The medical wing aboard the Resolute Dawn smelled like antiseptic, ozone, overheated circuitry, and exhaustion.
It always did after combat operations.
The medical droids and medics moved through the compartment with the quiet efficiency of men who had learned to work around screaming, blood loss, missing limbs, and the terrible Republic habit of calling catastrophic survival "acceptable casualty rates." Ceiling lights reflected off polished durasteel and white med-panels, casting pale illumination over bacta tanks, operating stations, diagnostic tables, and rows of occupied recovery cots.
Outside the reinforced transparisteel viewports, hyperspace stretched into endless blue-white distortion.
Inside, the war continued in softer tones.
Doc stood at the central neurodiagnostic console with both forearms resting against the edge of the display table, brows furrowed hard enough to carve lines into his face. Rift stood beside him in partial armor, helmet tucked under one arm, silent in the way clones got when something truly bothered them. Neither man noticed Will enter at first.
Their attention was locked on Jackal.
The trooper lay shirtless on the med-table beneath suspended scanner arms, bruising dark across his ribs and shoulder from Dooku's Force Push and his own Force Push. Thin sensor wires ran from his temples and spine into the diagnostic array above him. The monitors beside the table painted pale blue light across his scarred skin.
Jackal looked asleep.
The readings beside him did not.
Will slowed as he approached.
"What's wrong?"
Doc didn't answer immediately.
That alone made Will's stomach tighten.
Finally the medic exhaled slowly through his nose and stepped aside from the console.
"His brain activity spikes every forty-three seconds."
Will frowned. "From the concussion?"
"That's what I thought at first." Doc tapped the display. "But it's too regular. Too clean."
Rift folded his arms tighter. "Looks programmed."
The word hung ugly in the air.
Will moved closer to the monitors.
The neural scans rotated in layered holographic slices over Jackal's skull, mapping tissue, electrical activity, healing trauma, and—there.
A shape.
Tiny.
A little metallic.
Embedded near the rear upper cranial structure.
Will's eyes narrowed.
"…What the Force is that?"
Doc zoomed the scan.
The object became clearer: a smooth bio-mechanical implant buried deep in the cranial cavity, threaded with microscopic conductive filaments that extended into neural pathways like roots.
Will stared at it for several long seconds.
Then another thought hit him.
Hard.
He looked at Doc.
"Do all clones have these?"
Doc's expression darkened.
"…Yes."
Rift turned sharply toward him.
"What?"
Doc rubbed a hand over his jaw.
"Kaminoan inhibitor chips," he said quietly. "Behavioral modification implants. Medical-grade neural regulators."
Rift blinked once.
Then again.
"You're telling me there's shit inside our heads?"
Doc looked genuinely uncomfortable now.
"Only clone medics and some high-command personnel were informed, like the Jedi High Council and the Chanceller."
Rift stared at him.
"You knew?"
"Not everything," Doc answered immediately. "Just the official explanation. Aggression regulation. Loyalty stabilization. Suppression of undesirable independent behavior patterns." His mouth twisted. "Kaminoan bullshit phrasing."
Will felt anger rising cold and fast beneath his ribs.
Not hot anger.
The dangerous kind.
Controlled.
Focused.
He looked back at the scan.
The chip pulsed again on the display.
Forty-three seconds.
Exactly.
"Why," Will asked quietly, "did nobody investigate these further?"
Neither clone answered.
Will laughed once.
Not because anything was funny.
Because suddenly the Republic looked even more insane than usual.
"The Kaminoans," he said slowly, "are secretive gene-engineering psychopaths who sold an army to a dying Republic under mysterious circumstances connected to a dead Jedi Master and a bounty hunter working for the Separatists…" He looked at the scan again. "And the Council just accepted 'there are control chips inside every clone soldier's brain' without tearing the whole fucking thing apart? Even if for the sake of a humanitarian act?"
Rift looked between them.
"This is real?"
Doc nodded once.
The captain's expression changed slowly.
Shock first.
Then offense.
Then something darker.
"We're carrying unknown implants," Rift said quietly. "And nobody thought maybe we should know that?"
Doc looked exhausted.
"You think I'm happy about it?"
"No," Rift replied. "I think you're scared too."
That hit home harder than yelling would have.
Doc looked away.
Will stepped closer to the display again.
The chip pulsed.
Forty-three seconds.
Again.
And again.
Like it was waiting for something.
His jaw tightened.
"What's it capable of?"
Doc shook his head. "No idea."
"That's unacceptable."
"I know."
Will looked between both men.
"The Kaminoans built these things into every clone in the GAR," he said. "They had behavioral authority over millions of soldiers, and the Jedi Council never fully audited the system?"
Rift muttered quietly, "That's insane."
"Yes," Will said flatly. "It kriffing is."
The room fell silent except for the soft rhythm of the monitors.
Jackal breathed steadily beneath the scanner lights, unaware that his skull currently represented one of the worst decisions in Republic military history.
Will finally asked the question already forming in his head.
"You trust me?"
Rift answered instantly.
"Yes."
Doc followed half a second later.
"Absolutely."
Will nodded once.
"Good." His voice hardened. "Because we're about to do something incredibly unauthorized."
That got their attention.
Will pointed at the scan.
"You're removing Jackal's chip."
Rift blinked.
Doc straightened immediately. "That's not a simple procedure."
"I know."
"There's risk of neural trauma."
"I know."
"We don't know what failsafes are attached to the implant."
"I know."
Doc stared at him.
"You already decided."
"Yes."
Will folded his arms across the plastoid chest beneath his tunic.
"We don't know what those things are actually programmed to do. We don't know activation parameters. We don't know whether they can alter behavior, induce compliance, or remotely trigger conditioned responses." His eyes hardened. "And I'm done trusting the Kaminoans."
Rift looked at Jackal.
Then at the scan.
Then slowly nodded.
"If one of us has a problem," he said quietly, "all of us do."
"Exactly."
Doc rubbed both hands over his face.
"This is treasonous levels of medical misconduct."
Will shrugged slightly.
"Then be treasonous carefully."
That finally got the smallest laugh out of Rift.
Will tapped the console.
"I want full analysis. I want to know what signals affect it, what programming pathways exist, whether there are verbal triggers, encrypted commands, bio-feedback conditions, everything." He looked directly at Doc. "And if removing it kills him..."
Doc's jaw tightened.
"Then I'll carry that."
Will nodded once.
"Call Spark."
Spark arrived seven minutes later carrying three datapads, a hydrospanner, and the expression of a man who had been told there was classified insanity available for inspection.
"What's the emergency?" he asked while entering the medbay. "Because Rift sounded like he was trying not to scream."
Then he saw the scan.
"…Oh."
Doc pointed at the chip.
Spark stepped closer slowly, like approaching a thermal detonator someone had labeled probably safe.
"What the haran is that?"
"Inhibitor chip," Rift said flatly.
Spark looked at him.
"What the haran is an inhibitor chip?"
Will answered.
And as he explained, Spark's face progressively transformed through the stages of disbelief unique to intelligent men discovering institutional stupidity on a galactic scale.
By the end of it he just stood there blinking.
"There are mind-control mystery implants," he said slowly, "inside every clone in the Republic Army…"
"Yes."
"…and nobody thought maybe that deserved follow-up?"
"Yes."
Spark looked genuinely offended.
"That is catastrophically dumb."
"Also yes."
Spark immediately moved toward the console.
"I'm in."
Doc pointed at him. "This is delicate."
"I know. That's why you called the handsome one."
"No one called the handsome one, we called someone useful, at most."
"That hurts, Doc."
Will leaned against the medbay wall, arms folded, watching the three clones gather around Jackal's scan like investigators around a bomb.
In many ways, that was exactly what this was.
A bomb inside the GAR.
Maybe inside the Republic itself.
And the more Will thought about it, the worse the implications became.
A hidden control system inside millions of soldiers.
Installed by Kaminoans.
Approved by bureaucrats.
Barely investigated by the Jedi.
If someone had designed the Clone Army with deeper contingencies…
The thought made his skin crawl.
Spark enlarged the implant image.
"Okay," he muttered, "this thing is deeply weird. It's partially organic. Self-adjusting neural lattice. There are encrypted pathways inside the chip architecture itself."
Doc frowned. "Encrypted?"
"Yeah, and not medical encryption either. Operational."
Rift's eyes narrowed.
"Operational how?"
Spark highlighted several microscopic structures.
"Signal-response layering. Looks dormant, but not inactive." He paused. "This thing's waiting for commands."
The room went colder.
Will's voice lowered.
"What kind of commands?"
Spark grimaced.
"That," he said, "is what we're about to find out."
Hours passed.
The medbay lights dimmed into night-cycle mode while hyperspace continued roaring silently outside the ship.
Jackal remained sedated during the initial prep.
Doc shaved a narrow section near the rear cranial access point while Spark mapped neural pathways and Rift stood nearby looking increasingly disturbed every time new information appeared.
Will stayed.
Not because he could help medically.
Because leadership meant witnessing things personally.
Doc finally straightened from the scanner.
"We can remove it."
"How risky?"
"Moderate," Doc admitted. "But leaving it there feels worse."
Spark nodded immediately.
"Oh yeah. Much worse."
Will looked down at Jackal.
The ARC trooper had trusted him with his life repeatedly.
Every clone aboard had.
And suddenly Will wondered how much of the GAR's loyalty had always been manipulated by systems no one fully understood.
The anger came back.
Not at the clones.
Never at them.
At the Republic.
At the Jedi Council.
At the fact that millions of living men had been engineered as weapons first and people second.
Will exhaled slowly.
"Do it."
Doc nodded once.
The procedure began.
The surgery was ugly in the precise way real medical work often was.
No dramatic music.
No elegant miracle.
Just concentration, sweat, quiet commands, surgical lights, and the terrifying intimacy of opening a man's skull while hoping you understood what had been hidden there.
Spark handled the technical interface.
Doc handled extraction.
Rift stood watch over both like a man guarding family.
Will remained near the rear bulkhead, silent, arms folded tightly.
Every now and then he caught himself touching the hilt of his saber unconsciously.
Not because violence would help.
Because instinct wanted a weapon anyway.
Doc finally cursed softly.
"Found it."
The chip appeared magnified above the operating field.
Smaller in reality than it looked on scans.
Tiny.
Horrifyingly tiny.
Spark whistled under his breath.
"That little bastard's causing all this?"
Doc carefully disconnected the filament roots.
"Not yet," he said quietly. "But it could."
Rift looked pale beneath the scars and fatigue.
"How many of us have these, again?"
Doc answered without looking up.
"All of us."
That landed hard.
The extraction took another twenty-two minutes.
Then finally—
Doc lifted the chip free.
The medbay became silent.
The tiny implant rested in a containment field above the tray, faintly pulsing blue.
Spark stared at it like he wanted to punch a scientist.
"Well," he said softly. "That's kriffing cursed."
Will stepped closer.
The chip looked harmless.
Which somehow made it worse.
"Can you access it?" he asked.
Spark smiled without humor.
"Oh, General." He picked up his slicer tools. "I'm gonna violate this thing academically."
While Bad Company began dissecting the chip's systems layer by layer, Will left the medbay quietly.
The cruiser corridors were dim during night-cycle.
Most of the crew slept.
Others worked silent shifts beneath low blue lighting.
The war never stopped enough for true rest.
Anakin Skywalker's recovery quarters sat near the officer medical wing, guarded lightly more for privacy than security. Officially he was still recovering from torture and interrogation trauma.
Unofficially he was probably already trying to ignore half the medical restrictions Doc had transmitted over.
Will entered without ceremony.
Anakin sat upright on the bunk wearing a loose black undershirt, one arm wrapped in fresh synth-bandages. Bruises still marked his jaw and throat, but the fury had returned to his eyes fully.
Good.
Dead men didn't look angry.
"You look better," Will said.
Anakin snorted.
"That's because your medic drugged me."
"He drugged you because you're annoying."
"Fair."
Will closed the door behind him.
Anakin noticed the shift immediately.
That wasn't casual posture anymore.
That was mission posture.
"What happened?" Anakin asked.
Will stepped closer and lowered his voice.
"We found something."
Anakin's expression sharpened.
"What kind of something?"
"Clone inhibitor chips."
That got his full attention instantly.
Will explained quickly but thoroughly: the implants, the hidden programming, Jackal's abnormal readings, the extraction, Spark's investigation.
By the end, Anakin looked furious enough to punch through a bulkhead.
"They put unknown devices inside every clone trooper?"
"Yes."
"And the Council knew?"
"Parts of it."
Anakin stood too fast and immediately regretted it when his ribs protested.
"Kriff."
"Sit down before Doc senses weakness in the Force and teleports here like a night-sister from Dathomir."
Anakin ignored that.
"What are you going to do?"
Will hesitated only briefly.
Then:
"I'm going back to Coruscant."
Anakin blinked.
"…What?"
Will leaned closer.
"Unofficially."
Now Anakin looked interested.
That was usually dangerous.
"I'm going to interrogate Grievous."
Anakin stared.
Will continued before he could interrupt.
"And if interrogation fails…"
He let the implication finish itself.
Anakin's eyes narrowed slowly.
"You're talking about executing a prisoner."
"I'm talking about preventing future clone casualties and Separatist offensives if Grievous knows something relevant to these chips, Kamino, or Dooku's contingency planning."
"That's still execution."
Will met his gaze evenly.
"If necessary."
The silence stretched.
Then Anakin surprised him.
"…You know what the fucked-up part is?"
"What?"
"I don't disagree."
There it was.
The dangerous overlap between pragmatism and war fatigue.
Will hated how understandable it felt.
"I need cover," he said quietly.
Anakin folded his arms carefully.
"You want me to lie to the Council."
"I want you to help me buy time..."
"And lie to the Council."
Anakin's mouth twitched faintly.
"You really are getting more like me."
"That is not a compliment."
"No, it definitely isn't."
Will glanced toward the door.
"I need Ahsoka here. Quietly. She's good with people, and she'll make the Council not suspect. She can continue her training here while I'm gone and you look over the researching."
Anakin studied him for several seconds.
Then:
"You're asking for a pretty massive favor."
"I know."
"And if this goes wrong?"
"We'll both get buried under Jedi disciplinary reports."
That finally got a laugh out of him.
Anakin rubbed his jaw thoughtfully.
Then he nodded.
"…All right."
Will blinked once.
"That easy?"
"Don't sound disappointed." Anakin smirked slightly. "Besides, if the Council thinks I'm still too injured to move properly, they won't question why I'm staying aboard instead of rejoining the 501st immediately."
Will tilted his head.
"You're going to fake being more injured?"
Anakin grinned.
"Oh, I'm going to sell the Outer Ring out of it."
"That's deeply manipulative."
"I learned from Obi-Wan."
Will barked a laugh before he could stop himself.
Then the seriousness returned.
Anakin's expression hardened.
"Be careful on Coruscant."
Will nodded once.
"You too."
"And Will?"
"Yeah?"
"If Grievous knows something…" Anakin's eyes darkened with a shade of yellow very briefly. "Get it out of him."
No Jedi phrasing.
No softening.
Just truth.
Will understood.
"May the Force be with you Will."
"You too, Anakin."
Three hours later.
A hidden maintenance hangar aboard the Resolute Dawn sat in near-total darkness except for scattered amber deck lights and the faint glow of idle engine systems.
The starfighter resting there was old.
Older than the war.
A heavily modified Z-95 Headhunter, stripped of official GAR markings, equipped with illegal hyperspace-capable engine upgrades and sensor bafflers that Spark had once described as "morally questionable engineering."
Meaning excellent engineering.
The hull carried no Republic registry.
No transponder identity.
Nothing traceable.
Perfect.
Will climbed into the cockpit wearing a stripped-down field loadout: dark cloak, compact armor plates, green saber at the hip, blue shoto-pike mounted behind the seat beside a blaster. No Jedi insignia visible.
No rank.
Just a man going somewhere he absolutely was not authorized to go.
The cockpit sealed with a hydraulic hiss.
Outside, the hangar crew—carefully selected by Rift for loyalty and discretion—pretended not to know anything.
Inside the cockpit, the systems awakened one by one.
Power grid.
Navigation.
Weapons.
Shielding.
Hyperspace calibration.
Will rested both hands on the controls for a moment and stared through the canopy at the darkness beyond the hangar shields.
Coruscant waited out there.
The Temple.
Grievous.
The Council.
The chips.
The hidden rot beneath everything.
And somewhere inside it all, answers no one else seemed willing to chase hard enough.
The comm crackled softly.
Rift's voice.
"You sure about this, General?"
Will smirked faintly.
"No."
A pause.
Then Rift answered quietly:
"Good. Means you're still sane."
The hangar shields began to open.
Stars appeared beyond them.
Will pushed the throttle forward.
The Z-95 roared into the void.