The silence after the voices was worse than the storm.
The Wolfpack sat scattered through the command center, weapons close at hand, armor gleaming faintly in the flickering lights. None of them spoke. The sound of their own breathing was too loud, too irregular, a reminder that something else had been breathing with them only moments before.
Husk ran a cloth over the damp plates of his chest armor, though the water never seemed to dry. Every pass left a sheen, like the surface of Kamino's oceans pressed against his skin. He stopped, staring at the reflection in the plastoid. The face looking back at him wore his scars, his eyes—but the mouth twitched in a smile he had not made.
He blinked. The smile was gone.
Across the room, CT-4427 traced the ridges on his neck. They were shallower now, faded, but the skin tingled beneath his fingers as if remembering a sensation he could not forget. He muttered quietly under his breath, counting. At first Husk thought it was just nerves—every clone had habits for calming themselves. But then he realized the numbers were wrong. Out of order. Repeated. Backward.
"Muzzle," Husk said suddenly, voice sharper than intended. "What's the tally on our supplies?"
CT-4115 looked up from where he crouched by the rations, eyes distant, unfocused. "Enough," he said. His voice was flat, as though the word had no weight. He glanced at the others. "Not enough to matter."
Before Husk could respond, the lights overhead flickered. Not the irregular sputter of failing power, but a rhythm—two short bursts, a pause, three long. Again. Again. A code, deliberate and inhuman.
The Wolfpack froze, eyes darting toward Plo Koon.
The Jedi Master sat cross-legged in the center of the room, motionless, his senses cast into the storm beyond. His respirator hissed with each measured breath. When the lights steadied, he opened his eyes.
"They are testing us," he said softly.
No one asked who they were.
The Night Watch
Later, Husk volunteered for first watch. The storm outside had worsened, waves crashing so violently against the pylons that the entire structure shuddered with each impact. Yet inside, the greater pressure came from the quiet.
The command center's corridors stretched too long when he patrolled them. Corners bent subtly where they shouldn't, doors opened into rooms that felt different each time. He passed the same supply closet twice, though he swore he had only turned one corner.
At one junction, he stopped. Water pooled across the floor, rippling with unseen motion. A reflection stared up at him—not his own, not exactly. Its helmet bore the Wolfpack insignia, but the wolf-jaws were inverted, the teeth pointing inward. The reflection lifted its blaster. Husk gripped his own, breath catching.
The puddle stilled. The reflection was gone.
He didn't tell the others.
Whispers in the Bunks
When second watch came, Muzzle took over. He sat near the bunks, rifle across his lap, listening to the storm hammering the walls. The others slept uneasily, twitching, muttering in half-formed dreams.
Then came the whispers.
At first they rode the storm, hidden in the thunder and the hiss of rain. But gradually, they pulled free, voices layered one atop the other, echoing through the vents.
"…CT-4115…"
"…Muzzle…"
"…come below…"
He stood abruptly, rifle snapping to his shoulder. "Who's there?"
Silence. Only the storm.
Then a new voice, quiet, calm, unmistakable.
"It's me."
He turned toward Husk's bunk. The clone lay asleep, chest rising and falling evenly. Yet the voice had come from his direction.
Muzzle stepped closer, hesitating, finger brushing the trigger. Husk's lips moved faintly, breath catching on syllables that didn't belong to him.
Numbers. Out of order.
Muzzle backed away slowly, eyes darting toward Plo Koon. The Jedi still sat in meditation, but Muzzle couldn't shake the thought that Plo had heard it too—and had chosen not to intervene.
The Jedi's Vigil
Plo Koon did not sleep. Sleep was no refuge here.
The Force pressed around him like water, currents shifting, tugging. Each clone's dream bled into the others, and into him. He felt the pull of the tide, vast and infinite, an ocean of thought and hunger. It was not darkness in the way of the Sith, not a wound in the Force—it was older. Patient. Curious.
He saw flashes in the current: Kamino's endless storms. The halls of Tipoca City. Rows upon rows of sleeping brothers, their breath synced, their dreams shared. The tide had been watching them even then, brushing against their forming minds, whispering numbers into the liquid wombs of their creation.
The clones were not its prey. They were its inheritance.
And now, the tide was calling them home.
Plo's chest tightened. His people, his Wolfpack, sat balanced on the edge of something vast. To resist meant agony. To surrender meant transformation. And somewhere, beneath the waves and the storm, the tide waited. Counting.
By morning, the Wolfpack gathered in silence. Their faces were drawn, pale, their eyes ringed with shadows. No one mentioned the whispers. No one spoke of the ridges along their necks, though every hand lingered near them as if to confirm they still remained.
The storm had shifted. It no longer sounded like wind or rain. It sounded like a breath, vast and deep, inhaling… exhaling… waiting.
Plo Koon rose, his silhouette framed against the gray horizon. "We are not alone here," he said at last, voice firm but quiet. "And the longer we remain, the thinner the walls will become. This outpost is not safe."
He turned toward the ocean, waves churning black below the platform.
"They want you to descend," he said softly, almost to himself. "And they will not stop calling until you do."
The Wolfpack exchanged uneasy glances, each one silently acknowledging what none dared to say aloud.
Because in their dreams, in the reflections, in the ridges that now pulsed faintly beneath their skin—each of them already knew it was true.
The tide was rising.
And it was only a matter of time.