20 years earlier…

The floor to the sonic shower was cold. He could have sworn it took the warm out of his hair even. But times like this, where he had to sleep in the green goo all night and his feet were too slidey, he got to hold his nurses hand.

She wasn't cold.

She felt like more blankets and broken air. She felt like dinner after a long day of getting poked in the arms and back. And like that one time when the alarms went off and he didn't have any testing at all. She felt like if the sonic didn't bother his ears and only got rid of the goo. She felt like somewhere not here.

Stepping into the shower was tricky. He fell almost every time. Today, like always, nurse caught him before he hit the floor. The door slid shut and he waited for the sonic to start. He hated it, but it got rid of the goo and he didn't fall down as much after. And sometimes she sang. It made him not think about the sonic shaking his ears. If he was lucky, the songs would have pictures.

The last of the goo flew off his wings and down the drain. He hoped he didn't have to go in the tank again soon. The black marks they put on him had hurt and itched and stung. Even the tank had only mostly healed it. Scratching around the marks made it feel better. But when nurse slid the door open and saw it, pictures crashed into his head.

Dirty floors and old clothes and strange beings and sparkly ropes and needles and blinking lights under skin and crying. Crying. The picture ended. The crying was still there.

She knelt to the floor, touching the black marks on his shoulder. His fingers brushed the tears from her face.

"S'posed'a make good pictures, not bad." He patted her brown hair. He liked how different it was from doctor.

He point to her shoulder and back to his. "Now I'm just like you. S'not bad."

She sighed and held tight to his shoulders, "It won't always be bad. Would you like me to make a good picture before we go to the lab?"

He nodded and smiled; she loved it when he smiled. He wished he knew why.

Green surrounded him. Darker than the goo he slept in most nights. The air, sharp like a needle, felt good in his lungs. He looked to his feet and crunched his toes into the orange brown floor, little strings and sticks breaking and crackling to each step. Blue poked through the green above him. Or maybe the green was poking into the blue.

The picture moved through the green and the brown until there was nothing above him but blue. Green shimmered at his feet. In the distance there big triangles of grey. A blue line wiggled from the grey out onto the green. He could hear it bubbling like the goo but friendlier, not sticky or slimey. The blue above had pillows of white in it. They flew from right to left. And then the blue changed to yellow, and then orange and then all the colors at once, so bright and beautiful and-

The picture ended.

"Where is that! Can we go there? Why was everything…" The boy racked his brain for the right word to match what he saw, "...alive?"

Nurse pulled him tight to her chest and whispered in his ear. "I have another picture to show you, but you have to be very quiet when the picture is done. Okay?"

The picture was of him and Nurse in the sonic, hugging right then. What was going on? The "picture" Nurse and Him stood up and moved out to the hallway and walked to the lab. But they didn't go in the lab, they walked past the door and turned left down another hallway. He had never seen this hallway before. And then another hallway and another. They finally entered a room with a hundred screens in it. Screens of more hallways and more rooms. Then there was another person in the room, leaning over a chair. When he stood up to look at them, he had a hypo in his hand.

"Guard's unconscious. Are you sure the kid can do this next part?"

Picture Nurse nodded and got down on her knees next to picture Him. " I need you to do something very important. Can you scream for me? Not an ordinary scream. I need you to use your special scream, the one that makes Doctor angry. Can you do that?"

"Am I gonna get in trouble again?"

"No. And not ever again after this. We are going to go outside and leave Doctor forever, but we need you to scream for us. Can you do that? Please?"

The picture was silent when he opened his mouth. But he understood what Nurse wanted him to do. She wanted to break the screens. The first time he had done his special scream, it broke all the screens in Doctor's lab. She laughed so hard that she got mad.

With the screens all broken, they moved down more hallways. More people started walking down the hallways with them, all going to the same place. The hallway ended in the biggest room he had ever seen with doors that slid from both directions. There was something in the middle that looked like a big grey box with wings. Nurse took him and all the other people inside of the box. And then when they got out of the box…

Everything was green.

Present

"We lost half our people in the escape. And the scar from my chip never went away." Anakin took a deep breath. He was so close to the end of the story and then it would be over and he wouldn't have to say it again.

"Once we got off planet, she named me Anakin and I called her Mom. We did everything we could to get somewhere safe, but there were pirates. Gardulla bought us and then lost us to Watto. Life was almost good with him. We had our own space, there was sun, I had...friends." He looked up to the brothers sitting down at the foot of his bed. Where he expected pity he found a still sadness.

"A few months after I turned nine, Mom overheard Watto talking with one of the brothel owners. At first we thought they wanted her, but when they came into the shop one day while she was on a supply run-". His breath shuddered and he closed his eyes, trying to reign in some sense of control. "I thank the suns and moons every day for Master Qui-Gon finding me."

With the story ended, Rex ran a hand over his head. "You may not share our DNA, but you're more than our general, you are our brother. Anyone in the 501st and beyond would say the same."

Kix nodded. "We won't keep any medical records in the database. No long neck or mad doctor is going to find you."

"I'll brief the squad on a need to know basis. The rest of the 501st will hear you're a brother now, not just a general." Rex put his chest armor back on, stood, and saluted before leaving the room.

"Thank you." Finally, for the first time in decades, he could relax. He had help. He had people he could trust, who would keep him safe.

Planet side

With the Republic pilots gone, the probe droid hovered back above the charred grasses. It's memory banks full of footage and holo of the weapons test, it could return to its master with the results.

It had been a resounding success. Not a single Confederacy Droid scrapped and no civilians died. Only Republic scum had perished at the weapon's hands, every moment captured on the droid's scanners. Soon, Intelligence would arrive to scavenge any information they could from the wreckage.

Yes, it had done its job well. No doubt Master would let them have an oil bath in celebration of the Republic's defeat. Once the files uploaded into the Confederacy's database, they would get their reward.

Confederacy Space Station orbiting (redacted)

Half eaten ration packs and empty mugs littered the desks in the interns' office. Boot scuffs and caf stains marred the grey of the durasteel surface. Perched at the edge of every desk were piles of datapads with terabytes of hand-designed code. Cords connected them to the massive servers and displays.

"If we don't start getting better rations, I swear i'm giving up my IT dreams. It's not worth the heartburn." The skinny human swiveled and spun til the screens blurred. An empty wrapper popped out of the spiral, missing the wastebasket by meters.

The Twi'lek at the neighboring desk rolled his eyes. "You've been complaining since the day you got this assignment. Sure it's boring, but we also aren't dying in some Republic attack."

The human planted her feet, stopping the chair. "I guess that's fair. But it would be nice to at least know WHY we are stuck here, searching Confederacy and Republic databases non-stop."

"Oh my stars, Jax, if you give one more rant about freedom of information and declassification I will strangle you."

She chuckled and leaned back, staring at her screen once again. An alert came up.

"Looks like we've got another 'Unknown species'. What do you bet this time, Ferinn, Life Day costume or Core fashion model?"

The Twi'lek tossed a credit chip in the air and caught it again, "I don't know, I'm thinking it's one of Ziro's dancers."

"You're on." Jax laughed, opening the file. It took a few moments for the image to render, orange and brown pixels casting warmth on the interns.

The credit chip fell from Ferinn's hand and clinked across the floor.

"Call Doctor Arbor."