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Fives doesn’t feel good.
At all.
The floor keeps shifting beneath his boots, not enough to knock him over, just enough to make every step require thought. Neon signs bleed into one another above the street. Speeder lights stretch into bright ribbons whenever he turns his head too quickly.
Whatever the Chancellor injected him with is still inside him.
Fives can feel it crawling through his blood.
He remembers the needle.
He remembers Palpatine’s hand on his shoulder and that calm, grandfatherly voice telling him everything would be all right.
Then the room tilted.
His thoughts had come apart.
He’d tried to explain about the chips, Tup, the Kaminoans, and the Chancellor’s involvement. He must’ve said something wrong, because Shaak Ti had stopped looking concerned and started looking cautious.
Then Palpatine had leaned close and whispered something Fives couldn’t remember.
That missing piece terrifies him more than anything he does remember.
A Guard patrol passes at the far end of the avenue.
Red helmets.
Four troopers and a massiff.
Hound.
Fives ducks into the shadow of a vendor stall before the Commander looks his way.
He doesn’t trust them.
Maybe he should. The Guard is brothers and sisters, no matter what colors they wear. Rex would tell him that. Kix would tell him the drilling pain and suspicion are symptoms, not evidence.
But Fives barely knows them.
He knows Hound investigates people.
He knows Thire arrests them.
He knows Fox answers to the Chancellor.
That’s enough.
The patrol moves past.
Fives forces himself to wait six seconds before stepping back onto the street.
Training remains even when everything else is spinning.
Don’t run unless they see you.
Don’t keep checking behind you.
Move like you belong.
His ARC blacks are stuffed into a waste chute three levels away. Wearing them would’ve been faster, but a Republic ARC trooper moving through Coruscant alone would stand out immediately.
Dress grays don’t.
The 212th and 501st are both on shore leave. The entertainment district is flooded with clone officers and troopers in gray uniforms, battalion colors visible only in the piping and small shoulder tabs.
Fives has removed his rank plaque.
He’s just another clone out too late.
Another brother weaving slightly because he’s been drinking.
Nobody needs to know he’s completely sober.
Nobody needs to know his vision keeps doubling.
The bright sign over 79’s flickers ahead of him.
Fives nearly laughs from relief.
It comes out wrong, thin and breathless.
79’s is safe.
The Guard patrols it, but they don’t watch the clones inside too closely. There are always dozens of brothers coming and going, changing tables, losing jackets, trading uniforms after stupid bets.
He can disappear there.
He can find someone he trusts.
Rex might be inside.
Jesse.
Anyone.
Fives pushes through the door.
Music hits him like a physical object.
The bass drives straight through his skull. Voices overlap from every direction, hundreds of conversations collapsing into one roaring wall of sound. Brothers in orange and blue fill the tables, some in full dress grays and others down to their undershirts.
Nobody looks at him twice.
Good.
Fives moves deeper into the bar.
The lights pulse.
Blue.
Red.
White.
For one terrible second, the white flash becomes Kamino.
Tup convulses against the examination table. Blood runs from his nose. Nala Se orders another sedative while Fives shouts that something is inside his head.
Then the bar returns.
Fives grabs the edge of a table.
A trooper looks up at him.
“You all right, vod?”
“Too much tihaar.”
The lie leaves Fives easily.
The trooper laughs. “That’ll do it.”
Fives keeps moving.
He needs somewhere quieter.
He needs a comm.
He needs Rex.
No, he can’t call Rex. Rex will be watched. Maybe Skywalker too. Maybe all of the 501st.
The Chancellor knows.
The Chancellor has always known.
“Fives?”
He spins.
His hand goes toward a blaster that isn’t there.
Kix stands beside the bar with a cup in one hand.
His medic insignia is visible on his dress-gray shoulder. He looks tired, suspicious, and blessedly familiar.
For half a second, Fives thinks he might cry.
“Kix.”
Kix sets down his drink.
“What happened to you?”
“Nothing.”
“You look like death warmed over and thrown down a stairwell.”
“I need to talk to you.”
Kix’s expression sharpens.
“Where’s your armor?”
“Can we go somewhere else?”
“Fives.”
“Not here.”
Kix takes his elbow.
Fives almost tears himself free, but the contact is steady. Real.
Safe.
Kix leads him past the refreshers and into the narrow service corridor behind the bar. The music becomes a muted pounding through the walls.
Fives leans against the durasteel panel.
His knees want to fold.
Kix catches his chin and angles his face toward the light.
“Your pupils are blown.”
“The Chancellor injected me.”
Kix’s hand stops.
“With what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why were you with the Chancellor?”
“I was trying to warn him.”
“About Tup?”
“About all of us.”
Fives grips Kix’s sleeve.
“There’re chips in our heads.”
“I know what you found.”
“No, you don’t. They said it was a tumor, but it wasn’t. It’s a chip. Every clone has one.”
Kix’s eyes move over his face, checking his focus, his breathing, the sweat cooling along his temples.
The same look.
Fives knows that look.
Kix had worn it while examining Tup.
Patient. Careful. Worried.
Not convinced.
“They made us,” Fives says, and it comes out too fast, like he can’t hold it in his mouth long enough to shape it properly. “They put the chips in when we were embryos, when we were-when we were still nothing, just… just cells, and Tup’s-Tup’s malfunctioned, it broke or something, and that’s why he killed General Tiplar, that’s why it happened, that’s why any of it happened.”
“Slow down.”
“I can’t slow down!”
“You’re drugged.”
“I know I’m drugged!”
The words come out too loudly.
Kix glances toward the bar.
Fives lowers his voice.
“Nala Se knew-Lama Su knew too, they both knew, they had to know-Tup, they killed Tup because he knew something, even if he didn’t really understand it, even if it was just in his head and not all clear, and then after that they just tried to erase it, erase all of it, the evidence, everything like it never even happened!”
“Tup died during the procedure.”
“They murdered him!”
Kix’s jaw tightens.
At least that hurts him.
At least he believes that part.
Fives presses forward before the thoughts scatter again.
“The chips make us follow orders. There’s a plan, Kix. A protocol. I saw it in the records.”
“What protocol?”
“I don’t know. They kept deleting things. Shaak Ti took me to the Chancellor, and he injected me. He told me…”
Fives stops.
The missing memory yawns open.
“What did he tell you?” Kix asks.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t remember?”
“He did something to me.”
Kix takes out a penlight.
Fives jerks away.
“Don’t.”
“I’m checking your eyes.”
“No needles.”
“It’s a light.”
“No medbay.”
“All right.”
Kix lowers it.
He’s speaking the same way he spoke to Tup.
Softly.
Like Fives might break.
Like Fives is sick.
“Kix, you believe me.”
It isn’t a question.
Kix hesitates.
The pause lasts less than a second.
It’s still too long.
Fives’s stomach drops.
“You don’t.”
“I believe something happened to you.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“I need to know what you were given before I can separate the evidence from the drug effects.”
“The evidence is in my head.”
“That’s what concerns me.”
Fives releases his sleeve.
Kix’s face blurs, briefly splitting into two identical medics.
Both look afraid of him.
“You think I’m like Tup.”
“No.”
“You’re looking at me the same way.”
“I’m looking at you like your heart rate’s dangerously high and you can barely stand.”
“You think I’ve lost it.”
“I think you’ve been injected with an unknown drug.”
“The Chancellor did it!”
“I heard you.”
“You don’t believe that either.”
Kix rubs one hand over his mouth.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Fives backs away.
The wall catches him.
Somewhere beyond the corridor, the bar door opens. The music briefly surges louder before dropping again.
Boots strike the floor.
Several sets.
Measured.
Armored.
Fives looks toward the sound.
Kix steps between him and the corridor entrance.
“It’s okay.”
Every nerve in Fives’s body ignites.
“Who did you call?”
“I didn’t call anyone.”
“You told them I was here.”
“I found you thirty seconds ago.”
“Then move!”
“Fives, listen to me. You need medical care.”
“I need Rex.”
“We’ll contact Rex after you’re stable.”
“No!”
“Let me help you.”
The boots are closer.
A massiff’s claws scrape against the floor.
Hound.
Fives lunges past Kix.
Kix catches his arm.
Fives twists free on instinct, slamming Kix against the wall harder than he intends.
Kix grunts but doesn’t let go.
“Fives!”
“You set me up!”
“I didn’t.”
Red armor appears at the end of the corridor.
Hound enters first, helmet beneath one arm. Grizzer is leashed to his belt, her broad head low and alert. Four Guardsmen spread behind him without drawing their weapons.
“ARC-5555,” Hound says. “Stay where you are.”
Fives’s pulse becomes thunder.
The corridor stretches.
The Guards multiply.
Fox answers to the Chancellor.
The Chancellor injected him.
The Guard is here to take him back.
“No.”
Hound keeps his hands visible.
“We’re not going to hurt you.”
“That’s what he said!”
“Who?”
“The Chancellor!”
Something changes in Hound’s expression.
Fives can’t identify it through the drug haze.
Kix takes his wrist again.
“Come on. I’m going with you.”
“You don’t believe me!”
“I think you’re terrified.”
“That’s not enough!”
Fives tears backward.
Kix holds on.
Hound steps closer.
Grizzer whines softly.
The sound is wrong. Too gentle. Fives can’t survive gentle right now.
He swings.
Kix ducks the first blow and catches Fives around the chest. The Guards move instantly.
Hands close around Fives’s arms.
He fights harder.
“No! Let me go!”
“Fives, stop!”
“They’re going to erase me!”
Kix’s grip tightens.
“Nobody’s erasing you.”
“You don’t know that!”
Fives kicks one Guardsman away and nearly breaks free. Hound catches him from behind, pinning one arm without striking him.
Fives screams.
The corridor fractures into Kamino white and Senate red.
Tup is dying.
Palpatine is smiling.
Kix is handing him over.
“Please,” Fives gasps. “Kix, please. I’m telling the truth.”
Kix’s face twists.
“I know you believe that.”
The words destroy whatever remains of Fives’s control.
He thrashes against them, terrified beyond dignity, beyond training, beyond thought.
Kix keeps one hand locked around his wrist as the Guard drags him from 79’s.
Straight into red hands.
Straight back toward the Chancellor.
Something sharp presses into his neck and cold floods his veins, burning and numbing at once as his strength drains away. The corridor tilts, voices fade, and Fives collapses into darkness.
Fox conducts the interview in a storage room because no official interview is occurring.
Official interviews require recordings, witness logs, signed transfer orders, and a chain of custody. They can be subpoenaed by the Senate, requested by the Jedi, or discovered by anyone with rank and a creative interpretation of military transparency.
This room has two chairs, one crate, and Ghost outside the door.
Fives sits opposite Fox in medical blacks, looking like death rejected him for being too much paperwork.
The sedatives are finally gone. So is whatever the Chancellor injected into him.
Now he feels everything.
His hands shake against his knees. Sweat beads at his temples. Every few seconds, he presses two fingers against the right side of his head, where a surgical incision heals beneath a bacta patch.
The chip used to be there.
Removing an object from his own skull with one medical droid had earned him an extended lecture from Kix, Lex, Scalper, and three more medics.
Hindsight is usually delivered by someone shouting.
“Start with Tup,” Fox says.
Fives swallows.
Fox’s voice gives him nothing. Good.
“Tup killed General Tiplar,” Fives says. “Not because he wanted to. Something happened to the chip.”
“What did you observe before the shooting?”
“I wasn’t beside him when it started. But before the fighting, he was confused. Kept saying something was wrong.”
“I didn’t see him beforehand.”
Fives looks up.
“I was in the air. Trench was collapsing our western approach and forcing the fleet into overlapping fire lanes.”
“Trench is a bastard.”
“Yes.”
Fox pauses.
“An extremely competent bastard.”
Respect remains useful even when directed toward enemies who deserve to be spaced.
“I saw Tup after,” Fox says. “Restraints. Nosebleed. Repeated phrase.”
“Good soldiers follow orders.”
The words settle into the room.
Fox has heard them before.
From Guardsmen waking from nightmares. From troopers whose thoughts went strangely blank after direct commands. From himself, once, with blood beneath his nose and no memory of the previous seventeen seconds.
Fives watches him.
“I found a chip,” he says. “Organic casing. Embedded in the brain. Nala Se called it a tumor, but it wasn’t. Every clone has one.”
“You verified that?”
“I saw the records. Embryonic implantation.”
“And yours?”
“Removed.”
“Where is it?”
Fives’s jaw tightens. “Lost when they intercepted me on Kamino.”
Convenient.
Also plausible.
Fox leans back.
“I need more than your recollection.”
“I know.”
“You were drugged.”
“I know.”
“You assaulted Guard personnel while resisting arrest.”
Fives looks sick.
“I thought Hound was taking me back to Palpatine.”
“He was taking you to Medical.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“No.”
Fox lets the silence stretch.
“I know how it sounds,” Fives says.
“Do you?”
“Like a crackhead theory from an ARC who cut something out of his skull, lost the evidence, got drugged, and fought half a patrol inside 79’s.”
“Yeah, basically.”
Fives laughs once. It hurts him.
"If not for this." Fox slides a datapad across the crate.
The display shows contingency orders one through one hundred fifty.
Fives stops breathing.
Fox found the file eight days after becoming Chief of Defense. It had been buried beneath obsolete emergency statutes and sealed Kaminoan procurement records.
The orders cover military collapse, senatorial treason, hostile Jedi action, planetary secession, and command decapitation.
Order 66 is one of the more horrifying ones.
Fox had read it seventeen times.
“The wording assumes implementation is automatic,” Fox says. “A Marshal Commander or higher issues the order. All clone personnel understand and execute it.”
Fives looks at him.
“I didn’t know these orders existed until I found the file.”
“You’re one of the first CCs.”
“Yes.”
“You were bred for High Command.”
“Yes.”
“And nobody taught you?”
“No.”
Fox enlarges the implementation clause.
“The document contains no distribution protocol, training schedule, or encrypted briefing package. Yet it assumes universal recognition.”
Fives leans forward despite the migraine.
“The chips.”
“That is the probable mechanism.”
“You believe me?”
The surprise is almost insulting.
“I believe your theory aligns with evidence I already possess.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It's the most belief you are receiving today.”
Fives’s eyes close. His shoulders drop in relief.
“The Jedi?” he asks.
“Likely unaware.”
“Skywalker?”
“Especially unaware.”
Fives rubs the incision again.
“Scalper wants scans.”
“Scalper wants every chip removed before breakfast.”
“That sounds like her.”
“She threatened to begin with mine.”
Fives’s eyes snap open.
Fox does not explain that Scalper has already scheduled imaging, Ghost is compiling medical rosters, and Hound is tracing every Kaminoan file connected to contingency planning.
An operation this large cannot move quickly.
It must move invisibly.
Until then, ARC-5555 remains a fugitive who accused the Chancellor of conspiracy and resisted arrest.
Fox picks up a blank personnel wafer.
“ARC-5555 died tonight.”
Fives goes still.
“Cause of death: fatal injuries sustained while resisting Guard custody.”
“You’re gonna kill me?”
“No.”
Fox enters a designation.
“ARC-01-4444 arrived with yesterday’s shipment of shinies. Transfer records identify him as Guard-assigned, ARC-qualified, and temporarily attached to Commander Ghost.”
Fives stares at the number.
“Fours?”
“I never claimed creativity.”
“You dropped one five.”
“I dropped several. Four is easier.”
“Jesse’s going to laugh himself unconscious.”
“Jesse can't know.”
The humor disappears.
Fox slides the wafer across.
“Fives is dead. Fours follows Ghost’s orders, remains inside Guard facilities, and speaks to nobody about the chips unless I authorize it.”
“And Rex?”
“Not yet.”
Fours looks down at the wafer.
Then he takes it.
Fox rises.
At the door, he pauses.
“One additional matter.”
Fours looks up.
“Dogma will be pleased to see you.”
The chair scrapes violently against the floor.
“Dogma’s alive?”
Fox opens the door. Ghost waits outside, helmet beneath one arm.
Fox says. “Try not to make the reunion loud. You are recently deceased.”
He leaves Fours staring after him, alive by administrative error and assigned to the Guard before anyone else can decide what to do with the truth.