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Hunter couldn’t sleep after he and his squad had made it safely back to Pabu. The events on Teth kept replaying in his mind, again and again. It was like there was something he was trying to tell himself, that he hadn’t considered every detail.
For some reason it wasn’t just the CX trooper that sat wrong with him, but something about Crosshair.
Having Crosshair around was new, especially since he was so different now from the confident soldier who liked to start problems and arguments for fun like he used to be. But there was something else.
Maybe it was his slight tinge of jealousy about Crosshair and Omega’s relationship coming up, but it was more than that. It was the way Crosshair had said “we need to leave” as soon as the captive CX trooper had set eyes on him. They had seemed to recognize each other somehow.
Though, the moment had faded, and Crosshair had been fiercely loyal and protective, almost to his death. Hunter would never be able to repay what he’d done for them in fighting the CX trooper.
Still, something was wrong.
Hunter snatched up Nala Se’s datapad, and went to the cockpit to go through it. He knew Echo had already pulled a lot of data from it, but what if they were missing something? They had to be.
Hunter knew to follow his gut. In a way it was what he was made for. Sometimes his senses would pick up on something that reached him at a subconscious level, and made its way into his feelings, his actions.
He searched, struggling a bit at his unfamiliarity with this specific type of datapad.
Just as Hunter was about to give up, already having gone through file after file after file, he came across a locked file, buried under all the other information, buried under code, and misdirects. For the millionth—no, billionth—time, Hunter missed Tech.
He clenched the datapad tightly, clenching his jaw, leaning over with his grief, his frustration.
Before he could recognize why he was doing it, he hid the datapad. It was then that he realized his ears had picked up on Omega waking up, and coming toward the cockpit.
Hunter looked her over, her longer hair a mess, dark circles under her eyes.
“Hey, what are you doing up?” he asked, putting a gentle smile on his face. (Which wasn’t too hard. Hunter’s stress always slipped away at the sight of Omega. His child. She was like the sun to him.)
She crossed her arms. “I could ask you the same thing.”
Hunter let out a gentle laugh, and pulled her over.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“Nightmares?”
Omega nodded, arms still crossed, but now they were pulled in tighter, and her shoulders bowed with the weight of all she’d been through.
Hunter didn’t ask her if she wanted to talk about it.
“So, what have you been doing?” Omega asked.
“Running diagnostics on the ship.”
Omega eyed the console, the ship only running enough to provide a little light, and have the doors work.
“Mm hmm.”
Hunter sighed, and took the datapad from its hiding place. “I’m looking over the files again,” Hunter said. “Something… doesn’t sit right with me. I came across this one file. It’s locked. I… I wish Tech were here.”
A great sadness welled up in Omega’s dark eyes, like a deep pool lay beneath, holding so much pain that the galaxy could drown in it. Her eyes weren’t always this way. She was still resilient, still silly, still optimistic about most things. But there were moments like this, where she was just a kid who had been through too much. If Hunter could he would make sure she didn’t have to live like this anymore.
“I might be able to unlock it,” Omega said.
“I—”
“Hunter, I was imprisoned there. I already saw what the Empire is like.”
Hunter sighed, handing it over.
Omega started as she looked at the screen.
File name: Sub-level Containment. Re-education Program.
“Well that’s interesting,” she said.
“Do you know what the sub-level containment was?”
Omega looked towards the stern, to where the others slept. Then she shook her head. “I don’t know if it’s my place to say.”
She frowned in concentration as she tapped away at the datapad.
There was a tiny blip , and she announced. “Got it.”
Before Hunter could take the datapad from her, a hologram of Hemlock showed up. To Omega’s credit she didn’t even flinch. Hunter thought he might have.
“Rotation one. Many of my re-education efforts with the clones have been successful. But that was with the regular ones, save for another—though his process was… different. Today, I will begin this program with prisoner CT-9904 since his interrogation has proved fruitless.”
Hunter might have gasped. Omega leaned in.
He wanted to take the datapad from her, but he wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to do. They were too dragged in.
The hologram showed Crosshair, strapped to a table. Hunter wasn’t sure he could keep watching, but something compelled him to.
“Maybe we should turn this off,” Omega said, the voice of reason.
Hunter thought back to Crosshair seemingly recognizing the captive CX trooper, thought back to the ways the CXs had spoken to Crosshair.
“No, whatever this is, I need to know.”
“But Crosshair doesn’t want us to know.”
“And that’s exactly why we should.”
Omega paused the hologram, frowning at Hunter now.
“We don’t need to know what he went through. That’s his personal decision to make.”
“I know,” Hunter said. “I understand that. It’s why I haven’t even asked you for details you’re not willing to share. I understand that pain and fear is difficult to tell others about. But this—it’s more than that. I wouldn’t be looking if I didn’t think it was imperative.”
Omega hugged the datapad to herself, back straight now. “You still don’t trust him? I wouldn’t have escaped without him. And he helped so much on Teth. I don’t see what the problem is.”
“I trust him,” Hunter said. “It’s Hemlock I don’t trust.”
“What do you mean?”
“Isn’t the way the CX trooper spoke to him a bit strange?”
Omega’s eyes widened, but her disapproval didn’t waver. “You think that somehow he’s a sleeper agent?”
“Yes.”
“If he was I wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Maybe there’s something to Hemlock’s plans that we aren’t seeing. I have to watch this.”
Omega let out a disapproving sound, and handed the datapad over to him.
“Do it on your own,” she said. “I thought you were better than this.”
“Omega,” he called after her.
“I’m going back to bed. Good night.”
Hunter hung his head, trying to focus on taking deep breaths, hoping they’d dispel the horrible tightness in his gut, the tensing of his shoulders.
Guilt closed in around him.
He unpaused the hologram.
Hemlock made his way over to Crosshair, and readied a syringe. Hunter’s lips tightened into a thin line.
“I will begin by injecting a neurotoxin that should cause favorable conditions for weakening CT-9904’s independent thinking.”
Crosshair didn’t say anything, just struggled against his restraints.
His eyes widened as Hemlock came closer with the syringe.
Hunter had to close his eyes as Crosshair was injected with the neurotoxin. His pained growls stabbed right into Hunter’s chest.
And then they got louder.
Hunter skipped to a different part of the file.
File name: Sub-level Containment. Re-education Program.
Rotation: 4
Subject: CT-9904
As before, Hemlock was shown, and so was Crosshair, though this time he was in some strange contraption.
“The neurotoxin has yielded favorable results. Now other methods must be used to further weaken memory, individuality, and independent thought. However, I realized a better use for CT-9904. He will not be a regular CX trooper, but something… different.”
Hunter’s gut plummeted at the way he said that, and he couldn’t help but look toward the back of the ship, hoping Crosshair—if Crosshair it was—was asleep.
Hunter’s eyes were glued back to the hologram as Hemlock sent electrical currents into Crosshair’s temples.
He winced, stomach churning at this, and at the barely-there screams Crosshair let out.
Hunter searched more, seeing Crosshair get injected with the neurotoxin repeatedly, saw his temples get shocked, Hemlock trying differents amps to get his horrible project to work.
File name: Sub-level Containment. Re-education Program.
Rotation: 87
Subject: CT-9904
Hemlock must have already introduced this stage of the project because he didn’t speak to the recording device. Now he spoke to Crosshair, who surprisingly was not restrained. He had been standing and then went to lay on the table of his own volition.
It made Hunter sick.
“CT-9904, I wish to show you what the Empire can offer you for your service.”
“Yes, sir.” Crosshair’s voice was bland, a faraway thing, as if this wasn’t Hunter’s brother in that hologram.
He couldn’t believe this truly was him. It had to be a lie. This had to be some creation of the Empire’s to upset them, unsettle them, rip away their foundations.
This couldn’t be real.
Hemlock began talking for his log now, massaging his left hand, “Today I will be injecting CT-9904 with a stimulant drug of my own creation. Prior testing has shown that this drug is met with favorable results. During my own personal testing of it, I found it to be… quite enjoyable. Scans taken during the tests show that this stimulates the medial prefrontal cortex, making the subjects eager to do as they are told, abandoning their own free thinking and individuality. I have a lower dose for CT-9904, however. For what I require from him, he needs to retain much of his old behaviors, memories, and thinking. Today, I am starting with one-fourth the usual dose used in this program.”
Crosshair didn’t fight as Hemlock put his hands on him, tilting his head, and injecting him with the drug in the side of his neck.
Hunter couldn’t be sure but he thought maybe Crosshair’s eyes rolled up into his head for a few seconds.
Crosshair was hooked up to monitors, and a droid was scanning his brain.
Crosshair’s breathing quickened, deepened, and his muscles all relaxed. Hunter was sure his pupils must have been huge.
“ How do you feel, CT-9904? ” Hemlock asked, looking at the scans of his brain.
“Good.”
“That’s—”
rosshair tilted his head towards Hemlock, interrupting, “Can I have some more? ”
Hemlock checked the scan again. He seemed to stick with his decision to start small.
“Tomorrow,” he said.
Crosshair nodded, then relaxed against the table once more.
Hemlock then said, “A dose of one milliliter seems to have the desired effect on the brain. Of course, I won’t know more until the subject undergoes more questioning.”
Hemlock interrogated Crosshair, and Hunter’s lip curled down as Crosshair told him anything he asked. He shared some stories of when he was a cadet, spoke of getting his chip secretly removed after Bracca, and mentioned his displeasure with Hunter and his family seemingly abandoning him. It was so personal that Hunter wanted to look away. He couldn’t though. He was in too deep now.
Hemlock switched up many of his methods, depending on what imaging and testing showed that Crosshair needed for his sick project.
File name: Sub-level Containment. Re-education Program.
Rotation: 151
Subject: CT-9904
Crosshair was once again strapped to a table. He wasn’t fighting his restraints, and seemed quite used to it.
This time the very same CX trooper who had attacked them on Teth (or, Hunter thought it was the same one; he had the same armband with all the buttons) stood before the table, a blaster in his hands.
“No, no,” Hunter murmured, not even sure what he was about to see. “Please, don’t. Don’t.”
The hologram kept going, the past heedless of Hunter’s current thoughts and feelings.
“CT-9904 has successfully passed the base stages of this program,” Hemlock said. “He is now fit for training. And afterwards, I will use the electropulses to damage short-term memories in the prefrontal cortex. His body will remember this training, but it is of the utmost importance that his mind does not. ”
Hemlock turned to CX-2. “You may begin.”
Hunter held his breath, and leaned in, staring at CX-2’s trigger finger.
A stun blast was shot at Crosshair. A sigh left him, and he immediately lost consciousness.
Hunter caught Hemlock’s slight frown as he turned to grab something from a tray.
It was a pre-prepped syringe.
He uncaringly jabbed it into Crosshair’s arm.
Crosshair breathed in deep, and he began to waken.
Hemlock stepped back, out of range. “Again.”
Hunter watched as they shot Crosshair full of so many stun blasts, and full of so many stims, that he could hardly move on his own, could hardly speak. His mouth hung open slightly.
Hunter squeezed his eyes shut, and turned his head away as Crosshair was dragged into that contraption again, and had his temples shocked repeatedly.
What was worse than Crosshair’s screams from other such holograms in this log, was his silence, his willingness to let these things be done to him. He was now complicit in his own pain, his own torture.
Hunter skipped ahead again, though he was coming to the end of the log.
Again, there were days and days of Crosshair being stunned.
By the time he could withstand two stun blasts, Hemlock was pleased.
What came next was possibly worse than Crosshair being turned into… into a CX trooper, a thing that worked for the Empire.
He was injected with something that Hunter wasn’t paying attention to, and shocked into unconsciousness, all the while Hemlock said a strange string of numbers to him, repeatedly.
Crosshair woke up.
He started struggling—something he hadn’t done in months.
“What—what are you doing to me?” Crosshair asked.
“What I must ” Hemlock answered. Though, he had a cruel smile on his face as he added, “Everybody will end up despising you.”
Crosshair was led out by a TK trooper, head down at the futility of his situation, the exhaustion and fear of the daily pain.
When he was gone, Hemlock turned, a small smile on his face. “CT-9904 will need further questioning. However, I believe I have achieved my goal of making him a sleeper agent. Tomorrow’s tests will yield further results.”
Hunter, heart racing, sweat popping out on his face, went to the next day.
File name: Sub-level Containment. Re-education Program.
Rotation: 152
Subject: CT-9904
Crosshair was restrained, and had been injected with something yet again. His eyes grew unfocused, yet he answered Hemlock’s questions, sharing details about himself. His memories were all still there. He was still Crosshair.
Till Hemlock said a string of numbers.
Suddenly, Crosshair straightened in his restraints, focus came into his eyes. Hemlock questioned him more, and… that wasn’t Crosshair anymore. He had no access to his memories, his conscious self, maybe even his subconscious self. Hunter was looking at a body that was supposed to be his brother, but wasn’t.
Hemlock had taken that from him.
Hemlock had taken everything from him.
Hunter’s grip on the datapad was so tight it creaked.
Suddenly the hologram cut out, and another one began. Hunter thought maybe the files were degrading, but he checked, and it was still the same day. Just in a different part of the base, it seemed.
Hunter shifted in his seat, anxious about what could possibly be coming next.
Crosshair stayed still as he was given a blaster.
Hemlock began to speak for his log again: “We have reached the stage in the project where CT-9904 must prove his willingness to comply with commands. I see no point in starting small, as I am quite confident that he will do exactly as I say.”
Hemlock turned, speaking to perhaps a TK trooper: “Bring them in.”
Hunter watched clones get herded in a line in front of Crosshair.
“Execute these prisoners," Hemlock said to him.
Hunter watched, horror in his gut as one-by-one Crosshair killed each and every clone. Watched as every body fell to the floor.
"Success.”
The hologram switched to the next part of this disturbing log, the title flashing on the screen.
File name: Sub-level Containment. Re-education Program.
Rotation: 153
Subject: CT-9904
Crosshair wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but Hemlock was front and center.
“Unfortunately, there have been… side effects of the experimentation of prisoner CT-9904. While he is under the guise of Crosshair, his trigger hand has tremors. I have tried to cure this aberration through many means. Scans show some disturbances near the cerebellum. However, implantation of his monitoring chip has not caused the… disturbance. There are no underlying waves that show this is a physical problem that can be solved. I believe the testing has been… extreme for him. However, as CX-4 this problem disappears altogether, including on scans. I do not believe it will cause complications with his overall mission.”
“And what is that mission?” Hunter asked, leaning in again, staring hard at Hemlock.
Hunter searched through the large log, trying to figure out what the mission could be, sweat now slicking his back, clothes sticking to him. He was still breathing hard, heart beating fast and fierce.
The enemy was on the ship with them, with Omega .
Hunter loosened one of his pistols in its holster, and checked that it was set to stun.
Then he went back to his work.
He came across the file of Crosshair getting the chip implanted. He had been awake during the procedure, and strapped down, but had complied with it. Hunter thought he was going to be sick.
He couldn’t believe the enemy had been with them for a couple weeks now. They were so exposed. Omega often went off alone with Crosshair. Hunter didn’t know what to do. Because he was Crosshair, and yet… deep inside him, there was a thing controlled by Hemlock, waiting, waiting…
He was a ticking bomb.
Hunter searched till dawn, sickened at witnessing Crosshair’s torture again and again and again.
He had even forgotten to get a cup of caf by the time morning light was streaming in through the viewports.
He thought perhaps he had just found what he was looking for, the mission objective, when Crosshair himself came into the cockpit.
Hunter hurriedly hid the datapad, but he fumbled, and it clattered to the deck. He tried to remain calm, knowing that looking guilty would be one of the worst things he could do in this moment.
He worried that it had broken.
Crosshair just eyed it, but didn’t bother to pick it up.
Hunter did so, and put it in his lap facedown.
He tried to look at Crosshair, but ended up leaning back, blinking rapidly to clear what he saw. It was as if Crosshair’s time in Tantiss was superimposed over him now. He was screaming, he had tears leaking from his eyes, he was high, he was compliant in torture and murder, he had a damn needle in the side of his neck.
“You look terrible,” Crosshair commented. “And what’s with Nala Se’s datapad?
Hunter tried to see present Crosshair, his brother right in this moment, but he’d seen so much of his torture that his brain couldn’t stop thinking about it.
He turned away, pretending to be his regular broody self.
“Seeing if there’s anything on there about the CXs.”
“Pfft, probably not.”
“Yeah, not so much.” Hunter was worried this was already getting too close to what he knew, so he added, “Anyway, it’s hard to sleep after a fight sometimes.”
“If I remember it correctly,” Crosshair said, “I did most of the fighting.”
Hunter nodded, holding out his hand to him. He was absolutely terrified, but this man right here, this was his brother. No matter what. “You did. I can’t thank you enough.”
Crosshair’s hand trembled, and Hunter tried to keep his gaze from it. Though Crosshair seemed to know what he was struggling with.
Crosshair brushed past him, right hand in a fist, and Hunter let his own hand drop.
“Where are you going?” he asked Crosshair.
“Target practice.”
“Again?”
Crosshair responded, “Mm hmm,” which was his version of I don’t want to talk about it.
Crosshair left, and Hunter took out the datapad again, hoping for a few more moments of privacy before everyone else woke up.
The datapad was broken.
Hunter resisted the urge to whack it, and started hurriedly pressing buttons.
“No, no, no.”
He thought he saw a glimpse of something, but then the whole thing fizzled out in blue sparks and the screen and lights went blank.
“Kriff!”
Hunter didn’t care if anyone heard him.
He rested his face in his hands, feeling the full weight of his exhaustion and fear. And he had no idea what to do.
Omega, already ready for the day, entered the cockpit.
“You looked,” was all she said.
“I… I had to.”
He looked at her, and her disapproving face and stance.
“Get Wrecker, and… check to make sure Crosshair actually left.”
“Why? What’s wrong with Crosshair?” she asked, immediately curious, and worried.
“I don’t know all of it, but… We have to comm Echo too. Actually, stay here. I’ll wake Wrecker.”
As he walked past Omega she took hold of his arm.
“How bad is it?” she asked.
“I’m sorry,” was all Hunter could think to say.
Once they were together, Hunter closed the ramp to the ship, and he told them what he could without getting too detailed for Omega’s sake.
“No,” she said. “There—there has to be something wrong. Maybe you… misunderstood something?”
Wrecker pulled Omega into a hug. “It’s gonna be okay, kid.”
She hid her face against him.
“So what’s he supposed to do with us anyway?” Wrecker asked.
“The datapad broke before I could find that out.”
Their lives had shifted yet again, a moment changing everything for them.
Omega pulled away from Wrecker and wiped her face.
“We have to help him.”
Hunter drew her over, taking her hands in his. She held on tight.
“We will. I promise.”
Hunter pulled her in for a hug, and held a hand to the back of her head. His gaze met Wrecker’s, and he seemed just as lost as Hunter felt.
If only I knew what his mission was.
He glanced at the broken datapad again.
Were it not broken, the screen would have said:
File name: CX-4 Mission Status.
Mission Objective: Capture Clone Force 99 for Re-education and Project Necromancer .