When Hux entered the room, Snoke was standing at a viewscreen, flanked by two tall, purple-robed persons. Or creatures. Their proportions didn't look human, he realized as he approached. His familiarity with aliens was limited enough that he had no idea what these were. He chose a middle distance to stop at. He'd been called here, barely having started on plans for making the megaweapon a reality. He didn't have anything to show at this point but lists of ideas, options, and a growing list of questions that only Snoke could answer. So maybe it was a good thing that he'd been called in.

One of the purple creatures made a chittering moan and pointed at the screen as though showing something. The star field zoomed in to show a lighter band of grey through the middle. The device automatically added boundary lines and data that showed it was a particulate field. Probably a hazard to space travel. Possibly a source of minerals, but if the information Hux was seeing was correct, mining it would be inefficient unless the mineral in question was impossible to find in larger deposits.

If Snoke was speaking to the creature, Hux wasn't hearing it. But the thing nodded and pressed a button on the control panel. The bottom half of the screen filled with data. Hux was too far back to make out the text and besides, it wasn't his business.

Snoke was still facing away from him, reading the screen, when he said, "You checked yourself into medbay yesterday."

Hux blinked a few times. Why would Snoke care? How did he know this? How closely was Snoke monitoring him? And why? Also, how was he so sure Snoke was addressing him? "I did."

"I did not ask you a question."

What a jerk. Hux started to apologize, then kept his mouth shut. He questioned, again, how he was so sure Snoke was speaking to him and not either of the creatures with him. But he was definitely sure of it. It was puzzling.

"What treatment did you seek?"

It passed through Hux's mind that he ought to refrain from answering and pretend that he'd assumed Snoke was addressing the purple-clad aliens. But he recalled how he'd been treated after similarly misinterpreting Snoke's direction for him to go to his knees. Answering seemed wiser. Snoke could always tell him to shut the hell up if he was out of line. "Sir. I was seeking an antispasmodic."

Snoke turned to him. "For what purpose?"

He glanced at the alien assistants, who were conferring in strange tones. They were facing one another and not seeming to pay attention to his overly personal exchange with Snoke. "I … was having indigestion." His bowels had been unable to take the emotional strain he'd found himself under. It was one of the last things he wanted to talk about with a commanding officer. Or anyone. Snoke knew he'd gone to the medbay, but it was interesting that he didn't know why.

"Is this an effect of our last meeting?"

"I wanted to get started on the assignment as quickly and efficiently as possible." Which didn't explain why he'd sulked in his room like a frightened child for a day. He'd been weak. And then disgusted that his own body was betraying him. So he had taken actions to rectify the situation. It wasn't really a lie, he supposed. Snoke stared at him. Hux decided the look was because he hadn't answered the question. "Yes." Then he amended, "Yes sir."

"Hands and knees."

Hux knew what he meant. He shot the two aliens another look. There was also a warrant officer at the door whose job seemed to be seeing people in and out. He didn't want any of them to see him like this, but he hadn't been asked his opinion. Hux knelt.

This sort of posture happened so rarely in the Order that to see it at all was a laughing matter. No one laughed. For the aliens, maybe they didn't know. For the officer at the door, maybe she had been told not to. Or she'd seen it enough in the few months of Snoke's presence in the Order that it was no longer funny. Hux suspected it was the latter, which was loathsomely depressing. Why was this creature in charge?

He didn't have time to ponder it. His skin crawled, like something was moving over the backs of his hands. He grimaced and shifted then, picking up one and then the other, making a fist and setting them back down. He felt that pressure in his head, a feeling that Snoke was staring at him, a feeling of dread.

Hold yourself still.

Yes sir. He assumed Snoke could hear what he was thinking. Again – something he didn't have time to ponder. The feeling repeated on his hands, buzzing against his palms like he was touching machinery. It marched up his arms like he was dipping them into a mild acid, burning against his skin. It felt wet and then stung. He wanted to jerk his hands from the deck and frisk himself. He didn't. He stared at his arms where he could see nothing at all but felt it all the same.

He let out a shuddering breath as the pins and needles sensation flowed over his chest and down his body. No portion was left untouched. He squirmed anyway when his private parts were touched, then gasped as it felt like someone put a spike through his hands. They twitched, tendons standing out in relief as his muscles locked. Another spike. His fingers and toes curled at the pain. He bared his teeth and panted, trying desperately to hold perfectly still. Because he knew that was what the pain was about. He'd been told what to do and he wasn't doing it. Once he was still again, the process continued, starting at the same intimate spot where it had left off. There were a lot of nerve endings there. It took too long. His eyes watered.

Then legs. Feet. Face. He gasped, then set his lips together and tried to freeze in place. It felt like someone was touching his eyelids. A bug. The tip of a knife drawn across his skin. A spray of liquid. Residue. His scalp was next. That actually felt good, which was sickening. It sent his skin into gooseflesh. He wanted to object to this treatment. He wanted to complain. This was an offense, a breach of conduct. It was improper and people were not allowed to handle someone else like this, not even a commanding officer. But Snoke hadn't so much as touched him. Anyone could see that. Everyone could see that.

Then … his tongue. He swallowed compulsively before he could catch himself. He was tasting things. Or at least, his tongue was telling him he was tasting things. He was smelling them, too. It was like every smell or taste he'd ever registered was being evoked in a quick review, many of them mashed together. He felt nauseated. He couldn't tell if that was a reaction to the experience or a shift in Snoke's attention, but Snoke's attention did in fact shift. Hux had not been on such familiar terms with his gut as he was shortly. Snoke lit up every nerve cluster there in succession, putting them through their paces.

Hux wobbled, realizing the reason he was on hands and knees might be to prevent him from falling rather than any desire to humiliate him. He might still fall, but not as far. At the moment, he was on the edge of puking. The rest of his anatomy was similarly examined. He clenched. His vision faded. His hearing oscillated. His balance shifted. The room spun. He had to move to catch himself. It was either that or fall. He found himself with elbows bent, face inches from the floor. Had Snoke caught him with the Force or had he caught himself?

Snoke was walking away. Someone had come in. The purple-clad aliens were gone. Hux again had the feeling that too much time had passed. He had not been told to rise, so he stayed there on the floor, listening while Snoke discussed furniture options for some room. Snoke wanted to be sure they understood that alien accommodations were important.

Then he returned. Or Hux thought he had, yet Snoke continued walking past him to the console the aliens had left here. He pressed a few buttons and commed Admiral Nayta, whom he asked about her planetary survey results. Hux assumed Snoke must be making a point that he waited at Snoke's pleasure. And that was fine. He would wait. It was better to be here and be ignored than to be the center of Snoke's attention.

But when the call with the admiral was over, Snoke turned to him. Hux felt again various sensations of pain, heat, chill, nausea, what he would have sworn was heart palpitations, his throat itching, a desire to sneeze. His ear canals ached and so did his teeth. The whole experience was giving him a deep revulsion toward his own body. It was like it wasn't even his. He wanted to strip off this traitorous flesh and get rid of it.

"Your body functions within acceptable parameters," Snoke said dismissively. "It is the mind which is lacking in discipline. This seems endemic in the First Order." He looked off to the side, eyes sliding out of focus for long seconds. Hux swallowed and kept himself fixed in place. This time, he didn't look at whatever Snoke was gazing at. Snoke turned back to him. "If you wish to manage this project, you will learn to manage yourself or I will destroy you and find another."

The death threat didn't faze Hux nearly as much as it probably should have. After the preceding days … well. Instead, Hux thought about how he had managed himself. The medication had done its job. Was Snoke telling him not to use it further? What of the stims? Did he require Jedi-like asceticism in his people? What did Snoke expect him to do here? He was a human being and he was not asking for his body to react this way!

"Leave my presence." Snoke sounded put out, which was oddly validating. Snoke turned back to the new console as Hux stood and left. Hux gave the woman at the door a solid glare as he approached her. She at least had the grace to look away. He seethed internally all the way out about his obnoxious boss, who'd called him in to humiliate him over a standard human biological feature and then give him a complex about it.

As for the rest of what had happened … he vomited in the next refresher he came to. He had reason to continue using the antispasmodics and made a mental note to add an antiemetic to his regimen. He locked the incident away in his mind like it had never happened. He didn't know how else to deal with it. He had a project to finish scoping. He buried himself in his work.