I do not think, therefore I do not am

When you wake, it happens slowly.

Your senses sluggishly return to you, one by one, like rebooting an ancient computer. You can't move yet, you can barely think. Give it time.

First to come back is your hearing. Except there’s nothing to hear, only a whining electrical buzz, worming its way deep into your bones. Machinery, or electronics, you’re not sure which. The noise is making you lightheaded. Or maybe it's a lack of oxygen. Your breathing is shallow, intermittent, so you concentrate on inhaling and exhaling manually, counting out each one in your head. It works for a while, but then you lose focus, and slip back into that weak, stuttering rhythm. As your body wakes, you try again, and again, but eventually give up.

It's fine. You’re too busy worrying about other things anyway.

You have no idea where you are, no memory of how you got there. Not alert enough to do anything more than slightly shift your limbs.

You regret it instantly. Pain explodes outward, from deep in your chest; radiating down from your skull and neck; burning in your joints; dancing fire across your skin. Your breath catches as you freeze and grit your teeth. You inhale slowly through your nose as you ride the wave, motionless, waiting for the pain to subside.

You choke back a sob. You breathe. And you wait.

When the pain fades a little, you notice other sensations.

The surface you’re lying on (face-up) is flat and rigid, cool but not cold. Dull aches pulse wherever you are touching it, as if you've been lying for days. You know it can't have been that long. But you wonder.

Something is covering your body. Thin, scratchy. A blanket, maybe. You’re naked except for underwear, stripped of your blacks, raw skin catching painfully on the coarse fabric with every fluttering breath.

Your eyelids glow red-orange, and you know that if you open them you’ll be blinded. But you risk a peek anyway, squinting through tears.

Above you is a harsh tube light, glowing hospital-white, but you're not in a hospital. The walls are bare metal, the ceiling above is exposed machinery, and it smells… off. You’ve been in the medbay before, you know the smell of bacta and antiseptics and sanitised steel. This is not it. Those things are there, yes, faintly, but they're overpowered by other odours. Hot metal, chemicals, and some kind of food all mix together in a nauseating miasma, and you deeply wish you were nose-blind.

Unfortunately you’re not, so you just have to try to put it out of your mind. As you raise your head, your gaze shifts downward, to the grey-green fabric draped across your body. You take a deep breath and carefully move your left hand - the least sore - to lift the blanket.

Your chest spasms and you choke back a flood of bile as you realise the cooked meat you've been smelling is you.

Your skin is covered in burns and lacerations, all slick with bacta gel. Lines of stitches zigzag across your chest. Your right arm - what little you can see of it without peeling back the blanket even further - is charred like an overcooked steak. A few scraps of black fabric cling to the flesh near your elbow, jaggedly scissored away from what must have once been your undershirt.

Your right hand doesn't respond when you try to move it.

Your heart rate spikes.

Something is beeping. You imagine it's loud, but you can't tell over the rush of blood in your eardrums.

This time, you aren't able to stifle your cry.

A door opens somewhere. You barely notice. The blanket suddenly feels suffocating, weighing you down like it's woven from pure beskar. You kick fruitlessly at it as you lurch upright.

Rough hands push your shoulders back down.

Someone is yelling something in a language you don't speak.

A sting in your neck. It's cold.

The darkness sucks you back in.

The next time you wake, it’s much quicker. Too quick. You're ripped from the darkness. Your eyes fly open, wide and unfocused. The light blinds you. Adrenaline floods your veins, and your heart is attempting to explode out of your ribcage. You can't breathe. It aches, and you can't breathe. Every muscle in your body is tensed. You whimper through clenched teeth.

As the adrenaline rush fades, you inhale, deeply and desperately. Your body craves oxygen; that sweet, invigorating flood of fresh air. You can almost taste it.

It doesn't come. As your chest rises, a line of fire sears across your skin. You scream. Or at least you think you do; you can't tell if you're making any actual noise or if it's all in your head.

You’re tied down. Harsh restraints dig into your flesh, burning wherever they touch, across your torso, and hips, and around your thighs. Your arms are held snug to your sides. Your head is immobilised.

You thrash and writhe anyway, though you already know it's pointless. Tears leak from the corners of your eyes.

A figure stands over you, faceless, backlit, holding a stim injection.

“It’s awake,” they say, in a deep, warbling voice. “Vitals are… steady, but not ideal.”

“Good enough,” another voice answers, from somewhere out of sight. “We are to begin the next phase.”

“Yes.”

You try to speak, but your tongue won't cooperate. It stings. You must have bitten it earlier, but the other pain signals had obscured it.

The second voice talks again. Oblivious, or ignoring you? “Initial assessment shows significant damage to the lungs and heart. This was treated upon acquisition, but it’s unstable. Suggest augmentation.”

“Agreed,” says the first voice. You can see now that it belongs to a green-skinned Skakoan. Male, you think. The ceiling lights reflect off his pressure suit in a headache-inducing display as he leans closer to your face. You flinch, as much as you're able to. He stares, silent, unblinking, then straightens up and moves out of sight.

The two voices say nothing more. You strain and twist to try to catch a glimpse, but the restraints are too tight. They bite like teeth into your forehead.

At some point they leave the room, and for a long while, you’re left alone. You squeeze your eyes shut, and breathe shallowly, and lie still, and it’s almost enough to take your mind off the pain. You run through as many breathing exercises as you can think of - you’ve memorised several - to try to control your heart rate. It doesn't help much.

You still can't remember what happened. You know it must have been violent, but the memory eludes you like smoke, slipping and curling through your fingers every time you reach out. Eventually the frustration builds, and your chest burns, and you have to give up.

Then a door hisses open, and the Skakoans return.

When they come into view, you see the green one is wearing long gloves and a gown over his pressure suit that almost looks like surgical scrubs. The other holds a metal tray; you can't see what's on it, but it clinks and rattles when he sets it down near your head.

The one with gloves picks up a scalpel.

He moves towards you.

No. No no no, please no.

You know what’s coming. You know that there’s absolutely nothing you can do.

But you can't show weakness. You bite back the whimper that swells in your throat, and blink furiously to clear away the tears.

As he loosens the restraint across your ribs, he makes eye contact, briefly, and you give him the best defiant glare you can muster. His brows - or what passes for them on his lumpy green face - furrow slightly, but his clinical demeanour is unchanged as he reaches toward you with the blade.

The first cut is swift and clean. The line burns hot, sharp, slicing through your chest like a lightsaber through metal. Your jaw clenches, so hard that you're certain you’ll crack a tooth.

He continues.

The pain becomes your anchor. A focal point, so intensely bright that it eclipses all conscious thought. Your eyes are open, but you see nothing. Nostrils flare, muscles spasm. There's an awful, inhuman whine. Not the surgical tools; it might be coming from you.

You can feel everything.

At some point they sedate you, just enough to keep your heart rate under control, but not enough to dull the pain. Your already-fragmented thoughts dissolve into mush. All that remains is the cold, sharp metal in your lungs.

You aren't aware of much. You don't know when they stop, just that they do. They leave, and you cry a bit, and pray over and over that you were anywhere else. Every breath burns, but the burn is localised.

You drift in and out of barely-technically-consciousness, snatching rest wherever you can, but not for too long. Never too long. You're exhausted, but in too much agony to doze off. How long, you wonder, until sleep deprivation makes you completely lose your mind? You don't have much of it left anyway. Who knows, maybe it’ll be a blessing? Better than your current state, at least.

Finally, one of them comes back, and doses you with something stronger, and you’re gone.

Whatever they did to your lungs, it wasn't the last of it. Not by a long shot. The Skakoans return on a number of occasions, operating on different parts of your body each time. Always the same green Skakoan leading the procedures, but he’s accompanied by a rotating cast of assistants. Two particular aides feature regularly; you recognise their skin tones, one blue, the other lavender. You’re kept restrained, and can’t see what they do to you, but you can feel it.

They do not give you pain relief.

The worst by far was your head. You were kept awake, and made to respond to stimuli - 'read this word', 'count to ten', 'what colour is this?' and so on. You resisted at first, so they prodded you with a shock baton until you cooperated. At least they numbed you. A blessing... until it wore off. Brains don’t have nerve endings, but a skull sure does. The agony was unlike anything you've ever experienced, or ever wish to again.

You don’t remember much about yourself, not even your own name, but you know that you have people who care about you. Brothers. You have to survive this, for their sake. You repeat it in your head, like a mantra, to get you through the worst - you can’t tell if it’s helping, but it’s comforting, at least.

The passage of time is blurry, but eventually you start to regain some clarity. You’re aware of things, now. You’re tied to that same table, with the same scratchy blanket between your skin and the restraints. Every inch of you hurts, as usual, but you can pick out other sensations too.

Before the… whatever they did to your brain, you had patchy, semi-fried hair, but they’ve shaved you bald. And your skin tugs uncomfortably at several points where something is sticking through the bone. You can't tell if they're staples or what, but they pinch your scalp whenever your head shifts on the flimsi-thin pillow. They must have given you it after the skull thing; you remember lying on bare metal, before. Small mercies.

They keep you hydrated through an IV line. It comes out the other end in a catheter, which just makes it feel like you need to pee, real bad, all the time. There are other tubes, too, coming in and going out. You have to guess there’s nutrition in one of them, since they haven't been feeding you.

Your breathing is improving. Whatever was wrong with your lungs, it must have been serious, but they did something to you and you’re not dead, so. Could be worse. You’re recovering quick, accelerated by copious amounts of bacta gel. You’re used to the smell now, but it’s still not pleasant.

They obviously want you alive, but for what? You’ve been puzzling over this for a long time. These guys are putting an awful lot of work into saving you. You still can’t recall much from before, but you get flashes, now and then. A tunnel through stone. Fighting. Blaster fire. And a voice that sounds a lot like yours. Nothing that explains why you’d be so important to them.

Your train of thought is interrupted by the Skakoans returning again.

You brace yourself for another session of slicing and dicing, but the green one - he seems to be in charge - isn’t wearing scrubs this time. He says something in that odd, warbling voice of his, but you don’t quite catch it.

The other one touches your ribs with the shock baton. You jerk away from it, and the restraints across your forehead and shoulders sting as they bite into your still-raw skin. You blink furiously, and that green putty face comes into focus. “You are awake. Good. I said, we are to begin physical testing. I will loosen your restraints, and you will follow my directions. Understood?”

You stare blankly at him.

He gestures to his associate - today it’s the lavender one - who raises the baton again. “Understood?”

You croak out an affirmative.

“Good.”

When the restraints come off, you do nothing for a moment. Your chest rises, further than it’s been allowed to in days, as you take a deep, cool breath.

“Are you ready to begin?”

Your primary objective is to find a way to escape. But first, you need to heal, and regain your strength. The strategic move, for now, is to play along. Buy time. So you nod.

“Sit up.”

You exhale. Easier said than done. Your abdomen is laced with incisions that spark painfully as your core muscles engage. You hiss in an agonised breath through clenched teeth. Exhale. Inhale again, deeper. You brace yourself, and roll over enough to get an elbow under you with a clunk. Again, on the other side. Every move is a fresh hell, but you push through it. You’ve always been a fighter. Your right arm falters, skids on the slick metal, but your left gives you the boost you need to get all the way upright.

You sit motionless for a moment, gasping, trembling, trying not to sob. You did it. Everything is on fire but you did it.

You don’t have time to celebrate. The Skakoan - you’d almost forgotten he was there - types noisily away on a datapad, then gives another command. “Stand up.”

This is going to suck, you just know it. But not as much as the baton.

You go to peel back the blanket from your- hm. That’s not.

That is not a hand.

Your brain buffers in real time, trying to make sense of what you’re seeing. Your right hand is not where it should be. It’s gone.

It’s gone.

But it’s… not?

Your breath shudders. There is a metal abomination where your forearm should be, and it moves like it, it feels- you can feel it, but it’s not you.

Your brain sends the signals to move your wrist, and the metal rotates instead, and you’re struck with awful, gut-churning recognition. It’s a droid component - a scomp link. They put a scomp link on your arm.

Oh.

There it is, you think, as a flood of nausea surges upward. You hunch over, knees raised, and vomit right onto the blanket. There’s nothing of substance, only a thin splatter of yellowish liquid.

“Gross,” one of the Skakoans mutters.

The other one says, “Stand up.”

You bring your other hand into view, terrified that it’ll turn out to be metal too; to your great relief it’s still your hand. Blistered, burned, tubes poking out of it, but yours. You wipe away the bile from your mouth. “Gimme a second,” you snap, or try to; it comes out jumbled.

They gave you a fucking droid arm. Why.

The buzz of the stun baton shifts your focus. The arm - you refuse to call it your arm - can be dealt with later. Compartmentalisation is a valuable skill, and one that you’re well practiced in. You can do this.

You sigh. You throw back the vomit-soaked blanket. You swing your legs around, off the side of the table.

Your face hits the floor.

When you regain consciousness, you’re already mostly upright, strapped to the table again but this time at an angle. Something stings, sharper than normal, just below your ribs. Did you pop a stitch? You blink groggily. The Skakoans are conversing a few steps away; they haven’t noticed you’re awake yet.

“… monitors detected a spike in cortisol right before it collapsed. My hypothesis is that the problem was psychological, not physical.”

“Interesting,” says Putty Face. “Keep a close watch on its brain activity after that knock to the head, I don’t want it getting another concussion.”

“Yes, sir.” Lavender glances over. “Speaking of, it’s awake.”

“Very good. Let’s try this again,” says Putty Face, as he moves toward you. He steeples his gloved fingers. “I will remove your restraints, and you will stand up.”

He doesn’t give you any time to process. Echoes of the last things you saw before passing out are swirling and raging in your mind, but there’s no time to dwell on it. You have to compartmentalise, or you’ll fall apart.

Your right arm is now a scomp link, and your legs are metal. Both sides, amputated just above the knees. It repeats in your mind, over and over.

And he wants to test their functionality.

You’re nothing more than a droid to him. You’ve been torn apart and put back together all wrong, and he’s standing there with that cold, smug detachment-

No. Rage won’t help.

You swallow your bitterness and nod, like a good little science experiment.

Despite your best efforts, when he loosens the restraints you slump forward. Your forehead smacks painfully into his chest plate. He catches you by the shoulders, hoists you upright, and wipes his hands on his suit with a grimace. Once he’s sure you’re standing under your own power, he slides a few paces back, and accepts the datapad handed to him by his assistant.

Next to you is a stand on wheels where your IV bag hangs. You grip it with your one good hand, for stability. You take a deep breath, and step - or more accurately, lurch - toward him. The floor is strange underfoot. You can feel it, but the sensation is… off. Your legs aren’t moving like you’re used to.

You refuse to look down. You don’t want to vomit again.

He allows you to stop after three steps. He peers intently at the datapad, and at you, but his flat expression doesn't give anything away.

You’re trembling. Even that short distance has winded you; your chest heaves as you desperately suck in air. You’re weaker than you realised.

“Turn around.”

You do, slowly and clumsily. The three steps back to your table might as well span the entire galaxy. But you make it, somehow. You stand there, gasping for breath, your whole body wracked with tremors.

“Sir, its heart rate is too elevated for my liking,” Lavender says.

“Let me see that.” Putty Face snatches the datapad from his associate. “Hmm. Very well. That’s enough for now.”

Putty Face gestures to Lavender, who glides toward you. The table is returned to a horizontal angle, and you’re helped back onto it. The metal, so harsh and unforgiving, softens under your body and embraces you like an old friend. You’re learning to push the constant aching and stinging to a deeper, more distant part of your mind.

The fact that you’re getting used to it is almost more distressing than the pain itself.

They bring a fresh blanket and pillow, but do not restrain you this time. You’re too sore and exhausted to try anything anyway, and they know it. They leave, and the door locks behind them.

Despite the malestrom of emotions tearing through your mind, it doesn’t take long at all for you to drift off.

You get only a couple hours of rest before Lavender is back, prodding you awake to check you haven’t died in your sleep from a brain bleed or whatever. He runs through some basic cognitive tests, flashes a torch in your eyes, and leaves again.

This repeats several times.

On the fifth visit, Putty Face is with him. You think it’s morning, but you can’t tell - there are no windows in this little room, and no timepiece anywhere you can see.

Today’s testing begins with the same sequence of commands: ‘sit up’, ‘stand up’, ‘walk toward me’. You do a little better; you make it four steps this time, instead of three.

He orders you back to the table, and you sit gingerly on the edge of it as you catch your breath, legs hanging limply off the side. You still can’t bring yourself to look at them. Instead, you pick a spot on the wall - an exposed conduit - and stare at it instead.

You’re allowed only a brief moment to recover. “Raise your right arm.”

You try not to look at it as you slowly do as he instructs.

“Stop there. Now, bend your elbow.”

It’s been wired into your nervous system well enough.

“Extend it straight out.”

It’s part of you now.

“Bend it again.”

That’s a piece of droid, attached to your body. Your stomach twists.

“Rotate the scomp attachment toward you.”

… huh. You freeze for a second. Human hands don’t normally spin like a drillbit, you don’t have the neural pathways for that motion. But it did spin, earlier, before you fell.

The whole cyborg thing has you horrendously conflicted. You so badly want to be able to ignore it, to pretend it’s not there, to pretend it never happened. To pretend you’re fine, and healthy, and whole. But you can’t. As much as it terrifies you, your curiosity is winning, and that part of you won’t be satisfied unless you investigate.

And the scomp link is curious indeed. Why that, and not a regular prosthetic? If they can do functional humanoid legs, surely they could do a hand. But no, they’ve given you a droid part instead, and you can't figure out why. There has to be something more to it.

Damn it. You huff frustratedly, and commit to the train of thought.

Okay. It can spin. How do you make it do that?

How about this? Your brain still thinks you should have a hand there, your nerves remember it, so you tell it to twist and face palm-down.

The metal buzzes. You swallow apprehensively, and brave a glance at it.

The scomp link is spinning. Haltingly, inconsistently, but spinning. And you can feel it.

A shudder runs down your spine.

“Not that fast,” Putty Face scolds. You stop. You try again, with a more subtle motion. It’s smoother, slower.

“Good. Now, the other way.”

You move your ‘hand’ outward, palm up, and the scomp link stutters and reverses direction.

Whoa. Trippy.

“Again.” The usual flat, clinical affect to his voice is noticeably absent. He sounds almost... excited? Eager?

Pressure is building behind your eyes, but you keep going. He makes you repeat the bending and twisting motions over and over, until the headache reaches a point where you have to squeeze your eyes shut and turn away.

“Perhaps we should let it rest?” Lavender queries. “Its blood pressure is elevated.”

Putty Face is silent for an uncomfortable length of time. “Fine,” he says eventually. “But we will resume as soon as possible. I am eager to gather more data.”

He’s true to his word. They leave, and you lie down again, but it's not very long at all until they're back. They run you through the same exercises each time, but more, and longer.

Your physical therapy regime is relentless. They push you to your limits, enough that you reopen your wounds at least twice. Every second you’re awake is a second spent exercising. But you're recovering steadily, and as you do, various tubes and IV bags get removed - they replace your catheter with a refresher that emerges from a wall panel, and later they even let you have solid food. A nutrition bar, you think - it’s dry, and tasteless, and has the texture of old leather, but to you it might as well be uj cake. You savour every last crumb.

Then something changes. The door hisses open, like usual, and you turn to face it, legs off the side of the table, like usual. Putty Face enters the room first, as he often does.

When Lavender and Blue wheel in the portable computer terminal, you freeze.

The pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fall into place. The computer has a droid port. You now know what the scomp arm’s purpose is, and you have a pretty good guess as to your purpose too. Your spine goes stiff as you lean away subconsciously.

Putty Face is explaining something to you. You understand all of the words individually, and the logical part of your brain processes what he wants you to do, but the emotional side of you isn’t believing your ears.

“This terminal has been completely wiped and reduced to its base functions, as a safety precaution. You are to plug in here,” he gestures to the port on the side of the housing, “and edit the text on this screen to say ‘hello’.” He points again, to where the screen is currently displaying ‘power on’. “I took the liberty of downloading some basic code into your cerebral interface when I installed it, so you can communicate with the machine.”

Whatever they want you to do, whatever secrets they want to get from your brain, you won’t do it.

Putty Face clocks your hesitance. He makes a noise adjacent to clearing his throat. “You are to plug in,” he says louder, enunciating every word, “and make the screen say ‘hello’.”

His associate, Blue, passes him the shock baton.

Damn it.

Wait. No. If you behave, and you learn how to access and manipulate computer files, maybe they’ll eventually let you into their mainframe. And maybe then, you can gather data and come up with an escape plan.

Okay.

You inhale, and brace yourself. The floor clunks under your metal feet as you stand and walk towards the machine. You kneel carefully and, before your will can falter, jam the scomp link into the port.

For a moment, nothing happens, and then-

[you are in the computer. you are the computer.

there is so much data in here. strings of numbers and letters and symbols, completely incomprehensible, flashing through your head as pure information, beyond the need for images or thoughts.]

Your head aches. Your sinuses feel stuffy.

[it takes every shred of your brainpower to stay focused. you sift through the data, looking for anything familiar. what are you trying to do again? there. a tiny string of plaintext, nestled amongst a cluster of other bytes you don’t understand. it says power on.

there is an edit command stored in your memory. you focus on the text, and run the command.]

You’re aware, distantly, of wetness on your face.

[you delete the letters. you slowly, painstakingly replace them with h, and e, and l, and l again, and o. you run another command: apply.]

“Excellent,” a faint, far-off voice whispers. “You may unplug now.”

You can’t move your limbs. You’re not sure how to.

“Unplug,” the voice says again, more urgent this time.

You’re trembling.

The voice speaks again, but you can no longer hear what it’s saying.

Something tugs at your shoulder.

[the storm of data in your head flashes violently, then goes-]

dark.

You’re dazed and groggy, when you come to. Your head is in excruciating pain - it feels like it’s been stuffed full of nails, which are coated in acid, which is on fire.

The overhead light is more piercing than usual when you crack your eyes open. You immediately, reflexively squeeze them shut. Your nose wrinkles; you feel something tug at the skin around your nostrils.

You’re unbelievably dizzy. Slowly, carefully, you raise your head and open your eyes again; an agonising task. You have to fight to stay conscious.

You bring your hand up to your face. It comes away crusted in dried blood.

You’re on the floor, on your back. Three Skakoans are standing over you. You can’t tell who’s who, as they’re nothing but dark shadows, backlit by the ceiling lights.

“Well, that is… undesirable,” one of them comments.

Another one orders, “Get it back to bed.” That sounds like Putty Face, maybe.

They lean down. You’re hoisted up, one set of hands gripping under your shoulders and a second at your knees. Your vision swims. The room is melting around you.

You’re lowered onto your table, and the second your head touches the pillow, you’re out.

They allow you to rest for longer, this time. You’re in and out of consciousness, and when you sleep you dream of numbers, of code, in formats the human brain was never meant to understand. But you do. You understand it.

And it terrifies you.

When you wake properly, you find the lights are dimmer and the nosebleed has been cleaned up. You’re certain they’ve been watching you, and now that you’re up, they’ll be along soon.

You’re right. A minute or two later, the door slides open, and Blue brings you a meal and some water. When he leaves, you eat, and use the refresher built into the wall. They never bothered to give you a privacy curtain for it. You’re getting accustomed to its absence, but that doesn’t mean you’re happy about it, and you let them know this by glaring at the security camera in the corner as you do your business.

The room is, ostensibly, a lab, but it feels more like a cell. And just like a cell, it’s securely locked. You’ve investigated the door mechanisms before, and nothing’s changed. But you try anyway.

When the door finally does open again, it’s not from your efforts. Blue and Lavender are back, and they’ve brought the computer with them. You scramble back to the table; you know what’ll happen if you act up.

A moment later, Putty Face enters the room.

He locks eyes with you. “We go again, but I will be monitoring you more closely. This time, you unplug when ordered.”

You’d rather be shocked by the stun baton than connect again. It hurt. But you have to maintain your broken, obedient facade if you stand any chance of ever getting out of here. So you lower your eyes, and nod.

“Same orders. Change the text to ‘hello’. I will be timing you.”

Hard flooring meets metal knees; then you plug in.

[you brace for the onslaught. you might be imagining things, but it seems a little easier this time. it’s still a challenge to stay focused. but you do your best.

wading through the flood. searching. searching... there. you find the piece of code you’re looking for.

there’s so much information, streaming in from all sides. your brain was never meant to handle this type of data.

you can do it. you have to do this.

you concentrate, and one by one run the commands. the text changes from ‘power on’ to ‘hello’.]

“Unplug now.” You can hear him clearly. You’re not as lost, this time.

It takes you a moment to remember how to move your limbs, but you do. You pull your arm back. Simultaneously, some subconscious part of you finds and runs a buried command-

[disconnect]

and you’re out. The port releases your scomp link with a click as you fall backward.

Is your nose bleeding again? Oh, it is. You gag abruptly, and cough as blood trickles down the back of your throat. But you’re conscious. That’s progress!

“Someone give it a rag, it’s getting blood on my floor.”

Celebration over. Putty Face seems… not thrilled, but satisfied.

“Should we be worried about that?” one of the aides queries. Blue. The other one, Lavender, leaves the room.

“It is within expected parameters.”

They say nothing else. Lavender returns shortly to drop a folded cloth bandage at your feet.

You press the wad to your nose. Your tongue is coated with the acrid taste of metal, flooding down your throat as you breathe heavily through an open mouth.

Behind you, the table awaits. You switch to pressing the bandage to your nose with the tip of the scomp link, and reach up with your good hand to grip the edge of the table and raise yourself shakily to your feet.

Putty Face hands a datapad to Blue. “Continue with the subject’s physical therapy. There are other matters that require my attention. We’ve seen enough for today, but the computer is to be incorporated into its schedule from now on.”

He and Lavender leave the room. Blue studies the datapad, and then you. “You know the drill,” he says.

And you’re right back into it.

As promised (or threatened), the computer features heavily in your daily activities. Always with Putty Face supervising. Usually with both Blue and Lavender, too.

It’s a little easier every time.

They start adding variables. The code gets denser, more complex. You get faster, and the nosebleeds become less frequent.

The tipping point comes sooner than you expect. Putty Face has begun asking questions while you’re plugged in, gauging your external awareness while you’re performing tasks digitally. It’s simple stuff, mostly: ‘what year is it’, ‘how many fingers am I holding up’, ‘repeat after me’, that sort of thing. True or false questions follow, then more complicated open-ended ones, until one morning he asks you, “Analyse this, and tell me what Team A’s next move should be.”

[open file. it is an extremely simplified overview of a battlefield. two teams, a and b, indicated by coloured icons. you recognise the environment layout; it is similar to one of the defaults used in hypotheticals during strategy planning sessions.]

Oh.

Your heart drops as it begins to sink in.

[team a is spread out too thin. there is cover, but they’re not utilising it well. it’s a common personnel spacing used by droids.]

Your lungs spasm, not quite a gasp, not quite a sob. This confirms what they need you for.

[team a needs to tighten up their left flank. there’s already a team b squad positioned for a strike. if - when - they make it through this point, then that point there, the battle is over.]

They want your tactics, your strategies, and they’re going to use them to wipe out your brothers. You won’t do it. You- you can’t.

You’re out of time. Nobody is coming for you. Why would they? You’re a clone, you’re expendable. That means it’s on you. You have to make a move, and it has to be now, or you’re never getting out. You disconnect, and throw yourself away from the terminal.

“What?” Putty Face exclaims. Then, “Hey! Stop- sedate it!” as you scramble to your feet and shove past him. The door is usually unlocked while the Skakoans are inside - you’re counting on this being true today.

It is.

You punch the controls and burst through the door as it hisses open. You’re in a gently curved corridor. Both directions look the same. Grey walls, harsh lighting. You take a gamble, and go right. Behind you, the Skakoans are shouting; you only catch some of it, but it doesn’t sound good.

“Stop!”

“-thought you said you broke its will?!”

“Subject is loose, heading-“

“-to stun! I want it alive!”

Your feet pound against the floor as you run, metal on metal, echoing through the corridor, thundering like your heartbeat.

At a junction, you freeze. Which way?

To the left, you hear the rhythmic clanking of droid feet, so you take another right. Your heart is trying to punch right out of your chest. You’re still so weak.

Dead end.

No!

There are a handful of doors down this corridor. You try each of them, one after the other, but they do not yield. The facility is locked down tight, and the droids are getting closer. You look around in a panic, trying not to sob.

There’s a port on the wall.

Screw it. You drop to your knees and plug in.

[ooookay, this is a lot more data than you’re used to.

you want schematics. blueprints. but first you need to get one of the doors open. otherwise-]

“There it is!”

Ohhh no that’s a droid. Time’s up.

“Blast it!”

[aha! the door controls. you can still-]

You hear a pshoom. Your muscles seize, your vision goes white, and then

black.

You’re restrained again. The straps are tight, pressing uncomfortably into your skin. You can’t take a full breath. Your muscles are all tingly and weird, which you recognise as the aftereffects of a stun blast. Your ears are ringing.

You twist your hand around, testing for any give in the strap, but it holds firm. The rough material scrapes your skin as you tug fruitlessly at it.

“It’s awake.”

You freeze.

“I know you can hear me. Behave, and we can forget about this little incident,” says an awfully familiar voice. You peel open one crusty eye, then the other. Putty Face is standing above you, with more of an expression than you’ve ever seen on his face before. “All I want is your cooperation.”

And by ‘cooperation’, he actually means your total loyalty, and complete and utter betrayal of everything you stand for.

“G... go... fffuck yerself,” you cough out.

He is motionless for a long moment, then exhales. “I am disappointed. I’d hoped it would not come to this, but I’ve invested too much in this experiment to let it go to waste.” He turns away from you, and waves a hand at one of his associates. “Sedate it. We’re switching to plan B.”

“Right away, sir.”

You yell wordlessly, and thrash in the restraints as the Skakoan approaches. You’re not going anywhere, you know that, but your panicked, flighty, prey animal instincts have other ideas.

You feel that all-too-familiar sting in your neck. You try to fight it, but the drugs are potent. In just a few seconds, you’re out.

[booting.

os load complete.

restore memory?

>y

memory restore successful.

connecting to main drive... connecting to main drive... access granted. downloading data.]

“I think it worked.”

“Test it, then.”

[load scenario a.

analysing variables.

searching archive data...

analysis: group a is too spread out. output: move clusters a1,a2,a5 to position x. move clusters a2,a7 to reinforce. group b will attempt piercing manoeuvre with cluster b4. move clusters a2,a5 to intercept and flank.]

Get out of my head.

[end scenario.]

“Its heart rate is elevated.”

“No matter. It’s proven it can perform the necessary tasks if its higher functions are bypassed. Now we just have to keep it stable. Prepare the stasis chamber.”

“Right away, sir.”

[load scenario b.]

[new connection registered. awaiting input.

>who is this?]

Hmm. That request is... irregular.

[searching archive data...

archive data found. designation: ct-1409.

text-to-speech output. ct-1409. accessing voice bank.

ct-1409.

ct-1409.

ct-1409.]

[warning: stasis suspended. disconnecting feeds.

hydration: disconnected. nutrition: disconnected. waste: disconnected. oxygen: disconnected. temperature regulation: off.

algorithm status: standby.

chamber opening.]

You feel pops in your torso as the tubes there come loose. The leads in your head and spine are still attached; they halt your fall. It hurts.

Hey. You felt that.

You felt it!

[access camera feed: central lab.]

Hmm. No, that's not it.

[switch input to... what’s the word? right. eyes.]

You blink weakly. Everything’s blurry, warped, through a film of tears.

“Echo.” That voice is so familiar. It sounds warm, but sad. “Tech, we’ve got to get him out of here. Figure out how to unplug him from… from this mess.”

[something else is in here. not the operator. it’s poking around the settings; it wants to terminate the algorithm. you don't know if it’ll terminate you in the process, but you don't care. you want out, and you don’t mind how it happens.

you guide it to the right menu.

it’s altering the program. disabling settings, enabling others.

it switches something, and...

you remember.

your name is echo. you were at the citadel, trying to escape. there was a shuttle. it looked like the only way out. risky, but if you didn’t move, you’d be trapped. you made a run for it, but...

no.]

No!

You’re brought out of it by a hand on your shoulder. That same voice, talking to you, soothing you.

You’re not there anymore. The Citadel. It’s over.

Your brain is mush, but you’re beginning to be able to see things. You’re in a large room, much larger than your cell. Green and gold walls, lights in the floor. It's really cold. There’s a circular control array - you’re slumped in the middle of it - and two people in the room. One is crouching next to you.