Revelation

By Qymaen jai Sheelal

You are General Grievous.

You weakly open your eyes, and look around the room. A canopy of light blinds you, making detailed objects seem like a silvery-white mass. You blink; a thin membrane of skin whips away the dust that lay on your eyes. You look around you, and you notice your sight has become clearer; the fine details on the wall are now visible to you. You notice the alien mist radiating in the room, you see the Geonosian's skin twitch with every blast of cold breeze. You see San Hill sitting modestly on the other side of the room, with his characteristic smirk on his face, his pointed teeth poking through.

You wonder why you are here, what has happened.

Suddenly memories flood you back into realization.

You're in a Geonosian operating room.

Your heart clenches. You remember the conversation you had with San Hill; how he said he could save you from certain death, rebuild you into something better, more advanced.

You remember yourself agreeing.

Anger fills you. You remember your fellow Kaleesh dying in the shuttle crash, how San Hill refused to save them, to let you go back to Kalee and die a warrior. But something is wrong with you, you wish for the rage to stop, but it keeps going. It has a mind of its own; it is virtually uncontainable. You try to raise your arms, to find they are chained down. The rage grows, like the monster inside your heart. You growl in frustration, to find that your voice is different. You have no throat, it is durasteel; you have no voice box, it is a vocabulator; you have no veins, they are circuitry.

You hear the stillness in the air around you, besides the occasional breath taking in air, and the wheeze of it coming out. Durasteel horns on both sides of your head sieve in the noise, shifting when you are trying to listen to something different. You look beneath you, to see charred red flesh, a remnant of your past. Underneath that, you see a durasteel mask surrounding your face.

You heave harder at the chains this time, and finally they give way.

It doesn't even take much of your energy.

It was like crushing a bug.

San Hill backs away, like a coward, and activates a ray shield. The ghost white aura of energy completely surrounds him, but not his troops.

So you start crushing bugs.

It is easier than breaking your chains.

Portions of flesh fly around the room, followed by blood-spattered veins and unidentifiable organs. You pull apart a stomach as easily as ripping tissue paper. Gore covers your armorplast faceplate, staining sections of it a pinkish red. You crush one Geonosian's skull as if cracking a nutshell.

San Hill sees your destruction, and gives an undetectable smile, well, it's not undetectable to you; you see everything. From the nerves beneath his fine skin twitching, to the skin around his mouth pulling into a slight smile.

And this angers you even more.

You run towards San Hill, your durasteel fist pounding of the aura of light, but it does not break. Your eyes narrow in aggravation, you scream at the IBC banker. You shout how he has ruined your life, how he has destroyed your body.

San Hill doesn't even blink.

Instead, his smile gets wider.

And then he tells you. What he tells you makes your rage develop into an infinite source of resentment and ache.

The Jedi killed your family…

You feel the skin beneath your eyes twitch, your eyes sting.

Jedi.

Not only did they ruin your planet, they have killed your family.

It's unbelievable, but true.

You try to escape this nightmare, but the revelation is too real.

This isn't a nightmare.

This is your life.

Forever.