Archive of Our Own

“I have to do it.”

There’s something in Crosshair’s voice as he says it that freezes Omega’s blood. She rushes back to him just in time to see it happen.

She’s been working on the door, like he told her to – the locked door that stands between them and saving the others, that stands between them and escape.

The operative, the one who brought her here in the first place, has them trapped.

She gets the door open quickly – a well-remembered voice in her head, walking her through everything he’d ever taught her about electromag locks.

A Plagen 25? This one is quite simple to bypass once you locate the armature plate.

She gets the door open, and rushes back.

She’s just in time to see it – that glowing blade completing its downward swing, the shudder that runs through both men when it connects.

For a moment, she thinks the operative is dead – that Crosshair killed him – and she gasps out loud. She should be relieved. Cold dread descends on her instead.

It doesn’t make any sense.

The operative says something she can’t quite hear. His helmet, she notices, is broken – a long, jagged crack running from the right eye and down across the front. The eye lenses are smashed. The modulator must be broken, too. His voice is just a whisper.

Crosshair staggers back a step.

She can’t see his face but somehow, she doesn’t need to – she knows exactly what he’s feeling.

There’s blood on his hands, but he doesn’t notice. He scoops his rifle up from the floor in a single smooth motion, one Omega has seen dozens of times.

He holds it for a moment, doesn’t raise it just yet.

“Don’t,” she says, but that doesn't make sense. They need to get out of here, they need to get to the others. She should want him to eliminate the threat.

Something, all her instincts are screaming at her, is wrong.

She has to stop him. She can’t let him do this.

Everything depends on it.

“Kill me then,” the operative says, louder now.

Crosshair raises the rifle. His hands, for the first time in months, are steady.

The operative starts laughing.

*

He won’t let them escape; he’ll die first.

That is the most important directive, the foundation on which his existence rests.

His life is not his own, it’s to be spent in service of something greater than himself. He has his orders – stand and die if you must, sacrifice so the others can complete their mission.

That’s not just the training, he knows, that willingness to die for the cause, to die for others. It’s inherent, the conditioning simply redirected it.

It’s all that’s left of whoever he was before. Even this body isn’t entirely his own.

He’s waiting.

His orders are to wait. Hemlock thinks he knows exactly how to catch the target. He made the other two bait in a trap. He believes that she, and probably 9904, will eventually come here to free them – that they’ll have to, that they won’t be able to do anything else.

CX-2, though, isn’t convinced that 9904 is brave enough to come back.

But he’s waiting. Those are his orders.

His helmet sustained damage in the initial explosion. He should shed it and find another one – there are spares in the armory – but he’s curiously reluctant to be without it, even briefly.

If the other operatives were here, it would be easy enough to flush his quarry in that direction once he makes contact. Trap them in the briefing room, re-outfit and re-arm himself before making a final approach.

It would be simple then to dispose of 9904 and deliver the child to Hemlock.

But he doesn’t have the others now.

They left him here because he’s the only one who’s had success dealing with the target. He has the best chance of completing the objective, and the others are needed elsewhere.

He adjusts the broken helmet, willing it to hold together a little longer.

He doesn’t want to be without it.

The operatives don’t have access to mirrors. They don’t even really have living spaces in the normal sense. They’re not supposed to have vanity or curiosity any more than personalities or preferences. They are simply tools in service of a cause.

Knowing what they look like is beside the point.

He knows, though, that whatever terrible something brought him to the program in the first place also left him badly scarred. He can see the scars on his body, can feel the ones – like cracks in a pane of glass – that cross his face.

He’d sliced into his own file after Teth, searching maybe for a reason he’d failed so badly and so uncharacteristically. He didn’t find a reason, but he did find medical charts – file after file, detailing skin grafts, genetic reconstruction of his organs, bones borrowed from cadavers.

The charts list the designations of his donors, the men whose skin and bones and genetic material saved his life.

C6, L5: CT-1011
Lacrimal, Frontal: CT-9851
Graft: CT-8704
Keratoplasty: CC-2447
Plasma: CT-9904

There are more, but those are the ones that stick in his memory. Only one of those men was a living donor.

The irony of that man’s identity isn’t lost on CX-2.

The charts don’t, however, list his own number or rank. There’s nothing about where he came from. He appears fully formed in the records as CX-2, as though simply created here in Hemlock’s lab.

It’s better that way, CX-1 had said the one time they talked about it.

Now that he’s seen his own medical files, he understands the sentiment. Maybe it is better not to know.

But still, occasionally he wonders.

He can make inferences from the record of his own injuries – a catastrophic ship failure, perhaps? He’s a naturally gifted pilot, clearly experienced – he hadn’t needed the flight training modules.

It makes sense. It’s his pet theory.

The operatives dream, albeit rarely. When he does, he dreams a scream of metal, a rush of frigid air – his mind is calm, but his body knows what’s coming.

It doesn’t matter how it happened, it’s irrelevant to his mission, but he does wonder.

He leaves his helmet on more than the others do.

The other operatives came to the program with distinct personalities, with their identities still intact, with memories that had to be erased. Sometimes those memories still surface.

That doesn’t happen much to him. He’s different.

You were dead when we found you, CX-1 had said, during that one brief conversation. He’d looked away and just shrugged. I don’t think there was much left to replace.

That was early on, just after the third and fourth operatives had completed the program –and just as 9904 was failing it for the first time.

That, he thinks, was what had prompted him to ask the question.

Teth had made the question more urgent.

After Teth, he thinks, CX-1 might have been more willing to talk. But after Teth, of course, there had been no more CX-1.

He reaches a hand up – his left hand – knowing that the tendons that allow him to do it originally belonged to someone else, and that that person was likely right-handed – and keys into his comm.

He checks in – the target has yet to appear. There’s no sign of 9904.

Should he move on?

“You have your orders, Sniper CloneX2,” Hemlock says.

It’s a ridiculous designation because while they’re all trained assassins, they aren’t all snipers. It betrays how imperfectly Hemlock understands the soldiers he created; how little he actually knows about the missions he sends them on.

The operatives all shorten it when speaking to each other. The regular troops do as well.

He’s loyal to Hemlock, of course – he can’t be otherwise – but he also can’t help but notice the little inconsistencies, the little weaknesses in the doctor and his disciples.

He’s loyal, but not blind.

Hemlock has his flaws. He’s arrogant, impatient. He often relies on others to do the work he takes credit for. He’s too confident in his own opinions, too certain.

But Hemlock’s certainty, in this instance, pays off. 9904 and the child do arrive. They go into the training area from above, pausing in the upper passage.

They unknowingly give him the opportunity he’s been waiting for.

He silently follows them up, just in time to see 9904 freeze for a moment.

He’s afraid, and he should be.

CX-2 closes the training room door in front of them, then seals the passage behind. They don’t realize they’re trapped until it’s too late.

“You should,” he says to 9904, who brings his rifle to bear before CX-2 is finished speaking, “just let me kill you.” He jerks his head at the training room door. “You already know what the alternative is.”

9904 should just shoot then, but he hesitates and that costs him.

CX-2 doesn’t pull his own weapon yet and rushes him – they're too close for a clean shot. 9904 strikes him with the butt of his own rifle and he can hear the joints still holding the pieces of the helmet together crack and start to give way.

The violence of the blow feels personal.

He does understand that. His own control slipped on Teth, rage shaking him from some forgotten place inside.

Understanding you does not mean I agree with you.

All of the operatives have breakthrough memories. His are infrequent, much rarer than the others, but when they do happen, he’s usually left shaken.

It happens, this time, at the worst possible moment.

He pauses, just perceptibly, and 9904 takes advantage, slamming him to the floor, disarming him. They grapple for a few moments before 9904 gains the upper hand, holding him down, a mirror image of their fight on Teth, their positions reversed.

9904 seems stronger now – or perhaps he’s simply more desperate.

If 9904 loses this fight, he loses everything.

“I understand,” he breathes, close to CX-2's ear. “It’s not your fault, but I can’t let you go.”

That, of course, goes both ways.

He’ll die, he thinks, before he lets himself be captured. He’ll die before he lets them escape.

He can see the target now – the child. He can see her over 9904’s shoulder – she's watching them struggle, her eyes wide.

“Go,” 9904 snaps at her. “Get that door open now.”

He returns his attention to the fight, grabbing CX-2 with both hands and slamming his head back against the floor.

The helmet creaks ominously under the blow.

They roll apart, both scrambling to their feet. CX-2 puts his back against the wall, reaches for his vibroblade only to discover it isn’t there.

“I have to do it,” 9904 says, and it seems like maybe he doesn’t realize he’s speaking aloud. “I’m the only one who’ll be willing do it.”

The blade glows in his hand.

“I have to.” It almost sounds like an apology.

"Then do it.” He can hear his own voice without the modulator, and it’s unfamiliar – like it belongs to a stranger. “I am willing to die, you know that.”

Don’t you do it, someone says from within the depths of his mind, in the part of his brain that still sometimes hears the final echoes of dead men.

He knows what’s coming. He closes his eyes.

He’ll die before he lets them escape. He’ll die before he fails another mission.

9904 slams him back against the wall, and he sees stars. He wonders dimly where the target is, and he opens his eyes again.

She comes running back just as 9904 raises the blade.

The look on her face doesn’t make sense, but there’s no time to process it.

The blade sparks, and he accepts it. It’s the right choice. It’s exactly what he would have done.

In the breath before it happens, he thinks, I won’t let them escape; I’ll die first.

*

He loses Hunter and Wrecker in the smoke and dust of a large explosion.

He finds Omega in a ruined corridor in the aftermath.

This is the last place in the galaxy Crosshair ever wanted to be again. He would do anything, he’d told himself over and over, rather than go back to Tantiss.

It turns out, of course, that there was one thing he couldn’t bring himself to do. He couldn’t walk away and abandon the kid, not for anything – and that makes him just as soft as he always said the others were.

Coming back for her puts everything at risk – his life, his freedom, his family. Even if they all somehow survive this, coming here might still destroy whatever small life he’s managed to build for himself.

It’s worth it, of course, if he can save her – but he’s not sure he wants to survive to see what comes after that.

Tantiss holds the last and biggest of his secrets – the others have managed to forgive him for some terrible things, but even they have limits.

Hemlock, of course, knows all of this.

Hemlock has always liked to play psychological games – he's very good at it. He’s a master manipulator, Crosshair had dared say to Emerie once, the tiniest flash of recognition in her eyes. You can’t trust anything he says, he’s always using you. She’d blinked, though, and it was gone.

Hemlock seemed to find a perfect outlet for those tendencies in the operative program. He would pit men against each other, create false choices, push his subjects to the brink – some gave in, some gave up and died.

Crosshair is the only one, so far, who hasn’t done either.

Coming back here now is giving Hemlock the opportunity to correct that – and this time the stakes are much higher for them both.

When the smoke cleared and his ears had stopped ringing after that first big explosion, the other two were gone. He’s pretty sure Hemlock sent troops to take them – but leave Crosshair.

That left him with a choice.

He could try to track their comms, but he hesitates. He has a good guess where Hemlock will have taken them. Once he knows for sure, he’ll have to make that choice.

It’s exactly the sort of thing Hemlock would enjoy watching – will Crosshair save them or save himself?

It’s tempting, just for a moment – he could go now and find Omega, the two of them could run from here, just like before. He’d keep her safe, he’d do all the right things for her to cover his own wrongs.

But he won’t do that. He’s loyal – it's his biggest weakness, even if Omega insists it’s his greatest strength. He loves them all – he loved them even when he hated them. He has to try to save them – even if it means destroying himself.

What happens next makes the decision for him, anyway.

He checks his rifle, tunes his comm to a channel that Echo – somewhere in the depths of the mountain – will know to check. His ears are still ringing from the blast, his neck stiff, but he pulls himself together and moves into the nearest undamaged passage.

She’s standing there, staring through a door that had once led to the animal research ring of the mountain, but now is a twisted mass of metal, the ceiling beyond it crumpled in on itself.

“Omega,” he says, and she turns.

Of course, she’d figured out how to free herself. This, he thinks with grim satisfaction, is something Hemlock probably hadn’t expected.

A series of emotions cross her face in quick succession when she sees him.

The length of the pause before she runs to him makes him wonder – something has changed, and he’s not sure what.

Does she know? he thinks in the moment before she moves. Hemlock might have told her – or somehow tricked Emerie into doing it – just to see what would happen.

She flings her arms around him, though, so it can’t be that. It might be something else they’ll have to worry about later, but it’s not the worst-case scenario.

Not yet.

He quickly comes up with a plan. It will work – as long as she doesn’t catch on to what he’s doing.

She pulls back, arms still around him, and looks up at him – that same odd something on her face. Instinctively, he empties his mind, the way he had with that supposedly reformed assassin back on Pabu.

The comparison gives him pause. Why had he felt the need to do that? He watches Omega closely for a moment.

Her face relaxes into a familiar expression. “I told them you were coming.”

He lets go, and only then realizes how tightly he’d been holding onto her.

They stand in the ruined hall for a moment, staring at each other.

“I can’t figure out what did this much damage,” he mutters.

“The Zillo.” She looks around, then takes a deep breath. “I set her free.”

The existence of the beast had been the subject of much speculation back in the cells. Omega had eventually confirmed it for the other men, and Crosshair had pretended not to care.

“Why,” he hisses at her now, “would you do that?”

“It was the right thing to do,” Omega says. “She wanted to help.”

Before he can lecture her, once again, that not every being in the galaxy is trustworthy – especially not a 100-meter-tall killing machine – an impact tremor rumbles the building around them.

“Come on.” He grabs her by the arm and pulls her with him into a side passage, deeper into the heart of the base. The creature is likely to head for the nearest exit and make its escape. If they move toward the interior, they’ll probably be safe from the rampaging beast.

“What are you doing?” She jerks away from him. “Where are we going?”

“There’s long-range transport at the auxiliary docks. We can get there in ten minutes if we take the central passage to Level IV.” He’s spent the past week memorizing the layout of this place. He’d seen the ships on the scanner on their way in. They belong to the CX Division and that means he knows how to fly them.

She stops, refusing to keep walking. “We have to go back and get the others.”

He’s seen this look on her face before. “Omega,” he says, calm but in a tone that he hopes means no arguing. “You’re the most important person here – you have to accept that. You are what Hemlock needs – what the Emperor needs. The choice isn’t between helping the others or helping yourself. It’s-”

She cuts him off, doesn’t let him finish – probably because she knows he’s right. “We have to go back for them.”

“Not happening.” Then, “You know I’m right. You’re old enough now to understand, so I’m not going to lie to you – your choices aren’t always going to be good. Sometimes you won’t be able to choose what’s right, you’ll have to choose what’s best.”

The expression on her face changes. “You sound like Emerie.”

He tries not to let that bother him. “If that’s what she told you, then she was right about something for once.”

She looks unhappy, but when he starts moving again, she follows.

His plan isn’t that complicated – get Omega to the ship, lock in coordinates to somewhere safe, set the auto, jump out and remote seal the doors. She’d need an operative override code to take control and even she’s not good enough to figure that out before the ship breaks atmo.

Then, he’ll go get the others – or die trying.

He thinks they’re moving through the advanced conventional weapons ring now – on the side of the base opposite the training room and Hemlock’s own offices – but the power is off. Dim emergency lights glow along either side of the walkway. It’s harder to be sure where they are without any markers to go by.

He’s going to need to find an area that still has power, one with a computer terminal.

The corridor, when they find it, is littered with bodies. Omega’s eyes go wide, like she’s realizing for the first time that this is, indirectly, her handiwork. The lights are on here, so there’s no hiding the damage.

He grabs a datapad from a fallen scientist.

He hands her his rifle, then slides the pad into a computer terminal.

It feels like a mirror image of their first escape from this place.

This time, he’s the one using the computer – this time he knows what he’s looking for. He pulls up a schematic on the display – alarms are flashing everywhere, including the auxiliary areas. He keys for the security cam.

The walkways to the rear docks have collapsed. There’s a vast chasm now between the base and the CX-class ships. He pulls up another view – the blast doors to exterior-facing areas around the base are all slammed shut anyway.

They’re trapped, unless he thinks they can fight their way back to the main hangar without anyone seeing Omega.

He doesn’t.

Of all the terrible luck, he thinks.

Omega has an odd expression on her face. “There’s no such thing as luck,” she murmurs, even though he hadn’t spoken aloud.

He strips the corpse of a TK trooper of its blaster and comm, handing the weapon to Omega. He’s buying time with the search, trying to figure out what they should do now.

“We have to go back for them,” she says into the silence. “I promised the others I would come back.”

He straightens up, staring at her. He’s been thinking of Hunter and Wrecker this whole time – getting Omega safely away and then going back for them. It hadn’t occurred to him that maybe she had meant something else – someone else.

“Who,” he asks carefully, “are you talking about?”

She explains, and it’s worse than he imagined.

He risks trying to raise Echo. He hasn’t tried since he’d lost the others – for good strategic reasons, but also, he knows, to avoid having to face questions.

Echo picks up. He knows all this already, it turns out. He’s on his way to help. He has his helmet off, his comm open and there’s a soft female voice in the background – a familiar one.

“We’ll get the kids,” Echo says.

“Who’s we?” Crosshair asks, even though he’s pretty sure he knows.

Echo confirms that Emerie is with him, and Omega’s face lights up.

“Not everyone is worthy of your trust,” he growls at Omega. Then, into the comm, “I’m not sure you should trust her, either.”

“She can hear you.”

“I know.”

“We’ll get the kids,” Echo repeats. “I think you should...”

Omega turns to Crosshair then, like she’s just realizing something. “Hunter and Wrecker aren’t with him, are they?”

No use lying about it now. “They aren’t.”

It takes about ten seconds for Omega to get all the information from Echo and then dig in stubbornly. “We have to help them.”

“That’s exactly what Hemlock expects us to do.”

“Because it’s the right thing.”

On the comm, Emerie makes a soft little noise of disagreement.

Crosshair hates being on her side of an argument, but she’s right.

Echo has tracked the others to the training room. Hemlock hasn’t turned off their comms – their locations are still pinging. It’s very obviously a trap, both Crosshair and Emerie point out.

“He’s manipulating you,” Emerie says softly, mirroring Crosshair’s own words all those months ago.

But Echo and Omega win the argument. One team goes to get the children in the vault, the other goes to get the rest of the squad.

He points out that they’re using ‘team’ very loosely here, and that’s when Echo hangs up on him.

Crosshair could navigate the path to the training room in his sleep. He’ll never be able to forget each turn, every step along the way.

When they get there, though, the lift is heavily guarded.

“There’s another way in,” Omega whispers.

He, of course, knows that better than anyone.

They make their way up through a service shaft, slipping out of a maintenance room and into the corridor.

The back way in is unguarded, and that can’t be an accident. He can only hope that they can figure out how to use Hemlock’s arrogance against him. They're walking into the trap, but at least they know it’s a trap.

Through the open doorway, he can see the training room with its so-called ‘learning’ modules, the stasis pods, the large displays that monitor vitals, brain activity, stress.

He freezes.

He can’t go back in there.

Someone is strapped into a learning module chair – he can hear the sickeningly familiar buzz of electricity. Five of the ten or so stasis pods are occupied, three are running training cycles, one has the emergency life support engaged.

Dread washes over him, the memories almost bring him to his knees.

“Still cooking, I guess,” one of the technicians had joked to another, waving a hand at the stasis pods. They tended to talk about the men as though they weren’t there.

“A couple of ‘em are cooked, though,” the other one replied, shutting off the life support on a pod where an indicator light had blinked off.

That happened fairly frequently. The scientists would go over the training data, clucking to themselves about unsuitable subjects with weak constitutions.

The men, of course, knew better. It came for everyone, even the ones who were ultimately successful – a moment where you felt like you couldn’t take one more second of pain, your brain shutting down in a desperate attempt to spare itself.

Some men fought through it, but others gave in.

When it came for him, Crosshair had wanted to embrace it, but something stubborn in him refused. But he understands it – that urge to just give up, fall asleep, slip quietly away. He couldn’t do it, but part of him envies the men who could.

“We have to go,” Omega whispers, bringing him back to the present. Her face is drained of blood, her eyes wide – she looks almost as frightened as he feels, and that’s out of character. It’s like he’s seeing his own fear reflected in her.

He adjusts his blaster and motions her forward.

They’re almost there when the door to the training room abruptly closes. He turns back, and the door to the main passage is also sealed.

They’re trapped.

His hesitation is what cost them.

An operative – the operative – is standing in front of that sealed door, blocking their retreat.

Hemlock knew what he was doing, sending this particular operative after them.

The operative is talking but it’s just a buzz in Crosshair’s ears. He steps in front of Omega, rapidly running through their options.

There aren’t many.

Omega starts forward but he sends her to try and open the training room door. It makes strategic sense, but he also doesn’t want her any closer to this than she has to be. All the ways this could go wrong start running through his head on a loop.

Then everything seems to freeze. Distantly, he can hear the clicks of someone attempting to open a mag lock. The operative tilts his head to one side, considering. Neither man shoots, though Crosshair already has his blaster rifle in his hands.

The operative seems to make a decision, then rushes at him.

He strikes out blindly with the butt of his rifle, and somehow makes contact.

He feels disconnected from the fight – like he’s watching it all happen from far away. He lets go, lets the training take over.

He comes back to himself in time to feel the vibration as he slams the operative’s head into the hard floor, hears the faint metallic clang the helmet makes when it hits – it shudders in his hands.

He rolls away and comes up with the operative’s blade.

He knows what to do next, but again he hesitates.

Killing from far away is easy.

It’s always been his preference.

Up close – hand-to-hand – it's real. Taking someone’s life that way – like holding them underwater with both hands, he thinks before he can stop himself, waiting until the light leaves their eyes – is harder, it should be.

Killing with a blade is like that – it’s personal, intimate.

Maybe, he thinks, looking at the other man, he owes him that much. A good death – a love battle.

He has to do it. He’s the only one who will – he's willing to do what needs to be done. That’s always been true.

The operative is on his feet again.

He has to do it now – before he loses his chance, before there are questions.

He shoves the other man into the wall, striking him with his free hand. The operative’s head snaps back, smacking the wall, the structural integrity of his damaged helmet finally failing.

This is the moment. He has to do it.

Crosshair hefts the knife, ignores the tremors that shake through his hand. He draws back and intends to plunge it into the other man’s heart.

He misses.

The blade, turned aside, snags on gnarled tendon, glances off bone. Something crunches. The hilt quivers in his hand.

The operative is pinned to the wall, damaged but not dead. The voice coming from inside that smashed helmet is no longer distorted.

“I should have known,” it says, familiar and alien at once, “that you would lose your nerve.”

Just his eyes are visible – they're different, of course. It’s how Crosshair had known, from the beginning, that there wasn’t any hope. It shakes him now just as much as it had the first time.

He takes a step back.

Whatever he is now, the operative grabs ahold of the hilt like he means to pull the blade out.

“Stay there,” Crosshair says. He means it as a threat, but it comes out sounding like a plea. “Don't move. There’s nothing you can do. You’ve lost.

“Kill me then.”

He’d meant to but he missed.

Maybe he can do it from farther away.

He retrieves his rifle and steps back again, trying to find a comfortable range.

“Don’t,” Omega says softly. She sounds almost surprised by her own words.

He hadn’t heard her come back. She looks at the operative and her eyes widen.

He can feel her gaze as it falls on him next, and that’s when he realizes that she knows everything.

*

Sami is the one who notices the change first.

Just before the big guns open fire, she looks around the table at them all and says, “The birds stopped singing.”

The silence that follows that statement is immediately broken by the boom of a laser cannon, then another and another, the base shaken by each recoil. The other children gasp, and they all look to Omega.

“What’s happening?”

She smiles, relief flooding through her. “My brothers. I told you they’d come.”

She’s been waiting for this.

She hesitates, though, looking at the others. Maybe it would be better for them all to go now together – there are so many things that could go wrong, that could prevent her from coming back for them.

She can’t second-guess herself. They’d decided together that this was the best way. She’s leading them, but she’s not telling them what to do – they aren’t soldiers, they aren’t a squad. They’re kids, and they’re scared.

She’s scared. Not of the danger, not of getting hurt or caught, but of failing. The other children are relying on her. Her brothers are risking everything for her.

Everyone needs her to be strong, to be brave, to make the right decisions.

She slips back into her room, the others causing a distraction outside. She opens the hatch, takes a deep breath, and climbs up.

This is the plan, she knows what comes next, but she hesitates at the top of the shaft.

What if she can’t do it? What if this is the wrong choice?

Focus, she says to herself. The plan isn’t complicated: she gets out of the vault, causes a larger distraction, finds a high-level datapad – probably Emerie’s, one way or another – and then lets the others out.

She can do this.

She calms down, her pounding heart beginning to slow. She feels suddenly like the other children are here with her in the shaft. She realizes that it’s because, in a way, they are. They’re reaching out to her. They can’t maintain it for long, but it helps.

They know how to do that because Emerie taught them.

Omega can’t help resenting that a little. During all those long, dark months they were here together, it would have been nice to have that connection – to the outside world, and to each other.

Instead, Emerie taught children she’d only known for a few short weeks.

Logically, Omega knows, this is childish and unfair – but she feels very alone. She wishes Emerie could help her now – that they could help each other.

She wishes she knew where her brothers were. They’re here somewhere. They came to get her. She reaches out for them. She doesn’t find them, but she does find someone.

You can do this; I believe in you. You can do more. Trust yourself.

She has a flash of something – a memory that she’d forgotten maybe, or just something she wishes had happened. Her very small hand is in Emerie’s. Something bad is happening, her younger self is frightened, but Emerie gives her a smile, then rolls her eyes and Omega laughs.

It’s gone almost immediately.

She focuses on the lingering sensation of it – their hands clasped, facing something together, laughing at it to show they aren’t scared.

Maybe the vision – because, she realizes, that’s what it is – means that Emerie will help her willingly – that she’ll come with them when they escape.

She takes another breath, pushes open a hatch and emerges onto a platform high above the Zillo beast’s enclosure.

She looks down at it – her distraction.

Hunter would hate this plan. The others would love it.

She makes her way down – eye-level with the beast – careful not to be seen. At least, she’s not seen by the humans manning this lab. The Zillo beast, on the other hand, is watching her with interest.

Or hunger – it could be hunger.

Omega swallows hard.

Emerie had told her to listen for the Zillo, that Omega should be able to feel it if she tried. Emerie could hear it breathing from inside the vault, could sense it when the giant creature woke up.

Omega couldn’t reach it then, but, up close like this, she’s beginning to feel it now.

She closes her eyes.

Before she has time to think, she’s reaching a hand out toward the beast. It heaves a snuffling breath, then stills. She gently lays her hand on its blunted nose, barely daring to breathe herself.

It’s not angry, she realizes. It’s afraid.

“Me, too,” she says, leaning against the beast. It’s warmer than she expected. It makes a pleased sound, the way Batcher does right before she falls asleep. “But we shouldn’t be afraid. We can get out of here, if we help each other.”

The Zillo dips its head, and Omega chooses to take that as a sign of agreement.

“Help me,” she whispers.

The beast makes that happy noise again, deep in its – her – chest.

For a moment, they’re both calm. Omega tries to keep that calm feeling, hold it and not let it go.

It mostly works.

“How about,” she says to the beast, “I open that door and let you out?”

If she were a Jedi, she’s pretty sure she’d just think about moving the lever that unlocks the Zillo’s enclosure, and it would happen.

But she’s not a Jedi. She is, Emerie had said, something else – they both are – apparently created in an attempt to prove a point, to use science to replicate something supposedly spiritual. They’re connected to the Force, Emerie had continued, but not quite like those naturally born to wield it. She’d used the term with a little distaste, like it was unscientific – ‘imprecise’ was the word she’d actually used.

“It’s an energy field – it's tangible and verifiable,” she’d said dryly. “I don’t understand all the mysticism.”

Omega chooses instead to focus on how quiet she can be as she creeps toward the door switch. She wills the technician observing the Zillo beast to look away for a moment – and he does.

The Zillo comes surging out when the enclosure opens. She tramples the bank of computers, trailing sparking cables as she climbs up, then bursts out, up into the wider areas of the base.

In the distance, something large blows up with an extremely satisfying boom.

Omega follows in her wake, climbing up and then out onto the level where the genetics lab is located.

Emerie, though, isn’t in the lab when she gets there.

The big computer display is on. Omega pulls up the last thing accessed – schematics of the vault – not something Emerie would need, but someone coming from the outside would.

The passage outside is still empty and she pauses, thinking about what she should do next. Should she try to find Emerie? Should she stick to the original plan?

A ship rumbles overhead, outside the Zillo screeches, electricity crackles and the lights in this part of the base abruptly go out.

Maybe she shouldn’t be thinking, Omega considers, remembering advice she’d gotten not that long ago, maybe she should just listen to her feelings.

Another big explosion rocks the base, and led by instinct, she decides to head toward the boom.

She finds Crosshair there, standing alone in the smoke, at a crossroads of sorts where two large corridors meet. Fear leaps back into her chest at the sight of him, but she can’t think now about what that means.

They’re holding you back, you know. Your brothers.

She can hear the surf breaking on the sharp rocks, can almost taste the salt air. She can still hear the creak of the boat as they step onto it and move away from shore. The memory stops her for a moment, but she pushes it away.

The fear, though, remains.

She flings herself at Crosshair, buries her face against his chest.

He makes a little growling noise when she does – like Batcher, like the Zillo. It sounds threatening but it’s not. He closes his arms around her too tightly and does it again.

As they pick their way through the shattered base, her instincts start screaming at her. They’re going the wrong way, this is wrong.

When they discover that the escape path Crosshair wants to take is blocked, inexplicable relief courses through her.

The wrong path, she thinks, might be the only one that’s right.

They talk to Echo – Emerie is with him and Omega’s sense of rightness grows. This is how they escape; this is how they win.

“We’re doing exactly what Hemlock wants us to do,” Crosshair grumbles after they close down the comm. “He knows I won’t want to go...”

Fear is etched into the lines of his face. He hasn’t talked much about what happened to him during those long months, but Omega isn’t naive. She knows enough to guess what Hemlock meant by ‘reeducation.’ She lived on Kamino long enough to know precisely how reconditioning worked.

“Do you think he wants to try and do that to them, too?”

He looks away. “I guess he could be...”

“That doesn’t make any sense, though,” she says, but he still won’t meet her eye. “Why would he do that if he knew it hadn’t worked on you?”

But something – the same something that made her trust the Zillo, the something that led her to Crosshair – is telling her that that’s exactly why Hemlock wants the others. That same something also tells her they need to hurry.

“Maybe he knows it won’t work.” That’s a lie – she can feel it. “But he’s betting that we don’t.”

That’s how they end up on the threshold of the training room, in the last place she knows Crosshair would want to be.

That’s how they end up trapped there, while she struggles with first the mag lock and then the key codes.

Her instincts, all her feelings, are still insisting. That sense of wrongness comes back – there's something she has to do, and it’s not cracking the door.

The lock gives way, though, and the door slides open.

She sprints back to Crosshair, driven by something she’s never felt before. She’s always had hunches, little hints of secret knowledge – why people do things, what they’re going to do next. She hasn’t always listened to them – she's always wanted to believe that people are better than they are, to give them a chance to live up to the best version of themselves.

She’s always been right about Crosshair, even when she didn’t want to be.

She has to stop him. She doesn’t understand why, but she can’t let him do this.

Everything depends on it.

She stops cold. A vibroblade glows as it slashes through the air. She thinks, for a moment, that the operative is dead.

But then he looks at her, his face still mostly hidden by that cracked and failing helmet, and that’s when she realizes who he is. The sudden flash of knowledge surprises her. It’s like switching a light on in a dark room.

She breathes his name, but he doesn’t even twitch.

Crosshair turns sharply to look at her.

Why would he do that if he knew it hadn’t worked on you?

Now, it seems, she has her answer.

But she can’t think about what that means – not yet. It all happens in a moment, but it feels longer.

Crosshair finds his rifle, picks it up.

“Don’t,” she says.

That’s when everything changes. Suddenly, she can hear them both in her head. Not just hints or hunches but clearly, like they’re speaking directly to her.

No surrender, die first. Kill or be killed. Remember your training.

Omega, no no no…

They sound so much alike it takes effort to pull the tangled thread of thoughts and feelings apart, to see them as individuals.

One of them is afraid, the other is angry, but she can’t quite tell which is which.

She’d been able to reach the Zillo, she thinks, just like this through anger and fear. Maybe she can reach them both.

She thinks about balancing on wet rocks, her feet slipping, failing to feel whatever it was she was supposed to feel. She thinks about sitting with the other children in the vault, trying to hear the birds outside.

She’d heard the birds eventually, but it took time. She’d needed help to do it.

This is much harder.

And she doesn’t have much time.

Trust yourself. It’s Emerie’s voice in her head, but it’s also her own.

She manages to put her own fear aside, like she’d done with the Zillo beast. It’s harder now, but she does it – she focuses on what’s around her, and listens.

She connects – to something vast, to something powerful – but can’t control it. She casts around for something, anything, to keep her steady. She finds it in Crosshair’s even breathing there beside her, in the familiar beat of his heart.

Concentrate.

It’s Emerie’s voice guiding her, teaching her how to hear the sound of the rain outside.

It’s Crosshair’s voice, the first time he showed her how to properly align a sight at range.

It’s Wrecker’s voice, telling her to cut the blue wire, not the red.

It’s Echo’s voice, showing her how to use a tool he’d made just for her.

It’s Hunter, back at the beginning. Don’t worry, kid, you’re safe with us.

It’s her own voice, talking to her from one of a hundred possible futures.

Calm down. Breathe. Concentrate.

It’s Tech’s voice, the first time he let her take the controls.

She pushes it away. She’s not ready for that yet.

She focuses on Crosshair – he’s her tether, her anchor. She finds the thread of his thoughts that she’s been looking for.

It’s not him, he’s gone, he’s been gone all along, we can’t save him.

“You knew,” she says. There’s no accusation in her voice, but Crosshair flinches anyway.

She walks past him, toward that impossible figure. He’s injured, bleeding, the blade went clean through and into the wall.

Omega grabs for the hilt.

Crosshair’s breath catches, his heart jumps in his chest.

She loses the tether, her connection to him, to this moment. She can feel everything. She knows all at once where everyone is, what they’re doing, what’s going to happen.

Emerie is a beacon in the crush of sensation – easy to find, brighter somehow than everyone else. Omega focuses on her, can sense that she’s somewhere higher up in the facility – she's clutching tightly to something and whispering, “Hold on, hold on, we’re almost there.”

Omega can’t tell if Emerie is talking to her, or whoever she’s with, or both.

Echo has ahold of Emerie’s arm. “Go ahead of me, take them with you.” He pushes her forward through a door without him, secures it, and turns to face their pursuers. Something clenches in his chest, but he stands his ground.

His future is uncertain. Omega can feel each of the possibilities like they’re already happening.

He’s easier to see because Emerie is with him, because the other children are, too. They’re all connected now – to each other and to something bigger. Something, Emerie would say, powerful but imperfectly understood, something worthy of further study.

Emerie has to make it through this. Echo has to make it through this.

Omega doesn’t want to let them go.

She doesn’t want to lose any of them. Not again.

She can feel the others now, too – closer at hand, in the training room.

Wrecker, ribs smashed beneath his armor, trying to push past the pain, to keep himself from slipping away, but he can’t get a full breath. The life support in the stasis pod is keeping him alive and he knows it.

His future feels more set.

Hunter is uninjured but trapped – strapped down, defeated, hopeless. They’ve been hurting him, but he blames himself for this and that hurts more. She wants to reassure him. It's not true. Don’t give up hope. We’re coming. 

Things will be all right, she decides, if only she and Crosshair can get to them in time.

But right now, all she can feel from Crosshair is still no no no no.

She looks down. Right there in front of her – impossibly – is someone who used to be her brother. But now... he’s empty. He’s hollowed out, he’s broken – maybe beyond repair. She doesn’t want to accept that. She reaches out, pushing hard, pushing past the barriers in his mind until she finds it – the faint, faded memory of who he was. It’s buried deep, just barely perceptible.

It’s slipping away.

But – she sets her teeth, she digs in – it is there. It might not be enough to make a difference, but...

That grounds her. Brings her back. The room resolves. She’s back in her body, the knife’s hilt solid in her hand, the only thoughts she can hear are her own.

She pulls the blade out.

“It’s not him,” Crosshair says, out loud this time, panic in his voice. “He’s gone, Omega.”

Maybe that’s true, maybe that faded memory isn’t enough, but she won’t leave him behind. She’ll bring back whatever’s left.

The operative sinks to his knees, pulls his shattered helmet off, his head bobbing forward like it’s too heavy to hold up. Crosshair brings his rifle back to bear, practically vibrating with tension.

“Don’t,” she says again.

“I’m not going to shoot him – not yet anyway.”

“Is this... Is this why you didn’t want to come back?”

“Not,” he says, but he still won’t quite look at her, “the only reason.”

He fires, the operative crumples, and she gasps. The rifle, though, is set to stun. She hadn’t realized it even had a stun setting. Maybe he modified it.

He lowers the weapon and starts, once again, to shake.

She reaches out, tentatively, but he’s got walls up now to block her out.

“Get out of my head,” he growls, but he doesn’t entirely mean it.

It might actually be a relief to share it all with someone.

Tears well up, but he shakes his head hard. “Cut it out. We don’t have time.”

They haul the operative into the training room with them and seal the doors. There’s an emergency setting, a special code that locks everything down from within, that can only be canceled from inside – Crosshair knows exactly how to activate it.

“How did I miss it?” Omega asks, not quite able to look at the operative. Tears are overwhelming her control now, too. “How could I not know?”

“Because,” there’s a look on Crosshair’s face she’s never seen before, “it’s not him. He wouldn’t seem like him anymore, even to you.” Then, “We’re wasting time talking about it.”

Inside, he rummages around in a storage locker, looking for restraints – there's a concerning variety of them.

His hands are still shaking.

“I can do it,” she says, taking a pair of standard binders from him. “I’ll do it.”

“I don’t think those will hold him.” He pulls out something else, secures the operative in place on one of the long benches. A series of wires and other devices run along its sides, most concentrated at the top – right where someone’s head might lay.

Hunter is restrained on a similar bench nearby, and Crosshair moves to free him.

The operative – wounded, still unconscious from the stun blast – doesn't stir. His breathing is ragged, shallow gasps that sound like they hurt. She forces herself to look at his face. It's him – physically, at least – there’s no question.

It’s him, but he’s not the same.

A vast web of scars run from his jaw up around his still-closed eyes and onto his scalp – they're especially thick on his right side, scar tissue leaving bald patches where his hair once would have grown. The remainder of his hair is shaved close to the skin, it’s somehow lighter in color than it was before.

In profile, she realizes with a jolt, he looks a lot like Crosshair. With the light low like this, it would be easy to confuse them from behind.

Hunter stumbles to his feet, leaning on Crosshair. His pupils are wide, like he’s been dosed with something. “Wrecker’s hurt. I don’t know if we can move him. I don’t know if he can...”

“He can,” Omega says, and Crosshair just nods like that settles it. He doesn’t question how she knows that. He seems to have accepted the change in her without comment – but maybe they just don’t have time for it now.

“If we take him out of the stasis pod, it could kill him,” Hunter continues, his eyes still unfocused, not really seeming to hear them.

Crosshair is staring at a spot on the floor, like he’s seeing something in the past. Then, finally, “There’s a medical cart behind the main module.”

She finds it – it’s full medical supplies and equipment more commonly seen on a battlefield. She grabs a crash kit – complete with a defib and an extra-large roll of bacta sleeve – pausing to consider whether she should treat the operative before things get complicated.

“Not him,” Crosshair snaps, and takes the bacta from her. “He can bleed.”

The bleeding from the stab wound has stopped, though – vibro wounds don’t bleed all that much to start with. He’s not in danger, but he has to be in pain.

She looks around the room – a place she’s heard a lot about but never seen.

Crosshair has moved and is standing in the center of it, looking at something she can’t see.

Over his shoulder, Hunter is blinking like even the weak light hurts his eyes. He doesn’t offer anything to the conversation. He might not even hear them – he still looks dazed, disoriented.

“What did they give you?” Crosshair asks him. “Do you know?”

They have a brief mumbled conversation that ends when Crosshair pulls something from the medical supplies and jabs Hunter with it.

“Ow.”

“Don’t be so difficult.” Crosshair sounds, for the briefest moment, like himself again. “It will take a few minutes, but it should clear whatever they gave you.”

A small monitor standing all alone catches Omega’s attention and keeps it. Locator dots blink steadily on the display, scattered across the galactic grid. She brushes her finger over one that pulses at the heart of L-9 – a number designation unfurls, displaying vital stats, coordinates and real-time updates in a code she doesn’t understand. It’s probably a mission code for the CX operatives, but she doesn’t have time to crack it.

Four of those locator dots are clustered within N-11, all on a single planet. Is it Wayland? That would make the most sense. She wonders if there’s a way to zoom in, to confirm her hunch.

She moves on from it, though, finding the main computer – the one that controls the stasis pods. She pulls up the details of each one, of the men inside. It’s easy to determine which one is Wrecker.

There’s a master switch, and she starts to reach for it.

“You can’t turn that off.” Crosshair turns and focuses on her. “If you turn it off at the main console while the program is running you could...” He seems to choose his words carefully. “You could damage them.”

There’s an echo of Hemlock – and of Emerie – in the phrasing.

She takes the bacta roll back from him and cradles it, looking up at him. She’s aware that they don’t really have time for this, but she also knows – with the same inexplicable but unshakeable knowledge she’s had about him since they sat side-by-side in a cell on Kamino, marking her first step into a wider world – that she can’t rush this. She can’t force him.

“Go turn that one off at the source,” he says to Hunter, indicating the pod containing Wrecker. “That’s safest.”

He moves automatically, still stumbling like a sleepwalker, but he does it.

Crosshair is still standing there, looking at the other occupied pods. “What should we do about them? They might be past help.” His eyes flick back to where the operative lies. “They might-”

“What would you want done,” she asks, not pushing but inviting, “if it was still you?”

He closes his eyes, his throat bobs – his grief and fear are so strong the emotions almost overwhelm Omega, too.

“I’d want it to end.”

“Then,” she hears herself say, in a voice that sounds older than she feels, “end it.”

He nods, stepping past her to the command module. He turns some setting off first, a brief flash of hope in his eyes. Then he closes his eyes again, grabs the master switch and throws it.

Two of the indicator lights go out.

But not all of them.

Hunter seems to come back to himself then, as though turning off all the program modules helped call him back from wherever he’d been in his own mind. He lunges to open the pod Wrecker is in. Omega is hard on his heels, helps the others catch Wrecker as he stumbles forward out of the pod, going to his knees.

She flings her arms around him. “I knew if we got here, you’d be all right. I felt it.”

“You felt it?” He sounds weak but manages a surprised laugh.

She has the roll of bacta sleeving in her hands, and she helps him apply it. Crosshair injects him with something and he grunts, but his color improves immediately. He’s clearly still in pain, he winces with each breath, but they stabilize him. He’ll have to be careful, but now they have a chance at escape without leaving anyone behind.

For a moment, they all collapse against each other in an exhausted embrace.

But their job isn’t done yet. The hardest parts are still in front of them.

The operative is still shackled to one of the training chairs. He groans in pain and the others look sharply toward the sound.

Crosshair goes rigid. Hunter scrambles to his feet and stumbles over.

“This isn’t possible,” he says, after a long moment. “Is it?”

Silence descends. Omega realizes she’ll have to be the one to break it. “We were just as surprised you are.” Beside her, can feel Crosshair relax.

It’s not entirely a lie, she tells herself. It’s for the greater good.

Wrecker, still sprawled on the floor in front of the stasis pod, looks at the operative and blinks – then he grunts a laugh, his voice still tight with pain. “Nothing surprises me anymore, I guess.”

The others re-arm themselves, while Crosshair considers first the operative and then the remaining pods.

“We can’t open them.” He pauses. “I don’t know how far into the conditioning they are and-”

“Can they get out on their own?”

“Not until we unlock them.” He picks up yet another datapad. “But we can do that when we’re clear.” He thinks for a moment. “Once we’re gone, they can decide for themselves what they are.”

As one, they all look over at the operative.

“Drugging him would keep him more manageable.” There’s a pause. “Probably.”

“I’ll do it,” Omega says, grabbing an injectable from the medical supplies before anyone can protest. She’d wanted to give him something for the pain before, anyway. Hunter follows, blaster in hand.

She kneels near the operative, but not too close. He’s breathing fast, his muscles twitching just perceptibly. He reminds her of an akk she’d seen once at a traveling show on Ord Mantell. They’d stumbled onto it by accident, walking through the city on their way back from the spaceport. The animals had been caged, lined up on display to sell tickets.

She’d paused in front of the akk for a moment, watching its flanks heave, breath snorting, its claws scrabbling. It launched itself uselessly against the cage, to the delight of the spectators.

Its handlers, Tech had told her later, probably kept the creature drugged – agitating it so it seemed more dangerous, amping up the drama to fill seats.

The operative tests his restraints, his breath hissing. She gives him a dose of something bitter-smelling, and he settles almost immediately.

Hunter is staring down at him, too, an unreadable expression on his face.

The operative turns his head.

He opens his eyes.

One of them is the wrong color.

It’s not him.

Omega feels panic well up.

He looks at her and all she can feel from him is a howl of rage – trapped, wounded, like that animal in its cage.

There’s nothing familiar left now.

She reaches out anyway, tries to find him in his own mind.

And suddenly they’re falling.

She’s dreamed about this moment over and over for months. It’s worse than she imagined.

The fall is sheer terror. It seems to last forever.

There’s a scream of metal all around, the wind sharp as blades – rocks scrape by, impossibly close. It sounds like the end of the world, like the planet is dying right along with him.

Then things go blank for a while.

When reality returns, the pain is unbearable.

He’s alive then, but not really. Rebuilt with dead men’s bones, stitched together with borrowed skin.

One of his eyes is the wrong color.

She jerks away.

It’s not him.

But, she thinks, trying to control her breathing, trying to slow her pounding heart, he does remember that. It’s deep in his subconscious, but it’s there.

“We have to kill him,” Crosshair says, bringing her attention back. The others are looking at him in shock.

“You just went to a lot of trouble not to kill him.”

He catches Omega’s gaze and holds it.

“That’s not what he means,” she says, knowing what he’s thinking the way she usually does.

“You’re determined to do this?” he asks her, but it’s clear he already knows the answer.

“We can’t leave him.”

He disagrees, she knows, but he won’t argue with her now. He looks at the other two and says, “The tracker – Hemlock's tracker – it can’t be removed. But once an operative’s heart stops, it stops transmitting.”

She looks back at the tracking monitor, watches the steady blink and wonders if it’s his original heart, or if they’d had to replace that, too.

“He has to stay dead,” Crosshair is saying. “He has to be dead.”

“How long?”

“Five minutes minimum. Ten is better.”

“You could kill him for real.”

They’ll have to take the risk.

A stun blast at close quarters can stop the heart, she knows. She remembers seeing postmortem reports in Nala Se’s lab. It disrupts the heart’s electrical impulses but doesn’t damage the organ.

That means, in theory at least, that they can start it right back up again. All the tools they need are in that too-well-stocked medical cart.

Crosshair is looking at it, too. “Not the first time someone’s been brought back like that in here,” he says, lost in memories, his face grim.

He grabs what they need.

The operative stirs, testing his restraints again, and they all jump.

“You should kill me,” the operative says though it sounds like it takes effort, that well-remembered voice weak with pain. It’s familiar – it reminds her of scrabbling up a sheer cliff face on Serenno.

“Don’t worry,” Crosshair says, his voice flat. “We will.”

This is a risk, an especially dangerous one – and she’s the one insisting they take it.

“I should do it,” she says, but Crosshair won’t let her.

“No, I have to do it.”

He presses the muzzle of a blaster – not his rifle, something smaller – against the operative’s chest, takes a breath and squeezes the trigger.

She closes her eyes.

His heart stops.

Omega starts counting.

They let eight minutes pass before they bring him back.

His pulse jumps to life beneath her fingers. The monitor, though, stays blank.

There’s a murmur of voices – Did it work? That’s a relief. We’ll have to keep him under…

Omega barely hears them.

She looks down at the operative, taking his hands in hers, his pulse weak but steady. His hands are warmer than she expected.

Whoever he is now, they helped him. Whatever happens next, they’ve done the right thing.

She can see it all ahead of her – how they can win here today, how they can escape this place. But she also sees beyond that – the people who need their help, the things that need to be put right, all those possible futures.

Her future now feels more set.

I can do this, she thinks, but she knows she needs a tether.

She finds it in his breathing, in the steady beat of his heart.