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There was something there that shouldn’t be.
Maul furrowed his brows further, reached closer to the clone’s head. He could keep searching for the girl, but that was getting nowhere fast. This spot, however…
It was hidden, deep. However stark in the surrounding brightness (ugh) of this clone’s being. A blotch of dark where there shouldn’t be. Almost curious– Maul hasn’t been curious in a long time –he checked the next closest clone, and it was there too.
Then he checked the next down the hall.
And then, trailed that clone’s connection to others. And, my, whoever this clone was, they must’ve been around, because the whole vanator lit up with a thousand little lights. Different clones in different places, living. Yet they had it too. All of them had it .
…It reeked of Dooku.
And Maul wanted it gone .
With a sudden crack of something, his own twisted moral code giving way, maybe, Maul reached around it within the clone’s mind, and then, the clone’s string to the other clones, and then the other clone’s strings to other clones, and so on and so forth until he could feel 2 billion lives under his hold; 2 billion blotches in his palm. The pulsing of something , like an ion cannon about to be fired–
And snapped every. single. one.
It broke out like a chain reaction. The clone in front of him felt it, and Maul heard him hit the floor with a thud. Then the clone down the hall. Then the clones with the unfortunate luck of stations closer to the cell, then the ones further within the vanator.
And then, like a shockwave, it spread .
He felt the wave hit another vanator, several hundred clones falling at once.
He felt it hit a fleet of fighter pilots, and some weird, repressed part of him hoped they wouldn’t crash from such a disturbance.
He felt it hit a planet, a kyber crystal pass between a pair of hands, and then knees suddenly hitting rough ground.
And then he felt it come to a sudden stop as the last traces of whatever Dooku left behind were shattered.
After deliberating for a moment, he pulled back, rasping a sigh. It was hard to get anything out of a mind that was screaming so intelligibly.
The clone in front of him was bracing his forearms on the floor, looking up at him in horror.
“ What have you done ?”
His fear was not a fear for his own well being, but a fear that he would have no control. That Maul had tinged his mind. That he’d have no choice but to hurt those around him. Something hummed a low “ how ironic ” in Maul’s ear, though he couldn’t remember how this would be, and brushed it away to meditate on later. He found himself fighting the urge to scoff.
“There was something there.”
He said simply.
“I removed it.”
The clone’s horror did not subside.
“What? ”
Maul did scoff, that time.
“In your head,” He drawled.
“Over your temple.”
The clone, who had pushed himself up to sit, but whose vision was still swimming and Maul could see it in his eyes , pulled a hand off the floor and grabbed at his temple. There was a pause.
“...put it back ?”
Honestly, Maul didn’t think he was that awful that anyone would assume he only did things to sabotage their survival, but then again he was just trying to kill their commander. Another scoff, if only to keep up the front of drawling hatred.
“I doubt you’d actually want me to do that. It felt strongly of Dooku.”
Now that caught the clone’s attention. Maul felt as his thought processes did a double-take.
“What? ”
Suddenly, the door slammed open, and the clone slid backwards on the floor, tugged by the force. Pulled behind a very, very angry commander.
“What did you do to them?!”
She yelled, and oh she was livid .
Maul both felt his heart glow with pride, and his stomach sink.
“Put them back , put them back now .”
Maul didn’t think he’d heard anyone shout this loud. Somehow, he managed to hold his expression.
Barely.
“I never took them away, Commander Tano.”
“But you did something -”
She sputtered, and it was now that Maul could see that her whole body was shaking.
“Something that-”
Her next thought– that scared them – was so loud that Maul didn’t even need to pry to hear it. He wondered, for a split-moment, if this was what a true and real loyalty looked like.
“Yes, I suppose I did.”
Because it did scare them, he felt it screaming through the strings.
And–
...Oh.
Maul felt the ripple of someone else's enragement. And it wasn’t Commander Tano, who was doing some prying herself from behind the clone; who had pushed himself to his feet far sooner than he should have been able to so he could stand between her and Maul.
It wasn’t him either, or any of the clones, for that matter. All of them were screaming out into the force with fear, confusion, shock.
It was bigger.
Slowly, like lava over a mountain, the realization came dripping down Maul’s mind, and he felt himself smiling wickedly.
It was from Sidious .
Oh, it was from Sidious .
A laugh bubbled out of him, all delirious with delight, just as a squad came running down the halls. All heavy footsteps and yelling words. Maul watched as the clone in front of him pushed the Commander further behind him, even as the lines on her face were evening out with a dozen of realizations.
“Jesse: back .”
One of the squad members say, and then the clone- Jesse, apparently, turns around, keeps his body between Maul and Commander Tano the entire time, and runs to the squad of other troopers.
Maul watches as he collapses the moment he gets behind them, feels the jolt of alarm from several of them, a skirmish of panic. The Captain, though one of the clones which the jolt originated, kept forward steady, and leveled his blaster for Maul’s head.
“Stay where you are."
The Captain said, straight as his aim.
Still slightly overdelighted, grinning with all teeth despite himself, Maul yielded. There would be better times to turn the tables, better opportunities.
Besides, he had already won.
Palpatine; eat revenge.