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Waking up in the medbay on Anaxes had been a surreal experience.
Echo’s eyes fluttered open to bright, fluorescent light, and on instinct alone, he immediately started to thrash. It was easier than it had previously been. The Techno Union hadn’t restrained him at all this time, either through physical restraints or by playing with parts of his brain so he couldn’t move his limbs. In fact, no one was in the room, aside from a hovering medical droid that distinctly looked like the kind they kept on Kamino?
No, that couldn’t have been right.
But before he knew it, Echo had rolled to his side and plummeted to the floor, grunting in pain as he landed heavily and without anything to stop his momentum or pad his fall. That was when he realized the prosthetics the Techno Union had bestowed on him were missing—he had no legs to push himself up with, nor the scomp arm to wield as a weapon.
He was completely defenseless, weak from sedatives and painkillers, and in a place he had no recognition of.
Wait… painkillers? Kaminoan medical droid? No restraints?
Echo’s bewildered musings were interrupted by the appearance of several pairs of white boots and then the shouting of his name, though it was marred with static and a near-constant droning buzz. But it was his name . Not “the clone,” or “CT-1409,” or “the experiment.”
Echo.
“Echo!”
Echo shook his head, then glanced up to see none other than Kix kneeling beside him. The medic had grown out his hair, covering up the Aurebesh tattoo that wrapped around the back of his head, but Echo would recognize his brother’s face even when surrounded by clones. Kix wore exhaustion and concern as a constant mantle, though to outsiders and shinies it often looked like anger and frustration.
“Echo, can you hear me?” Based on Kix’s expression and the tightness in his throat, he was shouting, but Echo could only just hear him. The drugs were definitely messing with his system.
Echo nodded in response, still staring at Kix and questioning his own sanity.
“We’re going to put you back on the bed, okay?” Kix said, speaking slowly enough that Echo could read his lips and understand what he was saying.
The humiliation of Kix and another medic hauling him back up onto the medical cot was enough to shake loose the memories of the last couple of days and Echo stared dully at the ceiling once Kix had dimmed the lights in the critical care bay.
Upon the Havoc Marauder’s landing on Anaxes after a 12-hour trip through hyperspace, a medical team, led by Kix, had been waiting for Echo’s arrival. Tech had already managed to compile a chart for Echo—based off of the ARC’s old health records and all of the information he’d downloaded from the Techno Union’s database—and sent it ahead to the 501st’s head medic, who had almost immediately sent back a message that they would be taking Echo straight to surgery.
Through the haze of a post-adrenaline crash mixed with the quick effects of the anesthetics, Echo could only somewhat understand what Kix and the other medics had planned—removing the excess and unnecessary external parts of Echo’s mutilated body and replacing a majority of the cybernetic ports with ones that wouldn’t stick out as painfully. Echo knew he should have protested being put immediately under upon his return, but his growing exhaustion along with the welcome shock of seeing Kix and knowing that the medic, as brusque as he could be at times, was in charge of his care, wiped away his inhibitions and let him settle into the medical gurney as it was hauled through the base.
Now, he was staring at Kix, his discomfort only growing as he tried to interpret what Kix was saying through what felt like cotton in his ears. The muffled sounds combined with Echo only somewhat being able to read his lips left him beyond baffled.
“What?” Echo stared, and realized that he could only just hear his own voice from how the timbre reverberated through his head.
Kix heaved a sigh, as evident by the almost dramatic rise and fall of his shoulders, before he clumsily signed sit-rep.
Echo drew back slightly before realizing what Kix was asking. “O—oh. Yeah. Umm… everything hurts. Can’t really hear what you’re saying.”
Kix sighed again before trying to form the numbers one and ten, though his use of ARC sign was meager at best and it was obvious that he’d probably learned it second-hand from someone else—Kix wasn’t an ARC after all.
Echo simply shook his head, still at a loss, and Kix seemed to give up. He turned to one of the other medics, giving him muffled instructions before taking a datapad and passing it over for Echo to read. It was his chart, and more specifically, a listing of everything they’d found—and not found—during the surgery.
Two leg amputations; the right a hip disarticulation, the left a transfemoral. A right arm amputation; transhumeral. A reinforced spinal column, though the exterior plates were mostly removed for comfort and flexibility. Severe malnutrition, contributing to iron deficiency anemia and a wan pallor. Several organs damaged—some completely missing and replaced by mechanical substitutes. About a dozen other things Echo couldn’t interpret. And now, apparently, hearing loss.
Echo supposed it made sense—he’d been caught almost at the epicenter of an explosion on Lola Sayu and hearing loss wasn’t an unheard of side effect for being an infantryman on the front lines of the war. But this… this seemed far worse. And rather sudden. He could hear well enough when they’d left Skako Minor.
His gaze was drawn away from the datapad by a flurry of movement and none other than Jesse stood at the door, helmet tucked beneath his arm and wearing a… was that an ARC trooper’s kit?
“Jesse?” Echo blinked before grinning.
Jesse mirrored the grin as he stepped into the room. “Echo!” he replied, clearly ready to launch into a speech that probably was something along the lines of how glad he was to see Echo alive before he was smacked in the chest plate by Kix.
“Right,” Jesse said sheepishly before starting to sign, his hands practiced. Pain. One to Ten?
Echo frowned before the question finally dawned on him. “About a five? Maybe a six…”
Kix nodded before setting to work and it didn’t take long before the pain was ebbing, along with any sense of consciousness. Echo fell asleep mid-sign conversation with Jesse, the ARC troopers attempting to catch-up on everything that Echo had missed.
Echo stared blankly at the opposite wall of the Havoc Marauder as the Bad Batch moved around him, prepping the shuttle for the flight up to Admiral Trench’s flagship, the Invulnerable .
Kix nearly had a conniption when Echo snuck out to propose his plan to take out the Separatist blockade to the generals, then the medic had a total meltdown when he actually heard Echo’s plan. But nevertheless, and with a number of strings pulled and favors promised from General Skywalker and Captain Rex, Echo was released from the medbay and allowed to play his part for what would hopefully be the final push to take back Anaxes.
Tech walked by and Echo hardly paid the engineer any mind until a datapad was placed in his hands and he looked down at the text written on it. Over the last few days, people had spoken to Echo through a combination of written messages or ARC sign and honestly Echo was getting exhausted by it, as well as the near constant ringing in his ears. It turned out that during his surgery they had removed an external device that had apparently served as his hearing, but when they attempted to re-attach it, the thing shorted out completely and left Echo with a massive migraine. Kix promised that he would work with Tech to sort out more of a permanent solution, but for now, Echo had been left to the buzzing in his ears and clunky ways of communicating.
He knew that, logically, he should have at least been frustrated, if not downright angry and upset, by having one of his five senses almost entirely stripped away. But after losing so much of not only one’s body but also one’s autonomy, Echo was simply drained. What was one more thing to lose? Truth-be-told, the only things that currently left him reeling was that he was not stowed away in the brig and that he was allowed to assist in this mission despite the fact that he could very well have been a spy and never even known it.
Echo loosely held the datapad for a moment before looking down at it and realizing that Tech had practically written a whole speech and was waiting for his response.
Echo. I have devised a way that might assist you with hearing our voices. Though it is a temporary solution for now, I have carefully reviewed your cybernetics and have developed a program that should allow our helmet comms to connect directly to you via your embedded neural processing unit. The signals would be interpreted by your brain as sound waves, and thus you would be able to hear our voices. I can also upload a program to your HUD that will translate our words in real-time to text, though this could prove distracting in a combat situation.
The message went on to explain some of the finer points of both the program and Echo’s complicated anatomy—complete with diagrams—before ending at a simple question.
Do you consent to this? If not, Clone Force 99 is well-versed in ARC sign, which we can utilize on this mission in order to communicate with you.
Echo glanced up at the engineer, who was watching him carefully. If Echo didn’t know any better, he’d think he saw just a hint of hopeful excitement in the gleam in Tech’s eyes. Then again, Echo had only known the man for a few days, and most of that had been spent in medbay and while on drugs or half asleep.
“You won’t do anything else?” Echo asked.
Tech shook his head before speaking slowly enough that Echo could read his lips. “Not without your consent.”
Echo glanced back down at the datapad before passing it back. “Alright. Let’s try it.”
Tech offered a smile in return before stepping behind Echo and plugging a cord into one of the ports in his head, just above his left ear. Almost immediately the ringing in his ears stopped, but just as quickly his perception was filled with a field of seemingly random letters and numbers. Though if he focused hard enough, Echo could decipher what each code meant, especially after Tech’s detailed written explanation as to what he had planned.
Even still, the experience was jarring, and the randomized numbers and letters were slowly drawing his mind away from Anaxes and the Havoc Marauder, and back to Skako Minor and Purkoll.
“Echo, can you hear me?” Tech’s voice suddenly rang out, almost crystal clear, in Echo’s mind.
Echo blinked and glanced over his shoulder at Tech, who started to smirk even before Echo could verbally confirm that yes, he had indeed heard him.
“How is the signal? Is it too soft? Or do I need to turn it down?” Tech asked.
“If you could turn it down just a little?” Echo asked.
Tech nodded sagely. “Yes, I do suppose Wrecker can be a bit loud and it would be best to not overload your system by trying to account for his volume.”
Echo managed a small chuckle before glancing up as Tech stepped back in front of him.
“There, the modification to your neural network is complete. Now I can make the adjustment to your helmet?” Tech asked, though his voice sounded just the same, as if it were all around Echo instead of coming from right in front of him.
“Uhh, yeah, sure,” Echo replied before offering the helmet to Tech. “Why does it sound like you’re… in my head, instead of in front of me?”
Tech studied Echo, owlish gaze fixed on him as he tilted his head ever so slightly to the side. “I cannot be certain, as I do not believe anyone has as advanced a neural and cybernetic network as you do, but since you are hearing my voice through a comm frequency received by your neural processor and not your peripheral auditory network, you are not able to distinguish where a sound is coming from in relation to your person. Likewise, since our comms usually only pick up our voices and loud noises, you will be unlikely to hear any ambient background noise.”
Echo slowly nodded. “Can it be fixed at all?”
“Perhaps, but not in time for this mission,” Tech responded.
Echo held up his one hand. “Oh, no, I didn’t mean it like that. But later on, we could adjust it?”
“Yes, we could, though I believe it would be more beneficial to supplement what remains of your natural peripheral auditory system. Your brain is still able to interpret sound, we just need to provide the means to get sound to your auditory cortex,” Tech explained before returning his focus to the helmet and datapad in his hands.
Echo stared past him, slowly interpreting all of the information. “That… sounds like more surgery.”
“In order to install the necessary aids? Most likely, yes. However, it is to your consent,” Tech murmured, the tone of his voice changing to something a bit softer and less clinical. “Any adjustments or upgrades to your cybernetics are your choice, though I would advise that perhaps we sit down and discuss any changes you would like to have made so that we can achieve maximum comfort for you in as few procedures as possible.”
Echo nodded, satisfied, and sat back to watch Tech as he finished working on the helmet. “Thank you, Tech. For all of your help.”
Tech seemed to freeze for a moment before glancing up at Echo and offering him a smile. “I am happy to assist. You… are like us now, for better or for worse, and though we have never been POWs, we have experienced trauma and hardship due to our own specific deviations. Any way that I can mitigate that for my brothers, and now for you, is beyond worthy of my energies.”
Between replacing the attachments for his missing limbs, upgrading some of his older cybernetic tech, and removing further, unnecessary equipment, Echo had undergone three more surgeries since joining Clone Force 99 after Anaxes.
His new legs were—dare he think it— comfortable. On more than one occasion, when they were in the barracks on Kamino or during an extended hyperspace trip that didn’t require them to be geared up, he’d fallen asleep still wearing the prosthetics because he hardly felt where his body ended and the prostheses began. Especially with the enhancements Tech made to Echo’s neural network, they felt like perfectly normal legs with full articulation of all of the joints—even his toes, to allow for a smoother gait and the ability to climb. And the legs didn’t look all that strange either, at least when he was wearing his kit.
The scomp arm, while it had received numerous upgrades and adjustments, was the same core prosthetic that the Techno Union had outfitted him with. But after much trial and error, the weight had been significantly reduced and the elbow joint improved for greater flexibility and range of motion. The attachment had also had a considerable rework so that it wouldn’t chafe so badly against his skin, and though it took longer to get used to than his new legs, Echo found that the adjustments were well worth it in the end.
With the external changes, there had also been numerous programming adjustments. Some of them, Echo could import on his own via the scomplink once Tech had built the code. Others, Tech would have to connect in through one of the external ports and install himself, though he always told Echo what he was doing and often spoke to him when he did, so as to distract his mind from slipping into a PTSD-induced hallucination that he was back with the Techno Union.
Throughout the process, Tech had held true to his word. Everything he did was for Echo’s comfort and only done with his consent. In turn, Echo learned everything about every change, from the benefits and drawbacks, to the purpose, to how it replaced or enhanced his existing physiology—both natural and cybernetic. And though he still abhorred what had been done to him, Echo was learning to accept his new body through the simple act of learning about it.
Echo had been sitting in the Batch’s barracks on Kamino, scrolling through Hunter’s mission reports and making edits as needed when Tech walked in. Some things were simple, such as grammar and organization and formatting—Echo had known how to write a mission report well before he had ever been tasked with such a thing, thanks to his near-memorization of the reg manuals as a shiny. The harder element of proofreading Hunter’s documentation was correctly describing exactly what tactics they had used to complete a mission and carefully omitting or adjusting anything that would have cast too much suspicion on their less-than-conventional methods.
Tech was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet as he cradled a small case in his hands, grinning at Echo with an almost obscene level of outward excitement for the usually unflappable engineer. “It is completed!”
Echo looked up from his datapad and arched a brow. “You’re… going to have to be more specific. You’ve got about…” he trailed off, looking at Tech’s workbench and all of the things cluttered on top of it. “Well, you have quite a number of in-progress projects.”
“I was able to finish the final casing for the external pieces of your neural network!” Tech explained, holding out the case. “All that is left is to test the fit and efficacy then adjust your helmet in order to accommodate the headpiece.”
Echo nodded. “So what is it supposed to do again?”
“The primary function of the headpiece is to shield your neural network from damage. It insulates the ports so that electrical charges do not short out your system, such as those from a droid popper or an attack from an enemy while scomped in, especially when you stay plugged in despite my insistences to the contrary,” Tech fixed Echo with a glare, though his smirk ruined the overall effect of the scolding. “Likewise, it has extremely high level encryption such that no one can hack into your network and take control of any of your systems or shut them down.”
Echo couldn’t help a small shudder at the mention of being hacked into. Of course he knew it was possible, and he and Tech had taken extra precautions to protect his system as best they could in the interim. But the extra layers of security would help Echo feel much more safe, both for himself and to keep from becoming a danger or liability to his squad.
“The external headpiece also provides additional random access memory space for your cybernetic network,” Tech continued. “This will be particularly useful for when you are scomping into a port, as it will provide the extra space needed in order to accommodate the information overload you have described previously. It should also keep you from getting migraines from processing information so quickly or extreme hot flashes due to the overheating of your current, limited RAM space.”
Echo frowned. “Extreme hot flashes?”
“Yes. Unfortunately there is no way to eliminate the discomfort entirely due to your unique physiology. But the additional computing space as well as the external surface area should mitigate the problem,” Tech explained.
Echo nodded. “Last should be… the hearing thing, right?”
“Yes. This headpiece contains the external equipment needed in order to restore your peripheral auditory system to a more natural state,” Tech replied.
“So no more having your comms directly wired into my brain,” Echo confirmed.
Tech rolled his eyes. “That is correct, though our comms are not “wired” into your brain, they are transmitting a frequency to your neural network.”
Echo rolled his eyes in response, smirking. “I got it, Tech.”
Tech pushed up his goggles in response, huffing quietly before his smile returned. “Well, shall we try it on?”
Echo nodded, turning the information over in his head. Of course he knew everything that the headpiece was designed to do—he had helped Tech design it. But it was reassuring to hear it all over again and to know that, in all of it, he had a choice. “Yeah. Let’s try it on.”
Like every time that Tech worked on Echo’s cybernetics, Echo got as comfortable as humanly possible. He set a pillow on the table and slumped forward, clutching the pillow in his hand and resting his head on top. They turned on a random radio station and Tech started talking as he worked, Echo not even realizing that Tech had plugged in and started working at first.
However, unlike previous times, this modification took much longer. Especially when it came to fitting the actual device.
“How does that feel?” Tech asked, stepping back as Echo sat up and hesitantly touched the headpiece.
“Strange,” Echo said, tilting his head from side to side. “Feels weird to have my ears covered. And it’s not as heavy as I was expecting?”
Tech smiled. “Good. I wanted it to be durable and well protected, obviously, but not cumbersome to wear.”
“I would say that you’ve achieved that,” Echo murmured.
“Excellent. Are you ready for me to switch off the comm frequency and turn on the hearing implants?” Tech asked.
Echo nodded, and a moment later the buzzing in his ears that had become a characteristic background noise that he usually tuned out just… vanished.
“Can you hear me?” Tech asked, and instead of the engineer’s voice sounding like it was only inside Echo’s head, it was outside of him, coming from off to one side. Echo nearly startled at the sound of Tech’s footsteps as the engineer walked behind him, the sound almost bouncing around the bunk room. Echo had almost forgotten what ambient noise sounded like…
It was then that the door to the barracks hissed open, and Echo whipped around to see Hunter, Wrecker, and Crosshair stepping inside, all carrying differing levels of exhaustion and frustration. Such was life for the Bad Batch on Kamino. But almost immediately, Wrecker’s face broke into a grin.
“Echo! You got your fancy head thing!” Wrecker practically bellowed, and Echo winced in response. When it was just the comm frequency, Tech had taken the liberty to turn Wrecker’s input down to account for just how loud the brawler tended to be. But for normal hearing, such a thing wasn’t exactly possible.
Echo chuckled before nodding. “Yeah. And I can properly hear you.”
“Nice!” Wrecker exclaimed, pumping a fist in the air before Crosshair smacked him in the chest.
“Volume.”
Wrecker’s grin turned sheepish and he rubbed the back of his head as he glanced at Echo. “Sorry…”
“It’s alright, Wrecker,” Echo replied, softly laughing at the novelty of hearing every little thing.
Tech sat down beside Echo on the bench, a satisfied smile on his face. “Since it is late, we can test the function of the excess memory tomorrow, then get to work on the adjustments for your helmet.”
“That sounds like a good plan.” Echo nodded. “Thank you, Tech.”
“You are more than welcome,” Tech replied, and Echo saw in him the same warmth and ardent sincerity that Tech had exuded when he’d first told Echo that he was worthy of the engineer’s energy and assistance.
Hunter stepped between them, holding two ration bars. “You’re both more than welcome to eat then get to bed.” The sergeant fixed his gaze on Tech. “You’ve been overworking yourself, and you,” he glanced to Echo, “haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Did we miss evening meal?” Echo asked, taking the ration bar.
Hunter nodded and turned to go to the fresher. “By the time I’m out of the shower, I expect both of you to be sound asleep,” he called, and then the door hissed shut.
Tech rolled his eyes. “He is one to talk about healthy sleep schedules.”
“He might be a hypocrite, but he isn’t wrong,” Crosshair muttered from where he was disassembling and methodically cleaning his firepuncher.
Wrecker nodded in agreement. “Yeah. You both need some sleep. Especially since we’re hopefully gonna ship out soon.” He fell back into his bunk and grabbed Lula, hugging her to his chest as he sprawled lazily across the sorry excuse for a mattress.
Echo nodded wordlessly and quickly ate his ration bar as he went to his hammock by the window, flopping into it and enjoying actually hearing the crashing of the thunder and the rattling of the rain against the transparisteel, instead of only feeling it in the vibrations of the room around him.
But the minutes eeked by, and though the others had fallen silent as they got ready for bed, the room was anything but quiet. After going so long with only hearing the sounds of his brothers’ voices in his head or loud noises that the comms managed to pick up, the squeaking of the shoddy mattresses, the sound of the shower going in the fresher, and the general settling of Tipoca City around him was positively cacophonous. Distantly, Echo wondered if this was how Hunter felt on a constant basis. It gave him an even greater respect for the sergeant.
Echo wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Hunter emerged from the fresher and walked past his hammock. The sergeant’s hair was tied up in a sloppy bun while his towel hung around his neck, the soft joggers he wore making a soft rustling noise as he padded through the room. But it wasn’t just Hunter’s hearing that was turned up to eleven. While his vision was nowhere near as enhanced as Crosshair’s—who could see perfectly clearly in the pitch black—Hunter could still pick up the flicker of Echo’s eyes moving back to watch the ceiling.
“Pretty sure I told you to be asleep,” Hunter drawled, smirking slightly as he perched on the edge of his bunk.
Echo shrugged. “Well I assure you that it isn’t for lack of effort.”
Hunter arched a brow. “How so?”
“Everything is… it's too loud.” Echo mumbled, almost ashamed to admit such a thing to a man that likely perceived the world as too loud all the time.
“Yeah.” Hunter softly laughed. “Yeah, I know what that feels like. I’d offer you an extra pair of earplugs, but I’m not sure they’d do you much good.”
Echo huffed a laugh in response before shaking his head as both Wrecker and Tech began to snore in tandem. “It’ll just take some time to get used to again,” Echo sighed.
Hunter nodded in agreement. “Most likely. But we can talk to Tech about it, too. See if he has any thoughts.”
“In the morning,” Echo murmured. “Like you said, he’s been working himself too hard. Needs to sleep.”
Hunter sighed before relenting. “You need your sleep too. If I might offer a recommendation, I find it helps to focus on only one sound. Usually I pick the waves or the tide generator. It helps to drown out everything else until I can get to sleep.”
“Thank you,” Echo replied, though he had no clue how Hunter could hear the tide generators far beneath the city and the ocean’s surface as they worked to power Tipoca.
Hunter gave a single nod in response before tossing his towel into a shared laundry bin and turning into his bunk, growing still a few seconds later.
While the sergeant seemed to fall asleep quickly, Echo stared unseeing at the ceiling until the wee hours of the morning, when the sounds of the rain and thunder finally, finally dragged him to sleep.
The next morning, as Echo sank heavily onto the bench at the batch’s usual table in the mess with a full cup of caf balancing dangerously on his tray, Tech squinted curiously at him. Everyone in the squad seemed perfectly well-rested, but Echo was clearly exhausted, the bags under his eyes showing starkly against his skin that was only just beginning to return to its normal pigment.
“Did you have a bad night?” Tech asked, blinking owlishly at the corporal as he tilted his head to the side.
“Yeah. Couldn’t fall asleep until about… 0300. I think,” Echo mumbled.
Tech hummed, concern coloring his voice. “Why not?”
“He said everything was too loud,” Hunter murmured as he slid onto the bench beside Tech and across from Echo.
Wrecker immediately winced. “Sorry Echo. I’ve tried everything to stop snoring but it never works.”
“It’s alright, Wrecker. I guess I’m just not used to normal noise levels yet,” Echo said, shrugging.
Tech blinked a few times, face twisting slightly in confusion. “You… you do remember that we designed your headpiece such that you could turn the noise down yourself, right?”
Echo opened his mouth to respond before pausing, looking down awkwardly at his tray and swilling his cup of caf. Crosshair scoffed and Echo could just see the way he rolled his eyes, though the corners of his lips were ever-so-slightly upturned.
Just then, Hunter’s comm beeped and the sergeant sighed. “Eat quickly, lads. We’ve got a mission.” He took a sip of his tea before setting the mug down with a resounding thunk. “Wheels up in thirty.”
Thirty minutes later, when they’d gotten to the Havoc Marauder , Tech hardly waited for official clearance before leaving the landing bay and throttling the shuttle out of Kamino’s atmosphere. Once the ship was in hyperspace and solidly on its route, both Hunter and Tech practically bullied Echo back into the bunks until the corporal was curled up beneath one of Hunter’s weighted blankets, Wrecker even forcing Lula upon him in case of any nightmares.
And once Echo had figured out how to turn down his own hearing, he got some of the best sleep he’d ever had since being pulled from stasis.