Rain drummed against the durasteel like a thousand tiny hammers, relentless and unyielding. The storm had not relented, yet within the Wolfpack's command center, the air was unnaturally still, almost thick, as if the humidity itself weighed down every motion. CT-2391—Husk—shifted on his bunk, chest still heaving from the memory of the dream, and glanced at the others. They, too, sat frozen, hands tracing the ridges on their necks, eyes wide, pupils dilated in unspoken recognition.
Plo Koon moved to the center of the room, robes clinging wetly to his frame. His respirator hissed faintly, though it was impossible to tell if it was the mask or the air itself. He raised a hand, motioning the Wolfpack to follow. They rose as one, an unspoken bond drawing them toward the center of the chamber where the shadows pooled darkest.
The Force whispered through him, subtle and sharp. It was not fear, not exactly—something else. Expectation. A tug from beneath the durasteel and the black waters beyond the platform, ancient and patient. The waves outside pounded like war drums, yet the sound seemed distant, muted, as if something under the water absorbed it.
Plo's gaze drifted toward the observation window. Rain blurred the horizon, but through the curtain of silver drops, dark shapes moved below the waves. Large, coiled, and impossible to measure, they shifted in patterns that suggested purpose, intelligence, and a patience older than the Republic itself.
Husk noticed Plo staring, and his hand twitched near his blaster. "Master… what are they?" he asked, though his voice sounded strange in the enclosed space. Almost swallowed by the storm's muted roar.
"They are waiting," Plo said finally, voice low, measured, though a tremor lingered beneath the calm. "And they know we are here."
CT-4115—Muzzle—shivered, hands brushing along the bulkhead as if the metal itself might speak. "Feels… like Kamino," he whispered, not meeting anyone's eyes. "The water, the air… the smell. It's all wrong."
Husk shook his head. "Kamino isn't here. It's—" He stopped, unable to find a word for the shifting, oppressive weight that pressed against the edges of thought.
"No," Muzzle muttered again, more insistently. "Not like this."
The ridges on their necks throbbed faintly, subtle pulses that seemed to sync with the low hum vibrating through the walls. Each clone touched them almost instinctively, tracing lines that were not scars, not yet, but something growing. Something waking.
Hours passed in silence. The Wolfpack maintained a perimeter inside the command center, rifles resting at their sides, helmets removed to reveal faces pale under the flickering lights. Plo Koon sat in meditation at the center, reaching through the Force, sensing—but not touching—the strange current that pressed from below the platform into the very bones of the living.
By nightfall, fatigue draped over them like a second skin. Yet sleep did not offer solace. One by one, their eyes closed, and the dream began—shared, inescapable, and suffocating.
The Dream Sequence Begins:
Black water. Endless, swallowing, oppressive. Kamino's oceans stretched far beyond memory, but the sky above was void, as if light itself had been drained. Waves rose without sound, black and viscous, reflecting not the stars but faint, impossible glimpses of figures moving beneath the surface.
Voices murmured, soft at first, curling around each clone's consciousness, layering over one another like a choir of distorted echoes. Numbers—random yet intimately familiar—drifted through the dream, lodging in the back of minds that did not yet know how to resist. CT-4427 felt them, each numeral striking a different nerve, as though the water itself counted his worth.
The clones struggled to move, hands clawing at currents that were not water, but something denser, alive. Every time they surfaced, it was only to find themselves back beneath the waves. The pressure of the water pressed inward, then outward, as though the ocean itself were alive, breathing, observing, feeding.
Shapes appeared in the black depths. Faces of brothers, twisted, features elongated, gills flaring subtly along their necks. Then shapes of creatures impossible to name—half-formed, coiled, watching. Sometimes the shapes mirrored the clones themselves, only subtly wrong, until the eye could not trust its perception.
Muzzle reached upward in the dream and felt a slickness along his palms, as if the water were something other than liquid—something alive, moving in response to his fear. His throat throbbed in rhythm with the ridges forming along his own skin, and he felt them flex, pulse, almost as if calling to the dark shapes beneath.
Husk heard a voice calling his designation, a whisper that rippled across the black waves:
"CT-2391… you belong below."
The clones tried to respond, tried to call out to one another, but the water swallowed sound. And then, slowly, the numbers began repeating—first softly, then louder, counting up, counting down, always wrong, always right. They were the tide, the rhythm, the language of something patient and ancient.
CT-4427 opened his eyes in the dream, realizing the water's surface reflected nothing but his own face, and yet his eyes were not his own. In the reflection, the ridges along his neck spread wider, wet and iridescent, breathing. The water beckoned, silent but impossible to ignore.
Somewhere, in the depth, the voice laughed. Not a laugh of joy or malice, but of certainty. It knew them. It had always known them.
And the dream did not end.