Disclaimer: Star Trek © Gene Roddenberry
A/N: Practising poetic writing. Apologizing beforehand.
This is the final instalment in the MACHINE trilogy (Turbine Womb, The Bleeding Machine and this one), but as always, can be read separately.
.
Verflucten Übermenschen
.
.
An explosion of bright, white light prickles behind Kirk's twitching eyelids.
It triggers a panic—a madness—that surfaces, disappears, and surfaces again. His head hurts as if he had a hangover. It discolours his thoughts, like a grainy scene cut from old film stock, or the insides of a whiskey bottle.
Kirk remembers a battle.
(Death breathes scorching kisses against crashing ships. Parachutes fall like feathers, or prayers, and men like embers, blackening orange, burning alive. The engines' wails resemble a bloodcurdling vivisection done by demon typewriters and fax machines. Ash in his hair, smoke in his mouth, ozone in his nose. Kirk screams and there is no sound.)
The silence is deafening.
In his current location, it smells pungently of antiseptic, in vain trying to blanket the desperation cauterized into the atmosphere. He's a tortured, eyeless blob, soaking up the cold from the hard surface he lies on.
An eternity later a dark face blocks the white supernova above Kirk.
"I will destroy you."
Kirk could recognise that low, hollow voice anywhere.
"Go fu—fuck yourself, Khan." His mouth tastes like a pasty sponge, like something has slid down his throat and died.
Khan leans closer. "I merely want you to know that you are helpless. Not just weaker than me. Not just failing in determination. But helpless."
Spider legs extract themselves from behind his head with the sound of sharpening knives. They consist of several thin, silvery bits, varying in size from 5 to 20 centimetres, clattering loudly when moving. Steel against steel. Dark fluid ooze from their syringe ends. The limbs erect, only to disappear from his narrow view. What follows are sensations of needle pinches, and Kirk has a realization whose chill eclipses the area's temperature:
Some of those things are inside him.
So is the substance from the syringes, leading it directly into his body. It is no paranoia, no madness, but... "Bl—Blood." Khan's blood. "Why?"
"I saw a darkness in you," Khan says, "and I wish to bring that darkness forth."
The second realization him brings forth an ice age inside him.
"Never."
"But the transformation has already begun." Kirk tries to speak but is silenced with a finger pressed against his lips. Khan's head splits sideways with a smile that goes from ear to ear. Within him the spider legs move, screaming like rusty hinges, laughing.
Kirk bites.
Khan does not move away until he hears the crunch of bone.
"Ah. You bit through my hand. Fascinating." He studies it, and then smears it across his face, a blur of red and black and white. Kirk has just proven his point, it seems. "Now sleep. Like I did."
His grin is the last thing Kirk sees.
.
.
Blind. Bound. Bare.
Kirk's surroundings move into focus, contrast lowering, footage no longer washed out. Above him a ganglion of pipes reside, long and thin and grey. He lies on a table in a pale round box.
Sticky moisture resides on his body, and so, dread pools in his stomach.
Warily, he reaches out to touch it. Like the silence, dry and ancient, the binds snap apart. His fingertips brush along his exposed spine, and the sensation of cold metal makes the hair on the back of his neck rise. Rings have been inserted into his vertebrae. Quivering tubes go out from them, connecting him to the machinery above. A part of the whole.
Kirk bristles. Gags. Vomits a thin, murky juice. It dribbles past his chin and onto the floor.
(It's on his skin, in his hair, lips, tongue, teeth, inside him.)
Dread shuts its ugly mewl around him. He is cramped a box without air, overcome with hysteria. He screams himself hoarse. More binds snap apart as he yanks out the tubes. The echo of snap! Snap! Snap! reminds him of bone breaking. The tubes wiggle around, gushing blood and oil, worm like.
Exhausted, he falls down from the table, a pale shivering thing covered in blood. Again, his head starts throbbing like the morning after a night of dives and dames and drinks. He can't feel his legs. The shivering greatens as he fights the madness. The floor opens up under him, becoming burning fields. He does not know how long he lies there.
Then, the singular grey wall turns transparent. Behind it is another wall of black glass, barely hiding more wires and wheels. More machines. Khan blends in well, standing behind the first wall of glass, unblinking.
And Kirk spits a great blob of spit at the glass wall and tells Khan to go fuck himself. He wants nothing more than to shout vulgarities and demand answers from him, like where and when and how. But he knows Khan will not tell him, because "It's a guessing game," Kirk rasps. "A puzzle. Is everything a game to you?"
"Simply put, yes," Khan replies. Kirk doubts his pulse went over 85 as he crushed Admiral Marcus' skull. "And if you find the key, you'll be free to leave."
"So where's the goddamn key?!"
He's going crazy, slowly.
"Do you expect me to tell you?"
Kirk snarls. The madness resurfaces, and he backs, clutching his head. The hallucinations return. He coughs up more fluid, and it feels like a thousand ants crawl over him. The tiles beneath him become bubbling hot tar, swallowing him. No sound. No air. No sight. Something inside Kirk tells him to give up and let it fill his lungs.
Abruptly, he's kicked over on his back. Hands fumble at his jaw, pushing at pressure points. Dry pills slide down his throat, followed by the sting of a needle on his inner arm, effects immediate.
"How disgusting. How human," Khan says, and clicks his tongue. "Though worry not, we'll get rid of that soon enough."
.
.
The tubes are back inside him when he wakes. This time, he's bolted securely to the table, which is bent at an odd angle so he sits up. Kirk is correct. It is a game.
"I want you to guess what I'm doing," Khan states, standing with his hands folded on his back, turned away from Kirk. "What I desire. What is my purpose?"
"You want to see how far I'll fall."
"Incorrect."
"You're pl—planning to turn me into you. I'm an experiment, a fucking project... a pet..."
"You disappoint me. I do not wish to make you a copy, no no no. It is simpler than that."
"I… I hate—"
"Yes. Hate. That's more like it."
Kirk's Adam's apple bob.
Khan holds up three fingers, and then one. "One more go, or you'll lose this round. What am I doing? I think you know the answer, Kirk. It's buried deep inside you, but I know how to get it out."
Kirk drags himself away from Khan. His legs still refuse to respond. "Fuck. You."
"No, not that either."
"You... want to destroy me."
"But I'm already destroying you, Kirk. Do you think I'll tell you about my plans if there was the slightest chance that you could prevent it? I'm not a comic book villain. The truth is that I've been feeding you a mix of my blood and a cocktail of various matters. Knowledge of chemical and biological warfare is other specialties required of my kin. You look around in a room and see nothing. I look around in a room and see a thousand ways to kill. That is how I'm programmed. Let's see if I can program you."
Khan strides over to him.
"I'm destroying you, bit by bit, and there's nothing you can do about it. I am rebuilding you into something greater."
"Ho—how?"
"Do you know your mother's name?"
"What a stupid fucking question of course I—" His mind dies and rots, for a little. He cannot complete the sentence because he himself (or what he is becoming) is unfinished. "It's..." There is a blank space where his mother's name ought to be. Curtains are drawn over pictures he knows exist. He feels like ripping apart his skin. Maybe his veins are tangled or something is lodged in his ribcage. It feels like something inside of him has broken or is missing.
The next time he wakes up, he's blind.
.
.
"You are learning to see. I am redesigning your eyes."
Man is reliant on his sight. Change the vision, change the man.
Kirk's panting gradually ceases. He lies there for a while, naked, soaking up the cold from the table. He cannot remember his mother—her face, her voice, her fingers (gone, gone, gone). He imagines them to be gentle and slender, running through his hair, reassuring him that it's gonna be okay Jimmy, I promise. But it's not.
It continues to murmur around him like a turbine womb, ready to hatch him into the world as a pink, screaming parasite.
"I'm inside a machine," Kirk realizes.
"Good. Your hearing is improving." Metal soled boots clink against the floor. Khan circles him.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Because I want to." There are fingers on Kirk's throat, caressing his jugular. Kirk's heart quickens. "I want to crush your windpipe and watch you die. I want to pick you up and slam you into the wall until you add red to this bland world. I want to rip out your tongue and watch you choke on your own blood. And yet... And yet I won't kill you."
He'd rip apart a bird's wings just to watch it fall. Then he'd pick it up, gently, like a child who doesn't fully understand why he's done it. Khan is a thing trapped between instincts and instructions. He was birthed—produced—to help the human race. Somewhere along the way, something went wrong. In Khan's demented mind, he is helping Kirk by removing his humanity.
"You are under my control. I will make you better. I must get to your essential. And destroy it."
Everything is so cold. Kirk whispers, "I cannot feel myself anymore."
"Good," Khan says.
And then it comes. The panic. The panting, the cold sweat and the spinning world, making him convulse on the table. He's dying, like steam escaping from a pipe. Each time he wakes, a little piece of him is missing. Khan is eating him. Stripping him to his bones, and self. To his core. To where the darkness is.
He thinks of Spock, Uhura, Bones... Of his crew. His family. Would they hate him if they saw him like this? Are they even alive? His head hurts and hot tears are streaming down his face and he can't see anything and soon he won't remember anything either
"There, there. Perfection can be tough, yes."
Khan does something that twists Kirk's very core. He reaches out and wraps his arms around him, like a sick, hollow replication of an embrace. It is a horrible invasion of personal space. A rape.
Kirk wants to scream at him to get away.
But there is only silence.
.
.
"Where are we?"
Khan shrugs.
"Doesn't matter. Rest assured, I have made sure no one will disturb your destruction—or your creation. We could be on a faraway planet, underneath the surface. We could be on Earth. Maybe I annihilated your race, just because I could. Or we could be on a stolen ship, floating through space. It doesn't matter." Khan watches him intensely. "Maybe I'm on your ship, Kirk."
"Shut up."
"Maybe your crew is here along with you."
"Don't."
Maybe I'm doing the exact same thing to them."
Kirk imagines them, wiggling and screaming like he did, all alone when they were pumped full of chemicals. Is it there Khan goes when he isn't with Kirk? "You're a soulless creature," he says, vacant eyed.
"Odd choice of words. What is a soul? If I crack open your ribcage, will I see it? Warm and thick, flowing through my fingers, smelling like salt and tragedy?" He sighs. "They named me John, which means God is gracious. Ironic. Did they wish to implant religion in me, or am I God? He created you in his image. And I am created in yours."
"You're not god."
"Then what am I?"
"You..."
"What am I? Say it." His features twist, horribly. "Say it."
A super soldier, genetically designed to be better at everything. An artificial human. An Übermensch. But this is not what Khan wants to hear. He thinks himself to be war, vengeful, fiery war, which leaves a trail of bloody footprints. He's wrong.
The grins, the smiles, the smirks... They're all horribly empty. Khan is cold ashes. Shrouded in black.
"Death."
Khan pauses. "You little bitch."
"Even a bitch has teeth."
Kirk cannot stop laughing. He laughs for what seems hours. He laughs when Khan pounds on top of him, beating him, and he laughs when Khan rips a good chunk of flesh—now, genetically augmented—from his neck with his teeth and spits blood and pieces of Kirk. He laughs harder.
Laughs when Khan straps him to the table and doubles the doze.
The last light flickers.
.
.
"Have you ever wondered why you're not hungry anymore?" Khan asks.
Kirk, barely conscious, blinks and screams.
His mouth tastes like blood.
.
.
Kirk watches with newly made eyes, unblinking. The room is the same. White. Round. The wound on his neck has regrown, as if it'd never happened. His memories have been reduced to fractured flickering images, dreamlike and distant. Living has become a series of nouns. Blood, bed, battle.
Pain has become something to hang onto. A broken nose, fractured ribs, bruised knuckles. Anything to remind him.
"Why do you fight your nature?"
Kirk does not indulge him with a reply. Every time he pulls out the tubes, Khan knocks him out and straps him back into the machine—the motherboard. Mother. The tubes are umbilical chords. Kirk tries to prolong the time unconnected. But it is almost worse, having to partake in Khan's mind games.
"Let me rephrase it, then. What do I have to do to break you?"
"Fuck you."
"Tch. I already told you. I don't—" he pauses. Icy eyes widen. So does a terrible smile. Khan steps forward.
Kirk immediately scrambles back. "Don't come near me," he hisses.
Khan merely marches forward, grabs his hair and smashes his head against the wall. Then he drags him on top of the table. "Strange how there is always a little more innocence to lose, isn't it?" He uses tubes to tie Kirk's hand to his sides. Lips touch his shoulder, then a tongue, then teeth—
And buries them so deep Kirk can feel blood running down his back.
"Get off, get off, get off!"
"Careful." In the sharp, translucent light, Kirk imagines sharp, white canines glinting maliciously against his neck. "I could rip out your throat. And this time I won't miss."
Khan removes his shirt with slow, deliberate movements. Scars decorate the flesh, new and old. They are like a map of a battlefield. War is imprinted into his mind, his hands, his skin. And they are fighting a war of their own. Kirk digs his nails into Khan's back and bites (strange how they are reduced to such animalistic things), attempting to open a scar. It's like biting leather. Khan curls his shirt into a small ball, and fastens it to Kirk's mouth. "Let's get this over with, shall we?" He removes Kirk's uniform.
There is no love in the picture.
Khan is doing this to hurt Kirk. To extinguish him.
He grabs a handful of Kirk's ass. "Yes, this is happening. There is nothing you can do. Do you understand?"
.
.
He is twitching, starved and dehydrated, fucked and drugged, beaten and broken.
He is a portrait of death.
"Yes," Khan says. "That'll do nicely."
.
.
He feels God moving inside of him.
Food doesn't tempt him anymore. He can even pass by water now, because he's living off the parts he doesn't need anymore. The screaming parts. He could feel the slow drips of pain before, swirling inside where his lung should have been. Now he's clean inside.
Everything that falls off him is sacred.
Every tear. Every hair. Every fingernail. Every piss.
Rebirth is sacred.
The candle dies, and he feels himself—which self, he wonders—evaporate.
The memories of friends and family don't bother him anymore. Don't hurt him anymore. Only he can. And that's okay. He doesn't need them anymore. He can live off himself. He speaks to himself, dances with himself, eats himself.
He doesn't hurt anymore. He isn't lonely. He isn't sad anymore. He's eaten through.
Sometimes God comes in and says, "You're doing fine. You're almost there."
Every day he stretches out and the darkness seeps out of his pores, all consuming. Some days he can't stand because the room spins too much. And he smiles because he's almost there.
.
.
There is a key, the beast says, dangling it between two fingers. Then he swallows it.
Khan swallows hope.
.
.
(This is what he understands: His name is Kirk and he fights for his family. He is a genetically engineered super soldier and he is inside a machine.)
.
.
"I think you're finished. ...Khan."
The thing that was Kirk looks at him.
"Now it's your turn to complete my vengeance."
Khan raises a gun to his forehead and shoots himself. Red splatters the white wall. Kirk doesn't flinch.
.
.
He is in the belly of a terrible machine—
He is in the belly of death.
The door opens and Kirk is blended by bright, white light.