Chapter Text
Today was the day.
CT-7567 and Keeli sat next to each other on the bench beneath their bunks. Neither of them had actually slept the night before. They waited together in anxious silence for the rest of their squad to wake up for breakfast before the Sergeant collected them in a few hours.
Sergeant Priest had announced a week ago that he would hold a battle circle between Verbur, Karoya, and Buruk Squads today.
They all knew the battle circles never ended well.
Three weeks ago Holly from Mirshe Squad left the circle on a stretcher and returned on the maintenance crew. The week before, Nine-Eight from Shev’la died three and a half hours after he won. Epidural hematoma. Mush from Kel Squad just vanished after his fight. Nobody’s seen him for two months. All they could do was imagine what tragedy would befall Verbur that day.
CT-7567 leaned his head on Keeli’s shoulder.
It hurt to think about, but he couldn’t stop himself from worrying. He became a different person entirely when he was released from Ko Sai’s shadow. He didn’t want to believe he had come so far just to lose it all because of Sergeant Priest.
Keeli leaned his head on his twin’s.
Verbur had already gone through devastation before CT-7567 joined. Six-Five died from Quannot's Syndrome two days before CT-7567 was transferred in. The Sergeant had told them that no one had been able to recognize the signs until the autopsy. But CT-7567 suspected it was simply that only Verbur had cared. That seemed more likely to him, but he wasn’t about to reopen wounds by telling his squad what he really thought. Six-Five was especially close to Six-Four, who still hated his guts. Not to mention Lorry would never let that fly, and he didn’t want to hurt Doubles or Keeli.
Quiet chimes interrupted CT-7567’s thoughts, announcing that it was 0530. Lorry came down from his bunk and got ready first, model squad leader that he is. Doubles and Six-Four rose much slower, clearly exhausted and nervous. They talked quietly with Lorry before preparing for the day. Then, Lorry walked over to CT-7567 and Keeli.
“How are you two doing?” he asked them.
“We’re alright,” Keeli responded.
Lorry nodded and looked at CT-7567. He just shrugged. He didn’t know what he was feeling, just that it was probably unpleasant enough to be appropriate for their situation.
“Okay.” Lorry sat down next to Keeli and joined them in staring at the lockers.
“Are you okay, Lorry?” Keeli practically whispered the question. As if anything louder would cause Lorry’s unyielding composure to shatter. The squad leader was supposed to be the strongest.
For a moment, he said nothing. Then, just a quiet, steady “T-minus four hours.”
CT-7567 sat up straight again and leaned forward to see Lorry’s face. It was the first time since Sergeant Priest announced the battle circle that CT-7567 could recognize the fear he knew to be stewing in his eyes.
The squadmates locked eyes. Smiling usually made Keeli seem happier, regardless of his mood. He typically only gave the rest of the squad the neutral face he always wore, but he cautiously pulled his lips apart and scrunched his cheeks up to his eyes. He knew he didn’t look happy. He obviously didn’t feel happy. He only hoped it wasn’t the type of smile that would make Keeli go “eughhhhh!”
Keeli’s eyes flitted to his face. He paused for four seconds with no visible reaction. Then,
“Your face looks stupid.”
He immediately dropped the smile. Of course he had messed it up. He never smiled right when he wasn’t happy. But this time, it had actually mattered.
“It’s your face, too, idiot,” he shot back. He was frustrated that he had failed his own very simple mission. “Clearly it’s not me that’s stupid.”
“How is my face stupid and yours not if we have the same face, huh?”
“That doesn’t matter!”
“Yes, it does!”
“What matters is that I’m clearly the smarter twin because you couldn’t even remember that we’re clones!”
“Um, hello? I was talking about your facial expression! Who’s the idiot now?!”
“Still you, idiot. You should be more specific. Face and facial expressions clearly aren’t the same thing.”
“I know that! It was implied! Y’know…context?”
“Never heard of her.”
They were openly yelling at each other at this point. No one else in the barracks was even looking their way. They had all long-since become used to this kind of behavior from CT-7567 and Keeli.
Still, CT-7567 heard a quiet, breathy chuckle from Keeli’s other side. A small, lopsided smile graced Lorry’s lips. Somehow, CT-7567’s plan to make Lorry happier by smiling at him had still managed to work in a weird, roundabout way. Even though Lorry was their steadfast, no-nonsense squad leader, it seemed he still had a vulnerability for CT-7567 and Keeli’s pointless arguments. Clearly, he didn’t have enough willpower to hide his laughter today.
CT-7567 felt a little less scared.
“Oh, I know.”
But he wasn’t going to let that distract him from the battle at hand.
“Well, maybe if you’d add some content to that context every once in a while, you’d actually make sense to someone other than yourself!”
Their argument ended up lasting for a total of four minutes and thirty-five seconds when Lorry tried and failed to be stern telling them to pack it up for breakfast. Far from their record. They’d just have to try harder the next morning.
Verbur Squad stood in a straight line in a parade rest. Sergeant Priest walked back and forth in front of them like a hunter stalking its prey. His eyes burned CT-7567’s face as he stared straight ahead. Unmoving.
The Sergeant had run them through warm up drills and repeated the rules of the battle circle to them—no deathblows, no leaving the circle, and only weapons chosen by the most honorable combatant were allowed. Now they was waiting the final few minutes before it was time to meet with Karoya and Buruk Squads in a larger training area. CT-7567 didn’t want to go.
When Sergeant Priest had his back turned, he snuck a glance at the other members of the squad. Keeli was rocking back and forth just ever so slightly. Doubles stood stock still, a feat normally unachievable through conventional measures. Normally hot-headed Six-Four was visibly shaking. Even Lorry’s typically perfect stance was pitched a hair too far forward. If CT-7567 could tell they were scared just by looking at them, he knew it was bad.
Sergeant Priest looked at his chrono and back up at the cadets.
“Fall in!” he ordered.
It was time then.
The cadets slowly moved into their marching formation. CT-7567 watched Lorry’s minute hesitation to take his place at the front of the block. Sergeant Priest’s eyes were locked onto the squad leader immediately.
“Forward, march!”
The harsh tone of the command echoed in CT-7567’s ears as he took the split second before the command was to be executed to think for himself.
And he made a choice he couldn’t take back.
As the rest of the squad in front of him marched the formation forward at a steady pace, CT-7567 remained perfect still.
“SQUAD, HALT!” the Sergeant was furious.
“CT-7567 ARE YOUR EARS DEFECTIVE AS WELL?!”
CT-7567 remained looking forward at parade rest. He was still processing what he had done.
“I SAID CT-7567 ARE YOUR EARS DEFECTIVE?!”
CT-7567 followed orders.
Not this time, though. He had disobeyed a direct order from his superior. A simple one at that. Keeli should’ve won their argument that morning. He really was stupid. He was going to be decommissioned for what? Disobeying a “forward, march?”
No. He was going to be decommissioned for not marching to his death behind his brothers.
Sergeant Priest ambled over to CT-7567. He took this moment to look around the room. Six-Four’s eyebrows were raised in surprise. Doubles was frozen again, eyes wide. Lorry had an expression of pure terror on his face. Keeli-
He didn’t look at Keeli.
He felt a cold, solid line of pressure touch his throat while he was distracted. Sergeant Priest held a blade to his neck. He grabbed a fistful of CT-7567’s blond curls and yanked, better exposing his jugular vein to the sharp edge. It felt as though his scalp would be pulled off like a swimming cap, but it was much more painful than removing a wet head covering.
“I should slit your throat right here and now for disobeying an order like that, hut’uun,” he growled, “but I think I’ll give you a choice: fall in and march with the squad so you can fight first or hold the blaster in an improvised live fire drill against the rest of your squad.”
CT-7567 grit his teeth. He didn’t like either of those choices. He glared into his sergeant’s eyes with as much hatred as he could muster, which he felt was quite a bit.
He had made his decision.
“I see you’ve made up your mind.” He shoved CT-7567 forward as he released his hair and withdrew his blade. CT-7567 stumbled forward to catch himself before he faceplanted. “Fall. In.”
He was fairly certain the Sergeant had guessed his decision wrong.
“Forward, march!” Sergeant Priest called the command again.
This time, CT-7567 followed orders and marched out the door with the rest of the squad. He took note that Sergeant Priest kept a consistent distance about two meters behind CT-7567.
He took one last look at his squadmates’ backs. His brothers.
He was glad he didn’t see Keeli’s face. He knew he would look devastated. He hoped his twin wouldn’t hate him for this.
That was a lie.
He knew Keeli would never hate him. But he hoped he would. He didn’t deserve that kindness for all the pain he knew he was about to cause him.
He waited until Verbur Squad had left the room and fully straightened out the formation in the hallway.
Then he bolted.
He shoved a shocked Six-Four and horrified Lorry to either side as he ran straight forward.
“CT-7567!” He heard Priest’s shout from behind him. He didn’t look back.
He refused to be marched to his death. And he wasn’t going to allow that for his squad, either.
He dashed through the identical white hallways and skidded around corners. He could make out five sets of footsteps and shouting behind him over his frantic breathing and the increasingly loud beating of his heart in his ears. His squad must have run after him and Priest. The heaviest set was the closest.
He still refused to be caught. If he slowed even a little, he would be done for. So he let his burning legs carry him down a path he remembered finding a year earlier with Keeli.
The zig-zagging hallways grew longer, and CT-7567 began to feel himself losing speed. He passed the hallway that held the bridge to the part of the city where the commander class clones were trained. He was close to his destination. He wasn’t really sure he had a plan.
He forced his wobbly legs to take him down that last hallway, and he slammed his palm onto the control panel to open it. He begged for it to still be malfunctioning like it had been all year. I would certainly be his luck for it to magically be fixed when he needed it broken the most.
Priest was now close enough for CT-7567 to see the rage covering his face. His squad rounded the corner just as the door creaked open. He could barely stand as the sense of relief overwhelmed him for a moment. But he quickly came to his senses and threw himself into the room.
He turned around and shut the door. Then, he grabbed hold of the door’s control panel and tore it off the durasteel wall. He ripped out the two wires he knew would make the door unopenable when disconnected and took a few steps back from the door. He hoped Priest regretted teaching them that now.
He looked around the familiar room he had entered. It was Loading Dock D3. CT-7567 and Keeli would sometimes escape to this room when they could afford a couple of hours not under constant observation. Today, the cargo containers weren’t stacked neatly on the sides of the room like they usually were. That meant they were going to be moved. If Priest couldn’t make it through the door, someone else would very soon. He didn’t have a lot of time to figure out what he was going to be doing.
He looked at the labels on the cargo containers, hoping they were something that could be of use to him. He noticed an identical warning on the side of each container. It read: “Warning: Explosive Materials.” That would either be of tremendous help to him or kill him. He took note of it.
There was nothing else in the room other than that shipment of explosives, so he went to the door across from the one he had entered. The panel of the other door was emitting sparks and the chirps of error messages. Priest must be trying to get in.
CT-7567 braced himself and opened the second door. He was immediately pushed back slightly by the heavy winds, and he had to shield his eyes with his hand to protect them from the stinging raindrops blowing sideways into his face. Typical weather on Kamino.
He slowly walked outside onto the dock, careful to keep his footing on the slick surface. He and Keeli had learned that the training shoes were very much made for indoor use and not intense Kaminoan city-climbing in the constant torrential downpour. Cadets like them were probably the reason for that.
CT-7567 turned around to check on the entrance to the loading dock. He could no longer hear the sounds from the hallway over the wind and rain breaking past his ears.
He turned just in time to see the control panel erupt into a shower of sparks as the doors easily slid open, revealing the silhouettes of four scared cadets and Priest in his Mandalorian armor with a blaster raised directly at him.
He threw himself around the doorframe just in time to hear a volley of blaster bolts squeal past his head. He slid to a stop on his side at the edge of the metal platform. He pressed himself up against the wall as flat as he could. He had nowhere to run. And he certainly didn’t have a plane.
He stood back up slowly, hugging the wall. He needed to find something he could do. Maybe set off an explosion using the cargo containers. But there was nothing stopping Priest from simply shooting him dead the moment he stepped around the corner.
But maybe he would have a chance if he closed the outside door. It could buy him a little time to think. The control panel was on the opposite side of the platform, but if he ran fast enough, Priest might not have enough time to anticipate his movement.
He would probably die regardless of what he did, but maybe he could at least go out doing some damage. He steeled himself and took a quick moment to play through his plan in his head.
CT-7567 made a run for it.
The first ten feet of the dock closest to the door was abhorrently slippery, and his start was slow, but he managed to gain speed fast. When he reached the door, he looked into the room. In that brief moment, he saw his squad still watching from the hall, but he couldn’t spot Priest. Just as he was about to turn his head back to his destination, a streak of blue light flashed across the loading dock from the side, landing directly on cargo crates.
One second he was on his feet, and the next, he was rolling across the dock. He landed on his back, disoriented. He looked back the direction he had flown from.
He caught a glimpse of figures on the floor engulfed in a bright light. He wasn’t sure if it was the stark hallway or the flames. The haunting groaning of metal echoed in the open air as he watched the ceiling slowly pull down towards the debris littering the floor. He heard far-away splashes as chunks of metal cascaded down into the raging waters below.
CT-7567 couldn’t move as the same figure that had hunted him to his current position slowly walked forward, blaster aimed at his chest. Distantly, he recognized a siren wailing over the high-pitched ringing in his ears.
All he knew was that he was going to die.
He didn’t feel anything.
Pain. Anger. Terror. They had all just faded into vague concepts in the moment.
He decided he wasn’t going to just sit and wait around for Priest to finally stop torturing him and shoot. He struggled to his feet at the edge of the platform, sliding around and nearly losing his footing. His eyes never left his instructor, who stopped and watched. Taunting.
He tried to look past Priest to see his squad one last time, but the hallway was mostly obscured by the collapsed roof and still-falling flaming debris. His eyes swept over Priest’s enraged face, and he finally felt something as he threw all of his weight backwards.
Satisfaction.
CT-7567 would die on his own terms.
Hitting the water wasn’t as soft as he had expected. It was less like a splash and more like being slammed into a wall. The impact forced all of the air out of his lungs. He immediately started sinking, clothes already heavy with water. He ignored the instinct to thrash his legs and flail his arms about. He didn’t try to swim. Didn’t try to fight it. If he surfaced he would be shot. The overpowering currents were his terms. The salty ocean water made his eyes sting, but he forced himself to keep them open, desperate to catch every last glimpse of his short life.
The cold panic started seeping into his limbs. Or was it hypothermia? The water was very cold.
His lungs were burning with the lack of air, but he couldn’t breath. His left side kind of stung, too.
The world started to grow fuzzy.
The violent water shoved him around and turned him over as he limply drifted downward. Each blink showed a new scene. Or was he gradually losing consciousness? He wasn’t sure.
His chest felt like fire. Like every inch of his lungs had been shot with blasters and left scarred by plasma burns.
The water around him started to go dark.
Everything was fine now.
He couldn’t stop himself from gasping when a large piece of debris slammed into him from behind.
Water filled his throat and he convulsed as he tried to cough it up. He only ended up breathing in more water.
He thought he felt something warm wrap around his waist and back as his mind slowly faded away from his painfully blocked lungs into the welcoming darkness.