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[You took something valuable of mine, now I’ve taken something of yours. It’s only fair that I destroy it, but not until I’ve had my fun first.]

“How could this have happened? Who would take her? Where would they go?” Wrecker is in hysterics, pacing the floor of the barracks, clenching his fists on both sides of his head, a look of worry and desperation painted on his face at the sight of your blood soaking the flimsiplast.

“Panicking isn’t going to help, Wrecker.” Echo tells him, walking towards his brother and pulling his hands back down to his sides. He can sympathize with his worry, wondering if anyone suffered even a fraction of this emotional turmoil when he was taken from his brothers. “Just stop and breathe, okay?”

Echo and Wrecker sit together on the cluttered benches in the center of the room. Crosshair is bouncing his knee compulsively and grinding his teeth against a toothpick in his mouth from where he rests on his bunk, racking his brain along with Hunter and Tech who are leaning against the wall, deep in thought for how and who to pursue.

“Do you remember the spice mine we collapsed last month on Kessel?” Tech chimes into the conversation, looking at Hunter as he perks up from the wall. 

“I was just thinking the same thing.” Hunter confirms his mental math is going in the right direction when he reaches the same conclusion as Tech.

“What about it?” Wrecker asks, not making the connection just yet.

“Does anything about that Zygerrian creep show who was running the place ring a bell?” Hunter adds to the conversation and a mention such as that puts a sour taste in their collective mouths. 

“What was that guy’s name? Slec something?” Crosshair finally speaks after a long stint in concentrating silence.

“Slec Sirrot.” Tech is quick with his data pad and pulls up the criminal records of this likely suspect. “He has charges illustrating crimes ranging anywhere from slavery, trafficking of persons and drugs to conspiracies of terrorism and mass pillaging of planets not under the jurisdiction of the Republic.”

“Well, that narrows things down.” Hunter confirms. “The Zygerrians openly revived their slave trade when they allied with the Separatists, so we at least know of a place to start.”

“Hunter… Do you think she’s okay?” Wrecker asks, and his words describe what everyone is thinking. Judging by the excess of blood not only on the note but collected on the floor from where it was dripping down the wall it was fastened to, it required a significant amount to write it. Everyone’s concern for you reaches a sense of urgency fueled by righteous need for your rescue.

“We ought to hurry and make sure she is.” Hunter nods at Wrecker, glancing at the rest of his squad to communicate a sense of uniting motive before folding the note and sliding it just beneath his chest plate and over his heart as he leads everyone to The Marauder. 

Your captor is someone that the group had been commissioned to uncover an illegal mining operation utilizing slave labor. It’s one thing for soldiers of the Republic to clear hotspots of corruption and human exploitation. It’s a different beast altogether for them to go the extra mile and detonate the entire vein, rendering the resources inaccessible, even with ethical means. Unbeknownst to them, they had no idea this fateful decision would come back to haunt them.

As an act of vengeance, it would be too impossible of a task to try and topple the coordinators that delivered the order. Persons of power are guarded by security and many different measures of surveillance. A sinister loophole opens up at the realization that the clones are the security and meant to be their own safeguards.

∆ ∆ ∆ 

With ringing ears and a pounding headache, you awake to pitch black surroundings, a capsule no more than an arm’s length in all directions. It’s disgustingly humid. Your eyes and nose ignite with the stink of filth hanging in the air, or maybe it’s death, you can’t tell. You just know it’s sickeningly putrid and strong. You try to breathe through your mouth, but it burns your throat even worse, suffocating you in this foreign stench you cannot escape from. 

You’re coughing repeatedly, every breath you take in is caught on its way to your lungs and you can never fully expand your chest, fearing for your life in drowning without a drop of water in sight. 

The sound of doors opening and slamming in the distance gain your attention. In an attempt to filter the air, you lift your shirt to your nose and mouth and begin taking in shallow breaths. Between the opening and closing of the doors, you can make out the familiar sloshing sound being strewn within the enclosures, followed by a violent scream promptly interrupted by the door’s closing. The thunderous vibrations are getting closer and closer. Door slams. Water sloshes. Screams resound. Repeat.

You’re blinded by the sudden white light flooding your space no larger than a broom closet. The floor is bare and swept clean, one small fortune as you realize that the stench is coming from the other captives on either side of you and you have no evidence of this stall having been soiled recently. 

A recognizable robotic silhouette adjusts his posture at the retrieval of a freezing bucket of ice water. That’s it, you remember seeing this same model droid come into the barracks you were staying in on Kamino when it harshly struck you. Unfamiliar with the personnel of the cloning facility, you had no reason to believe it was a threat until it was too late. The absence of awareness teleports you to where you are now, trapped and forsaken. The ringing in your ears and crusted blood in your hair unveil more than you thought at first.

 Before you can prepare for the impact, you’re drenched and screaming, joining the chorus of cries that surround you. The sudden cold intake is perceived as a threat by your body and begins redirecting warm blood from your extremities to your vital organs, causing them to become dysregulated in temperature. Now, you know exactly why everyone else is joining in the cacophony. Another small fortune is granted upon you when your vision fades to black, soon forgetting why your throat was hurting in the first place. This horrendous cycle continues only to be repeated every time you pass out, being woken up with bucket after bucket of unforgiving ice water.

You don’t know how long you were kept in the enclosure. It could have been a few hours, or a few days. Time is an illusion in this manufactured hell, this mill of misery. The door to your cell swiftly slides open and you flinch, expecting another wave of water but instead, the droid’s clamp-style clutches take you by the wrist and pulls you to your feet. The baking sun makes the sand beneath your feet burn hot against your bare skin, increasing the pace in which you walk so as not to suffer a sear with every step. You have been stripped of every aspect of your identity, noticing the same tattered smock-like uniform you’re wearing along with many other unfortunate souls pinned beneath the Zygerrians oppressive thumb. They’re walking in single file lines, some carrying stones and boulders that look like they could weigh three times their scrawny weight, getting whipped and beaten by other droids to move faster. 

For a moment, you contemplate the thought of overpowering one of these nameless, emotionless service droids turned drones of destruction and control. The thought lingers far too long, and you’re shoved to the ground by an electrified baton colliding with your back followed by an aggressive string of binary you can’t understand. Your knees scrape against the rough and rocky ground, and it makes rising to your feet increasingly difficult. Another baton strike falls upon your back, effectively shoving all thoughts of rebellion from your mind when you crumble further. You finally rise, shakily regaining your balance and brushing off the fine dust caked to your bloodied knees before walking forward.

You’re ordered to keep walking until you feel a metal clamp tug on your smock, halting you where you stand. Not wanting to suffer another high voltage beating, you follow its lead and obey its request for you to stop. It slaps a monitor cuff on your left wrist, fastens and activates it. An electrical whirring can be heard linking with the droid and you are shoved into a massive boulder yard where the population of other prisoners have been rounded up and put to work. All the faceless screams now have an identity, gaunt and emaciated complexions gazing at you in pity, knowing full well that you’re the new arrival. 

You get right to work, wrapping your blistered fingers around a large rock amidst a pile of others. Nudging it back and forth, you manage to influence it to roll in your direction. Although, it’s far heavier than you expected and it immediately crashes to the ground, clipping a nearby prisoner’s foot. They let out a loud yelp and you’re conflicted in being the cause of more unnecessary torment for these people to go through.

“Oh my! I’m so sorry! Are you okay?” Before you could help them up, they angrily stand tall, landing a firm punch across your jaw and limping away. The impact sends you to the ground and the droid that’s taken you under its charge emits a series of chirps that you could only describe as its binary-style chittering laughter.

The levels of depravity they’ve been through make them not only avoid newcomers but despise them. Any amount of sympathy for each other’s suffering is swiftly beaten out of them. By the looks of this rubble, it would take far longer for everyone to tend to clear the vein’s entrance individually as opposed to if everyone worked together. Perhaps a formula such as this is perfectly crafted to ensure maximum anguish for the prisoners while also turning them against each other. You learn quickly to keep your head down and mind your own pursuits, desensitizing yourself to the trials and tribulations of others, forcing you to learn how to be cold and indifferent in order to survive.

From well before the time the sun rises until well after it goes down, you’re trapped in this field of rubble clearing stone after stone, boulder after boulder without so much as a water break. People drop like flies from exhaustion and are beaten back into consciousness just to squeeze as much energy out of them before they’re completely spent, unable to even lift their arms in self-defense. At which point, they’re dragged to their cells to “sleep it off” only to wake up to the same itinerary the next day. The ones that fall before the sun do not return to their cells with a meal at the end of the day, having not earned it. These people in particular have a tendency of passing in the night, but the chances of being just another corpse in a closet drops when you’re ushered into the line where meals are being served.

A few heads down from getting your bowl filled, you notice a stringy, foaming substance being ladled into everyone’s trays. It smells no better than the cells you’re kept in and looks even worse. Your turn arrives and you hold your tray up just the same as the last person did, but the uncalibrated droid misses the bowl and spills mystery slop all over your tray and hardly gets any into the bowl. The only thing relatively edible was a piece of bread that was as stale as a brick, but when you softened it in the cup of water, it wasn’t that bad.

The mystery soup on the other hand, you dared not to touch it in fear of soiling your cell were it to not agree with your gut. You could detect rotten vegetables floating in it, moldy parts still fuzzy even when drenched in whatever they tried to pass as “broth”.

Many days like this passed and after a while, you spent every modicum of your mental energy trying to manifest an avalanche that would kill you instantly, but it never came. Death is far more preferable to this. If you wander outside the established perimeter of the rubble field, the cuff around your arm shocks you violently. It’s not happened to you yet, but you’ve witnessed the abrupt seizing of your fellow captives when they wander a little too far out of bounds. The thrashing is enough to bring a person to death’s door, so you’re careful to navigate the safe zones as best as you can.

Though, it’s as if something shifted within you. You’ve lost all hope for rescue, and you would rather die trying to escape than submit for the rest of your life, what little may be left of it. An opportunity reveals itself when you notice a window of vacancy in the droid security rounds. This window puts you directly in the path of the landing bay where various ships are stationed. There is bound to be one that you can take control of and flee with. The only issue is the cuff around your left wrist. 

A couple more days pass and you mentally record the cycle of droid rotations, timing the opening perfectly to ensure you have enough of a window to work with. You sneak to a blind spot in the rubble yard where you rip a portion of your smock off and wrap it around your arm just above the elbow. A steel rod from the remains of the scaffolding is on the ground at your feet and you use it to tighten the scrap of your cloth, effectively making yourself a tourniquet. “There’s no other way… This is how.” You begin muttering repeatedly, psyching yourself up to do the unthinkable. 

It’s a few minutes from the moment that your escape window begins. A surge of adrenaline courses through your veins, starting with a roaring wave pulsing from your stomach. “There’s no other way.”

You tighten the tourniquet and wait until your limb begins to tingle and go numb. Looking around to ensure no one is watching, you lie with your back flat on the ground next to a rather large boulder. It’s resting perfectly on top of a few smaller rocks that can easily be shifted under its weight, knocking the boulder off its kilter. “This is how it has to be.”

You use another longer, thicker piece of scaffolding to smack the little rock. It doesn’t take the first few smacks and you get frustrated, having worked yourself up to this only for fate to stall your pain. But just as you begin to have second thoughts about what you’re doing, the rock dislodges the boulder, and its full force comes crashing down on your arm. The steel cuff cuts and stabs into your flesh but is no match for the boulder’s force. The shock of your arm being caught in this lethal vice causes you to panic a bit when you only have so long to free yourself.

Biting your lip with tears in your eyes, you steady your breathing to avoid crying out in agony as much as possible. The bones in your forearm snap like twigs and your flesh rips apart at the elbow the harder you twist and turn your limb in order to pinch it off and set yourself free. 

You gasp, gulping for breaths at the realization you did it. Your jaw trembles with the horrifying distress you’ve just put yourself in. Blood is rapidly pouring from the place where your hand used to be, soaking you in its iron-scented warmth. “Ohh.. Oh no... Oh-okay… Ohhh fuck ...” 

There is a small power cell emitting a faint source of light. With dusk on the rise, you remove the protective cover keeping the heat core contained. Raw power is exposed to the elements now and you feel the warmth radiating heavily from the cell. Looking at your severed limb, you do the only logical action to stop the bleeding, cauterizing it with the power cell.

The crisp burn of the artificial yet extremely potent source of light cooks your flesh in an instant and you’re shameful to admit that your stomach gurgles in appetite at the scent of your singed meat.

The time has come for your window of opportunity to be acted upon. The guards are being cycled from their towers and you make a run for the landing bay, having reached far past the bounds that the bracer limited you to. 

You begin to shed tears of happiness as you reach the home stretch. Your feet come in contact with the feeling of stable steel platforms as opposed to uneven sandy and rocky terrain. You make it to the first ship within sight, climb aboard and execute take off sequences. The engines prime in a timely manner and you’re in the atmosphere within seconds. “Yes!”

Though, before you could celebrate your liberation, the proximity sensors pick up a couple of shuttles tailing behind you, ready to inflict their own countermeasures. “No! No no no !”

Shields have been disabled on this shuttle you tried to make off with, bringing you to believe that this was done intentionally for anyone who had the gall to go to lengths such as yours. Your engines are taken out with a couple precise shots, and you brace for impact after falling from the sky.

Smoke fills the hull, and you stumble out of the wreckage, blood and sweat seeping into your right eye as you try to see where and in what direction you landed so that you have a general idea of where to run. Clutching your severed arm, you shuffle as fast as you can to nowhere in particular. Kessel is a vast wasteland of nothing, and the patrol droids catch up to you rather quickly. However, you happen to look upon the first sight of a person of power that wasn’t a bucket of bolts. He is a tall and slender Zygerrian, dressed in a long duster coat with a gas mask concealing his mouth and snout. He bears a scar across his forehead that looks to be a part of a larger wound leading to a chunk missing from his right ear. His apparel beneath the coat is simple yet elegant, pretentious as he still clings to the damaged relics that hold mere vestiges of what his power used to represent. 

Amidst your shuffles, a stun bolt is shot from the Zygerrian’s blaster, and you fall limply to the ground. The sight of freedom fades out as your eyelids threaten to close. A voice cuts through your psyche as you struggle to deny the empty blackness. 

“They fall for it every time, don’t they?” He remarks about you to one of his accompanying droids. “Take this one to my personal quarters. I’ll deal with her later.”

The droid steps towards you, roughly yanking you up from where you lie on the ground and the Zygerrian stops it for a moment. “Wait!”

He examines your missing arm and the tourniquet that is still fastened there. “Now, you didn’t do a little stunt like this just to get out of working, did you?” He grabs you by the chin but you’re nowhere near as aware of your surroundings as you should be, unable to resist or even feel the bruising hold he has on you, squeezing your face until your features are warped and contorted. 

“You’ve got guts, kid. I’ll give you that.” Shoving your face to the side like a piece of refuse, he waves to the droid to carry out his initial order. “I’m going to enjoy playing with this one.”

Here you are, back where you started. You tried your best to eliminate the pain, but only inflicted more upon yourself. Would it have been so bad to keep moving rocks for the rest of your sorry life? You wouldn’t know as you lay dying in the droid’s firm and inanimate arms. Your wounded soul yearns for the grave, a level of deliverance that would appear to be too much to ask for.

Just like he would have the droids wake you and the other prisoners up, he treats you in the same fashion, drenching you in freezing ice water and circling you as you thrash and gasp for breath while secured to a stable stretcher that has you strapped in upright. The bucked he used clatters to the ground, and he walks around it. You have sores from where the restraints have been digging into your skin, and the room is illuminated by a very low cast and faint glow from a power cell. A power cell that is missing its protective cover and your stomach plummets.

“Well, well. Look who’s tough.” He glances between the power cell, the table of frightening utensils and your petrified face. “You owe me a new power cell, you know. This ain’t ever gonna work right again.”

“Who are you?” You manage to speak, a civil exchange of words for the first time with someone who is definitely not civilized.

“I’m someone your little clone friends shouldn’t have messed with.” He leans in close, his whiskers nearly brushing your face. “But you can call me Slec Sirrot, and I think you’re going to like it here.”

“What do I have to do with any of that? I only met them a week ago!” You’re frustrated with the path of logic this Slec has taken to reach his conclusion, wondering why he’s wasting his time with the likes of you.

“People like them can’t stand when innocents are in danger. So, what better way to lure them to me than with a little bait .”

“It’s not going to work…”

“Oh really? And why not?” Slec questions your judgment, wondering what flaws in his plans you see but he doesn’t.

“They wouldn’t waste resources on me. It’s not in their training.” You mutter, defeatedly.

“Well, keeping pets isn’t protocol either, and they deviated from that now, didn’t they?” Slec’s eyes move between yours and the lazily bandaged stump where your hand used to be. He steps into your space, inches from where you’re secured to the stretcher and flexes his hand to expose his claws. Their razor sharpness is lightly dragged from your forehead to your jugular. Slec pauses tracing your anatomy to watch you whimper and flinch, knowing one wrong move and he could fatally slice you open. “When my pets run away, I have no choice but to discipline them.”

You scream at the top of your lungs as he chooses to dig every one of his claws into the blood-soaked gauze secured to your stump that’s doing a sorry job of keeping your blood contained. With every scratch and laceration, he’s exposing your raw burns and inflamed muscle fibers. Your voice fades to nothing as you lose the ability to enunciate your agony and it is only then that Slec releases his hold on your arm. “You’ll thank me for this. A struggle of this degree unveils the strength you had inside all along.”

You cry, taking in hissed breaths when you are offered a reprieve from his animalistic torture. Contrary to what you’ve been conditioned to believe at this point, the torture hadn’t even begun when you were working the boulder field. Apparently, you let out one too many whimpers and you were met with a backhanded slap across your face. “That’s enough.”

You couldn’t believe the power he holds over you. You no longer felt the urge to sob, but the apathy transitioned to rage. He takes your silence as submission, but you’re only waiting for the perfect time to try and kill him yourself. If he’s not commanding the operation, everyone else is free. You’re willing to risk everything even if it seals your fate in the process. 

“I think the least I could do is properly bandage this, hm? Maybe sew it up a bit better than it was done before? Can never trust droids to do anything right…” Slec walks to the little table of utensils and rolls it over beside you. Upon getting a closer look at it, you see that there is far moore than the average tools of torture atop it. In addition to the morbid arrangement, there are sterile syringes with vials of stimulants as well as numbing agents and pain relievers. However, Slec completely ignores the option to apply anesthetic and begins manually sewing your leaky limb closed. Your stoic front fades fast when the sting shoots waves of excruciating pain through your body. Your convulsions test the slack of the restraints, revealing that this stretcher is not as secure as Slec would like. He punches you in the nose, causing a stream of blood to emit from it and flood your teeth with its crimson drippage. Your mouth is painted red as you spit the excess out and adjacent to Slec. “Stop. Moving. Urgh! I can’t do this if you’re freaking out like that!”

Slec continues to sew you up without any form of numbing or anesthetics and you nearly bite your tongue off trying to maintain your composure to no avail, suffering yet another blow to your face. 

“You know, you’re the one who’s asking for this. I made my conditions clear and you keep disobeying me.” He scolds you bitterly. He pushes your lips out, forcing them to work as a spout for your blood to pour from. You shake your head free of his grasp and he doesn’t like the defiance in you, hoping to snuff it out with another collision of his fist with your battered face. One of your eyes is nearly swollen shut and you can barely see out of the other, only able to make out fuzzy silhouettes. “Now stay still.” 

He leans in one last time, not knowing that this would be his fatal mistake. His neck is tilted in your direction and you’re staring at it, a familiar surge of adrenaline possessing you just the same as when you made the decision to put that tourniquet around your bicep. His pulse is running strong and prominently through that main carotid artery and you disassociate, unaware of the next few moments, where you went or what you did. Instead, your psyche saves you the suffering and displaces you from the present, allowing you to run completely on primal instinct; the instinct to survive.

It looks like a dream. A nightmare. You’re beside yourself, performing acts you never would have assumed that you had the strength to do. In a way, Slec was right. He made you stronger than anything possible, but at such a grave cost to your humanity.

When Slec leaned in to administer his cruelly prolonged surgery, you pushed the slack you gained in the stretcher to its absolute limits, lunging forward and latching onto his neck with your teeth. You don’t let go, no matter how many times he impulsively stabs you with the little needle he was using in a primitive attempt at first aid when things such as bacta patches have long been invented. 

In a favorable twist of fate, you sink your bite down deep enough into him that your teeth touch themselves and he rips away from you. You hyperventilate as the nauseating flavor of iron and salt overwhelms your senses. His fur-coated flesh rests in your mouth and puts a foul flavor on your tongue. You repulsively spit out the chunk of neck muscle and begin to vomit what little contents you had in your stomach all over his boots. 

He staggers away from you, a palm to his neck in an effort to stop the bleeding, but he falls to his knees and gurgles through the stages of blood loss, choking on every pint as it gushes out of him in synchrony with his heartbeat. The immediate horror subsides, and you work quickly to unfasten the restraints keeping you pinned to the stretcher, carefully operating with your only hand and unlatching them one by one until you collapse to your knees. Your pants are soaked with Slec’s blood upon impact with the floor and you hug your freshly amputated arm close to your chest. Slec’s face has grown pallid, frozen with a ghastly expression, but he’s not dead just yet.

He can’t enunciate a single word through the gurgling, but he does manage to look you dead in the eyes as his chest heaves, fighting with his involuntary agonal breaths to release sputtering bouts of laughter at your brave display of resistance. While smiling through his fading consciousness, he watches you pull the tiny needle he left out of your chest. Groaning as you remove it, you flick it in his direction and he scoffs at you, spitting up more foamy blood. Your eyes scan over the utensils atop the table that he only sparsely got to play with before you chewed out his throat.

Among the many tools and utensils were the classic pliers, scalpels, various knives of different sharpness grades and textures, but your sights have been set on a hand-held brick hammer, no doubt taken from a miner’s utility belt to be kept with this nefarious collection. You don’t recognize the person you’ve become, the person he’s turned you into. He still lies there, laughing at the impending brutality you’re sure to inflict upon him, as if pleased with himself in accomplishing the mission to inherently alter your nature to be that much closer to his. 

In this moment, you might as well be no different, no better than him. Except, you could care less when you feel just how satisfying it is to drive the sharpened steel of the hammer into his skull. You underestimate the fortitude of his feline cranium as it bounces back with a turbulent vibration. The sudden instability threatens your muscles with increased fatigue, and you nearly drop the weapon, shaking out the discomfort before rearing your arm back and delivering another blow. This time, you feel no resistance as you successfully shatter his cranium. Brain matter splatters across the wall, warm mist coats your face as his blood mixes with yours and it’s not enough. 

You keep hitting him until his face is beyond deformed and pulverized. Clumps of fur are clotted about the space as the puddle drenching your pants from the knees down grows significantly in size. You begin to deliver blows to other parts of his corpse, shattering his collar bones, a few ribs and crushing both hands. The continuous strain you’re putting your singular arm through nearly cripples you with drudgery, but something overrides the want to put the hammer down and stop. Maybe it was all those times you were woken up with freezing water and forced to report for hard labor in the mines, or maybe you had one too many bowls of rotten vegetable soup. Maybe it was the stun batons.

Having disassociated through the whole ordeal, you had no idea that your cries of rage and fury could be heard through the whole lair, allowing you to be located by your trusted clone associates. You couldn’t hear yourself, you’ve lost complete awareness of your surroundings, and that’s probably for the best. Your screams were guttural and hoarse, an audible representation of the chaos you’ve lived through.

You have climbed atop Slec’s battered body, straddling and continuously beating him until the hammer collides with the hard floor due to the lack of flesh having enough structure to take each blow. Your vision is stained in crimson. The metallic scent is too much to bear, and yet, not even a shred of your own humanity brings you to deviate from your morbid task at hand.

It’s only when a muffled series of voices brings you back to reality, followed by an abrupt shift in your posture off its center caused by an outside force. Someone has wrapped their arms around you roughly, slightly brushing against your bloodied stump and the electrifying currents of discomfort force you to try and dish out the same anger on this new and unknown foe.

They resist every attempt and disarm you even faster. One arm blocks you from attacking them with the hammer and the other is careful to restrain your severed limb without hurting it. Then the voices become clear, and you identify the first one you recognize. Through all the gore and viscera, a pair of brown eyes peering through yellow lenses cuts through your demented episode. “Look at me! He’s gone! He’s long gone!”

Despite the very clear image in front of you, it takes a few seconds more for this reality to actually register, and your volatile reaction is to be expected, lashing out with a single clenched fist and continuing to scream until it feels as though you’ve swallowed shards of glass. “No! Get the fuck off me! NO!”

“We’re here!” He yells, jostling you from the hold of this demonic possession and finally helps you establish the truth. 

“We’re here.” He repeats himself, telling you the words a second time with a more tranquilizing inflection. One of his gloved hands raises and he caresses your face, using his thumb to gently swipe over your eyes to soak up a bit of the scarlet mess dripping from your features, making sure not to hurt the swelling shiner. “We are here, and he is gone.”

The surrounding silhouettes in the dark are hard to see with your vision obstructed, and you shrink into yourself at the sight of the tall figures encircling you. 

“Give her space.” He warns and the shadows back up obediently. “She’s not… well.”

“Tech?” You ask with a voice no louder than a whisper. 

“Yes. That’s right!” He brightly encourages you. “Do you recognize anyone else?”

The shadows step forward and the scary silhouettes turn into the very clones that rescued you from a life of turmoil on Cosuscant. “That’s Echo… Crosshair... uhm... Wrecker and Hunter.”

“Very good. You’re doing a great job.” Tech continues to pet you, aiding further in grounding you to your surroundings. “Do you know where you are right now?”

“I’m in…” You can’t continue after those words, trying once more with no better result. “I’m…”

To no avail, you are unable to bring yourself to even say it despite knowing the answer, every last shred of your strength falls apart when you glance between Tech’s eyes and the burning nub where your arm used to be. You are a product of Slec’s institution, and you never thought the guilt and shame would riddle you in this way. Before being brought here, you always believed you were an individual of decency, but your reflection has faded away into a soul you no longer are familiar with. Time has a way of changing things and hardening even the kindest of souls. Every bridge burned here has led you directly back home where traversing the path to your healing, physical and mental, begins with acceptance that you are not alone. You never were.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to say it.” Echo steps in, rests a hand on your shoulder while Tech tries his best to keep you whole. 

“We need to get her out of here.” Echo adds, taken aback by just how much blood is flooding this little interrogation room you were kept in.

“Can you stand?” Hunter asks, chastising himself for putting a burden like that on you in your state, but Wrecker chimes in at the perfect moment.

“Doesn’t matter.” Wrecker pushes himself into the forefront, proudly volunteering to offer you his assistance. “Let me carry her.”

Tech acts quickly and pulls a canister of bacta spray from his pack along with a sterile med-patch. “We need to get this missing limb under control first.”

“Don’t!” When Tech leans in to administer proper first aid, you instinctively push away from him, your mind being thrown right back into when Slec was primitively sewing up your frayed flesh; exposed nerve endings and shards of bone cutting deep into your senses. “Please just… Don’t touch me.”

“What did he do to her?” Crosshair wonders aloud, but only the brothers can hear. He’s broken by the sight of someone’s bright light being all but snuffed out. He now knows this much blood is legitimately warranted after what you went through.

Echo takes a knee, hoping to reason with you in the necessity that in order to save and protect you, you have to let them get close. “You know we aren’t going to hurt you with that stuff, right?”

You refuse to speak, not knowing what the correct answer to that question is. “That looks like it really hurts.”

“It does…” You sniffle, stifling another cry.

“Did he do that?”

You shake your head, closing your eyes and letting the tears fall down your cheeks, causing interrupting streaks in the blood splatter. 

“Did… Did you do that?”

A single nod confirms the worst to be true. The group in entirety ponders on just how far you were pushed in order to commit to something so gruesome upon yourself. Echo sighs deeply, taking the medical supplies from Tech’s grasp. “I know you probably don’t think it right now, but you’re so incredibly strong. As a matter of fact, I’ll tell you exactly how strong you are.”

Echo removes the seal on the canister of analgesic spray, shaking it to create a foamy chemical reaction within the confines of the steel aerosol can. You flinch at the sudden movement, and he reads your body language and slows his actions. “People can do miraculous things under extreme pressure, so that basically makes you a superhero, right?”

Echo doesn’t reach for your arm. He doesn’t even let himself into your space without your approval. Instead, he keeps the canister of analgesic in one hand and gestures with his scomp hand for you to close the distance. This kinship in missing your limbs together makes it easier to receive medical care, and your tears are no longer sorrowful, but slowly transitioning to some semblance of acceptance. You grimace, giving him your arm so that he can saturate it in a fine, soothing mist. The pain relief is instantaneous, and you feel like you can finally breathe. Echo smiles when he sees that the medicine is fast acting and already easing your afflictions. “And superheroes can do anything. They defy all odds. Just like you did.”

Echo and Tech conclude the procedure by working together to apply the patch, securing it to your arm with a few layers of sterile gauze until you can’t feel a thing but the pillowy buffer. “Doing an amputation like this by oneself would be taxing even to the bravest of soldiers. And I’d say you went above and beyond the lengths a common clone or even the Jedi generals have been pushed to.”

“Has a Jedi ever killed a man with their teeth?” You ask, wanting to know the moral stance on that from his point of view. Though, he’s stumped and struggles to answer. 

“Erm… Well, they have many methods of execution so would venture to say…” Tech begins, making eye contact with Echo who is shaking his head so as to nonverbally communicate to him that he needs to stow the facts and say whatever he can to not make you question your actions. “There’s definitely a chance it’s been done before. You saw no other way.”

His words of endearment spell your suffering out in a different perspective. Your will to live was so much stronger than your will to die. So much so that you would have found peace in your demise if it were in the pursuit of freedom. “Wait! What about everyo-

“The prisoners have already been released.” Crosshair cuts you off, answering the question you were about to ask. He commends you for thinking proactively as it proves that you have retained your humanity. Slec didn’t take that away from you as much as his laughter made you believe he did. “You know, it says a lot to be in your state while still worrying about them.”

“Can you believe the entire op was run by droids? One EMP ‘nade and there was no one left to enforce!” Wrecker lets out a boisterous laugh and you feel yourself smile, a foreign feeling you never thought you’d get to experience again that actually strains the muscles in your face and jaw.

“When we couldn’t find anyone who looked like they were coordinating the facility, we knew we had to locate his personal quarters.” Tech adds, shaken with the reminder of the sight he saw upon entry when he pulled you off Slec’s corpse. “It is rather fortunate that we found you when we did.”

Hunter removes his bandana and unfurls the fabric so that it can be widened to fashion as a sling. Tech assists him in placing it on you, holding your stringy and saturated hair up so that Hunter can tie a knot at the base of your neck. Tech lets your hair fall back down about your shoulders and stretches the banana to its limits so that you can put your arm through it without too much pain or difficulty. “There. How’s that?”

“Much better.” You confirm, grateful for everyone’s thoughtful kindness. “Thanks for everything, you guys.”

“Now can I carry her?” Wrecker begs, eagerly wanting to join in to help comfort you.

“She’s all yours, big guy.” Hunter says, shuffling with the other boys to step aside so that Wrecker has enough room to lift you into his arms. 

“Alright, sweetheart.” His large grip wraps around your torso, and he pulls you into his sturdy frame, cradling you tenderly so that your head rests perfectly on his chest. “We’ll be out of here soon.”

Tech was the one who brought you to your senses and snapped you out of your murderous frenzy. Crosshair assured you that all threats have been neutralized and that the prisoners have been freed. Echo administered first aid and spelled out your own perseverance in a powerful way that he holds in high regard. Wrecker is quite literally shouldering your burdens by not letting you pull your own weight while also giving you a safe place to lay your head, and Hunter showed you that you are worthy of sacrifice when he led his brothers here to save you in the first place.

∆ ∆ ∆ 

You don’t remember leaving the facility. You don’t even remember getting back to Kamino. From the moment your head touched Wrecker’s chest plate, it would seem that your body recognized that it was finally in good hands and allowed you to catch up on all the rest you were deprived of during your stint in that hellhole. The entire way back, Tech and Echo take turns monitoring your vitals to ensure you’re remaining stable. Once they’ve returned, you are immediately admitted to the med bay for surgery where they do what they can to salvage what’s left of your arm. A medically induced coma keeps you in stasis within a restoration tank and all the surface wounds heal perfectly. All those stab markings Slec made with the needle, the lash marks and contusions from his fists against your face or when the droids would beat you with their batons, scraped knees and ulcers around your mouth from malnutrition have all disappeared. The journey of healing the wounds to your soul has only just begun.

The boys receive a comm transmission from AZI notifying them of your recovery. You’ve not woken up yet, so he suggests that they hurry in order to greet you.

“Come on, Tech! Hurry! She could wake up any second!” Wrecker is anxious to sprint down the boarding steps in a hurried pursuit to the med bay.

“Yelling at me isn’t going to help us land any faster, Wrecker.” Tech rolls his eyes, concluding his procedures and powering down the ship. 

“Do you think she’ll remember us?” Wrecker asks, concerned with the state of disarray you were in the last time he saw you.

“Only time will tell.” Tech responds, contemplating it himself. “She’s endured an awful lot.”

“She wasn’t hooked up to a mind flayer or anything, was she?” Wrecker argues, privy to the brainwashing tactics of the Separatists.

“She didn’t have to be.” Crosshair joins in the conversation. “He starved her. Brutalized her. Stripped her of her autonomy.”

“We need to be mindful of how we approach.” Hunter orders his brothers. “She could still be in shock. Especially if she sees… her missing hand.”

“About that.” Echo inputs proudly. “I had Rex put in a good word to General Skywalker and got this made for her.”

Echo unveils a mechanical prosthetic limb made of bright and shiny chromium components. It’s modeled after an actual hand and not a scomp or clamp, conscious of the learning curve you would have to go through in order to make use of all ten fingers again. 

“That’s perfect, Echo.” Hunter smiles, nodding in approval at the kind lengths his brothers are going for you. “She’s going to love it.”

∆ ∆ ∆ 

The blinding radiance of overhead lights make opening your eyes a near impossibility. The strain in trying to make out anything at all is nauseating. Panic washes over you in heated flashes and cold sweats. You begin to salivate profusely, and an involuntary urge begins shoving your tongue out from where it rests in your mouth. Lifting yourself off the cot, you slump over and spill your guts into the steel bin on the floor.

You cough and gasp for breath, reaching to clean your mouth with your left hand that… doesn’t seem to be there anymore. The coughs and gasps morph into choked up sobs when you’re reminded of what happened. What you did. Who you killed.

You readjust back on the bed using your only arm, pulling your knees to your chest as you clean your mouth with a couple tissues from the bedside table, tossing them into the bin as well. You rest your face on your knees and look down at your left arm, letting your sorrows soak the sheet draped over your legs.

Suddenly, the blast door across the room slides open and your stomach drops, a familiar response that challenges the degree of your safety. Although, no freezing ice water punctuates the sliding of metal panels against each other. You’re instead greeted by your trusted saviors.

“Knock knock!” Wrecker announces their arrival, and you hastily wipe your tears. “AZI told us you were finally stable enough to visit!”

“AZI?” You ask, not knowing who or what that is.

“AZI is a medical droid stationed here on Kamino.” Tech clarifies. “We told him to keep a watchful eye on you.”

“How are you feeling?” Hunter asks, leaning on the foot of the cot.

“I think that much is obvious.” Crosshair mentions, concerned by the presence of vomit in the bin on the floor, using his foot to push it away so as to not make you any more queasy. “If you need to, we can call AZI back and he can run a quick diagnostic-

“Don’t.” You cut him off and the others pause, listening to what it is you want. “I don’t… I don’t know what I want right now.”

“Well, how’s this for starters?” Echo walks forward with a beautiful prosthetic in his grasp. He sets it on the bed directly in place of where your left limb would be, effectively completing your missing piece. “It’s not fancy, but it should do the job.”

Your jaw trembles, eyes burn and nose stings. The only difference is that this pain is accompanied with a release of wonderful emotions. It is their hands that held you, carried you. It is their voices that spoke of a compassion you were never familiar with. It is their grace that fills you to the brim with a stronger, more eternal sense of hope. You cry. Again, and again. And they all do their part in holding you together. 

No additional words are needed to quantify the reasons you felt incomplete. Your inherent wisdom overrides the demons that strive to trip you up, just as your self-perceived but false weakness has strengthened the skin on your knees, allowing you to get back up and dust yourself off to be even stronger than before.

(Art by @binkyisonline)

(Art by @phantasmagoriatime)