Dominoes

Alive

Echo wakes up screaming, and he can't stop.

Dimly, through the haze of red that's descended over his vision and the white noise shrieking in his ears, he's aware of more voices, panicked and worried, barely audible through his own screams. He thrashes wildly, uncertain of where he is and who's around him, and then his terror only grows, because he can't move. He's in some sort of tiny box—a coffin. It feels like a kriffing coffin.

He cries out again. Is Tambor finished with him? He welcomes death, but not—not like this. Not buried alive, starving, suffocating. He claws fiercely at the walls around him, but his fingernails slide across smooth, flawless metal.

He can't escape.

Suddenly, he's moving, and he's blinded by a harsh, artificial light. A figure looms over him. Echo shouts and leaps for the figure's throat. They've made a terrible mistake by releasing him. His hands wrap around the figure's trachea—his eyes are blurry, he can't see, but he hopes—oh, he hopes it's Tambor himself.

A second figure slams on top of him. Echo snarls, baring his teeth as the first figure escapes from his grasp—and then he's being pinned down, held against his will. Now Echo is thrashing, frantically trying to dislodge his captors because he can almost feel the prick of Wat Tambor's needles, feel the machine they used to cut open his mind and expose the secrets he carried—

"Echo!" It comes from very, very far away. Echo ignores it. He doesn't have time to listen to the cries of the dead, he has to fight. He has to escape.

"Echo!" There it is again. He gasps for air when the new figure slams a fist into his solar plexus, and the world shifts, tilts.

"No," he gasps out. "No, no more, please—!"

He can't help but beg. They'll break him even harder for it, but he can't help it, he can't do anything else but beg. They already know his secrets, but the torture doesn't stop. It never stops, he can't take it anymore—

"Please..."

"Echo, stop!"

"Echo, it's us, it's us!"

Someone grabs his wrist. Echo flails for a moment, but then he realizes that he can feel it. He hasn't been able to feel in that arm for months, not since Tambor replaced it with the cybernetic but didn't bother reconnecting it with his nerves. That, out of all things, makes him pause, and though his vision is still murky he forces himself to stare up at the figure holding him down.

The very last thing he's expecting is to see his own face staring back at him. His chest heaves as he sucks in air, and slowly, very slowly, he makes himself relax.

"Echo! You with us?" the clone says. It's not one Echo recognizes, and the voice inflections are all wrong for it to be any of the 501st. "Kriff, mate, what was that?" The clone glances down. "Hey, Domino! What's the hold up? Why didn't you help your squad mate?"

Echo's heart stops.

Domino...?

He lifts his head slowly, because he's still not convinced this isn't a trick. He's shocked to realize that he's in the clone barracks on Kamino. The tiny space he'd thought was a coffin is his bed.

"Wh—what?" he manages to get out, and it feels like he's been swallowing shards of glass. His throat is raw. He remembers that he's been screaming, and lifts a hand to massage his throat.

Is this real? Echo's no stranger to hallucinations. Tambor likes to torment him with them.

"Domino? Any of you slackers alive down there?" the clone above him asks. He lets Echo go and gets back on the ladder. With his foot, he kicks at the front of someone's bed—Cutup's, if Echo remembers correctly. There's a hiss as Cutup's bed slides from the rack, and Echo's heart stops again as he lays eyes on his brother.