Guarded (#2 Post-Order 66 Series)

Guarded - Part 2

Typho led them down the elaborate hallways, their boot heels clicking on the flawless marble flooring. Stained glass windows tinted the sunlight shining in, casting various shades of reds and purples across the clones as they walked in silence.

Crosshair took in the environment around him quietly. It was breathtaking, particularly after he'd spent most of his life on Kamino, then starship after starship, and then of course the Imperial prison that he'd been placed in after attempting to return to the Empire. He shuddered slightly at the memory of the cool dark cell that he'd been locked in. The single member of his Imperial squad that had escaped from Tipoca City had sealed his fate in the Empire's eyes. Traitor. Rampart's words echoed in his mind. He remembered hanging his head, studying his boots. A traitor, but to who?

He was grateful that his brothers had rescued him from the prison, but he was also angry with them, angry that they didn't come for him sooner, angry that they'd abandoned him in the first place. It seemed like anger was almost all he could feel anymore, but most of it was directed internally.

How much of it was the chip, and how much of it was me?

The Empire had told him his chip was removed from the start, claiming that they'd removed it to test his loyalty as a soldier rather than enhancing it, strengthening it so that he would be helpless to resist it. He'd shot Wrecker and had planned on killing them all, drawing them out one by one. Good soldiers follow orders. Kill the traitors. The enhancements to the chip had been so thorough that nothing in his mind had noted the difference. He'd heard Wrecker talk about trying to fight the chip when his own had activated, but Crosshair hadn't even known to try. He fought back in some ways, but he always thought it was an internal struggle, his "severe and unyielding" nature, as Tech had put it.

He hadn't realized that the chip had been damaged by the Venator's engines, hadn't known that he'd been able to resist it. He just assumed he still had control, unable to differentiate where his own will ended and the chip's programming began. He hadn't even noticed the difference in how he viewed his brothers, how he no longer wanted to just kill them or the remorse he felt for shooting Wrecker. He'd always just assumed it was him being conflicted and changing as the Empire evolved.

The most painful thing for Crosshair was that while he hadn't noticed the abrupt change within himself, neither had his brothers, the ones that knew him best. Of course they'd initially suspected the chip, but when he told them that the chip had been removed, as he believed it had, they didn't question it. They just believed him, believed that he was capable of the things that he'd done, and that was what tortured him at night as his brothers snored around him. They thought I was a monster.

His chip had continued to degrade in the prison, and the headaches became more frequent. By the time Tech and Hunter had burst through his cell door, he'd been curled in a corner, rocking back and forth in agony as his head pounded. Tech had scanned him as soon as they'd gotten back to the Marauder, finding the bright abnormality immediately. The look of guilt that they all shared when they saw it crushed him as he realized what they'd thought of him. His fingers absently drifted to graze the uneven scarring pattern on the right side of his head at the memories.

Of course I was loyal to the Empire. I had nowhere else to go. And then, I had nothing.

Now, it was as if he was a complete stranger to them, no one knowing the way forward. Hunter had tried to fall back into their normal routine, almost as if he refused to acknowledge Crosshair been gone in the first place, but it just made the disconnect even more apparent. Wrecker was borderline clingy, constantly trying to joke him out of his foul moods and playfully shoving him to try and regain some sort of normalcy. Echo had no idea how to be around him, and Tech was, well...Tech, going about his business as normal, but with the occasional guilty look when he thought Crosshair wasn't looking. Crosshair suspected he felt the most remorse for not putting the pieces together sooner.