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Cipher Nine’s eyes fluttered open. The world took a second to stop spinning, swirling in front of his eyes in a way that he hadn’t felt since his last stint in a medical bay. Thrown into an unfamiliar situation, he froze. He was definitely not in a medical bay this time. Ticking away slowly, struggling to wake, his mind registered that his hands were bound. A few seconds later he realised that his feet were much the same. There was… there was someone talking.
A figure approached. The restraints at his wrists and ankles fell away, and someone tugged at his shoulder until he was sitting, his legs over the edge of the table. Why had he been lying down? Where was he? The world was fuzzy, hazy at the edges. In his ears there was only static. The hands returned, pulling him forward until he dropped lightly onto his feet. His body was filled with sand, heavy and weighing him down. Something wasn’t right.
“Keyword: atychiphobia . Engage Dorn protocols. You will follow all given commands with the designation Cipher Nine attached.”
With a movement that resembled the cutting of a marionette’s strings, Cipher Nine collapsed.
“Stand up, Cipher Nine,” Keeper droned.
Instantly, Cipher Nine stood. He fell into a natural parade rest, his eyes unfocused on some spot over Keeper’s shoulder. This wasn’t right. Why couldn’t he move?
“Well,” Keeper said, his voice echoing with something that might have been disgust and might have been regret, “This was certainly a success. Wouldn’t you agree, doctor?”
“Yes—yes, I would,” stuttered the doctor. She fidgeted with her ocular implant, clearing her throat. “The subject seems to be responding to the conditioning as we predicted. He should be able to hear you, now.”
“Good.”
Keeper’s voice was practically nothing. His blank face filled Cipher Nine’s vision, unfocused. Cipher Nine couldn’t blink the haze away. Taking stock of his situation, he realised that he couldn’t do a lot of things. Conditioning? What was the doctor talking about? He didn’t recognise the woman, but that didn’t mean much. Intelligence had a revolving cast of doctors, each one thrown aside once they’d outlived their usefulness. Much like Cipher agents, he mused with a building sense of dread.
Sir? What’s going on?
Raking his gaze up and down, Keeper shook his head. He sighed, something that might have been an apology in his eyes. Then, he turned away.
“Watcher Seven, you may take over. I have other things to attend to.”
Watcher Seven stepped forward from where they’d been lurking in the corner. The twisted grin on their face would have made Cipher Nine shudder, if he’d been able to. If he could have pleaded for Keeper to stay he would have. At least with Keeper he knew what to expect, knew that the man wouldn’t do anything to actively harm him. There was something in Watcher Seven’s cold eyes that told him all protocol had been tossed out of the window and firmly ignored. The blast door slid shut behind Keeper with a heavy, resigned shunk .
“Let’s test a few things, shall we?” Watcher Seven suggested. They stepped off to the side. Cipher Nine couldn’t follow their movement. His eyes were frozen forward, unfocused.
“Look at me, Cipher Nine.”
Cipher Nine’s head snapped towards them. The sudden focusing of his eyes sent a spike of pain through his skull, throbbing almost in time with the new crick in his neck. Watcher Seven had their hand tucked behind their back, clearly concealing something from him. Slowly, they moved closer.
“Cipher Nine, you are not to defend yourself.”
Defend himself? Why would he need to defend himself? Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of a shine, something that might have been metal.
The blade froze less than a centimetre from his throat.
The room held its breath.
Smirking, Watcher Seven trailed the knife over his collarbone, tapping it against his shoulder. Cipher Nine couldn’t move. He could barely breathe. There was something pressing on his lungs, heavy and uncompromising, and it took him a few seconds to work out that it was his own muscles working against him. Watcher Seven examined his face carefully, before turning away with such a casual air that disgust roiled in Cipher Nine’s chest.
“Will pain stimuli interrupt the connection?”
“I, uh,” the doctor stuttered, adjusting her implant again, “It shouldn’t, but we haven’t been able to run conclusive tests yet. The serum is still in its Besh stages, you know.”
There was no warning before Watcher Seven was burying the knife in the meat of his shoulder.
All bustle in the room stopped. No one had been expecting that, apparently. Cipher Nine hadn’t been expecting that, either. It took a second for the pain to even register, a slow creep of molten iron sinking into his veins and clawing at his throat and he couldn’t breathe—
“Sir!”
Just barely out of the corner of his eye Cipher Nine could see the scientist protesting. Watcher Seven, still the centre of his blurry vision, ignored her with such practiced ease that she might not have been there at all. Cipher Nine couldn’t even blink as they twisted the blade ever so slightly, digging it in a little deeper into his shoulder. The tug on his muscle was sickening as Watcher Seven simply released the handle and stepped away, radiating an air of smug indifference.
“Sir!” cried the scientist again, rushing forwards to catch the knife as it fell. She scrambled to pull a cloth from her pocket and press it to Cipher Nine’s shoulder. There was blood dripping down his arm, staining the pressed grey tunic that Cipher Nine couldn’t remember dressing himself in that morning. The cotton burned a little as the scientist screwed it deeper in an attempt to stop the bleeding.
“He’ll be fine,” Watcher Seven said, waving a dismissive hand over their shoulder, “He’s had worse. And now we know that pain will not interrupt the connection, no?”
“But, sir—”
“Any complaints can be taken up with Keeper, doctor .”
At this, the scientist flushed an interesting shade of red and silently pressed the wad of fabric in harder. Cipher Nine almost wished she would say something, object just a little. Even on the basis of professional courtesy, it might have been nice to know that someone was willing to fight for him.
“Cipher Nine, sit back down,” Watcher Seven called.
His body didn’t even need to think about it. Beneath his stiff fingers, the metal edge of the bunk was cold as he hoisted himself back up onto the thin mattress. The scientist grumbled as his abrupt movement released the pressure on her fabric. The sting of fresh blood was barely a thought compared to the anxiety bubbling up his throat. For the first time in his—admittedly rather short—career, he was truly in the dark about what would happen next. Had he earned a grudge from Watcher Seven somehow? He couldn’t bring anything to mind, but maybe he’d messed up recently and hadn’t realised. That must have been it. He must have earned this somehow.
“Cipher Nine, clap for me.”
The movement was unconscious; the sound rang out in the stillness of the room. It tugged on his shoulder, but he barely even felt it.
‘Hmm,” mused Watcher Seven.
Behind them, just out of Cipher Nine’s range of vision, the blast door slid open again. Watcher Seven seemed to be expecting it, for all they reacted. It took a second for the person to step closer into his line of sight, but eventually he was able to make out Fixer Eleven—Elli, his brain corrected out of habit—hovering at the edge of his vision. She seemed nervous, fidgeting with the bundle in her hands. Her hair was almost in disarray. That was what Cipher Nine noticed the most. Elli’s head was never anything less than perfectly coiffed, not a hair out of place.
“Sir?”
Watcher Seven hummed lightly, waving her closer. Elli set her bundle down on the same table Watcher Seven had apparently gotten their knife from and backed away a little, stepping just out of Cipher Nine’s sight again.
“Now, Fixer,” Watcher Seven said, condescension dripping from their voice, “That’s not very polite. Why don’t you say hello to your friend here?”
Elli swallowed audibly, swivelling to face Cipher Nine. She managed a weak little wave. Cipher Nine’s stomach dropped. It was indeed true that they were on friendly terms—certainly more than him and any of the other Fixers and certainly more than any of Cipher Nine’s designated Watchers. He’d thought it would have been harmless, to form a simple connection like that. It certainly didn’t impact his missions in any way. Watcher Seven’s tone, however, made it very clear that they considered the term friend more akin to an insult.
“Hey, Cipher Nine,” Elli said, just as weak as her wave had been. Cipher Nine came to the rather horrible realisation that she hadn’t been told what was going on. Which meant… she likely had no idea that he was under the influence of whatever the scientist had done to him. The fall of her face at his lack of response confirmed it.
“Cipher Nine, don’t be rude,” Watcher Seven said, “Say hello to Fixer Eleven. I called her here just for you, you know.”
“Hello, Fixer Eleven.”
He didn’t sound like himself. It was like a droid had seized control of his voice box. It was strange—he’d never hated his own voice so much before. Elli seemed frozen, fixed to the spot, her expression carefully, waveringly neutral. Watcher Seven allowed themself a tiny smirk.
“Fixer, I would like to apologise. It appears you haven’t been informed of what we are doing here today. Well, we are running some tests on a lovely little serum that the good doctor here has cooked up for us—” They tipped their head in the direction of the scientist, who was starting to look like she would much rather be anywhere but in a room with them. “—and Cipher Nine was lucky enough to be among the first of our candidates.”
Laying a delicate hand on Elli’s proffered bundle, they pulled aside the fabric to show Cipher Nine his own heavily-modified pistol.
“I hope you appreciate the work that went into this moment.”
There was a creeping sense of dread building in Cipher Nine’s throat. Something wasn’t right. Elli was in danger. Why didn’t she have the sense to run ? Watcher Seven made their way back over, cradling the pistol in gentle hands. They dropped it onto the bunk beside him and took a step back, considering. Then, they turned towards where Elli had begun to fidget.
“Cipher Nine, shoot to kill. Target; Fixer Eleven.”
What?
No. No, no, not Elli, please, no, NO—
His stiff fingers pulled the blaster from beside him. Horror dawned on Elli’s face. In a movement almost quicker than he himself could follow, there was a neat little hole in her forehead and the sickening smell of a spent gas cartridge. The shot echoed off the walls and in Cipher Nine’s ears and it wouldn’t stop . Something sick made its home in Cipher Nine’s stomach. Watcher Seven, well, watched, a grisly kind of smile playing at their stiff features.
“Incredible,” they breathed, “You really have no control.”
You sick bastard , was what Cipher Nine wanted to say. What have you done to me? came in at a close second. What actually came out was nothing. He could barely even swallow and breathe, let alone speak. Elli hadn’t deserved to die. She had been the only kind face at first, before he’d proved himself as an agent; the only one whose orders over the comm hadn’t been snapped, who had actually bothered to read the tech-malfunction reports Cipher Nine had been forced to submit occasionally. They had been tentative friends, and it seemed that that was what had killed her—why he’d killed her, a vicious little voice in his head reminded him.
A glance behind them at the chronometer on the wall seemed to jar Watcher Seven from their thoughts. They sighed, so visibly put out that Cipher Nine wanted to throw up. With barely a glance towards Elli’s crumpled form they waved a hand, beckoning the guards forwards to take her away. There was betrayal reflected in her cold, blank eyes. There was accusal etched into her face.
And then… and then it was just them and Cipher Nine, and Cipher Nine had never felt so alone, so vulnerable. He had a feeling that, if his body could have physically managed it, there would be bile rising in his throat. The sour taste on the back of his tongue confirmed it.
“Regretfully, Cipher, we must begin to wrap this up. Our time today must sadly come to an end.”
You don’t get to laugh. You don’t get to not feel this guilt. You don’t deserve that kind of peace.
Watcher Seven chuckled, almost as if they could hear him. There was no humour in it. Then, they paused.
“Of course, you’re not supposed to know about this yet. It’s still our lovely little secret,” they crooned. If he could have mustered up the energy, Cipher Nine would have told them very politely what they could go do to themself.
“Keyword: atychiphobia . You will forget everything connected to this room and your conditioning. Erase the last hour from your memory. It no longer exists.”
Forget? You couldn’t just make someone forget everything like that, not something this big. Not what had happened to Elli. She mattered, she was important—if not to the people she worked with then to him, at the very least. You couldn’t—
Cold air on his face was the first thing Cipher Nine registered upon waking. Probing through the transparisteel, the gentle wash of hyperspace threatened to lull him back to sleep again. The Phantom was quiet, there was nothing to suggest he’d been woken suddenly. There might have been a little niggling feeling in the back of his head, but Cipher Nine ignored it. Carefully, he pulled together the scattered fog of his mental barriers, brushing away the sticky, scattered feelings that so often plagued his waking moments. They were normal. They didn’t matter.
Absently, Cipher Nine registered a dull ache in his shoulder. Strange. There was nothing to be found there but a faint tang of kolto, and he hadn’t been injured recently. Probably, he thought decisively, he had simply slept on it funny. That was all. Sleeping in a hard navigator’s chair wasn’t exactly good for the body. He resolved to at least try and make it to a bunk the next time he felt the need to pass out, and dismissed the matter entirely.
Clearing the pending messages from his console only took him a second. A check-in request from Keeper, an R&D report from Fixer Eleven, and something miscellaneous from Watcher Three—they could all be handled once he had touched down on Vaiken Spacedock.
Cipher Nine primed the sublight engines with practiced ease and settled into the rocking of his ship, his mind clear and his own.