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Fox is alive.
Riyo repeats that fact until the words almost become believable.
He lies across her bed beneath a light blanket, turned carefully onto his side so nothing presses against the burns crossing his back. Scalper has transformed the bedroom into a temporary medical ward in less than ten minutes. A portable monitor sits on Riyo’s nightstand beside an intravenous fluid pack, three empty medication cartridges, and the framed photograph of her family that Scalper shoved aside without asking.
The monitor gives a steady, quiet chirp.
Alive.
His breathing is still too shallow.
His skin is too pale beneath the bruising.
The room still smells like ozone.
Scalper strips off her gloves and drops them into the medical case at her feet. Her blonde hair has escaped its tie near one temple, and the inhaler hanging from her neck clicks softly against the zipper of her fatigues.
“He’ll sleep,” she rasps.
The words drag painfully through her damaged voice.
Riyo looks at Fox’s exposed shoulder.
Fresh circular burns mark the places where something had been attached to his skin. Smaller branching lines spread away from them in angry red patterns. Bacta gel gleams over several wounds, but it can’t hide what caused them.
She’d found him less than twenty minutes ago.
He had been stumbling through an empty Senate corridor with one hand pressed against the wall. His dress uniform jacket was missing. His shirt hung open at the throat, one side torn where the fabric had fused against a burn beneath it.
He hadn’t recognized her.
Riyo had called his name.
Fox had looked through her with unfocused gold eyes, tried to say something, then collapsed before she could reach him.
She still feels the impact in her knees from dropping beside him.
She still hears his breath catching as though his lungs had forgotten the order in which they were meant to work.
Riyo turns toward Scalper.
“What happened to him?”
Scalper begins packing away the scanner.
Riyo waits.
The chief medic doesn’t answer.
“What happened?”
“He’s stable.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Scalper’s hands pause over the medical case.
Riyo has known her for nearly a year. She understands some of the woman’s silences now. There’s the silence Scalper uses when a question is stupid, the silence she uses when speaking would hurt too much, and the silence that means she’s deciding whether the truth is more dangerous than a lie.
This is the third.
Riyo steps between Scalper and the door.
“He came from the Chancellor’s office.”
Scalper looks at her.
“He smelled like burned metal,” Riyo continues. “There are contact wounds on his neck, chest, and back. His muscles were still spasming when you arrived.”
The medical terms come from the emergency courses every Pantoran senator is required to complete. Riyo had always assumed she’d use them after an attack or transport accident.
Not this.
“Someone electrocuted him.”
Scalper’s scarred throat shifts as she swallows.
Riyo feels the answer before she hears it.
Her stomach turns cold.
“No.”
Scalper looks away.
“No,” Riyo says again, louder. “Don’t look away from me.”
Fox moves faintly on the bed.
Both women freeze.
His brow tightens, but he doesn’t wake. One hand curls weakly into the sheet near his chest.
Riyo lowers her voice.
“The Chancellor did this.”
Scalper closes the medical case.
The click of its locks sounds unnaturally loud.
“He did this,” Riyo repeats.
“Yes.”
The word is barely more than breath.
Riyo stares at her.
Something inside her mind simply refuses to fit around it.
Palpatine is the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic. He gives speeches about sacrifice, mourns fallen soldiers before the Senate, and speaks about clones as brave defenders of democracy.
He calls Fox his trusted Chief of Defense.
He did this.
“How long?”
Scalper doesn’t answer.
Riyo’s pulse begins pounding in her ears.
“How long has he been hurting him?”
“Longer than you’ve known him.”
The room tilts.
Riyo catches the back of a chair.
She remembers every time Fox arrived late with blood beneath his nose. Every unexplained period when he withdrew into himself and refused to let her touch his shoulders. The electrical scars she’d seen across his back in June, too fresh to belong to Dred Priest, although Fox had gone silent when her fingers moved near them.
She hadn’t asked.
She’d convinced herself that respecting his boundaries meant waiting until he chose to tell her.
He couldn’t tell her.
The realization comes with brutal clarity.
“He’s been ordered not to say anything.”
Scalper watches her carefully.
Riyo looks toward the bed.
Fox had kept military secrets from her before. When she asked about them, he told her he couldn’t answer. He became formal, apologetic, occasionally annoyed.
This had been different.
Whenever she came close to asking about the Chancellor, Fox’s entire body changed. His face emptied. His voice flattened. Sometimes his nose began bleeding.
“He physically can’t tell me,” Riyo whispers.
“Not directly.”
Riyo turns back. “What does that mean?”
“It means orders affect them differently.”
“Them?”
Scalper’s expression closes.
Riyo hears the word again.
Them.
Not us.
“You said them.”
Scalper says nothing.
“You’re Alpha-01.”
“That is my designation.”
“You’re the oldest Arla-template clone in the Medical Corps.”
“That’s what the files say.”
Riyo’s thoughts stop.
The answer is too deliberate.
Not a confirmation.
A description of paperwork.
She looks at Scalper properly. The medic appears older than most clones, but not because of accelerated aging. That had never existed beyond Separatist propaganda. The Alpha batches were simply born earlier.
Still, there were details Riyo had ignored because she didn’t know enough to question them.
Scalper’s accent changed when she spoke Mando’a.
She had contacts across Mandalore, Ord Mantell, and half the criminal underworld.
Supply crates appeared without Republic shipping labels.
Fox listened to her in ways he listened to almost nobody.
Boba called her ba’vodu.
“You’re not a clone,” Riyo says.
Scalper goes very still.
Riyo waits for denial.
None comes.
The silence confirms more than words could.
“Moon Goddess,” Riyo whispers.
Scalper glances toward Fox, then raises one finger to her lips.
Riyo lowers her voice further. “Does he know?”
A short nod.
“Who are you?”
Scalper’s face hardens.
That answer isn’t coming tonight.
Riyo almost presses, but Fox’s monitor changes rhythm as his heart rate climbs. Scalper crosses the room immediately, checks his pulse, and adjusts the medication flowing into his arm.
Fox’s breathing eases again.
The tenderness in Scalper’s hands is unmistakable.
Not clinical.
Familial.
Riyo stores the question away.
“Why can you tell me?” she asks. “If he was ordered to keep this secret, why aren’t you?”
“Because the order wasn’t given to me.”
“But if you were a clone, it would affect you too.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Scalper’s mouth pulls into a bitter line.
“Don’t know.”
That sounds like a lie, although perhaps not one aimed at Riyo. It sounds like something Scalper has been trying to understand for years.
“Orders settle into their minds,” Scalper says. “Some worse than others. Direct commands from authorized superiors are hardest. They can resist, but resistance causes pain. Confusion. Bleeding. Sometimes the thought simply stops.”
Riyo remembers Fox attempting to discuss reconditioning months ago. His nose had begun bleeding before he finished the sentence, and then his expression went blank.
Good soldiers follow orders.
She’d heard clones say it before.
Always in the same dead tone.
Her skin crawls.
“But the order only stops him from telling someone,” Riyo says slowly. “It doesn’t stop someone from noticing.”
Scalper nods.
“That’s why you answered.”
Another nod.
“You were waiting for me to figure it out.”
Scalper’s eyes move toward Fox.
Not waiting.
Hoping.
Riyo feels anger gathering beneath her ribs, sharp enough to make breathing hurt.
“How often?”
Scalper turns back to the medical case.
“How often does the Chancellor do this to him?”
The medic’s silence stretches.
Riyo steps closer. “I’m not asking as a senator.”
That gets Scalper’s attention.
“I’m asking as the woman who loves him.”
The admission lands heavily in the room.
Riyo hasn’t said it aloud before.
Not to Fox.
Not to anyone.
There had never seemed to be a proper time. Their relationship is still new enough that each private use of their names feels dangerous and precious. They’ve survived the Zillo Beast, political threats, military campaigns, and several truly catastrophic attempts to understand romance.
She knows she loves him.
She hadn’t realized the first person she would tell would be an armed medic standing in her bedroom over his unconscious body.
Scalper’s expression softens.
“Since the Guard formed,” she says.
Riyo stops breathing.
“Last June?”
“Yes.”
“More than a year.”
Scalper nods.
“How many times?”
“I stopped counting after twenty.”
The anger becomes something colder.
Twenty sessions.
At least.
Fox had walked into the Chancellor’s office knowing what waited there. Then he’d come back to her, to his commanders, to the Guard, and worked until his wounds closed enough to hide.
“Why hasn’t anyone stopped it?”
Scalper lets out a rough, humorless sound.
“Clones have no rights. Chancellor owns the chain of command. Complaints disappear.”
“Fox outranks nearly everyone in the Republic.”
“Not him.”
“He’s the Chief of Defense.”
“He’s still clone property.”
The words make Riyo feel physically ill.
Scalper points toward Fox.
“He refuses to send others. Chancellor requests command officer, Fox goes. Someone fails, Fox takes punishment. Someone objects, Fox takes punishment. Keeps it contained.”
Self-sacrificing di’kut.
Riyo has heard Thorn call him that with exhausted affection.
Now she understands what it costs.
“He thinks he’s protecting them.”
“He is.”
“That doesn’t make it acceptable.”
“No.”
“Why tonight?”
Scalper’s gaze sharpens. “Ask what happened today.”
Riyo thinks back through the Senate schedule.
Fox had returned from Kamino less than a week ago. He’d entered a hostage crisis before his transport had cooled, watched troopers die after the Chancellor ordered him to stand down, and nearly lost Thorn in the Rotunda bombing.
He’d been furious.
Not his usual controlled anger. Something hotter, raw enough that he avoided Riyo until Wolffe forced him to break.
Tonight’s session had come after Fox submitted his internal review of the hostage response.
“The report,” she says.
Scalper nods.
“He accused the Chancellor of causing the casualties.”
“Probably.”
“And Palpatine punished him for it.”
Scalper looks toward the burns.
Riyo follows her gaze.
Evidence.
The Chancellor had tortured the Chief of Defense in the center of the Senate District, then released him into the halls barely conscious because he knew nobody would challenge him.
Nobody except the Guard knew.
Fox couldn’t speak.
Scalper had no legal identity beyond a falsified clone designation.
The brothers and sisters who witnessed it were bound by orders in ways Riyo is only beginning to understand.
The Chancellor had built his safety around their silence.
Riyo walks to the bed and sits carefully beside Fox.
His face looks younger in sleep. He is twenty-three, and the Republic has already used enough of him for several lifetimes.
She brushes damp black hair away from his forehead.
He doesn’t wake.
“What happens if I confront Palpatine?” she asks.
Scalper’s answer is immediate.
“He hurts Fox.”
Riyo’s hand stills.
“Or someone else.”
The cold anger hardens into strategy.
That is what her mother taught her. Rage is useful only after it learns patience.
Riyo can’t storm into the Chancellor’s office. She can’t accuse him publicly without evidence, and Fox’s wounds won’t be enough. Palpatine will claim a training accident, Separatist attack, or classified medical procedure.
He controls the Senate.
He controls the courts.
He believes he controls Fox.
Fine.
Let him keep believing that.
“Document everything,” Riyo says.
Scalper studies her.
“Every wound. Every date you remember. Every session you treated afterward. Copy the records somewhere outside GAR systems.”
A slow, dangerous understanding enters Scalper’s eyes.
“I’ll review Fox’s schedule,” Riyo continues. “Meetings with the Chancellor, unexplained medical leave, canceled appearances. Mira will have the official logs.”
“Tovaan can’t know yet.”
“I won’t tell her why.”
Scalper nods once.
Riyo looks down at Fox.
“When he wakes, I won’t ask him to disobey the order.”
“Good.”
“I’ll tell him what I figured out.”
Scalper’s damaged voice softens. “That he can answer.”
The loophole.
Fox can’t reveal the secret, but he can respond once Riyo names it herself.
Palpatine’s command is a cage built around a very specific door.
Riyo has found the hinge.
She takes Fox’s hand beneath the blanket. His fingers are cold, but they curl faintly around hers.
“I’m going to destroy him,” she says.
Scalper raises one eyebrow.
Riyo looks up.
“Politically.”
The medic’s expression suggests she considers this an unnecessary limitation.
Despite everything, a strained laugh escapes Riyo.
Scalper checks the monitor one final time, then gathers her medical case.
“Call if breathing changes.”
“I will.”
“Don’t let him stand.”
“How am I supposed to stop him?”
Scalper removes a loaded sedative injector from her pocket and places it on the nightstand.
Riyo stares at it.
“Is that your answer to everything?”
Scalper considers the question.
Then she nods.
The front door closes behind her several minutes later.
Riyo remains beside Fox in the quiet apartment, watching the monitor pulse green across his sleeping face.
She had thought the Chancellor frightened her before.
Now she understands him.
That is far more dangerous.