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Gar Cyare Chapter Twenty-Six

Ongoing Alpha-17 x fem!reader fic

Word Count: 3700

Warnings: DARK THEMES, claustrophobia, scientific experimentation, themes of dehumanization, heavy themes of grief and survivor's guilt, and references to major character death, angst

Please mind the warnings on this one! Message me if you need a summary instead.

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Agol (Flesh)

It took some effort for you to get a deep breath. You had never considered yourself claustrophobic or afraid of oceans, but there was something discomfiting about knowing that a single weakness in the tube or the vehicle would reduce you and Alpha into a fine mist drifting briefly in the ocean currents.

Fortunately, the vehicle came to a gentle stop before you could think too much about the vast amount of water between you and the surface. The sides of the vehicle fell away and the section of tube in front of you slid open.

You and Alpha exchanged a glance. Wordlessly, you fell back and let him lead the way out of the car itself. He put his helmet on with one hand as he went, and you were willing to bet that he was using the HUD to gather as much information about the area as possible before he moved far enough for you to step out of the car.

At last, he beckoned for you to join him outside of the tube system. You did, peering around curiously. The lab wasn’t lit the way the tube system had been, and the glow of the vehicle’s control panel did little to penetrate through the gloom. You switched on your borrowed headlamp and shone it around the space.

It was an entryway of some kind, looking extremely like a durasteel foyer. There was a single door set in the durasteel wall opposite the tube’s entrance. Beside the door was a small panel, presumably allowing visitors to enter. The muted glow of the panel’s buttons was the only light in the space.

“What was the next clue?”

Alpha’s voice made you jump, but you managed to sound almost collected as you answered, “In the flesh.”

He shook his head slightly, seeming frustrated. “Makes no sense.”

“Well, there were two repetitions of the word ‘down’ before that part,” you reasoned. “One ‘down’ was probably for the elevator. That would mean that the other was talking about the tube system itself. Unless you think there’s another station further down?”

“There is nothing further down,” Alpha answered absently, tapping at the door panel. “This needs a passcode.”

“And you think the passcode has something to do with the ‘flesh’ clue?”

He shrugged. “Not sure. I wonder if Jaing has any ideas about what it could be.”

“Uhh…” You stared down at your comlink, feeling an odd tightness in the pit of your stomach. “We can’t comm him. There’s no connection down here.”

Alpha turned sharply to glance at you, then peered at the comlink mounted in his vambrace. He must have had the same problem, since his initial prodding at it turned to sharp stabs of his fingertip in only moments. He swore vividly, voice crackling with venom even through the small speakers of his helmet.

“What do we do?” you asked when he made no other movements.

“I’ll have to slice the door,” Alpha explained, pulling off the helmet. His brows were drawn into a fearsome frown. “Slicing isn’t my best skill. Do you know how?”

You tilted your head at him. “It’s illegal for non-government citizens to learn how to slice.”

“Learning should never be illegal.”

“Easy to say, but I wasn’t exactly motivated to learn.” You planted your hands on your hips, studying the door panel. “It never seemed like a good way to spend my time.”

Alpha sighed. “Maybe a det of some kind planted on the door could work…”

“Alpha!” you chided. “You can’t seriously be considering planting an explosive on the door. We’re thousands of meters underwater. The risk of collapsing this structure is far greater than the chance that it would open the door.”

“I know, neverd’ika. I was only joking.” He stared at the panel, sighing. “This isn’t gonna be fun.”

Despite Alpha’s dark words, the process of slicing the door wasn’t nearly as painful as he had made it out to be. Of course, you weren’t overly familiar with the process, so maybe it could have taken less time. Either way, in a little under ten minutes, Alpha had managed to slice into the door panel and used it to open the door.

Alpha had you wait in the entryway once more as he put on his helmet and stepped through the doorway to study his surroundings and the information displaying on his HUD. When he was satisfied that it was safe, Alpha had you wait outside as he closed the door and tested his ability to leave again without reslicing the door panel. There were no issues and he let you inside without further complaint.

When he removed his helmet, Alpha’s expression was oddly blank. That should have been your first clue.

The room was as dark as the entryway had been. But where the entryway had only the glowing buttons of the door panel to break up the darkness, this one had a series of lit tubes set against the walls. They ranged in size from the length and thickness of one of your fingers, up to ones large enough to have held a Kaminoan.

Distantly, you registered that there were other things in the room, including shelves of equipment, an expansive desk, and an intricate tapestry of shells knotted into coarsely woven ropes. With the lack of a data terminal in the room, you were certain that there must be at least one datapad tucked away somewhere, but you couldn’t gather the will to search - not yet.

Your attention was held by the tubes and you stepped carefully toward the walls that held them like more wall decorations. All of the tubes glowed a sickly green, though only some of them were occupied.

Perhaps that was the wrong word - occupied - but it seemed the most appropriate to you as you stared disconcertedly at the tubes. The smallest ones held what you could only assume were clumps of cells - grayish-white tissue floating in whatever clear serum Ko Sai had used.

As the tubes grew larger, their contents became more disturbing. The tissue in the tubes became recognizable as human embryos, curled into delicate half-circles. But the tubes didn’t stop at fetuses. The largest among them held full-grown clones floating in the clear serum, looking for all the world like troopers in a bacta tank, save for the lack of breathing apparatus.

Past the most familiar-looking of the clones were men unlike ones you had ever met. They were aged, neat placards at the base of the tubes labeling how old they were. The last tube held a clone who had been 43. The wizened features, framed by wispy white hair, were striking in the familiar face of a trooper.

Something didn’t add up there; the Kaminoans hadn’t been creating clones for 43 years, and even double-aging wouldn’t add up to an elderly clone. It wasn’t impossible that they had created an even faster form of aging before deciding that a half-life was the optimal time for planned obsolescence.

Still, your gaze wandered back over the tubes in their neat line, like troopers standing at attention. With the exception of the older clones, they could have been anyone on Kamino. You had met ARCs and cadets, even visited the laboratories with their centrifuges and growth jars. These could have been any of the troopers you had met and admired.

At least, they almost could. Unlike normal clone troopers, these adults didn’t have the tattoos, unique haircuts, and various scars of life off of Kamino. These troopers had never really lived. And they never would.

Without conscious thought, you reached back and grabbed convulsively for Alpha’s hand. He caught it easily, lacing his fingers through yours and giving your hand a comforting squeeze. You turned to him, eyebrows drawn into a pained furrow.

“Alpha, I’m so sorry.”

Alpha’s gaze held a weight that made your heart pang, but he gave a light shrug. “Don’t be. I didn’t know them.”

You shook your head slowly, holding eye contact all the while. “Don’t, Alpha. Please.”

He looked away, grief crossing his face for a moment as he looked at the fully-grown trooper. “He could have been a good man, a steady vod. But he never got the chance.”

The quiet loss in his voice echoed in your mind. Up until then, the search had seemed like a marvelous adventure. There was a little danger, of course, and your shoulder still gave the occasional throb in the makeshift sling, but it was ultimately more exciting than frightening.

This lab and the occupants were different. The seriousness of the situation hit you in a way it hadn’t before. Any bit of excitement or joy or adventure deflated from you as you stared at the familiar features of the unfamiliar trooper. That could have been Alpha. If Ko Sai had thought she could learn anything new by putting Alpha in a tube and studying his lifeless body, she would have done it without a second thought.

The idea of his scarred features floating in the pale green light made you sick.

With a choked noise, you squeezed Alpha’s hand again. “We need to get out of here.”

Alpha’s jaw firmed. “Not without those notes. We’ve come this far. And if there’s something useful in what she learned from… them, we need to get it. To honor their sacrifice.”

His nod toward the tubes needed no further explanation, and you agreed with him wholeheartedly. “The last clue is ‘On the flesh’. If we can figure that one out, then we can retrace our steps and get back to Tipoca City.”

You stared around the hidden lab, filled with the strange sound of the pressured ebb and flow of the ocean floor outside, and realized that you had already done two visual circuits of the room. All you could think about was how badly you wanted to leave that hellish space and get back to the sterile white halls and bright lights of Tipoca City itself.

“The notes could be stored in the base of one of the tubes,” Alpha suggested, a note of dread filling his voice. “Or there could be another final code, imprinted on the skin of one of the clones.”

“Maybe,” you agreed, trying not to openly gag. The Kaminoans saw clones as less than cognizant beings, but surely even Ko Sai would draw the line at carving or tattooing something on the skin of an experiment. Surely that would disrupt the results of whatever she had been testing down here.

When he had walked away, you dragged your gaze away from the tubes and thought about the final clue. On the flesh was an odd phrase. ‘In the flesh’ was a common saying, not ‘on the flesh’. It seemed like an odd mistake for a Kaminoan to make.

“Nothing,” Alpha reported.

An idea started to form and your frown deepened. “We were thinking about the possibility of a double code in this last clue, right? What if we were right?”

“You think it means something else?”

“What if it’s an anagram?” you asked, eyes traveling toward the shelves. “Flesh has all the same letters as shelf. And ‘on the shelf’ makes more sense as a location than ‘on the flesh’.”

Alpha cast a doubtful eye over the shelves in question. “That’s equipment, neverd’ika, not notes.”

“The notes could be stored in a drive,” you argued. “They don’t necessarily need to be written on flimsi or a book. It’s worth checking out.”

With a sigh, Alpha agreed and led the way over the shelves. He searched each with ruthless efficiency before turning back to you, already shaking his head. “Not there.”

You pursed your lips, glancing up at the top of the shelving unit. It was tall, as you would expect for something that had been used by a Kaminoan. Alpha had been able to reach the top shelf, but he couldn’t see on top of the unit itself.

“What about up there?” you asked, pointing.

“I doubt it’s up there.” Alpha crossed his arms, refusing to even look where you were pointing. “Besides, how are you sure the code would work the same written in Kaminoan?”

“It wasn’t written in Kaminoan,” you answered instantly. “All of the clues have been a one-to-one match for the letters between the original cipher and the translations. I remember that much from what I had already figured out before the Nulls left. The Kaminoan alphabet has different combinations of sounds. I don’t know why Ko Sai wrote her clues in Basic, but she did. I still think it’s an anagram.”

“I know better than to argue with you,” Alpha said, though he had done little else for the past few minutes. “How do you expect me to check? I can’t reach it, and I don’t have a jetpack. Maybe I could drag the desk over, but it’s on the other side of the room. It won’t move easily…”

“Can you pick me up?”

Alpha stared at you. “You have an injured arm.”

“Yes, an arm,” you agreed. “Not my legs. If you can lift me, I can look at the top of the shelf. As long as I’m not too heavy.”

He snorted just as you had expected he would, barely stopping short of rolling his eyes. “You’re not as clever as you think you are, little one.”

You beamed at him. “I think I’m very clever, actually. Now how do you want to do this-?”

Before you could fully finish the sentence, Alpha had grabbed your hips and hoisted you into the air. When he paused, your butt was half-resting on his pauldron. Your head was only just too low to see over the edge of the bookshelf, but you could reach over the top with your good arm.

Your fingers encountered nothing but smooth metallic shelving for a long moment. There was no dust down here, just as there had been none in the tunnel back on the stilt, but your fingertips tingled with the prospect of encountering dirt, dead bugs, or spiderwebs.

Instead, your knuckles brushed against something small and firm. It clattered out of reach when you touched it and you made a little noise of dissatisfaction.

“There’s something up there,” you explained, straining to reach a little further. “I can’t reach it…”

“Brace yourself,” Alpha warned. “Hold the edge of the top shelf. I’m going to lift you up and keep you steady. You’re going to stand on my shoulder.”

You were already latching onto the top edge of the shelf even as you said, “I’m not sure that’s the best-”

The rest of your refusal was lost to a shriek as one of his hands gripped around the back of your knee just above the swell of your calf. His other hand palmed your butt, lifting you into a standing position. Your feet had a surprisingly solid purchase on the curved plastoid of his pauldron, but you kept your balance mostly because Alpha kept both hands firmly around your hip and your leg, respectively.

When you stopped panicking long enough to pay attention, you found yourself with a new vantage point. Your head was well over the edge of the top shelf and you could see the entire surface clearly.

There, just beyond where your fingers had swept before, was a small data drive.

You grabbed it with the fervor of someone attempting to capture a stubborn womp-rat, showing it victoriously to Alpha. “I got it!”

“Good work, neverd’ika,” he congratulated. “Let’s get you down from there now.”

Luckily, he didn’t leave you enough time to worry about that process before he lifted you by your hips and lowered you down to the floor.

Relieved as you were to be standing on solid ground once more, your attention was focused on the data drive. If you were correct, it would be your key to getting out of that horrible place and back to the relative safety of Tipoca City. “I think this is it, Alpha, but I want to check before we leave with it. Did you see a datapad that we can use to look at the data?”

“No need.” Alpha gingerly took the data drive from you, holding it up to his vambrace. You were opening your mouth, ready to warn him that it needed to be inserted into a port, but a hologram flickered to life.

You closed your mouth, cocking a brow. Alpha took pity on you and explained, “I have a program built into my vambrace. It’ll read a data drive with contact. I can’t do much more than get a general idea of what’s on it, but it should be enough here.”

Sure enough, as the hologram image finished loading and displayed with readable file names. Your breath caught in your throat at the validation of your suspicions - the data drive contained a full copy of all of Ko Sai’s files.

She hadn’t bothered to use her cipher on these notes, but that wasn’t entirely a shock. She had done the same with the original files. You had gotten the distinct impression that she thought her notes were important to the future of the galaxy and had written them in Basic so they could be read and appreciated by as many people as possible. And with how few cloning specialists there were in the galaxy as a whole, Basic was likely the most accessible option for everyone.

“That’s it,” you breathed. “We did it! We can leave now. But… can it really be this easy?”

Alpha made a concerning noise, one that sounded suspiciously like he had started to laugh and thought better of it. “Easy? What part of this has been easy, little one? We’ve been at this all day.”

As if startled by the reminder, your stomach gave an unhappy grumble.

Alpha actually did laugh at that, resting a hand on your good shoulder. “C’mon. Let’s retrace our steps. We should be able to get back to the mess early enough to grab some dinner before we get you to the medbay.”

The trip back was long and uneventful, if slightly embarrassing at several key moments. The effort of climbing back up the Kaminoan-sized rungs of the ladder was too much for your injured shoulder, and Alpha slung you over his shoulder again as he climbed one-handed.

After a hasty stop at Alpha’s quarters for a new body glove, you had dinner in the mess hall - young cadets staring at your makeshift sling as you ate with a new and unlikely-to-be-repeated appreciation for the Tipoca City food. To be fair, that was what came of having only caf all day.

The trooper medic who had replaced Limit was able to diagnose you without a med scanner, though he used one to check his work when Alpha was skeptical.

Your shoulder was sprained, and only lightly so. The medic gave you some mild pain meds and a real sling with instructions to take the meds when needed and use the sling whenever you were upright for the next two days. If the pain continued, you should come back to see him again.

When you finally got back to your quarters, Alpha insisted that you shower first. “I want to make sure I’m ready to take you back to the medbay if something happens.”

“So you’re going to sit around in your armor while you wait?” you teased.

“Yes,” Alpha agreed, and you shook your head despairingly as you went to the refresher.

When you were finished and came back into the room, Alpha was setting aside his comlink. “Everything good?”

“Fine, even if washing my face was a little awkward,” you admitted, then jerked your chin at the comlink. “Everything good with you?”

“Just messaged the Nulls,” he explained, starting to remove the rest of his armor. “I told them that we have the files and we’ll figure out how to transmit them tomorrow morning.”

“That’s-”

You were interrupted by the chiming of a comlink. Both of you turned to stare at the discarded comlink on your desk. Alpha heaved a sigh. “I can’t deal with more Nulls today.”

Before he made it into the ‘fresher, the comlink rang again. Alpha glanced back at you over his shoulder, “You can answer it if you like. If they give you any trouble, hang up and let me know. I’ll put ‘em in their place after I’m done.”

Excited as you were about finding the files, you couldn’t stand the idea of another conversation with the Nulls that day, either. You let Alpha’s comlink fall quiet, then ring unanswered one more time before the only sound in the room was the distant water of Alpha’s shower.

It was quiet long enough that you started to doze sitting up on the bed. You were half-contemplating settling in for the night when your own comlink rang, making you jump.

When you retrieved it and checked, you didn’t recognize the frequency. After precious seconds of deliberation, you decided to answer it. Who knew how long the Nulls would keep trying if you ignored them? You wanted to get some good sleep that night.

“Hello?”

“Hello, ma’am. This is Captain Rex of the 501st legion.”

When Alpha came out of the refresher, confusion crossed his face, followed closely by worry. “Neverd’ika? What’s wrong? Don’t cry, ner karta, please.”

“Captain Rex commed,” you explained haltingly, trying to stifle the tears that had started anew. “I- I’m so sorry, Alpha. It’s Echo. He’s… He was on a mission. He was too close to a ship that exploded and- and he didn't make it.”

Alpha sat heavily on the bed, as if his legs wouldn’t support him anymore. When the tears started to roll down his face, you started crying again, too. All you could do was hold him, squeezing as tightly as you could manage and gently wiping the wetness from his cheeks.

It was all you could do, but it wasn’t enough. One of Alpha’s ARCs was gone, and nothing could take away Alpha’s grief.

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Author's Note - Sorry, sorry, sorry! I consulted my best friend irl about this chapter, actually. We both decided that it would be better to stick with my original vision and show the dark, horrific side of Ko Sai's laboratory instead of making it lighter-hearted. And then to sneak in that ending... Sorry for the angst!

If you skipped to the end of the chapter and need a recap of this one, feel free to let me know in a comment or a message! I'll make it happen.

Thank you for reading in any case! I would love to hear what you thought about this arc. I'll see you soon!

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