Star Wars_ Rebel Force 01_ Target - Alex Wheeler [8]
He wants to obey. He wants to blot out his memories, to empty himself of the past. He struggles to erase it all.
He has no name. No history. His life is blank. He remembers nothing but these walls, the light, the Commander's voice. Pain. Almost nothing…but…
There are images. A small girl, blond, with an innocent smile. A grassy hill, and just beyond it, a lake, cool and refreshing. Two suns blazing against a violet sky. A woman's voice. A hand on his forehead, soft and warm.
He wants to forget…but not as much as he wants to remember.
They are only images; they are all he has left.
"Tell me what you remember," the Commander says. His finger twitches over the switch that will bring the pain.
He would rather die than survive another jolt. And they will not let him die.
"I remember…a girl," he says softly. "She is my…" Sister? Friend? Daughter? But the memory will not come. Only her face. Only her smile. "She is mine," he tells the Commander.
The Commander smiles. "Not anymore."
* * *
The hours crept by as X-7 drew closer and closer to Coruscant. X-7 knew, because he had done extensive research on "ordinary" behavior, that most beings would feel the need to fill the time. They would fiddle with a datapad, play a game of dejarik, even gaze out the window at the emptiness of space. And when necessary, X-7 would do the same. On a mission, he was well-equipped to fit in.
But alone, he had no such need. He had stripped the mattress from his bunk. The rigid durasteel against his back felt comfortably familiar. He appreciated these hours, alone in space. So much of his life was a careful act. Isolated moments like this came as a relief. He could drop the mask and exist as he was: empty.
No one in the galaxy had ever seen X-7 like this, his true self exposed. No one but the Commander, of course, who knew him inside and out.
As he should: the Commander had made him.
He faces the Commander as an equal, though they will never be equals. There are no more restraints, no more sensors, no more neuronic binders to inflict punishing pain.
They are well beyond this. He sits on one side of the desk, the Commander on the other.
He waits.
"Congratulations, X-7," the Commander says. He holds out a hand, and X-7 knows to shake it. He has been well-trained. He can act human.
The Commander tells him he is human.
The Commander tells him that the lessons he's learned—how to smile, how to laugh, how to imitate sorrow or fear or joy—are things he used to understand instinctively. That he once was a being like other beings, soft and stupid.
He feels sorry for that other self.
He is grateful to the Commander for eliminating it.
"I have to admit, I always thought X-3 would be the one," the Commander says, shaking his head. "He seemed somehow…impervious."
But he had not been impervious to X-7's vibroblade in their final training bout.
X-1 and X-6 had been easily dispatched. X-2 had malfunctioned, tried to escape. X-5
had malfunctioned as well, begun muttering about alliances, encouraged the others to see the Commander as their enemy. That was before X-7's emotions had died away—he had been able to enjoy the kill. X-4 hung himself with a laser whip.
And then there was one.
"They were your friends, once," the Commander says. "Your partners in our exciting new venture. You feel no sorrow over their deaths?"
He knows the Commander is testing him, but they are beyond tests now. He feels no anxiety—he has nothing to hide.
"I feel nothing," he says honestly, "but the desire to obey."
The Commander nods. "You're ready. There's just one last thing. I want to introduce you to someone." He presses a button on his console, and a screen rises from the desk.
A face appears.
His head is shaved. Young, barely more than a child, but with the eyes of a man, stone gray and cruel. His thin lips are pressed together, a flat line running parallel to the single crease in his forehead. His skin is purpled with fading bruises, and a network of thin scars spiders across his scalp. "Recognize him?" the