Cody was silent as they headed toward the briefing room, his expression hidden beneath his helmet.
Rex glanced over at him, but his brother's gaze was fixed solidly ahead.
What they'd learned about Ko and the control chips was a revelation, but he doubted it gave Cody much peace of mind. Understandably, the attempt on Cody's life at the hands of his own second-in-command remained a difficult and unpleasant subject for the commander.
Rex wasn't great at tackling deep emotional stuff. He didn't mind talking strategy. He could do that for hours. But, emotions? He generally avoided those types of conversations, if possible. It was definitely not something they'd covered in their training at Kamino. When a clone was having a hard time dealing with something, he often pulled Ahsoka in to help. She had a way of talking to the men that always seemed to make them feel better. He couldn't do that here, though, so he'd just have to slog through and figure out how to help Cody on his own.
Rex was about to say something to engage his brother in conversation– anything– when he and Cody were each roughly grabbed by the arm and shoved into the large munitions storage room.
Cody pulled his blaster and jammed it under the chin of one of his assailants.
Rex's visors swept side-to-side as he prepared to kick out the knees of his attackers, and he found himself surveying a wall of grey and white clone armor.
The fekkin' Wolfpack. All of them grunts, if he wasn't mistaken.
Cody made the realization at the same time as Rex. And, where there was one member of the Wolfpack, there was always undoubtedly more….
Wolffe was leaning casually back on a crate sipping from an oversized mug that read: "Wolves do it in packs."
Cody holstered his weapon with such force the plast-leather gave a creak of protest. "Fek, Wolffe! Can't you just comm us like a normal clone?"
"He's all about making an entrance," Rex grumbled.
"I have a reputation to maintain." Wolffe shrugged, though Rex would've sworn he saw a faint gleam in the commander's eye.
"Maintain it another way," Rex said pointedly, staring Wolffe down, "I thought someone was trying to take Cody down again."
"Not on my watch," Wolffe's voice held the conviction of one brother willing to die for another. He made a series of quick hand signals to his pack who retreated as quickly as they appeared.
Rex's tense shoulders eased up a fraction and he holstered his twin blasters. He indicated the direction the Wolfpack had vanished with a jerk of his chin. "Are they always lurking around somewhere?"
Wolffe gave a non-committal shrug. "Have a seat," he shoved them both down onto crates. He reached backward and produced a thermos, gesturing to the steri-foam cups in Rex and Cody's hands. "Care for a refill?" Without waiting for a response, he topped off their cups.
"Now, since our 0700 meeting has been pushed back-"
"Wait, since when…" Rex quickly scrolled through his messages and Cody did the same. There was a quick message from General Skywalker requesting the ops meeting be pushed back 30 minutes so he could take a call from Coruscant. "Ah, I see."
"Right," Cody muttered, setting down his new mug next to him on the crate, "his calls." He stared up at the ceiling, and then looked over at Rex pointedly "Who do you think it is- the Chancellor or the Senator?"
Rex shook his head. "I don't know, and it's not the General's fault the Chancellor wants to speak to him all the time."
"All the time," Wolffe contributed in his sarcastic tone, "he never calls my General directly."
"Mine either," Cody contributed. He slipped off his bucket one-handed so he could take a sip of caf. "Rex, don't you find their relationship… a bit… eh…" he faltered, trying to find a diplomatic word.
"Irregular?" Wolffe immediately jumped in, but he was distracted staring at the bacta patch on Cody's temple.
"I was going to go with 'peculiar,'" Cody said.
Wolffe gestured to Cody's temple. "You took your chip out." It was a statement, almost an accusation.
"And here I thought you knew everything," Rex muttered, tugging off his helmet so he could take a sip of caf.
"You left yours in," Wolffe said, leaning in more closely to stare at Rex's temple.
Rex swatted him away. "Yes, I did. Echo and Kix are working on something and I volunteered to… eh… be a test subject."
OK, now that he said it out loud, it did sound like a bad idea.
Wolffe snorted. "Di'kut. Yeah, nothing could go wrong with that. You should've just gotten your chip out."
Rex shook his head. "Yes, well, the issue is bigger than that. Now, what is it you dragged us in here to discuss?"
Wolffe conceded with a nod "Iron, my chief medic, had been sending me quick updates on the work he has doing here with the 501st. What the medics discovered about the chips fits into what Boost and Sinker have been digging into." He stood to set his helmet down a nearby stack of crates and used the headlamp to project a holoimage.
Rex blinked in surprise. He had no idea they could do that with their helmets.
Cody was similarly staring in surprise. "Wait-"
Wolffe waved another dismissive hand. "It's a Wolfpack mod." His fingers danced through the air as he manipulated the image in front of him. "This is Ko's helmet. Rex here notices there were extra electronics in it."
He dipped his chin toward the 501st Captain.
Rex figured that was about as close as Wolffe ever went in giving words of praise. He gave a slight head nod in return before leaning in so he could study the holoimage more closely. He reached his fingers into the image and traced a wire. "This wire here is not standard. And, it is hooking into some kind of device here. What is that?"
Wolffe enhanced the image even further. "Ah, that was the tricky part. The helmet almost blew itself up when Boost tried to take it apart to examine it more closely. It's a transmitter. One-way. Long-range. Highly-encrypted. And, completely untraceable."
Cody stared at the helmet. "You think someone sent a message to Ko right before he shot me?"
"It's possible," Wolffe said, "I don't know why else his helmet would have this special mod. We tracked the records on his kit. His bucket was delivered late and had orders to be destroyed immediately if it could not be delivered directly to Ko. I think the bucket was supposed to destroy itself and Ko after the shooting, but somehow that one piece of it malfunctioned. So, instead of taking off Ko's head, they kidnapped on the way to Corrie instead."
Cody sucked in a breath. "Oh, fek. I didn't think the events of that day could've gotten worse, but…" his voice trailed off as he stared at the tiny pack of explosives wired into the helmet.
Rex stared at the holoimage and his gut twisted into a knot.
Cody quickly pulled himself out of his shock, eyeing Rex. "I know that look. What is it?"
Rex shook his head and then pushed out a long breath. It was hard to put into words. He glanced over at Wolffe, hesitant to mention just a hunch in front of his most cynical vod. "I… I don't know."
"Rex, if you suspect something, I want to hear," Cody ordered.
Rex sucked in a breath. He traced his fingers along the entire length of the extra wiring again. His arm and fingers turned blue from the hologram. "This extra wiring in Ko's helmet… and the attempt on your life… both of the attempts on your life… the call that Ko received… they're all connected."
"How?" Cody demanded. "How is it connected, Rex?"
Rex stared through the helmet and his head went glassy. His voice softened to a barely audible murmur: "All of it… it's all connected." With unfocused eyes, his hands traced down the wiring. "It's all connected to…" His eyes sharply focused as he and Cody came to the same conclusion at the same time:
"The chips."
Wolffe inhaled sharply and tapped at his skull "Fek. The same chips that my chief medic thinks every fekkin' clone has in their heads?"
"Eh, a few of them have been removed," Cody reminded, pointing to the patch on his temple, "but there is no feasible way we can get them out of the whole fleet."
Rex pulled out his datapad, stared intently at Wolffe's helmet, and after a moment of fiddling with his pad he changed the image to show the same image of the chips the medics had been using in the lab.
Wolffe blinked in surprise at Rex's technical prowess.
Cody smirked proudly, the brief exchange taking some of the deep tension out of the moment.
Rex pointed into the new image. "Kix says these images are embedded so deeply into our temporal lobes they can control behavioral and emotional centers."
"Like what happened with your Ko," Wolffe muttered thoughtfully, crossing his arms and staring into the hologram. "I understand from Iron the medics have a lead on something that may inhibit their function?"
Rex nodded. "Yes, Echo and Kix are working on something."
"Make sure they continue to share the data with Iron. We can work faster if I get my Pack on it," Wolffe continued to stare into the hologram, his voice filled with conviction.
"So, we've found out trigger, then," Cody's voice was filled with venom. "But, fek, if someone can activate these things through our helmets like they did with Ko, then…" his voice trailed off as they all thought through the implications of that statement.
"Someone can trigger these things in our heads at anytime," Wolffe hissed bitterly, tapping at his own temple and looking frightened for the first time since Rex had known him. "We have to make this research they're doing a priority. Keep that team from deploying for as long as possible." He blew out a long breath. "The timing is terrible since we're about to deploy at Anaxes and we're lean on resources to deploy in the field as it is-"
"We'll make this work, Wolffe," Rex said, placing a hand on his brother's shoulder. He looked over at Cody. "Somehow, we'll figure this out."
He shook his head. "Ticking time bombs. That's what we are."
Rex had mentioned the same thing in his conversation with the medics. He agreed, but no sense making all of them any more paranoid than need be-
The comms went off in all three of their helmets startling the quiet of the room. Wolffe glanced down at his chrono. "We're out of time. And, late."
He jammed his helmet on and left the room, conversing briefly with the Wolfpack grunts standing guard outside.
Cody grabbed his helmet, sitting on the crate next to him, and stared as if it might bite him. "Fek," he muttered, before jamming the helmet on his head and exited the room with Rex.
Out of the corner of his eye, Rex caught Wolffe's grunts from the Pack shoving something into his hands.
"Heads up," Wolffe said sharply to Rex and Cody. He tossed each of them… a mug.
"The 212th Does It Airborne," Cody read slowly as if trying to decipher code.
Rex read his mug: "I'm blue all over."
"General Plo has been encouraging us to express our creative sides." Wolffe gave a disinterested shrug, as he led the way into the meeting room, but the pride in his swarmy artwork was evident.
Rex stared down again at his mug, an oversized thing in a striking shade of 501st blue. "Well, I actually like it, Wolffe, so thank you."
The three command clones entered the meeting room together.
# # #
A/N: I've posted a photo on my Tumblr (longlivetheclones) of a Wolfpack grunt. The helmet of a grunt is a little less detail on it than Sinker or Boost. You see these grunts in the search and rescue missions with the Wolfpack. I picture Wolffe breaking in some of the new grunts doing his covert ops bidding.
A huge thank you to Adam (n7Huntsman) who always checks in on me when I haven't posted in a while and offers to read over what I've gotten written. In this case, I wrote a number of new chapters between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but never posted any of them. All of them needed editing and another pair of eyes. He also contributed a number of good ideas and some excellent dialogue for Wolffe. Thank you, Adam, for making this chapter come to life.
I no longer have a story artist for my Rex saga. GloryBlaz, (who did the beautiful cover art for Rex and my other stories), is now a mom and raising a beautiful little boy. If any of you ever get the urge to illustrate anything you see in these chapters, even if it is just a pencil sketch, please feel free to post it to my Tumblr. It's always so much fun to see how readers visualize these scenes.