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On the way back to Dromund Kaas, Raina tries to keep herself busy. Training with Cipher Nine, monitoring the comm system, calibrating weapons ... Anything to stay distracted and useful to the team. She did what she had to do—she knows she made the right decision—but that doesn't mean the grief or the guilt vanish.
She believes in the Empire. She cleaned up her father's mess. That's all there is to it.
Unfortunately, Raina still finds herself at loose ends sometimes, with nothing to do but think. After nearly an hour of restless pacing in her quarters, trying and failing to focus on a holonet article, she scrubs at her eyes and takes off for the galley. Maybe getting something to eat will keep her mind occupied.
Doctor Lokin is retrieving a few slices of toast. He looks up as she enters, and smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners. "Raina," he says. "You've been making yourself scarce lately. Is everything all right?"
She smiles back. "Of course. Just ... adjusting."
"I see. For whatever it's worth, I'm sorry that things ended the way they did. Your father was a good man, but you made the only choice you could, under the circumstances."
Raina clears her throat. "Right. Yes. Erm." She casts about for something, anything else to talk about. "Have you spoken with SCORPIO much? I still can't quite figure her out."
Lokin chuckles as he fishes out a butter knife from a drawer. "Oh, I've made the attempt. She is remarkably contemptuous of organics."
"I noticed," says Raina. She grimaces. "Mostly she's been ignoring me. Maybe it's for the best."
"Quite possibly." Lokin scrapes some butter onto his toast. "I would very much like to see her source code, but alas, Cipher Nine has forbidden any dissection of crew members. Terrible shame. We could learn a great deal from her."
Raina laughs. His more off-color jokes used to unnerve her, but a few months in his company have proven them harmless. He might be a part-time rakghoul with a background in bioweapons research, but he's also a genial old man with a talent for storytelling. He did more to put her at her ease when she first transferred to Intelligence than any of the others. Vector is sweet, but his mannerisms are more insect than human. Kaliyo can be funny, but she's also utterly selfish and often cruel. And Cipher Nine ... Raina likes and admires him, but he can be sort of ... distant, sometimes.
But Lokin knew her father, and doesn't hate her for killing him.
Raina decides to not think about that. "At least those two get along. I think the only person SCORPIO really talks to is Cipher Nine," she says. And now that she mentions it, he has been spending an awful lot of time in the engine room with SCORPIO. She says, half-joking, "Do you ever get the feeling that he likes the murderous ancient droid intelligence that tried to kill him better than he likes the rest of us?"
"Oh, I'm certain he does," says Lokin, quite seriously.
Raina blinks at him. "Why? She doesn't care about the Empire, or Intelligence, or people at all."
"Exactly." Lokin reaches for the jam. He tries to pry the jar open, but the lid seems to be stuck, maybe glued on by dried fruit preserves. He heaves a sigh. "Would you mind helping an old man, dear? My hands aren't what they used to be."
"Oh, of course," says Raina. She takes the jar and lid in a firm grip and twists them apart with a satisfying pop. She hands the jar back, sets the lid down on the countertop, and eyes Lokin as he gives her a nod of thanks. "What do you mean, 'exactly'?"
"Cipher Nine is a consummate operative," Lokin says, applying jam to toast. "He's an excellent liar with a talent for wetwork and manipulation, but caring is somewhat outside his skill set."
"I don't think that's true," says Raina. "He's been nothing but considerate and thoughtful. A bit cold in the field, maybe, or when he's talking about the job, but otherwise ..."
"I did say he was an excellent liar," Lokin says. "Which is what makes him far more dangerous than SCORPIO—she wears her apathy openly, ensuring that no one trusts her. But Cipher Nine plays nice ... until he doesn't. It's unsurprising that he'd find her candor refreshing."
Raina shakes her head and leans back against the counter. "Are all Intelligence personnel so cynical?" Her parents weren't, from what she remembers. And even if she were being cynical, she can't believe that they were only ever feigning affection for her, or for each other—not for years, not perfectly, not with such warmth.
Her father didn't say he loved her, before the end. But she knew. She could feel it, with the Force that has defined her entire life—
Stop that, she chides herself. The point is, even if she can't imagine Cipher Nine looking at anyone the way her parents looked at each other or at her, that doesn't mean he's not capable of it.
"Cynicism is a hazard of the job, Raina," Lokin says with a rueful smile. "And a useful survival skill, as well. But in this case, it's not the cynicism talking, it's just long experience. Clean slates like him tend to be rather disinterested in the intrinsic value of sapient life, if you catch my drift."
Raina frowns, watching as he takes an experimental bite of toast. "I'm afraid I don't. What's a clean slate?"
Lokin swallows and sighs. "Ah—my apologies. I forget, sometimes, that you put yourself through the standard training regimen in the cargo bay rather than at headquarters. Imperial Intelligence has a number of ways to enhance its agents. The eugenics programs, of course, and our cybernetics research division has an entertainingly vicious rivalry with the Sphere of Technology—to say nothing of my own work. One of the more, ah, aggressive approaches is intensive psychological conditioning. The numbers fluctuate, but between one in twenty to one in fifty field agents is what's colloquially known as a 'clean slate.' Individuals with no memory of their lives prior to Intelligence, and some useful cognitive modifications."
Raina stares at him. Her father never mentioned anything like this. "What kind of modifications?" she says uneasily.
"Oh, heightened pain and stress tolerance, enhanced analytical capabilities, total or near-total amnesia, bit of emotional deadening, that sort of thing. And suppressed empathy, of course."
"He's ... they did that to him?"
"Indeed." Lokin shrugs. "In short, Cipher Nine thinks more like SCORPIO than like you. He's just very, very good at faking it. That's the point of the procedure—agents capable of doing the messy, ugly jobs without flinching or breaking, who can still function in normal society."
Raina's skin is crawling. "So—so you're saying he doesn't actually care. About any of us. He's just—feigning camaraderie?"
"I'm saying that of the crew, Cipher Nine likely finds SCORPIO easiest to understand. They have a great deal in common."
She's preoccupied throughout the rest of the day, and her performance during hand-to-hand training suffers for it. She finds herself watching Cipher Nine's encouraging smiles, wondering if they're just a ruse.
"Sir, could I ask a personal question?" Raina says, afterward.
Cipher Nine takes a sip from his canteen and turns to her. "By all means."
"Doctor Lokin mentioned you were subjected to, er, psychological conditioning."
His expression goes particularly blank. "Did he."
She shifts her weight, uncomfortable. Maybe she's gone too far—but he knows practically everything about her, including her Force-sensitivity and family history. It's only fair if he returns the favor.
After a moment, he says, "What was your question?"
Raina steadies herself. In for a credit ... "What's it, erm, like?"
He raises an eyebrow. "Process or effects?"
"Both, I suppose."
"I don't remember the process. As for the effects ..." Cipher Nine tilts his head to one side, looking thoughtful. "What's it like not being brainwashed, Ensign?"
She blinks at him. "It's ... it's just normal?"
"This is my normal. I know it's not your normal, but I suspect that yours isn't much like Kaliyo's, or Vector's, or Lokin's."
"In fairness," Raina says dryly, "Kaliyo isn't human, Vector is a Joiner, and even Lokin isn't exactly what I'd call a normal person."
Cipher Nine's eyebrow ratchets even higher. "By that definition, neither are you."
She looks away and folds her arms against an abrupt chill. Between sweat from all the exertion and the cargo bay's environmental controls, it's easy to pretend that's all it is. "I—suppose you may have a point, sir. But I only meant ... well. It must be difficult for you. Doctor Lokin mentioned lost memories. I'm not sure who I'd be, without my past. How I'd cope with losing it." There are a few things she'd just as soon forget. But to forget everything?
He exhales through his nose. "Lokin, it seems, is fond of gossip."
"That's not really an answer, sir." She steals a glance at him—she's definitely pushing, now, but he keeps deflecting.
"And that wasn't really a question, Ensign," he says in teasing tones. Real, or just another act for her benefit? "But if I'm understanding you correctly ... You would be whoever and whatever you were made to be. You'd find a way to cope because you must."
Her gut twists unpleasantly. She can understand the rationale, of course. Intellectually. But the thought of being erased, being overwritten like an obsolete computer program—becoming someone else, someone who wouldn't even know what had been taken away ...
"That sounds awful," Raina says.
Cipher Nine shrugs. "Again, this is my normal. No point in moping about it."
"Lokin said something about ... reduced empathy. Do you—can you care about people? At all?"
"... Ensign, why the sudden fascination with my psychology?"
"You're deflecting again," she says.
He moves his head as if rolling his eyes. She's seen under the lenses; there's nothing to roll, just the sockets. It's an affectation, an empty gesture. "So are you. And you're being awfully familiar."
"Can you blame me for wanting to understand you a little better?" says Raina. "We've been working together for quite a while, now, and I feel as if I barely know you. I had no idea that you—that you'd been—you know—until Lokin told me."
He regards her in silence for a minute. Then he says, slowly, "Ensign, I want you to consider how you might feel if Lokin learned something very personal and private about you, and then told me about it without your assent."
"None of my secrets involve an inability to care about other people," says Raina.
"No, but your actions certainly reveal it."
"What? Sir, I—"
"I don't need to share in people's pain to understand them, or to predict how my actions might affect them emotionally. That's my job. I'm not perfect, but I am very, very good. When I hurt someone, I hurt them on purpose. When I don't hurt someone, that is also a deliberate choice. You seem to make no effort at all to understand the effect your words and actions will have on others. So tell me, Ensign—which of us is the more caring?"
The last time he was this sharp with her was just after her return from dealing with Cipher Three. And that was a lesson, one she needed to learn, one she didn't even realize was necessary until it became the only thing keeping her from falling apart.
She takes a shaky breath. "I'll be more careful. In the future. I'm sorry, sir."
"Thank you," he says coolly. "Now please consider why Lokin might have told you this information."
"It came up in conversation," says Raina. "We were just talking about SCORPIO, and he said it wasn't ... surprising, that you got along with her. I didn't know what he meant, so I asked, and he explained. About ... that."
"Brainwashing," says Cipher Nine, flat and cold. "Conditioning. It's not a dirty word, Ensign, it's a fact of life. Get used to it. And I didn't ask how he brought it up, I asked why he brought it up. What has changed, now that you know? Do you feel differently towards him? Towards me?"
She can't quite meet his gaze, and she can't quite put it into words. She presses her lips together and looks at the floor.
Cipher Nine takes a half-step back, raises the canteen, and takes another drink. He lowers it, drumming his fingers against the translucent duraplast. "Allow me to speculate," he says. "You're uncomfortable. You're questioning our every interaction, looking for ulterior motives. You think I've been insincere, that I've been deceiving and manipulating you this whole time. And you're not entirely wrong ... but I'm not the only one. Did you ever confirm Lokin's claim that he knew your father?"
Her head snaps up. "You—you think he'd lie about that?" She's never believed all of his stories about Cipher Three, but—surely he wouldn't invent an entire professional relationship.
Cipher Nine shrugs. "Lokin is an Intelligence agent who made it to the far side of fifty. No one survives so long in this line of work without a talent for deception. And I can't help but notice the timing of his little revelation—after I bring someone new onto the team, someone he can't influence, thus shifting the balance of power in my favor. Then you have your ... emotionally difficult experience. You're adrift, looking for reassurance, someone to lean on—well, there he is. I'm certainly not suitable; why, I'm a heartless automaton, just like SCORPIO. Trust Lokin. He's a nice old man. He'd never lie to you."
"But that's not—that's not how it was," she says, a bit helplessly. "He didn't tell me not to trust you. He didn't—"
"He didn't have to. He only had to suggest. Your own assumptions and fears did the rest." Cipher Nine swirls the water around in the canteen and exhales. "Or maybe I'm just paranoid, and Lokin genuinely means well. Maybe I'm the one who's using you. Maybe we both are."
"But we're all on the same side," says Raina. "Shouldn't that be more important than any power struggle amongst ourselves?"
His mouth twists into a mirthless smile. "Tell that to the Sith."
Some of the things he's said ... Do you truly believe the Sith have the Empire's best interests at heart? Has he been placating her, all this time? Pretending that he's just as loyal and dedicated to the Empire as she is, and covering the cracks in the mask with more soothing lies? Playing nice, as Lokin put it, in order to—what, maintain control over her?
But things have changed. Cipher Nine is right that something has shifted, between SCORPIO and her father and Lokin and Raina learning the truth.
She did her duty. She believes in the Empire. Even if individuals within the Empire sometimes fall short of that ideal—and she's beginning to suspect that Cipher Nine is no exception. Just because the worst of the Sith put their own interests ahead of the good of the Empire as a whole doesn't mean he should sink to their level.
Except he thinks the way he does because the Empire—or at least Intelligence—wanted a better operative, so—
"If you believe only one thing I ever tell you, believe this: everyone has an angle. Even and especially your own allies," Cipher Nine says. "I'm not saying to trust no one; I'm saying that you cannot trust lightly. Watch what people do and how their actions benefit them, not just what they say. Work out who they really are and what they really want from there. That's the only way to survive in this game."
"Then what's your angle?" says Raina. She sighs heavily, covers her face with a hand. "Why am I even asking—you'll just lie, won't you."
His smile turns enigmatic. "Oh, probably. And so will Lokin, and Kaliyo. Vector's a diplomat, which means he's a liar by profession, too. I think the only truly honest person on this ship might actually be SCORPIO."
"And me," Raina says.
Cipher Nine laughs once. He flips the water bottle around like one of his knives before capping it, then steps forward as if to brush past her—but as he draws level and she shifts to let him pass, he pauses, and puts a hand on her shoulder. Raina doesn't pull away, but she is very, very aware of how much taller he is. He leans in, just a little too close. "No, you're not," he murmurs.
Then he lets go. "We're all freaks and liars here, Ensign," he says. "Either accept it, or find a job where denial won't get you killed or worse."
He leaves her alone in the cargo bay.
Raina stands there, shaken. Was all of this a terrible mistake? He kept telling her she could leave, and she kept telling him she didn't want to. It was an honor to be chosen for Intelligence—but she wasn't; he told her that. She's only on the Intelligence payroll because Cipher Nine pulled strings in order to save her life. She didn't choose this, and she didn't earn this, and maybe—
Maybe she should have found a way to administer that Intelligence psych eval. If it's a requirement to think like Cipher Nine in order to be part of Imperial Intelligence—to care about nothing and no one, to lie for the sake of convenience and control—then maybe she shouldn't.
Maybe no one should.
Except—he did save her life, because she was useful to the Empire. He gave her a way out once the threat had passed, because he knew she didn't belong here. He kept trying to teach her how to survive a world her father never wanted her to see, as best he could, even when she didn't fully understand.
Watch what people do.
Raina smiles to herself. "You do care," she says under her breath.
She won't call him on the lie, of course. Out of consideration for his feelings. Never let it be said that she is not a fast learner.
Maybe she can make it in Intelligence, after all.