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Fives has proof, no safe channel, and one very bad plan. Unfortunately, Kamino notices before Coruscant can.
Tup is dead, and Fives doesn’t believe the parasite story for a second.
Parasites don’t appear as perfectly placed tumors inside a clone’s brain. They don’t match clean, healthy growths found in other troopers. They don’t come with encrypted Kaminoan procedure codes and files buried beneath enough security to protect a planetary invasion plan.
AZI-3 hovers beside him inside the archive room.
“The comparison is conclusive,” the medical droid whispers. “CT-5385’s implant had degraded, resulting in swelling and abnormal neural stimulation. Your implant showed no such deterioration prior to removal.”
Fives touches the fresh seal along his scalp.
Removing his own implant had been stupid. He accepts that.
It also worked.
Tup’s chip had swollen until it pressed against his brain. Fives remembers Tup rubbing his temple before Ringo Vinda. The headaches. The confusion. Then the way his face went empty before he killed General Tiplar.
“Show me the control files again.”
AZI projects the stolen records.
The Kaminoans describe the implants as safeguards against instability inherited from the male genetic prime. Jango Fett’s supposed aggression. Paranoia. Disobedience.
The deeper files say something else.
Behavioral control.
Command enforcement.
Emergency compliance.
Fives’s stomach turns as a list of executive authorization codes scrolls past.
One belongs to the Chancellor’s office.
“He knows,” Fives whispers.
“Evidence indicates Chancellor Palpatine possesses administrative knowledge of the implantation program.”
“He’s in on it.”
A sound echoes beyond the archive door.
Both of them freeze.
AZI dims his lights. “Kaminoan security is approaching.”
Fives copies everything he can onto a medical data wafer and shoves it beneath his wrist plate.
He can’t go to General Ti. She trusts Nala Se, and Nala Se has spent days trying to bury Tup’s death beneath clinical language.
He needs someone outside Kamino.
Someone with access to the GAR’s medical network, enough authority to protect the evidence, and absolutely no patience for Kaminoan osik.
Scalper.
Not over comms. Those can be intercepted.
In person.
A deployment of shinies leaves for Coruscant within the hour. Fives waits until the inspection teams move toward the forward transports, then slips between rows of supply crates near the Guard shuttle.
Sixteen-year-old troopers stand nearby in new armor, nervous and trying not to show it.
Fives reaches the open cargo hatch.
A hiss sounds behind him.
Pain bites into his neck.
He spins, but his legs are already folding beneath him.
A Kaminoan medical attendant catches his shoulder while Nala Se watches from the corridor.
The archive wafer feels impossibly heavy beneath his armor.
Fives tries to shout for the shinies.
His tongue won’t move.
Darkness floods his vision as the injector empties into his blood.
Fives drifts through scraps of sound, never awake long enough to know which nightmare is real.
Fives wakes beneath white light and immediately knows something is wrong.
The ceiling moves.
No, the ceiling stays still. His eyes move. Or maybe his head is turning while the rest of him remains trapped somewhere far below.
He tries to lift one hand.
Nothing happens.
Voices drift through the room, muffled by glass, water, or the thick chemical fog filling his skull.
“The clone’s condition remains unstable,” Nala Se says.
Fives knows that voice.
His body reacts before his mind catches up. His pulse jumps against the restraints around his wrists, but the movement feels distant, like someone else is struggling several rooms away.
“He is a Republic soldier,” General Ti answers. “He must be transferred to Coruscant.”
“He requires further observation.”
“He has already undergone extensive testing.”
“There remain neurological concerns.”
Fives tries to speak.
Scalper.
He needs to tell them to take him to Scalper.
What comes out is a wet sound against the inside of an oxygen mask.
Someone touches his neck. The contact is cold and careful, which means Kaminoan.
Fives jerks weakly away.
“He is waking,” Nala Se says.
“Fives?” General Ti’s voice moves closer. “Can you hear me?”
He forces his eyes open.
Shaak Ti’s face swims above him, red and white blurring into the light. Nala Se stands beside her, long fingers holding an injector.
Fives tries to say no.
The needle presses into the intravenous line.
“He will go to the Jedi Temple,” Shaak Ti insists. “The Council can examine his claims on Coruscant.”
Claims.
She knows he said something.
Maybe not enough.
Fives tries to warn her that the Chancellor knows, but his tongue lies heavy inside his mouth.
Nala Se watches his eyes.
Her expression never changes.
The white room stretches until Shaak Ti seems impossibly far away.
Fives falls back through the floor.
The next time he wakes, the universe is humming.
A deep vibration travels through the bunk beneath him, steady and familiar. Engines. Hyperspace.
He is on a ship.
Coruscant.
The thought arrives bright enough to cut through the drugs.
Fives tries to sit up and discovers that his limbs have become decorative.
A figure moves beside him.
Blonde hair. Brown skin. His sister’s face, though he does not know her.
She wears fresh Guard armor with almost no scoring, a shiny deployment mark still bright on one shoulder. Sixteen, probably. Young enough that worry sits strangely on features copied from someone older.
“You’re awake,” she whispers.
Fives looks past her.
Rows of new troopers fill the transport bay. Some sleep upright against their restraints. Others pretend not to watch the ARC strapped to a medical litter near their supplies.
The sister leans closer.
“They said you got sick.”
Fives tries to laugh.
The sound hurts.
“They lie,” he manages.
Her eyes flick toward the medical attendant near the forward hatch.
“Don’t talk. Everything’s going to be all right.”
She believes that because she has not yet learned what the Republic means when it says those words.
Fives wants to tell her about the chip.
He wants to tell all of them.
They have the same thing buried inside their heads, waiting for an order none of them knows exists.
His fingers twitch against the restraint.
The data wafer.
Still beneath his wrist plate?
He cannot feel his armor.
Panic rises, sluggish but sharp.
The sister mistakes it for pain and places her hand over his.
“You’re going to Coruscant,” she says. “The Jedi will help.”
No.
Not the Jedi.
Scalper.
Fox.
Anyone who will listen before the Chancellor finds him.
Fives tries to hold onto the thought, but hyperspace hums through his bones like a lullaby designed by an interrogation droid.
His eyes close.
The sister keeps holding his hand until he slips under again.
Metal rattles beneath him.
Fives opens his eyes to a ceiling made of dark panels and harsh strip lights.
He is moving through a corridor.
A repulsor gurney carries him between two medical droids. His wrists are restrained again, though someone has covered the binders with a blanket.
Coruscant air reaches him through the mask.
Dry. Recycled. Polluted.
Home, or close enough.
He turns his head.
Doors pass on either side, polished and expensive. Senate architecture, not the Temple. There are no carved stone walls, no distant presence of thousands of Jedi pressing against the Force.
This is wrong.
He tries to lift his head.
One medical droid presses him gently back.
“Remain still, ARC-5555.”
“Temple,” Fives slurs.
“Your destination has been revised.”
Fear burns through the chemical fog.
“Who?”
The droid does not answer.
Ahead, a door opens.
Warm golden light spills into the corridor.
Fives hears voices inside.
One belongs to Nala Se.
The other is soft, familiar, and far worse.
“I trust there were no complications during transport,” Chancellor Palpatine says.
Fives stops breathing.
For one clear second, the drugs fall away.
The files return to him. Executive authorization. Emergency compliance. The Chancellor’s office buried inside the records of every chip implanted in every clone.
He knows.
He has always known.
Fives pulls against the restraints with everything left in him.
The gurney rolls through the doorway anyway.