Chapter Text
The lights overhead are bright. The metal under Echo’s body is cold.
Every part of him that can move is immobilized, wide straps pinning his body in place. And his prosthetics are disconnected.
“Ah! You’re awake,” says a voice that doesn’t belong to a clone. “Stop panicking. You’re fine.”
“D-don’t,” Echo tries, with a tongue and lips that don’t fully cooperate. His breath shivers across his teeth, steaming in the chill air of wherever he’s being held. He doesn’t know why he bothers. No one who restrains another being to a table—because what else could it be?—has ever listened to a no or a don’t.
“The paralytic hasn’t worn off yet,” the voice says, with a snicker that doesn’t fit the situation at all. “Thought you might be a thrasher, and even with the straps, well… Better safe than sorry, right?”
Despite those straps, Echo tries to whip his head in the direction of the voice, chest heaving against its restraint. The last thing he remembers—
“Hi,” the voice says, and a face appears over his own, backlit by the overhead lighting. “Are you done freaking out? Can we talk? Or well,” she says, “I can talk. You have to wait a little bit.”
Dr. Efi Treill. Clone Force 99 had helped her once before, assigned by Cid to secure some stolen pieces of tech and return them to the doctor, a human with lanky proportions and almost no color to her, even down to her dingy white lab coat. Echo’s impression of her then had not been favorable, but only mildly; she had been annoying more than anything. He remembers, thinking about the encounter now, that she had smacked Tech’s hand like a naughty child’s for even pointing at some of the junk strewn about her workshop.
She’d also flitted around Echo, never touching but always too close, her eyes wide as she stared at various parts of him. Emphasis on parts, her gaze sweeping across his visible prosthetics and implants in a way he’d never experienced before. He’d been only too happy to see the end of the mission, purposely putting the rest of the squad—minus Omega—between himself and Treill’s voracious eyes.
He feels the full force of them now, though all the neutral curiosity is gone. There’s an incomprehensible blend of disgust and ecstasy in her pale, watery eyes, making the corners of her thin mouth twitch. “It was so nice of you to come out. I was so afraid you’d blow me off. A clone like you has to be busy.” A few strands of dry, tow-colored hair brush his cheek with how close she leans, and Echo tries to flinch away. He only succeeds in straining his neck.
The message had asked for him by name, passed on to the Wild Space Clone Underground base through a forwarding relay of people who knew people who knew him, starting from the current owner of Cid’s Parlor. If you can bring your whole squad, even better. I need your protection in moving some assets to a new location. I promise I’ll make it worth your while.
Echo hadn’t seen a reason to disturb his old squadmates on Pabu. A protection job for what sounded like a simple transport by a paranoid client didn’t need more than two bodies, max, if one of those bodies wasn’t Echo’s. He wasn’t in the odd jobs business anymore, but the kind of credits being promised could fund a lot of needs for the clone underground.
Rex had told him to ignore it—didn’t feel right, he said, and Echo hadn’t disagreed. And still he sent back an encrypted message: he’d do it. A job being “off” was nothing he couldn’t handle, so long as he kept his head on a swivel.
“I’m just glad this is finally happening,” Treill says, rummaging through drawers nearby. Either she’s cleaned up in the couple of years since Echo had seen her last, or she’s already moved her less valuable materials and work, because the workshop is down to just a few thin piles of junk. He can even see all four walls. “You can’t trust real mercs, even from the guild. You never know who’s gotten a bigger payday to betray you.”
“It’s no problem, so long as you pay,” Echo says, deciding he doesn’t want to look at the piecemeal droid leaned into the corner anymore. There’s something about the way its chassis has been left open, like a body being autopsied, that makes his jaw tight.
“I’ve always thought cyborgs were so interesting, you know.” More jangling somewhere behind him. “You would think the living body would reject the inorganic, but it turns out electrical impulses are basically the same whether they’re traveling through nerve or optical fibers. It’s a total enhancement.” He’s already forgotten what she was looking for; Echo finds her rambling a little too easy to tune out.
“Uh-huh. Listen, where’s the transport so I can go prep it?” Echo checks his vambrace out of habit. He’d been sure to give Rex the exact coordinates of his destination, as well as the actual planet and system names. There’s nothing else to comm him other than hi i’m bored or some other waste of communications.
“What? The transport? No, just wait, you can do all that stuff once I have the package onboard, and I want you to walk me there. Just give me another moment or two, I think I’ve almost got it.”
He sighs, and starts to turn toward her. “Listen, Doctor, I don’t think—”
The hypo is so quick against his neck Echo barely registers its bite.
“I didn’t want to trick you, you know.” Treill tears him back into the nauseating present. “But I couldn’t let you act against your own self-interest. People do that all the time, because they’re scared of change, even for the better.”
What change? he tries to ask, but it comes out just as slurred as his last attempt at speech.
“The paralytic will wear off soon.” Treill pats his cheek, a condescending little double tap as she straightens and leaves his field of vision. “Then you can ask all the questions you want. I can field a few right now, though,” she says, her voice traveling away in the room. “I moved you. All the coordinates and information you gave your beloved captain are bunk now.” Metallic sounds Echo cannot identify. “New planet, new system, new everything. I couldn’t let us be interrupted, and you’ll understand why.” A pause. “Also, you’re not naked, if you haven’t figured that out. I had to take off your armor, but I’m not a pervert.”
A big claim from a woman who’s strapped another being to a table. Echo tries to snort, and halfway succeeds.
“See? You can laugh a little. This doesn’t have to be horrible. I’m not going to cut up your body.”
“Then what,” Echo says, carefully enunciating each syllable as he wrestles for control of his own face, “do you want with me?”
“I’m just so jealous of you. You don’t know why yet, but you will, afterwards.” That sounds like keys tapping. Slowly, less like typing words and more like executing commands. It doesn’t feel like any of his ports are in use, but he can’t trust any of his senses when he feels like this. Dizzy, on the edge of panic, his breath a fluttering bird in his throat; every time he tries to get a hold of himself his mental grip closes around nothing.
“Afterwards?” he forces out.
Something that Echo thinks sounds like caster wheels comes closer, and so does Treill’s voice. “I recognized your implants, the moment I met you,” she says, ignoring his questions again. “Not the legs—those were harder to place. But I know Techno Union work when I see it.”
Her promise to not hack up his body is looking pretty weak in the face of those words, but Echo hadn’t placed much stock in it to begin with. His body still shudders.
“They’re fucking butchers,” Treill says, suddenly above him again with wild eyes. “Hacks. Every last one of them. They call themselves the ‘Techno’ Union like they’re not just shoving metal into meat and hoping for the best.” She scoffs, a tiny fleck of spittle landing on Echo’s nose. “They don’t know what real innovation looks like. I’m miles ahead of them, and look where I am.” Another scoff, before she actually focuses her eyes on Echo’s face and clicks her tongue. “Shoot, I’m sorry, Echo.” She wipes the spittle off with her sleeve cuff, and adds, softer, “I heard that Wat Tambor got his head cut off. I wish I knew who did it so I could shake their hand.”
In a different place, with different company, Echo might have agreed. The mental image of Wat Tambor’s head being sliced off—by what kind of blade, he might have wondered—would have given him a grim sense of satisfaction. Here, now, strapped to Treill’s table, he can’t conjure it at all.
Treill walks off again. Echo swallows his panting breaths, pushing back at the encroaching memories of being on a different table; none of that serves him right now. He can give in to his terror after he finds an avenue of escape, and that starts by gently testing the resistance of the restraints. If he can just—
“Aha. See, I knew that paralytic was about done. Let me fix those.” Treill tightens the straps on his thighs with single hard yanks. “I was just getting something. Relax, alright? This won’t take long—well.” She snickers again. “Not from your vantage point, anyway. I’m doing all the work, aren’t I? Lucky you.”
“What am I here for?” Echo asks, easier this time to form the words.
“Look. I’m going to be honest with you,” she says, somewhere in his peripheral vision. It hurts his eyes to look that far to the side. “I know you’re smart. I know you’re so smart that the Confederacy opted to data mine your brain instead of just killing you, one of millions if not billions of clone troopers. And because I know you’re so damn smart, I’m telling you now you’re not running away from this. Not just because I took your second-rate legs off, but because the only thing within a two meter radius of you right now is me. You’re not plugged into anything, you’re not breaking those straps, and nobody knows where to look for you. Not even you.” Treill sighs. “I mean it when I say I don’t want to do it like this. I’m not one of these people out here who call you and your brothers meat droids, you know? I get it. I see you.”
“Do what like this?” Echo tries again, to no avail this time, either.
“People think so little of you, but clone troopers have their own entire culture! That’s incredible! Especially considering you’re, what, how old?” She doesn’t wait for his answer. “Kaminoan clone troopers as a species have barely existed in the overarching history of the galaxy, but the way you name each other, and find ways to assert your individuality? It’s so cool!”
“We’re human. Not a new species.” Echo tries to turn his head again, also to no avail. “Can’t you at least let me look at something other than the overhead lights?”
“Nice try.” Treill’s voice is on the move again. “Didn’t I just say I know you’re smart? I’m not giving you a millimeter. I can’t trust you just yet.” Something rattles closer. “You could promise me you won’t leave, but I think we can both agree you’d only make that promise under duress. Not very reliable.”
The next few minutes—or so Echo guesses—are spent without Treill’s running commentary. She’s still in the room, judging by the clattering coming from different corners, completely secure in taking eyes off her prisoner.
There has to be a way out of this. She’ll have to unstrap him for something, won’t she? He’ll drag himself on his belly to the nearest transport if that’s what it takes, so long as he can get off this damn table. He can always get new legs.
“I can practically hear you thinking.” Treill looms over him again, enough that Echo has to swallow a flinch. “Tells me I made the right choice about you.”
“What choice?” he asks, despite the likelihood she’ll ignore this question, too.
“There have been so many hands on you, Echo. The Techno Union. The Kaminoans. Whoever made those legs. Also the Kaminoans?” She stares at Echo until he grits out an affirmative. “It’s such a shame about the Kaminoans. Being wiped out, I mean. They did incredible work on such a mass scale. Millions of thinking, feeling beings from a single genetic sample, with such a high level of quality control.” Treill cocks her head. “Not that they were very imaginative, at least from where I’m standing. I heard there were a few rogue geniuses running around, doing actual interesting things, but—ah. Probably just as dead now as the rest of them.” Her eyes go blank, like a droid resetting. “What was I saying? I derailed myself.”
“Stop pretending you can’t hear me,” Echo spits. “What do you—”
“Now I remember. My hands,” she says, with sudden intensity, holding up a hand as she leans down close, “will be the last on you. After me, nobody will ever be able to touch you in a way you don’t want. Not ever again.”
“I don’t know what that means!” Echo says, in a roar loud enough to make her draw back. “Why am I here? Why won’t you let me go?”
Treill is quiet as she appraises him, eyes flicking around his face as she presses her lips into a thin line. “You’re here because I’m helping you, even if you might not understand that way at first. I’m giving you a gift others would kill for—certainly I would. I’m giving you power on a scale you can’t comprehend yet.”
“I didn’t ask for help. Or power. Just let me go. There has to be someone else who actually wants this, whatever it is.”
“The kind of person who wants what I’m offering is guaranteed to abuse it. To make it something,” she curls her upper lip, “ugly.”
“I thought you said you would kill for this, yourself. Why not just—”
“I can’t. I can’t do it to myself. And no one else would do it right.” Treill shakes her head. “No, Echo, it can only be you. I’m going to help you, and then you’re going to help me. And when you’re done helping me, I’ll help you one more time, and that’ll be it. You’ll be free to go.”
“But you couldn’t have just asked me.”
Treill grins, a closed-mouth sly expression, and shakes her head again. “How about I show you, and we’ll see where we go from there?” She gets up without a response.
The rattling caster wheels that approach are the loudest, heaviest yet.
A motor turns on underneath Echo, and the table begins to tilt. “This,” Treill begins, as the tops of the walls come into view, “is the culmination of my work. And now you’re part of it. You will be more than any clone has ever been or ever dreamed of. More than the Kaminoans could have dreamt for any of their clones.”
What Treill presents him looks like a droid, made of a light-eating matte black material. A more complex, more sculpted droid than he’s ever seen, in the mold of a human man roughly the same height and weight of—of a clone trooper.
It has no head.
“I have never made anything as perfect as this. Not even this,” Treill says, drawing Echo’s attention with a snap of her fingers. He looks just in time to see her open a panel on her wrist, the synthskin edges unsticking to reveal the cybernetics within. “I just—I get so jealous, you know? Of all the people I make hands and feet and legs and arms for. They get something so much better than what they grew themselves, but not me. So I just—” She makes a knife of her right hand and brings the edge down on the middle of her forearm. “Whack! And helped myself.” She wiggles her fingers, and the visible metal flexes behind something that looks vaguely like a control panel.
“You, you, you just cut off your own arm?” Echo asks. He’s so damn dizzy he feels he might fall over any moment, even secured as tightly as he is to the tilted table. It has no head.
“It’s the most I can do on my own, sadly.” She shuts the panel. “I’m giving you everything I want, Echo. You’re so lucky. You’re going to experience something possibly no one else will ever experience again.”
“I’ve alr-r-ready done that,” Echo says, cursing himself for the rolling stutter. It has no head. It has no head. It has no head—
“Not like this you haven’t,” Treill says.
It has no head. But it needs one.
Echo admits to himself he already knew, from the moment he saw the droid body, that it was never that. Treill means for it to be his body, somehow. An impossible transplant by someone mad enough to cut off their own hand out of scientific curiosity—there’s no way this doesn’t kill him, and there’s no way his death will be anything but slow. I’m not going to cut up your body, she’d said, except he knows looking at this cybernetic body with its fully articulated fingers and toes that she will tear open his throat and put a knife through his spine, just offset enough not to kill him immediately.
He was never going to escape this. A triple amputee strapped to a table with no comms and no idea of where he is. This is where he dies in agony, away from his brothers who will never know where to look for his dismembered corpse.
“Please,” escapes him in a sob. “Please, please, please.” There’s no room for dignity. “Whatever it is you want, I promise, I promise I’ll help you. You don’t need to do this to me.”
The table begins to tilt back into place.
“Please! Please, I’ll help you! I’ll help you! I promise! I helped you before! Don’t do this! Treill!”
“What did I say?” she tuts. “About promises given under duress?”
The overhead lights sting his eyes as they tear up. “Fuck you! Fuck you, I won’t let—I’ll kill myself! I won’t let you do this to me! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you and them myself before I ever let you do this to me!”
“Oh, Echo,” she says, leaning over him to coo. She cups a hand to his scalp, hot against his clammy, sweaty skin. It hurts to flinch just as much as last time. “You’re shivering. It’s going to be okay.”
“Please,” he tries one more time, his voice breaking on the word like rotten wood under a boot. “Please, please. Please.”
The hypo bites into him again.
His eyes open. He’s alive.
His body is—
—heavy—
“There you are,” Treill says, somewhere outside of his narrow focus. The world is bright and blurry; her hand taking a grip on his jaw shocks a gasp out of him. “Look. I want you to look at what you’re leaving behind.”
He didn’t even realize the table was tilted forward again, his spatial awareness barely in play. “Look,” she says again, and shows him a second table, still flat.
A body, pale and lean. A piece of fabric draped over the groin, paying lip service to dignity. The legs cut off just above the knee, one leg ending much neater than the other scarred stump. Most of the right arm gone, ending in an empty socket.
A Y incision, freshly stitched shut. Livor mortis.
And no head.
Echo
screams—