It's here! For months, the Star Trek piece I had promised is here!

I loved Into Darkness. Not only was the plot, CGI, and acting magnificent, but Benny was in it as a ruthless and cutthroat villain. Naturally, I was charmed by this new take on Khan in the alternate universe. And I swiftly began to scheme...

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Star Trek. Any Star Trek. Just a few DVD sets

WARNING: I don't consider myself a trekkie. I'm really in love with Next Generation and watched it as a kid, and I adore the latest movies set in the alternate universe. But I've yet to marathon the original series, read many of the novels, comix...etc. I will attempt to be as accurate to the universe as possible, either way.

Prologue

-xxx-

He had counted on being pursued by the Enterprise's first officer. However, he'd not counted on being caught. Later, he will attribute this to a lack of will – without his crew, there was no longer an end game to be achieved.

Lieutenant Uhura's repeated attack of his person had left the Augment slightly winded, but otherwise uninjured. A few more stunners had toppled him, allowing for herself and her Vulcan counterpart to take him into custody. He sneers when the doctor McCoy met them in the transport room.

"It appears I may still be of use to you after all, Doctor," he enunciates. McCoy, for his part, merely tightened his jaw. He was already stricken by the loss of his captain and friend. Dealing with Khan is not helping matters. He did not reply, but gestured for a few red shirts to escort the fugitive to medical bay. Two hours and twenty minutes later, Khan is released to his glass chamber in the prison sector once more. Five hours and fifty-four minutes following that, Captain James Tiberius Kirk breathes again. The crew celebrates. Khan fumes.

-XXX-

He is visited by Commander Spock approximately twelve hours after his capture. Seated at the back of his cell, Khan watches the Commander approach with his unnervingly blue eyes crystal clear. Uhura and McCoy accompanies him. Both appear on-edge, whereas the Commander is serene, if a bit stern. The Augment des not bother in approaching the transparent glass-like field that kept him bound to the tiny white chamber, nor did sit up or greet the Starfleet officers. He simply waits.

"Khan Noonien Singh," the Vulcan began calmly in his clipped and professional tone. "You are being held, for the time being, on the Enterprise as she is docked and awaiting repairs at the San Francisco Starfleet station until appropriate accommodations are established for you –"

He doesn't doubt that this translated to a high-security prison vault within Starfleet HQ. They would want to keep him close. He is high-risk, after all, volatile, unpredictable, and…valuable. Marcus had not been the only one to see that.

"—furthermore, Starfleet has acted within its charter in seeking to hold trial to hold you accountable for the lives taken at the Kevlin Memorial Archives, the summit of Starfleet command, Kronos -"

It is quite a list. There were more, of course – a lot more – but Khan does not feel particularly keen to add any more names. Not that it matters.

"—and for that of Captain James T. Kirk of the Enterprise." The Vulcan takes a pause. The dark female, Uhura, shifts beside him. Khan detects a level of comfort between the two that was not standard for colleagues. He has had little interaction with Vulcans since he awoke, but if forced to guess he would say that the pair is … together, in a sense. Perhaps not bonded. But together. Curious.

"You will stand trial," Spock says evenly. "And I do not doubt that in the conclusion of that trial you shall be held fully accountable for all of your actions."

Khan merely gazes back, entirely unphased.

The doctor's hands, which had been crossed, lower into fists. But he does not speak.

Uhura move again, touching the Vulcan on the elbow lightly. He looks to her, brow furrowing slightly. She murmurs something too low for the Augment to catch – surprising, as his hearing was terribly advanced, but perhaps the force field separating them is straining her out. The Vulcan seems to agree, and turns back to the prisoner.

"I also feel it is my duty to inform you that all seventy-two of your crewmen survived and are currently being house in a secure location within Starfleet's San Francisco base," he says lowly. "They are due to be moved shortly, however, to another secure location."

That caught him. Khan didn't move, but he blinked slowly. All at once he seems to drain, chest falling, temper deflating. Inside, his world is crashing apart again. "Alive. Alive. Alive. They're alive," his mind chants. Khan pushes the raw emotion aside – something to be dealt with later – and blinks again, clearing his head. This was good news. This was…hopeful.

With a short nod, the Vulcan makee to take leave, with the lieutenant and doctor following. A deep voice held them back for a moment.

"Thank you," the Augment says. The humans turn back and stare – Uhura with something akin to pity, McCoy disgust. Spock simply inclines his head again. This time, Khan returns the nod.

-XXX-

Two days later, he is transferred. Khan briefly saw flashed of the ocean, the bridge, and the tall silver bay city before he was removed from the world. He savored his last few breaths of unstale, some-what-fresh air quietly.

The high-security holds they'd place him in were in the bottom of a warehouse just off of HQ. It was a secluded location with a basement holding similar to that of Section 31 in London – hidden, high-tech, expansive. The cell he was placed in was by no means new, forcing Khan to wonder just how many had occupied this underground prison. There were multiple cells, a dozen in total, lining the walls of his part of the compound. All were empty, of course. He suspected this to be another facet of Marcus's pet projects, though he could not speculate on cause or who specifically the Fleet Admiral had intended on keeping here.

His new quarters (to term it in the nicest way possible) are spacious. There are something like two rooms, a bathroom and a general living area. A thick metal pallet slides out from one wall creating a bed of sorts, while a table bolted to the floor provides an area to dine with a chair-like structure attached to the wall adjacent. A few PADDs rest in a shelf-nook near the bed. The lights are adjustable. It's relatively comfortable, aside from the transparent wall and the fact that he cannot go anywhere.

The escort of officers disbanded once Khan is released into the cell, leaving him to face Commander Spock once again. He suspects Kirk to be recovering still, else the pompous man would have probably insisted on coming along as well. He'd have his time, soon enough, with the trial and execution. Khan does not balk at the thought of his prospective death. If anything, he welcomes it, though perhaps not entirely gladly.

Spock regards the Augment with liquid eyes. "Starfleet has installed the most advance security measures," he tells the prisoner bluntly. "Any attempts at escape would be most futile and unwise. Everyone in your security detail has been told to shoot you on site should you be discovered where you do not belong. And phasers will not be set to stun. While we are uncertain if the setting that are fatal to a human would succeed in killing you, we have little doubt that they would be adept at disabling you at least briefly."

If Vulcans could sound any colder, Spock would have reached zero on the kelvin scale.

"There will be a crew on duty twenty-fours-seven to see to your needs," Spock continues. "And periodically members of Starfleet's Justice Department to collect your statement as well as a psychoanalysis."

"Why are you telling me this, Commander?" the Augment asks quietly. "We both know your Vulcan sensibilities loathe repetition and I am more than observant enough to detect that my chances of escaping are slim –" Here he bared his teeth briefly. "—at best. So…why?"

The Commander is silent. Then –

"I merely wish to remind you that despite the lives you have taken, despite how much of Starfleet you have disable…we have won, Khan Noonien Singh." The Vulcan met the Augment's eyes, hate pulsing. Spock's human capacity for emotion was ruling him. He does not especially mind. He allows it. He accepts the hate. "And you shall pay for your crimes. Eternally, if the courts allow it."

With that, the Vulcan spun on his heels and turned away.

-XXX-

Boredom was mind-numbing. Excepting the PADDs, Khan has little distraction in his new holdings, which drives him to near madness. They do not trust him with a comm system or any other computer. He has no other reading besides the PADDs, which contained nothing more than a few classic fictional text and a brief history of the world from the Eugenics Wars to modern times. Curious, he searches for mention of his name, and found a brief paragraph outlining his reign of the lands from the Middle East and greater Asia. But there was little else.

He is driven to think, and there was no greater misery. Khan had been designed to be a superior thinking creature; it was his greatest gift, his mind. Yet, given recent events and the fact that he had been in a comatose state for the past three hundred years, there wasn't much to think on that particularly pleased the Augment. If anything, the silence and time spent dwelling within his own thoughts only served to anger him – just has it had during his time of imprisonment under Marcus, before the Fleet Admiral realized Khan potential and gave him a measured amount of freedom.

The only thing serving to cool the Augment was the knowledge that his people were safe. Moderately safe. They had not been destroyed in the destruction of the Vengeance. This consoled him. While he might die for his attempts to win their freedom, they might still find life again. There was hope, anyways.

He felt little guilt for the lives he claimed in his attack of San Francisco. They had driven him to it. He had adequately expressed to Kirk his level of devotion for his crew. The retaliation could be no surprise.

Yet, there was some form of regret that dwindled within the Augment. True, he had been designed and bred to be a machine of death, to do what those inferior to him could not, to take action. Despite this, he did not relish any loss of life. To do so would be…callous. While he wasn't quite human, the Augment did identify as mostly-human, and therefore, ingrained with a sense of morality. Albeit, one he could drop at will.

"Weakness," Khan thought. Having reflected on the matter enough, he turns to meditation. Anything to make the hours pass.

-XXX-

This is planned out to be 24 chapters in total, and will span across the timeline of both movies, with inclusion of Enterprise's crew. The next chapter will, hopefully, have a little more meat to it.

Question: Is "augment" to be capitalized? Is it like saying someone is French or Asian? Or is it like describing someone's other traits, like deafness or bald?

Feedback is the best thing ever! I'd greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts! Please review!