Echo couldn't help but take a closer look at Cody's armor. His ab armor was new. Echo had only gotten a glimpse of the commander's bloodied and shattered armor the day of the attack, but he'd noticed the ab plate had been painted a distinctive grey. This new plate was standard white as if it hadn't been touched since it was issued from the armorer. His gauntlet was also new and unpainted. Fives had destroyed Cody's other gauntlet after prying it open to remove the tracking chip now embedded in all command and special forces armor. But, Cody's chest armor was still the same sternum piece assigned to him before he'd been shot. It was a strange mix of looking new on the sides and back and being completely scorched on the front. The distinctive sooty halo ring of a halo ring marred the paint on the chest piece. Scorching that severe couldn't be scrubbed out no matter how much you buffed or lightly sanded the armor. The center stripe of orange was barely visible under the scorching, and the side stripes hadn't fared much better. The starburst ring of scorching stopped just shy of the command badge over his heart, evidence of how close the blast had come to killing him outright.
The commander unclipped his chest plate and stared at it for a long moment before showing it to the others. "This is from the day my Captain shot me." He looked over at Rex. "You were there. I don't remember if the rest of you were as I'm still piecing things together from before and after the shooting. Ko– he was an exemplary officer. We were very close. Not like I am with Rex, or Trapper, but I could always count him to talk strategy with me at any hour or whip the new shinies into shape. He was the perfect 2IC." He paused, his voice deep with loss and mourning. Echo couldn't remember ever having a conversation like this with the 212th commander. He never opened up like this- at least not among the regular troopers. "I keep going over the events of that day– everything I can remember anyway- and wondering what I could have done differently to save him."
"Cody-" Rex started.
Cody shook his head, not willing to hear any words from anyone that it wasn't his fault. "He was complaining of a headache. I told him to go back to his quarters, but he refused." Echo could hear the anger in the commander's voice. "I should've recognized earlier there was something wrong with him. Why didn't I?" Rex inhaled sharply, but kept his silence. He bumped Cody lightly with his shoulder pauldron. Echo recognized the gesture as it was the same thing Fives did to him when he was trying to comfort him without words. Cody nodded at Rex, quickly acknowledging the show of support, and then closed his eyes as he struggled to remember exactly what happened that day. "He was irritable- snapping at me- all of it out of character for him. And, he was missing his targets. What kind of troopers can't shoot?" he scoffed, but there was no humor behind his laugh.
Sly opened up his mouth as if about to interject, but shut it again, holding his tongue.
"His voice… It was flat and hard to decipher… he was muttering about 'orders,' but I hadn't given him any, other than to go back to his quarters. And, then… " Cody sucked in a deep before continuing, "he shoved his decee in my gut and shot me… I saw his eyes, they weren't right. I mean, the only way I could explain it was him, but not him at the same time." His voice changed to one of hurt and disgust. "He destroyed me like he was taking down a droid. None of it made any sense… until..now."
He stared at the chip again, as if it could hold the answers to the worst day of his life.
A shocked silence followed his words. Echo dared a quick glance around the room at his brothers. They all knew portions of what had happened because they'd seen the devastating aftermath. Hearing it from Cody's point of view changed these chips from a point of scientific curiosity into something very personal.
Sly broke the silence, but his tone had changed. His enthusiasm had tempered into a different kind of energy- respectful and focused. "Sir, you said your Captain's behavior was off. At times, he was behaving like himself and not himself at the same time. Would it be accurate to say, it was as if he did not have full control of his actions?"
Cody looked over at Rex, and Echo knew the two of them were grimly considering the implications of clones being forced to shoot other clones. Or, any other grisly activity where they were being forcefully used as a tool at someone's will. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm thinking. What happened with Ko could happen to any of us at any time. We all have one of these-" he stabbed an accusing finger at the holo of the chip- " in our heads."
"Except for us," Kix pointed to the bacta patch on his skull, "we took ours out."
Rex shook his head. "You want to explain why you took such a reckless move without consulting me? You're my chief medic!"
Kix folded his arms across his chest defensively. "We were short on time and needed to study the chips. We didn't have the luxury of recruiting volunteers-"
A seed of an idea that had been brewing in Echo's mind burst forth. He hadn't wanted to acknowledge he was different, but he couldn't deny it any longer. "Sirs, I still have mine, and mine is different. I think it's important, but I… need a few minutes to pull some data together." His mind was already ahead three steps on gathering up the information he needed for the Captain and the Commander. Ironically, it meant compiling together all of the additional testing he'd put up such a fuss with Kix about getting done. If all of it turned out to be important, he owed the medic an apology.
"Fine," Cody said, making an impatient gesture toward Echo that basically said 'get to it.' Echo gestured to Fives to join him over at one of the terminals. He sat where he could keep an eye on the others and monitor the conversation, and work at the same time.
The commander pointed to Kix's bacta patch. "Taking the chip out– what does that involve?"
Kix nodded to Sly, encouraging him to answer. The new medic waved the command clones over to the equipment they'd use for the procedure. "We modified this scanner so we could locate the chip. It wasn't easy. The Kaminoans obviously didn't want them found. The procedure was easier after we did a few of them." He pointed to the other medics in the room, all of which Echo noticed had the good sense to look slightly guilty as they touched at their bacta patches. "But, it still is brain surgery and not to be taken lightly."
"Putting aside that all of you did something very reckless," the commander said, in a tone that indicated he wasn't putting it aside and there'd be a conversation about it later, "what happens if the location is slightly off?"
Iron jumped in with his Wolfpack penchant for delivering bad news straight up. "Hemorrhaging inside the brain, brain damage, emotional instability-"
Cody put up a hand to silence him, a gesture Echo now noticed he was very fond of when he was short on time. "Logistically, is this a procedure that could be carried out on millions of clones?"
The medics looked back and forth at each other in silent consultation, considering the question, and then shook their heads. Iron answered in his grim, straightforward way. "No, Commander, the implications of trying to do brain surgery on millions of clones is… staggering. These chips were implanted in us at birth. By their very design, I think they were implanted in such a way to make them very difficult to take out. Even if with all of the medics working at this task night and day, it would still take-"
Cody put up a hand again and scrubbed at his own skull at the spot where the chip resided. "OK, I get it." He pushed out a defeated sigh as he stared at the hologram again. "Are you saying there is no way we can save our brothers from this thing?" He stabbed at it angrily. "No way can we save all of us from what happened to Ko? From being controlled and manipulated-"
Echo cut the commander off before he'd even realized he was doing it. "No, that's not true."
His softly spoken words brought the room to complete silence. Cody stared at him expectantly, not bothered he'd been interrupted mid-sentence.
Echo rubbed at his own scalp, trying to figure out how to explain he was different. Different was never good as a clone. Different meant defective and this meant reconditioning. All clones learned early on you hid anything different or unique about you if you wanted to survive your time at Kamino.
The only person he'd spoken to about this was Kix. He looked over at the medic, gathering his courage. Kix nodded at him. Echo took a deep breath. "Sir, I… uh… saw something when I was in the Kaz'harian lab…before I was stabbed."
Cody scowled and stabbed at the hologram again. "Does it have relevance to this?
"Yes, sir, I believe it does, and there may be an alternate means of disabling these chips. I need a few more minutes for calculations and then I'll have something to show you." As soon as Echo said the words, hope blossomed in his chest.
"I think I know where he is going with this," Kix said, moving over to assist Echo with compiling data.
"But, until we figure out an alternate means, we should still try to get out as many of these chips as we can," Sly gestured to the meddroid looming near there on a nearby bunk, "at least among the essential staff and command clones."
Rex shook his head. "Mine is staying. Whatever it is Echo is coming up with, he can test it on me. If it's good enough for the fleet, it's good enough for me."
Kix snorted and grumbled. "Oh, it's reckless when I test things on myself, but it's alright when you do it."
Rex huffed good-naturedly and tilted his head to concede Kix's point.
"What about you, Commander?" Iron asked, pointing to the medbay droid and available bunk. "Looks like we have a few minutes. If you don't mind wearing your bucket for a bit until the scar heals, I can get your chip out. You'll be sore in that spot the rest of the day, but-"
"Do it," Cody agreed without hesitation and hopped up on the bunk.
"There will be a pinch from the sedative, and then you won't feel anything until-"
"Less talking and more cutting," Cody grumbled, from his position on the medbay bunk.
"Just like Wolffe," Iron muttered and slipped Cody the sedative.
# # #
Rex wasn't surprised Cody had chosen to get his chip removed. After what happened to him with Ko, he had a vendetta against the chips. The last thing he wanted was a ticking time bomb in his own head. Rex felt the same way but he was now pinning all of his hopes on whatever it was his brothers were working on.
Echo had saved them all before on Kaz'haria. While it was unfair to keep putting everything on the shoulders of one ARC trooper, Rex sensed in his gut Echo was on the right path again. He needed to give Echo a little more time and support him in what he was doing.
He watched the brain surgery on Cody- a surprisingly bloodless procedure- and stared in fascination as the chip was extracted. It was very tempting to demand his chip be taken out, too. But, removing the chip from a few clones wasn't going to save the whole race of clones.
There's so much more going on here.
We have to figure this out.
We are running out of time.
Alpha-17 had taught them to always listen to their gut instincts. Rex had noticed early on his gut instincts were uncannily accurate most of the time. The only other clones he'd met with such good natural instincts were Travis, his tubemate, and Cody, the brother who was closer to him than any other. There had to be something about Cody that made him the perfect candidate for grand marshall commander. Cody tended to grumble it was just bad luck and said there were much better jobs in the GAR. But, Rex liked to think maybe there was something a little more extraordinary about Cody that made him suitable for the job.
# # #
The pain from the surgery was less than Cody had anticipated. There was an aching, insistent pain at the incision site, the body's way of complaining about the intrusion. But, he immediately noticed his deep background head pain was gone. His headaches had become more and more frequent lately until they were an almost constant companion. But, the constant throbbing in his skull was gone. He inhaled deeply and opened his eyes.
"How are you feeling?" Iron asked, running a scanner over him.
"Better than before, the headache I usually have is gone," he touched two fingers to the bacta patch on his skull and winced. "I'm sore, but it's a different kind of pain than before. This is a lot less throbbing and insistent."
Iron looked thoughtful. "Lay still another minute and rest. I'm going to do another scan. Close your eyes." Before Cody could object, the Wolfpack medic had activated the scan. Iron stared at the attached screen and studied the results. "Does your medic know you've been having these headaches?"
"No, yes, maybe. I don't know if I mentioned it," Cody muttered irritably. "We were a bit distracted with the whole getting shot thing."
"Yes, well, you have more white matter densities than you should in your brain."
Cody frowned deeply. "What does that mean?"
"It means the headaches you've been having lately are so severe they've left residual effects behind in your brain."
"Like brain damage?" Cody asked sharply.
"More like scar tissue. The correct term is hyperintensities. Thanks to neuroplasticity, your brain has been rewiring itself. When you had these headaches, where did you feel the pain?"
Cody reached up a hand to the bacta patch. "It would start here– at the temple and then work it's way to the back of my head until my whole head felt like it was squeezing in on itself. The only relief I ever got was when Obi-Wan-" he flushed, and noticed Rex was giving him a curious, bemused glance, "er, General Kenobi would… eh… do some Jedi thing to make the headache go away. He once called my headaches 'odd.'"
"I think your headaches and these scans are proof the chips are physically damaging our brains," Iron said with finality, transferring the scans over to his datapad.
"Again, you're using the word brain damage. Should I be concerned?" Cody stared down the Wolfpack medic. He didn't like the sound of this at all.
"Having headaches to this severity is not good, Commander," Iron answered, tapping the datapad for emphasis, "however, the probable cause of your headaches has been removed. Your body will compensate for it like it does for any other injury."
"Great," Cody grumbled. "Send a copy of those scans to me. I need to discuss this with the General." He made a general gesture around the room. "All of this that we've discovered."
Rex immediately shook his head. "No, Codes, not yet. Until we know more, we have to keep this between us clones."
"I'm not in the habit of keeping things from my General-" Cody started.
"Yes, you do," Rex interrupted, and Cody shot him a death glare for daring to say such a thing in front of the men. But, Rex quickly explained. "We all do. The Jedi don't tell us everything and we don't tell them everything. When the time is right, we will share what we've learned. We're still investigating, and if we get shut down now, we will never get the answers we need."
"The General wouldn't shut us down," Cody insisted, intent on defending his General, "he'd support us."
"Yes, but who commissioned the clone army?" Rex pointed out.
"The Jedi," Cody conceded.
"Yes, and so until we know who it was that insisted a control chip be put in the clone army- commissioned by the Jedi- we need to keep this among us brothers."
Cody had to admit Rex had a point.
"I have something," Echo said, gesturing from where he hooked his datapad into a medbay terminal. He projected another scan of a computer brain.
"What are we looking at?" Rex asked.
"That is my brain," Echo said, "everything looks the same until you examine the chip more closely." He zoomed in on the scan focusing in at a hyper-level, pushing the resolution to its limits. "That's as good as I can get it." He pointed into the scan. "Notice anything different about my chip?"
Cody inhaled sharply. "What happened to it?" He stared at the partially-dissolved and misshapen chip. "It looks almost completely destroyed."
"I believe something in my body attacked that chip."
Cody frowned skeptically. "Are you sure you weren't given a bad chip years ago? Your chip shorted out or malfunctioned or something?"
Echo shook his head. "No. When I was in the Kazzie lab, they had clone brain scans on their screens. They were studying the chips. They'd discovered them somehow." He grimaced as he realized the impact of his words. "Eh… hopefully by scans and not… eh…" Rex gestured impatiently for him to go on. "The same scientists who were studying the scans were working with chemicals. I nicknamed it Kazzie goo for how sticky and slimy it was-"
"Wait- you touched it?" Rex asked incredulously. "You touched an unknown substance in an enemy lab?"
"Not by choice. I smashed into it during the fighting. My hand went through a beaker of it and when I was bleeding out underneath that table, the Kazzie goo kept dripping on me. I was fading in and out at that point, but near as I can tell, I ended up with at least a half of beaker dropping straight into my bloodstream."
"If I understand you correctly," Cody said carefully, "the Kaz'harians were studying the clone chips. There was an experimental substance of unknown origin and function nearby and you ended up with some of it in your bloodstream?"
"A great deal of it," Echo emphasized, "these are my blood test results and my levels are-"
Kix stepped in. This was his area of expertise. "-abnormal in several notable markers. Echo has been allowed to return to duty, under the agreement we would continue to monitor his elevated blood counts. He's shown no adverse effects, other than his blood test numbers looking different from other clones."
Rex stared at the ARC as if he'd never been so certain of anything in his life. "The key, Echo, it's in your blood."
Echo grinned. "Yes, if we can use these markers and my blood as a template, we may be able to reproduce the results."
"And, what then?" Cody demanded, "some kind of blood transfusion? For all clones? How is that any easier than removing the chips?"
Kix stared at Echo's test results again. Iron and Sly stood next to him as they saw what he saw. "Not a blood transfusion. A vaccine."
"I'm liking this better," Cody said, "but how do we slip in a new vaccine while trying to remain under the radar?"
Kix pointed to the results again. "As clones, we are vaccinated several times a cycle due to our exposure to hostile pathogens. We work this in as part of the next routine vaccination. I have an internal network of medics I trust. I can let them know about it. The rest of them likely won't even notice and will administer it without even looking too closely. The distribution method is already there. We could do it right under the noses of the Kaminoans."
Cody listened to all of their arguments, but the ultimate decision would be his alone. The decisions they were making here would affect millions of clones. "Echo was very sick after he was injured. You said his illness couldn't be explained by his injuries alone. We can't inject something into millions of clones at once that will sicken them. We'd lose the war overnight."
"True," Echo allowed, "but I was exposed to almost a whole beaker of the stuff."
"Dosage makes all the difference in medicine," Kix agreed. "The right amount of medication can save, while too much can kill. Getting dosages right is a critical part of being a medic. We'll get this right."
"I'm volunteering to be a test subject," Fives asserted, drawing a look of concern from Echo. "I still have my chip."
"I already said I'd be a beta subject."
Kix groaned. "You're our Captain. You may not be the best choice to test things on."
"Oh, now who's worried about following safety procedures?" Rex said pointedly to Kix. "You better get it right, then, or you'll be down one Captain. This is excellent work, all of you. However, all of you need to grab a few hours of rack time. You look exhausted. That's an order. Kix and Sly, I'll push your deployment back as long as I can, but once we need you in the field, I'll have to pull you right away." He turned to the Wolfpack medic. "You need to head back to your ship. Wolffe has made it very clear there will be unpleasant consequences if I continue to kidnap his CMO."
Iron grunted with amusement. "Sounds like Wolffe." He turned to Kix and Sly. "Keep me in the loop. I have a lot of resources on my end and I can help push things along."
The team of clones headed out of the auxiliary medical bay together, Cody giving one last glance at the holoscan of the chip before Kix shut down the power to the bay. He inhaled deeply and then tugged his bucket on to hide the scar from his recent surgery.
He and Rex walked in silence toward the conference room for their meeting, both lost in their thoughts. Cody had done his best to stay out of the "investigations" Trapper said he'd been working on with others. He'd resisted Wolffe's efforts to draw him in further and ignored Fox and his repeated warnings there was something going on. But, he could no longer deny any of it. There was some twisted conspiracy involving Jedi and the powers that be in the Republic and somehow the clones were caught right in the middle of it.
# # #
A/N: I hope you enjoyed this two-chapter update of Rex II. Writing has been going slowly for me as I have a migraine more days than not. One of the side effects of the migraines is the effect on language. The same electrical energy that causes a migraine affects the Broca area of the brain. The Broca area controls the ability to express language- to speak words or create sentences. It's frustrating to have a desire to write, and knowing it's something I'm very good at, but feeling like there is this giant roadblock in my head. As always, if you spot an error, I won't be offended in the least if you point it out. I have difficulties sometimes spotting my own errors. But, if they don't bother you, and you understand what I mean anyway, then enjoy the story.
Cody is my stand-in for migraine headaches in the past couple of chapters. He experiences blinding headaches from his control chip. According to canon, Fives and Tup experienced nightmares from their chips. They all have something in their brain that shouldn't be there so it stands to reason there could be some unwanted side-effects, (other than the homicidal tendencies at the whim of the Chancellor.) Cody's removal of the chip ends his headaches. Damage to the brain from severe headaches is a real thing. Look up white matter hyperintensities. It's not a good thing to have them. But, I have confidence Cody will find a way to persevere despite everything that has happened to him. He has to succeed. Whether he wanted to or not, he is the one who started this clone rebellion.
The terminology I use for Cody's armor comes from the 501st, (the Star Wars costuming group.) The detailing referenced on Cody's armor comes from the Costume Reference Library Commander Cody (Phase II) animated.