This is a translation. Here's the original in Spanish: s/14296732/1/Nada-m-que-silencio
I'm placing this scene after the first torture session, but before Crosshair escapes to send his message.
Lying on the metal bed, the needle in his neck didn't allow him to focus on anything but the pain coursing through his nerves.
The clones were resilient, and torture tolerance had been part of their training. The Kaminoans only created perfection after all. But as was the case the vast majority of the time, training and simulations did not do justice to reality.
He wanted to scream, beg for it to stop, but he still had a shred of lucidity left to know that wouldn't work. The only thing he could do was to remember his training; "Under no circumstances should you surrender information."
"The most important thing is to resist until the information you have is useless."
He had no idea how the doctor had found out that his brothers were alive, and it didn't help that he genuinely didn't know their whereabouts. No matter how small, any detail of how his brothers operated could give the doctor insight to hunt them down. And he had already seen what the empire was capable of.
"If you are captured it will be notified, and sensitive information will be destroyed or changed if possible." Information... Information... His brothers didn't know that the empire had them in its sights.
"They don't know… The information… They don't know…"
His physical agony didn't allow him to think clearly. He couldn't even register the sound of the doctor's soft voice. From one moment to the next, the droid made a slight screech and stopped.
The intense pain disappears almost instantly, giving way to a residual pain; is breathing accelerated but his muscles started to relax, even if only a little. Despite the fog of disorientation in his mind, he managed to focus on the dark, small room where he was, and the person in front of him.
Crosshair soon noticed that only the doctor was present. Neither the woman nor the two troopers who had brought him here were there. How long had it been?
"Ready to talk?" said a hazy voice.
It took him a few seconds to understand what the doctor was saying, still affected by the droid serum.
"I'm going to repeat something to you. If you give me the information I need, I will let you go. All your records will be deleted, you will be free to do and go wherever you want."
The doctor made it sound almost friendly. Almost. But even before the torture, Crosshair sensed venom in each of his words. "Go wherever you want." Even if the offer was in exchange for nothing, he was a clone. He had nowhere to go.
The doctor seemed to wait for an answer, but all he got was a challenging look, which made him sigh.
"If you don't talk, this is only going to get worse for you."
Again, silence was the only thing heard from the clone, and the doctor's tranquil expression began to twist into frustration.
"I can't say that I'm surprised by your stoicism. Kaminoan clones are products of the highest quality. But I assure you...you all break."
His calm voice was exasperating, and those last words, spoken more slowly and threateningly, had another connotation.
During the war it was not common to rescue clones who had been taken prisoner, but the few exceptions were usually accompanied by horror stories, and the most common were those of captors torturing clones just for the sake of it. Clone force 99 didn't usually hang around with regs to hear these stories, but Echo did have a lot to tell.
Despite the threats, Crosshair remained inert. He was no longer a soldier of the republic, or the empire.
He no longer had a purpose. He had nothing.
Except... The only bastion of sanity he had left was knowing, or imagining, that his brothers were safe and well somewhere, and he planned to hold on to that until his very possible death in this place.
"But... Are they safe...? The empire is looking for them and they don't know it."
The doctor, still waiting for an answer, stared at him. His eyes also seemed to be filled with poison.
"You know...? I can go on with this all day, and the truth is... I would like to know how much it takes for you to scream."
"Under no circumstances should you surrender information." His thoughts focused on the training. Nothing this guy told him was going to change his mind.
Despite not being able to move his head, he watched as the doctor headed towards the droid. He couldn't make out what he did, but judging from what he said, he was preparing it for another session. He watched in horror as the doctor stepped away and the droid approached him. He instinctively tried to raise his arms and turn his head away from it, both actions stopped by the straps holding him to the operation table.
As soon as the needle pierced the skin, every nerve in his body started screaming. It felt slightly more intense than it did last time. It was similar to an electrocution. One more time, invaded by the desire to beg for reprieve, the only thing he had consciousness for was to clench his teeth and hold on.
"The most important thing is to resist until the information you have is useless." And certainly, his information could be classified as useless to the majority, but even a tiny percentage had a chance of hitting bullseye.
"I wonder if you notice the difference," the doctor asked with a smile. "It's another formula. Slightly more powerful."
The clone heard his captor's voice along with the ringing in his ears, but did not register a single word.
"For some, just this small change is enough. And me...well, I like to go slow."
With a small smile on his face, the doctor watched with satisfaction as the clone desperately tried to move. He almost seemed to convulse, and his pained moans were beginning to have an effect on him.
Crosshair had no idea if he was managing to contain his voice, under the effect of the serum he couldn't distinguish what was, and what wasn't.
"How long has it been?"
"My information is useless."
"I must not speak... I must not speak..."
His thoughts were chaotic, circulating in the midst of a fog in his head, until he suddenly felt the fleeting relief of the droid pulling out the needle. Did the doctor tell it to stop?
His half-open eyes, affected by pain and fatigue, spotted the doctor closer than he would like, watching with a hungry gaze.
"It's fascinating how you react differently to the other clones. Is it because of your genetic modifications?" he asked with interest. "Nala Se did an excellent job with her little extra project. And well...we have time."
The ringing in his ears didn't let him understand most of what his captor said, but he definitely sensed something sinister in his intonation.
"I like how you react."
Possibly it was due to the effect of the serum, but he did not notice the moment in which the doctor moved away the panel connected to the table that was above him. The pressure of the straps holding his ankles loosened and he saw that they were being removed. And before he could think about kicking him, he felt hands on his hips, grabbing his clothes, removing his pants.
He was not naive, he already knew what would happen. Another of the stories of surviving prisoner clones, or at least the ones Echo had heard. These particular stories were not common, but they existed. But it seemed so foreign, the kind of thing that seemed to happen one in a thousand
"Is this really going to happen to me?"
His dazed senses were alerted as he watched the doctor climb onto the metal bed.
"There's no room for this here." the clone thought intrusively.
He was on top of him. The damn doctor was on top of him, spreading his legs, leaving no doubt of his intentions.
If the injection session with the droid hadn't already caused him enough agony, now he also felt a terrible weight in his stomach. He didn't want to see the man on top of him.
He directed his sight towards the entrance into the room, sealed by the red laser.
"Isn't this guy worried about being seen doing this?"
Everything could be seen through the red tinted entrance from inside to outside and vice versa.
"Is this why the woman and the troopers weren't here?" His mind was full of irrelevant questions. "Had he planned to do this?"
He had no idea what the doctor was doing, but he assumed the obvious. He felt his hands on one of his legs, but he didn't want to look at him, he just waited for what had to happen, to happen.
Finally, he began to feel the intrusion. He didn't want to show how much it hurt, but if he could handle the droid, he could handle this. It wasn't a surprise that his captor didn't prepare him at all. It was evident that he only wanted to make him suffer more, and the fucking sadist probably has had an erection for a while from seeing him at the mercy of the torture serum.
The clone didn't notice that he was frowning heavily, or that his breathing was quickening, but the doctor did.
"First time?" he asked with malice, leaning forward slightly, "Because it seems... ah... it seems it is," he said while starting to thrust without care.
"The most important thing is to resist..." Keeping his thoughts focused on anything else was paramount. His eyes were completely fixed on the entrance and its red tint, but a particularly rough movement made him let out a grunt without realizing it, which the doctor evidently liked because of the small laugh he heard. It was as if he had taken it as a signal to begin fucking him more roughly.
Holding him by the waist, the doctor kept a steady pace, and the clone could only clench his fists tightly and endure. The residual effect of the injection made everything even worse. He had a constant puncturing sensation inside his skin, but he wasn't going to show it. He wouldn't give him what he wanted, neither his pain, nor his information.
"Ah, the clones, always so resilient."
There was a part of the sniper that was withdrawing into himself, a part that felt nothing of what was happening to him and only contemplated how his decisions had brought him here.
Decisions.
Something almost foreign to the clones, but that he thought he had. Another mistake. The supposed "superiority" that he desperately wanted to believe he possessed over regular clones meant nothing to the empire.
His sole purpose, for which he had been created, was trampled by the very ones he believed would respect it. In whom he believed would continue to give meaning to his life, for the ones he decided to abandon his squad for.
"We were good soldiers, we followed orders...and for what?" Mayday was right, his brothers were right. And now he was paying the price of his poor choices.
A slap made him suddenly snap out of his thoughts, even broke his own rule as he stared at the man above him.
"Trouble listening, clone?" his normally calm voice was slightly agitated by the activity.
Crosshair wasn't sure what he had been saying, but he didn't care, he wouldn't give him his attention. Once again, he directed his gaze to another point in the room. But the doctor leaned toward him, his face close to his ear. He could feel his breathing.
"Let's make it more fun," he whispered.
Immediately the droid's screeching alerted him.
He turned his eyes to the droid and watched it approach.
"No..."
He didn't even have time to process his fear, when once again the needle pierced his skin and his vision filled with black dots.
The clone, again instinctively trying to flail and move away, made the doctor hold his legs and continue the assault.
"Aah... Is it the injection? You got tighter... Ah..."
Crosshair wasn't listening to him at all. He couldn't focus on anything.
"These spasms you're having...they feel so good," he said without stopping.
"Stop it, please stop it." With the pain the clone felt, he could no longer tell if his thoughts were inside or outside his head.
"Please stop!" He could only hope that in the sea of agony and bewilderment he wasn't externalizing his thoughts.
"I must not speak... I must not speak... I must not speak."
Punctures, punctures everywhere.
"Under no circumstance..."
The damn doctor wouldn't stop moving and felt like the inside of his skin was burning.
"No circumstance… no circumstance."
His head was pounding, ringing through his ears. He was so exhausted. When was this going to stop?
"They are looking for them... they are looking for the girl... they don't know it."
If they catch his squad they will bring them here. They will be in the hands of this sick bastard. He couldn't let that happen. He had to resist.
His senses were so attacked that he didn't notice the doctor's accelerated pace. He would have been relieved that he was surely almost done.
And although it was not relief that flowed through his body, the immediate cessation of the intense pain made him release a strangled breath. His rapid breathing slowly stabalized, echoing in the room. The droid was slowly moving away.
The pulsating headache was too strong, he could barely focus his vision. What little he could hear sounded as if they were coming through a pair of plugs in his ears. He was so sore, tired and disoriented. He didn't know it, but he was shaking.
The doctor's voice was sounding, but for Crosshair it was unintelligible verbiage. At no time did he notice when the man got off the table, the serum making it difficult to even discern time. His only "consolation" was that he didn't realized when it finished, it was just over from one moment to another. But he could see, through his blurred vision, how the man was putting his pants back on, putting the straps back on, leaving the operaton table panel in place, as if nothing had happened.
"I am a clone in the hands of the empire, to almost anyone nothing has happened."
It took him a few moments, but he was starting to hear more clearly.
"Emerie, I need you to come," the doctor spoke to a communicator in his hand.
While he waited for her, he placed his gaze on the clone, it really was fascinating. And he never got tired of seeing the effect of the serum. There was truly no one who surpassed the Kaminoans in the area of cloning. At least not until he did it himself.
He approached the table, watching as the clone and his gaze fixed on the ceiling, paying him no attention. But it did not matter.
"That was pretty nice. But now I have other things to take care of," he said with disinterest. "If you talk, all of this will stop. You will never see me or these facilities again and no one will come after you."
A very generous offer, and even more so for a clone, from his point of view.
"But if not...well, we will continue seeing each other. Although the truth is I would like to repeat this session...perhaps with another serum, or something more rudimentary."
He brought his face closer to the clone's ear.
"I'm always eager to experiment with different variables on my test subjects," he confessed with his dark, venomous tone.
A part of Crosshair really wanted to listen to him. Get out of there, never see him again, not have to continue going through this. And his intensely sore body supported this idea.
But another part, a stronger one, had already made up its mind. He wouldn't say anything. His brothers were the only thing he had left, even with their clashing opinions, or different paths taken, he loved them. He would rather endure this torture before handing them over or give a clue as to where he thought they might be.
It didn't matter that the republic no longer existed, or that the empire was not what he thought; he was a soldier with a mission. "Good soldiers follow orders." And his orders now came from his own conviction.
Whatever the doctor told him would be met with the same response. Silence.
Multiple footsteps sounded in the hallway. The woman and two troopers were standing outside the room, obscured by the laser from the entrance.
Crosshair watched as the doctor let them in and began to talk to the woman.
"I have to take care of a call. I'll leave you in charge of this."
The doctor was on his way out when he turned to the woman.
"And Emerie, don't stop until he speaks," he ordered flatly.
"Yes, doctor," she answered coldly.
The clone listened as the doctor's footsteps got further away, and any relief he might feel was overshadowed by the woman, who had only come here to replace him.
"Well? Do you have anything to tell me?" she asked calmly, but seeing that the clone remained silent she could only sigh. "Last warning, Crosshair. He won't stop, there's nothing to be done."
It was strange, but there was something weird about this woman. She sounded almost as trapped as he was. But he didn't care. She would receive the same answers as the doctor. He turned his nonchalant gaze towards the ceiling.
Another sigh, but unlike his other captor, this sigh outlined more disappointment and even sadness than frustration.
The droid's screech indicated that this would indeed not stop, and before the liquid began to course through his nerves, he remembered another phrase from his training.
"There is nothing more important than loyalty. A dignified death is to die in the fulfillment of one's duty."