Disclaimer: Star Trek © Gene Roddenberry

A/N: Unbeta'd, so I apologize for my English. It is a second language. Unintentional refs have become the norm, so kudos to you if you get what film I had on while writing this.

Update 16.08.13: Read through, and realized I uploaded the wrong, unedited version. Fixed!

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The Bleeding Machine

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"Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate."

—AM, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (Harlan Ellison)

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Khan awakens.

Screaming.

It takes five men to hold him down and another five to sedate him, their rough hands gloved with corpse coloured rubber. Vibrant blue light shines above him. No windows. It's a laboratory, just like the one he was made in. The walls are in the same colour as the gloves. White and white and white. Khan hates white.

His hope of a better world dies under fists and fulmination. Nothing has changed. Humanity still wishes to use him for their own selfish ends. But that's not why he's screaming.

He's screaming because he's forgotten.

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(This is what he understands: His name is Khan and he fights for his family. He is a genetically engineered super soldier and he is inside a machine.)

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He wakes up again, couched in gears and wreathed in wires. He's connected to dozens of machines and feels like one of them; a machine made to only function like mankind wishes him to. Sedatives crawl underneath his skin like maggots, and he slips in and out of consciousness. Shadows move back and forth in front of him, poking him with all sorts of hellish devices.

When he hits, he's put in a straightjacket. When he kicks, his feet are chained to the hospital bed. When he bites, a human muzzle is put on him. Khan spends weeks eating and breathing through tubes. Once, he catches fragments of a discussion.

"But Admiral, his bl—blood, it's got amazing healing abilities, we could s—save lives!"

"Quiet. No one will hear about this, understand? Or you lose your job. He's to be used for one thing, and one thing only."

In silence, he hates.

He constantly wonders if his crew didn't survive the awakening like he did, and it echoes in his crazy dreams. The past he remembers is blurred, like a daydream, or a fever. He remembers a unity of misery and melancholy in white, shining porcelain labs, dead light and the smell of disinfectant, oil and blood. Not much else. It doesn't matter if his memory loss is a result of the new devices or his time in the stasis, both leaving his identity shattered. He realizes he isn't supposed to have an identity. What is identity to a soldier, and much less, a machine? Because he is a machine, albeit a bleeding one, to be terminated when deemed useless.

There's a hole inside his chest that can't be filled.

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When he opens his eyes, a uniformed man stands above him. The light make him appear as a faceless clad. Monitors hum monotonously, their wires connected to Khan, keeping him drugged and weak.

"Here rests the monster." A monster, a machine. "I think an introduction is in order. I'm Admiral Marcus. You are, from this moment on, John Harrison. And you have caused quite the problems for my staff." He pulls forth a photo. "She has two artificial fingers thanks to you."

He slowly lights an cigar, the lighter's flame is reflected in his steel coloured eyes.

"They say we love what destroys us." The smoke disappears in the white. "War is destruction, too. But killing millions to save billions... That isn't destruction, that's salvation." He is no different from other men. There's a desire for destruction in his hard voice, marching the one in his eyes. Steel is uncompromising and puts a barrier between saying and doing. "War is inevitable, and someone must prepare us. Why not me? I'll gladly revive something like you to prevent the extinctions of our species. After all, what is a machine without a purpose?"

'And why would I help?' Khan's icy gaze asks.

The admiral puts the cigar out in Khan's knee, rubbing ash into genetically augmented flesh.

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The next time he stirs, he's in a small, white cell, monitors gone. As soon as his feet hit the floor, the doors slide open. Six soldiers and a scientist makes an entrance. "Please come with me, Mr. Harrison," the scientist says. 'Me', not 'us'. The soldiers don't count; minds inexistent and lives expendable.

Khan is blindfolded, his hands handcuffed, and pushed forward on shaky feet. After an uncertain amount of time, the blindfold is ripped off.

He's in a hall full of capsules, guided through a path between them. His crew! He sees all the familiar faces, remembering their names, hopes and dreams. The hole in his chest widens and blackens and chills. Animal Marcus stands at the end, accompanied by his own share of soldiers. The rest stand behind the capsules, covering about a tenth of them. Those men are not scientists. Those are men who score above 72 points in the Milgram Obedience Test.

Khan tenses. "To unfreeze them you must go a long and complicated procedure."

Marcus raises both eyebrows, uncaring. "Open the capsules by any means possible." And so the soldiers do, with rough hands, rough hands and crowbars. "Insides expendable."

They hold him back. The drugs still linger inside him, tiring him. Yet he cannot tear his gaze from the mass murder of his unsuspecting family members. Their bodies cannot handle the change. In their brief their moments of life, their pupils dart hysterically around, landing on Khan. Silent screaming begins. ('Where am I what is happening Khan why are you not saving us why do I feel like I'm dying—') Unlike theirs, his screaming is loud and raspy like a broken computer.

The men move to the next batch of capsules. Marcus holds up a hand. They halt, backs straightening, awaiting the next command. "There were eighty-four," the admiral says, "Now there are seventy-two."

"Seventy-two," Khan breathes.

Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

(Where do these strange words come from? Khan doesn't remember.)

"Will you obey, now?" No response. Khan promised himself and his followers, his friends, his family to never to obey the will of man ever again. Sighing like a disappointed father, Marcus gestures to the soldiers.

Fear swallows his resistance; swallows Khan. "I'll— I'll do it! I'll help you win your war," John Harrison shakily says. The hand lowers again and prevents another slaughter. John exhales and falls to his knees. When he rises, his face is expressionless like an angel carved in stone.

Inside, Khan churns and hisses like a sleeping volcano, helpless.

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The white cell has become... John's. He looks down, wearing a foreign outfit, disguising him as one of them. They should know better. He might wear a human suit, but something else lives inside.

All the information he's gotten is a piece of paper with a three-lettered word: LIE. And when a female enters his room and thinks he's suffered from severe amnesia, he lies without effort. "Yes, you have loads to catch up to!" she replies, shrilly and bouncy. Already he loathes her. "Let me show you around, Mr. Harrison sir..."

John listens to her explanations while following her through the building. Section 31. An officially nonexistent organization that handles the dirt smudges within Starfleet. Hidden in the Archive in London, England.

Workers scramble around him like insects. He contemplates them. Most spend their lives in the same anthill. The same road, the same office, the same city. Aimless. Meaningless. Wiggling, limbed maggots with teeth in one end and an anus in the other, feeding and breeding in the same rotten carcass, the same bleeding machine, the same dying world. Oblivious. The more savage part of him longs for blowing up the anthill.

The worst part? He is John Harrison, a top agent and technological genius, a worker in Section 31, a wheel inside the machine.

Khan thinks: 'I need to get out of here. I need to. Get. Out.'

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John is ordered to learn and observe.

To determine his uses they take blood tests, IQ tests, constructs his psychological profile (ongoing) and much more. John must live up to their expectations and move with the puppet strings since seventy-two lives dangle in thinner strings around him. Designing weapons and analyzing enemies come natural to him.

He effortlessly blends in with the insects and adapts to the age. Through the ages war—the thing he knows, breathes, lives—remains as the world changes, cavemen's sticks and stones replaced by soldiers' guns and grenades, ships' torpedoes and bombs. Same concept: Don't die for your side but make the other son of a bitch die for his. Ironically, the original John Harrison was a famous clock maker, and John handles war like clockwork.

John is given access to countless libraries. It doesn't take long for him used to virtual chapters folding out all around him like a map. There was a time when knowledge burned like a fire in his veins. But that fire is dead, leaving only ashes. The bright, pale light in Section 31 kills all the shadows but him. He is a stain on a clean scrubbed surface, knowing every dark secret in the history of men. As John's fingertips roam over touch sensitive screens, he schemes an escape plan, researching important Starfleet officials in the process.

He is sick of war. He will bring about its end.

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"...and how does losing awareness of all the technologic advancements that have happened in the last three hundred years make you feel?" Mrs. Carlson asks, hired to construct his psychological profile. He constructed hers when she spoke for the first time, concluding that Mrs. Carlson's believes more in god than anything else, and that god is herself.

They might have his body shackled, but they'll never restrain his mind. 'If I were to grab that pen and jab it into your brain, would it still kill you?' "There is nothing to talk about."

The psychiatrist scribbles something in her notebook. "Tell me about your childhood."

John blinks. There's a blank space in his brain where his childhood ought to be. Was his mind downloaded into a reconstructed, enhanced patchwork body? Or was he birthed into a box of cables and liquid nutrition along with hundreds of others like him? Or is he a product of genetically superior males and females forced to breed in human stables? 'No super soldier or machine has ever been a child.' "There is nothing to tell."

"I am here to help you, Mr. Harrison. Please allow me to enter your mind."

"My mind is not a pleasant place." John decides a new strategy is in order. Manipulation is another skill he's mastered. "But if you wish to enter..."

Mrs. Carlson leans forward in her seat. Her intrigue almost smoothens out the old, flabby flesh around her eye sockets. But John can count each disgusting wrinkle, each one of mankind's blatant imperfections.

John drops the sophistication and allows the monster to rule. He strips himself of the human suit and becomes war personified, uncivilized and savage, Khan. War speaks, and watches as intrigue becomes horror. She cracks in the middle of the descriptions of how to interrogate children. Abruptly, she rises from her chair, one hand in front of her mouth and another one on her belly. 'Ah.' "Are you expecting?" Khan—not John—asks, imagining a screeching parasite hatching out of her, wobbly and hairless. "If so, I could describe how to remove it," his smile falls like a ton of bricks, "or I could do it right here... right now..."

This is when she truly runs like a little girl from a monster, high heels clicking fanatically against the floor, followed by the sound of vomiting from the lavatory.

Lazily, he circles her desk, skimming through the notebook. He replaces words like trust issues and hostile to taciturn and antisocial. Rather a reserved freak than a paranoid killing machine. She's still retching into the toilet when he leaves the office, mental images of his stories keeping it going.

Later, John meets the same idiot who showed him around in Section 31. "What happened to your new psychiatrist?" she asks.

"I scared it away," he answers. "Let's hope the next can do better."

The next day, his ninth psychiatrist has to be talked down from a roof. When the twentieth ends up blabbering in a hospital after a mental breakdown, they stop pestering him, and leave him to his studies.

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The assembly hall's light dims, and so does the chitchat from the audience seats.

The stage is shadowed, allowing a dark figure to pick up threads of discussions and effortlessly ball it in to figure out their life stories. He knows people like he knows himself, and analyzes the recruits in a heartbeat. Bright. Knowledge hungry. Antisocial, often. Easily controlled and moulded into working for the greater good, too curious to miss such a chance. Loyal to their work and thus loyal to their masters.

The insects settle at last. Stage lights blaze above them, killing all shadows but the one that has learnt enough to function in their society.

"My name is John Harrison," he icily says, "and I'll be the Dreadnought Project's head in these upcoming months, the project you signed up to partake in." Time to pick out the frailest creatures. "I will be straightforward: Firstly, I do not tolerate errors. Secondly, I will never praise you. Lastly... complicate our mission with moral dilemmas and I'll have your position severely degraded. If you are a failure, I will tell you to scram. Are we clear?"

A bemused murmur rises from the crowd—though most reply with a wary "Yes sir"—and some even leave, glaring at him like they can't be replaced. John wastes no time on those dysfunctional without confirmations of talents they should already be confident in.

"You are chosen as the best and brightest amongst your kin. Do not disappoint me." First then does 3D blueprints appear over the recruits' heads, showing warships and weapons they've never seen before. Gasps fill the assembly room.

"This is no ordinary project. There is no going back." Then, Khan explains. The recruits are too hungry for knowledge to notice that he's reading from a script. In one of the reasoning segments it mentions protecting their families and he chokes, coughing to conceal it while inwardly cursing Marcus, and continues. The bastard wasn't happy to find out that psychoanalyzing John is impossible.

"...I will expect you to meet up at 05:35 tomorrow morning. Lack of doing so will be noted."

Khan is absent. John Harrison does not reach inside to touch the ire that boils under the cold exterior that cages the monster. He does not dare.

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White and white and white.

Seething, John studies to his new office. It is stripped of personality, 4x4 meters, soundproof, and as disgustingly white as the rest of Section 31. Through a glass wall, he can see the recruits being guided to assignments fit their strengths, peering curiously at him, an animal on display. The armed guards stationed outside his office do not help.

Various assignments pop up on his computer. John sets himself on autopilot, and so, it begins.

Little by little, the outline of a warship like no other is finished, regularly updated as the other little computers—dry humans living dry lives—work. Some of them come into his office to show him their finishes draft. Like he warned, he isn't kind. He throws out conclusion after conclusion ("I actually finish theorizing before I speak," he curtly tells them) and expects them to follow, tearing their ideas to shreds as they research something mankind hasn't focused so strongly on in decades.

After a week, they hate him almost as much as he hates them.

Oddly enough, the hatred doesn't lessen the admiration they have for him. No matter how many times he tells them "Useless", they still come back with something new until he's satisfied.

Can one be repulsed and puzzled at the same time? Apparently so. Humans are narcissistic, greedy, malicious, arrogant, deceptive, envious, pathetic little shits. They make him belch. Breaking such a flawed race isn't hard, but making them stay broken is another case. No matter how hard one hammers them, they still crawl off like cockroaches. If he axes one in half, will both parts wiggle like worms' do? He enjoys their little power plays, crawling over one another to show who the best worker is, seeking his approval. He sets them up against each other. It's refreshing, and ultimately, meaningless.

Once in a while, he presents his flawless strategies to old military men. "We attack here and here and here, destroying their natural resources." He easily manoeuvres the floating map in front of them. "It is wise to do so early on. Should the war last, you can starve them out by administrating a blockade. If military bases nearby are alerted, you'll send a team to slow them down."

"Wouldn't that kill the team?"

"For the greater good, of course." 'Don't worry, old man. You'll be sitting comfortingly in your billion dollar summerhouse while young insects die on planets far away.' He quotes Marcus, "A million may die, but it'll save billions." They nod in agreement. Idiots. None of them knows war like he does. They are digging their own graves. John is just pointing out where the best earth is.

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Sleep deprivation. Uncreative but effective, simultaneously weakening and controlling him. They cannot openly torture him, not when there's people dependant on his guidance, but they can extend his work hours.

His mind is an unpleasant place, and so are his nightmares.

(Men and women's faces pressed against the cracked glass, blood pouring out through the cracks like an ocean of wine, reaching up to his chest, threatening to drown him, '...why are you not saving us Khan why do I feel like I'm dying—')

As always, the madras is drenched with sweat. This particular night, soldiers shake him awake. "Admiral Marcus expects you in his office."

John is half-carried half-dragged down the hall, drowsy and exhausted. He's shoved into a room and wrestled into a chair and a bunch of papers are slammed into the office table in front of him.

"What's this?!" Marcus demands.

All the drowsiness disappears like smoke. John reads through the papers. He scowls when he finds the alleged complication: the automation of warships. "The lesser crew, the lesser errors. You can use the economical boost to upgrade the torpedoes."

"Machines have problems, too."

"Then the faults lie within the programmer, not the program."

Marcus massages his temple. Stress triggers a migraine, and the migraine keeps the anger in check. "It'd leave countless jobless."

"An attack from the Klingons would leave countless dead." The only reason John presses the issue is because he couldn't stand to see wormy little fingers dirty his machine with disgusting human moisture. "Hasn't Earth prospered to a point where a little unemployment doesn't kill a nation?"

"Answers will be demanded."

"History is written by winners." Is it bitter, bitter. Had the files not mentioned him, would he have been free now? No longer condemned as a useful criminal three hundred years later? "And you do intent to win this war, don't you?"

Marcus scowls. "Don't take that tone with me, son. You should be grateful for food and for a warm bed. Hell, you should be bowing to me since I allow your existence. You're an artificially created slave. Act like it, machine. Dismissed."

Later that night, he awakens by being shoved out his bed and onto the hard cold floor. Marcus has sent soldiers to teach him a lesson through beating him senseless, claiming it's for exercise. They hate him for no other reason than being told (programmed) to do so. The only time they punctuate his skin is when his head hit the wall, red smearing the white, like wet paint. It also runs into his eyes, and down his cheeks, like tears.

'It is better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven,' he thinks shortly before blacking out. 'And I will make this into a true Hell.'

The next morning, the stain is gone.

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Tenseness is forged into him, tenseness that assures he's always ready to tackle an unseen enemy. John sits with his back straight in the big office, finishing a review of the last month's progress and discussing strategic places for a military base on inhabited places on Kronos, drinking coffee with the admiral. It'd look friendly hadn't Marcus had a dozen guards making sure John won't break his cup against the desk and use a shard to slit the admiral's throat. He hates their fickle selfish little minds. That's why when he kills he always aims for the head.

"...Lastly, I'd advice firing Margret Rasmussen. She has been performing rather pitiful attempts at seducing me this last week, interfering with my work."

"Done." It is no victory. Marcus wants no human drooling over a machine. "Dismissed."

"Admiral Marcus," John inquires before leaving, "I wish to leave." It is stupid. But the hate poisons his insides like a terrible illness, forcing him to try.

Metallic laughter—John can taste it and it tastes like blood—echo around the room, bouncing of the walls. The mindless guards join in.

From a certain angle, the cup of coffee is deep and round and black.

"What, to visit the city? A war machine has nowhere to go during peacetime."

He ought to put a hole in the admiral's head. But the feeling of bone and brain crunching underneath his fingertips, pulpy blood oozing between them, would be far more satisfying.

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John considers religion. Belief in divine powers. Metaphors. Gods are what humans worship, it be a person or a place, a hope or a dream, an elephant man or a television show. An answer to their needs. Humans are as curious as they are selfish. The most popular and widespread religion's answer is a god who created them in his image (and he was created in theirs). Self worship. To find the answer to their existence, they need only look in a mirror.

"You wish to name the first warship of the Dreadnought class after a part in a book?" John clarifies.

"Not just a book; the book," the man proudly says. He starts reading from it, "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

"Also," the woman accompanying him begins, "Vengeance is a legacy name for warships. Intimidating, don't you think?"

"You don't want to know what I think."

"No, they don't, considering your poor judgement." Khan recognizes the antique cigar smoke and smug aura. The scientists bow low to the admiral. "Both of them have decent points. Ever heard the saying walk softly, carry a big stick? Vengeance gives out the message that the Federation ain't afraid to go to war to preserve peace. And there are extraterrestrial races that have been acted aggressive against us."

The volcano inside John convulses. . "You condemn the Klingons for crimes not yet committed?"

"Out," Marcus orders the scientists in a neutral tone. The woman sends him a pitying look when she leaves and Khan bars his teeth in response. With them, he could rip out a man's throat. Marcus clicks a button on a device he carries and the windows blacken. Three soldiers march in, two holding Khan's arms, the third starting to hit him. "That was stupid, son. Y'know there's bigger things at stake."

A crack widens. "Vengeance on them for existing?" It isn't about Klingons anymore. "You wish to stage it. Make them attack you, and then take the glory for preparing. Vengeance... Do you think yourself a god, Marcus?" The men force him to kneel.

"The women or the men?" Marcus asks. Khan frowns, then it hits him, and he bristles. "Which of them do you want to see go through the same procedure as the eight-four? It could be a surprise. I'll send my men, and they'll bring back the bodies, if there's anything to bring."

"No! Don't kill them, please just. Don't. Kill them."

Marcus raises his foot. Khan prepares himself. The boot collides with his skull. "This time, I am merciful. The genius of your design saves your little crew of criminals. But I warn you. If you step out of line again... I will make you choose which one to burn, and I'll make you watch." Marcus steps off. "The ship will be named Vengeance. Go back to work."

Khan curls up on the floor, brokenly whispering "no" again and again.

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Vengeance is the prototype for warships yet to come.

It is perfect. The sleek, black exterior is a dark contrast to the white, reasoned with words like camouflage and warfare, but in truth thanks to Khan's meddling. Black is good. Black is quiet, like death.

Yet as he watches the progress on his work, he feels nothing. In a few months, Vengeance will be finished.

To keep him in line, Marcus arranges a visit to for him. Under close superstition, John spends time with his frozen crew. He presses his forehead to each and every capsule. The glass is so cold he feels a wind in his soul. "Family," he whispers. "Family, family, family."

"Your former family, should you do anything wrong," Marcus says.

"Machines don't commit errors." 'Not like mankind does. Creating me was the first. Waking me up was the second.'

But soon, his usefulness will expire. John Harrison will expire. Tiny pupils dart around, a crazy calm taking over. A cornered creature is a dangerous one. An idea is born. He knows what he must do. Yes. Yes. And he will be so, so careful. He will devote himself to them, missing meals and sleep, blackmailing and bribing employees. He must ensure their safety.

They're the only thing he has left in this rotten world.

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"...The boss is such a freak. He never smiles, he never listens, and have you looked into his eyes? It's like looking into an empty house..."

"...He's like a living computer. I've seen drones more emotional..."

"...Sol said he was completely unreadable, and her PhD thesis was a study on body language..."

Idiots, talking so loud. Had they been on the real battlefield, John would've thrown a grenade over to them and watched as their bodies became overcooked, breathing in the acrid smell of burnt flesh.

Admiral Marcus ordered him to keep up appearances, and so he sits in the cafeteria, a book on quantum mechanics in his right hand and a cup of coffee in his left. What a waste of time.

No one ever notices him. When he's gone no one will miss him.

Suddenly, a guard tells somebody about his dying offspring. It awakens something awful in him, and he shatters the cup without noticing.

No matter. It will be replaced.

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John is working on a new training program free of compassion and comradeship when Admiral Marcus stumbles in. He stinks of alcohol. The strong sort. Perhaps it's stress, or guilt. "You wanna know why you're a godforsaken a machine?" John turns around. "I read your file. Your creators strived for perfection; an Übermensch; a super soldier. In that process, they removed everything that makes you human. Compassion, empathy, guilt... I hate your eyes. Those dull, icy eyes, always looking down at me, like I'm inferior, like I'm a bug that needs to be fixed."

'I want to rip out your eyes too, Admiral,' Khan whispers inside John Harrison. 'You do not deserve them.'

"I bet you feel powerful, with the super strength and the tactful mind, but lemme tell you something. Power doesn't come from strength or smarts... It comes from lies, lots of lies. When you got people agreeing to what they know in their hearts ain't true you got 'em by the balls. I could have your crewmembers killed in their sleep and nobody would care They'd all lie for me, because they believe in me, and those who don't still know that it'll all fall apart if I go. That... is power. You'd do well to remember that next time you look at me."

First when Marcus leaves, Khan speaks.

"Let us see what your lies can do against my fists, Admiral."

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Humans are destructive. This does not irk him. What irks him is their unwillingness to admit it.

But it's only natural for them to give in, eventually. Soldiers beat him regularly now, coming at irregular hours to mess up his sleep schedule. Bored men with bottled up anger. But this time it is different. Harsher. Uncaring about how a ruined machine corrupts the system, slowing it with ruined cogs and switches, making sparks and smoke, spitting oil and blood.

They've made arrangements. It's clear when a knife glints, the surveillance cameras don't flicker, and the men bring forth all sorts of devices. "Max here has a girlfriend who works under you. Y'know you made her cry and told her that suicide was a reasonable solution just because she asked for help a few times?"

'Twenty-six times. Imbecile.'

They start beating him, using electric weapons that make his body convulse. The knife is thrown away, unable to properly pierce through his rubberlike skin. They use John as a punching bag. It is nothing compared to the quiet ache deep inside him.

(Khan considers death. Born from oblivion, labour, and then go back into oblivion. Meaningless, hadn't it been for his crew. He will survive for them. They're all he has left.)

It comes to John's attention that he cannot breathe. There are hands on his throat. It also comes to John's attention that he's dying. The man suffocating him has heterochromia iridum; one eye greenish and the other... in the colour of steel. "You're just fucking human like the rest of us!"

John Harrison is like them. Human. Insect like. Pathetic. Khan is not.

Khan is war, who is pure and hateful and bloodthirsty and who never bothers to wash away the stains.

War opens its blood drooling mouth and locks it over the man's neck, barely missing the jugular. Crunch! Then he yanks and spits out pieces of the man. The soldier crawls backwards, screaming and wiggling like the worm he is. Khan calmly walks after him, smiling maliciously with salty red dribbling down his chin. His friends run off to help, or just run in general, pure self-worship moving them. Unchanged, Khan lifts the man up after his collar and starts slamming him against the wall, his feet dangling midair, gurgling.

Then Khan hears footsteps coming down the hall. Tilts his head. Stops.

The soldier in his grip slowly opens his eyes. First the greenish one and then the other—

"Stop right there!" Red dots appear at the back of Khan's head. "If you move we'll shoot!"

—and Khan dives his fingers deep into the eye socket, twisting and tearing the grey one out.

(Literature lies. It makes no pop! noise, but more of a ripping sound, like when cutting in tough meat.)

It takes fifteen tranquiller shots before he drops. But the eye stays locked in his fist, impossible to open.

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"Jesus Christ."

The cell is smaller than his usual one. Whiter. Still no windows. John is in a straightjacket and chained to the wall with duranium metal. The muzzle muffles his voice. "He was cutting of my access to oxygen, Admiral. Had I not defended myself, I'd be dead." The nurses didn't dare wipe off the gore around his mouth. He feels the eye pressed against his sweaty palm.

"Defending yourself? You ripped his goddamn eye out. Jesus fucking Christ..." Surprisingly, Marcus isn't angry. He chuckles bitterly, almost madly, like he's confirmed something. Has the quest for the greater good destroyed his mind?

People are not gods, after all, nor are they ideas. Even Khan, a supposed Übermensch, struggles underneath the weight of the name.

"What happened to them?"

"The one you attacked is currently being operated. The others were given strong amnesiacs and moved to another section. Given a raise, even." There are bruises on John's body, purple and blue, like a smeared painting. "Attacking you took balls. They did quite a number on you."

"You saw." An observation, not a question. "You did not interfere."

"The boys would've saved you. Instead you had to go feral."

"It..." John clicks his tongue, "was an accident. He was killing me. My instinct accted accordingly. Did you not call me a mindless killing machine?"

"Yeah. I guess machine do commit mistakes, huh?"

John's teeth gnashes against each other. In a moment of tire and hatred, a ridicules statement leaves his lips, "Then maybe I'm not a machine after all."

The silence that follows is like a thread, dry and brittle, threatening to snap anytime.

Marcus' expression is blank, as if someone has shattered the wall of glass and a wall of steel rose behind it. But it isn't completely unreadable. No. It's just not a thing John is used to. The silence snaps. The shackles tear into John's flesh. A fire is resurrected inside him.

"Don't pity me!" he chokes. "Don't pity me!" he cries. "Don't pity me!" he screams.

The eyeball falls from John's hand. It bounces, and then rolls, stopping in front of the onlookers' feet. The iris is in the same colour as Admiral Marcus'. A soldier promptly vomits all over the floor.

"Clean him up," Marcus says, vacant eyed, "and get him back to work."

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A year.

365 days.

525 949 minutes.

31 556 926 seconds.

in Hell. John sees them move around him, the bugs, and moves with them, and Khan wants to squash them flat. Nobody cares for him, nobody notices. He'll be another insect crushed under the weight of the machine. He can't take it anymore.

'I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE.'

'I NEED. TO GET. OUT.'

.

.

Restless, restless, restless.

Any day now, and they need him no longer. He'll be deleted from all memory cores, and gone from the world. Clocks aren't the only thing ticking. Bombs do it as well: the ones he has placed his crew into. It was an act of desperation. He had to smuggle them out somehow. The torpedoes were the answers. Another answer laid in the restricted section full of confiscated items. Khan had found a formula on transwarp beaming. Curious scientists helped him make the device, claiming it was for Starfleet's defence. Soon, he'll upgrade portable transwarp device that can take them all to safety. He can do it. He can save them.

But then it all shatters, like glass.

John hears something. He freezes.

In the creak of the door stands a human. She runs as soon as he sees her. Like an ant's antennae alert the hive, her voice will tell them about his treachery and when it'll reach Marcus...

(It does not occur to him that not everybody hungers for his misery.)

He is a strategist. Options appear in his head like on a computer screen and none includes saving them. For them, an apocalypse begins: the destruction of their kin. The first impulse is to hold vigil over his crew. Then he sees the face of the man reflected in the glass that disappears as the torpedo's lid glide over he closes his eyes, he sees their ends written on his eyelids.

His family is dead. John is dead. Khan is—

'I shall become war, unforgiving, vengeful war.'

Was there ever a chance for him to be something else?

("I am... Khan.")

The screaming from his nightmares is building inside his mind. He locks his hands around his ears, anything to block out the horrible wheezing, maddening noise of screaming. It takes him a heartbeat to realize they're inside his head. They'll be with him always and forever, no longer just in his dreams. With trembling fingers, he grabs his things. A portable computer, a trench coat, a wallet he pickpocketed from an annoying guard, and the prototype transwarp device. He is forced to escape alone.

A black figure bolts through the Archive, unapologetic as he trips office workers so that paper flies everywhere. It is an oddly quiet escape. No alarms, no gunfire, just the screaming inside his head. He is a shadow of a shadow with death blooming in its footsteps. He died with his family and will march over dead bodies and crush bones to dust to get his vengeance.

Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

(Khan still doesn't remember where the words come from.)

But perhaps the girl never the tale of the dark, broken man crying over the capsules. Perhaps the light blended her. Perhaps she didn't belong to Section 31. Perhaps she simply forgot.

"How human of him," no one says, "that it was all thanks to a mistake."

.

.

It rains thick, hot drops, like tears.

The streetlights on each side of him make his shadows seem like flapping wings. He runs until his feet can carry him no longer, and collapses in a Red Light district, a place where the authorities haven't bothered to remove the litter. Khan finds an old hotel pressed in between ramshackle buildings.

"One room. One night." He empties the wallet's contents on the owner's desk. "If anyone asks..."

"You're not here. Gotcha." She counts the dollars. Cash is still used here. "Take Room 3."

The floorboards creak underneath his boots.

The room looks like it hasn't been cleaned in the last century. The wallpaper is in the colour of urine. In the windowsill, there are dead plants and two ashtrays filled to the brink. Khan takes comfort in the dirt. Anything but white.

He unzips the bag, taking forth the PC. According its tracking device he hacked long ago, he's in the Marianas Trench. He goes over the information he's gathered, a scheme unfolding in his head, until sleep catches up with him. He prepares the bed, the sheets caked with dirt. Dust flies everywhere.

His dreams are crazier than usual, flying over monochrome fields, until the blur clears and the sound changes for the worse. In white rooms, torpedo lids are slid off and survivors reach up to the blending light like newborns, only to have a spear stabbed through their skulls. Their eyeballs slide upwards. Someone twists the blade. They feel it. Thick, blackish blood seeps out of their mouths, nostrils, and eye sockets, sluggishly pouring onto the porcelain floor. Admiral Marcus stands above it all like a god, no, wait, there's a reflection of someone in the glass and it isn't Marcus', it's—

Khan awakens.

He touches his face. His cheeks are wet. But he doesn't feel sad, just empty.

There is only dirt, and dust, and a cold that threatens to freeze him solid. Little else.

He knows what he must do.

.

.

To the man, he is an angel descended from Heaven.

Khan stands outside the Archive. It's risky, but he needs to hear the insects scream to drown out the screaming in his own head. Anything to stop the screaming. Thomas Harewood gives him one last glance, the silvery ring—a dissolvable antimatter container—glinting on his finger. Khan can understand his motivation: family. Had he not sacrificed himself if there was a chance?

Maybe his friends and family will console themselves that their Thomas was forced to do it or manipulated by a rogue madman. But Thomas Harewood looks at Khan and smiles. His eyes are clear.

A father dies and a daughter lives.

A fair trade.

.

.

Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

(He remembers, standing outside the wreckage of Section 31 among smoke and paper, inhaling the scent of a war mankind started and a war he will end.)

It was the Bible.