A/N: Thanks to Anla'shok, IWillNeverStopFangirling, Sam Mayer, and WhenTheSaintsGoMarchingIn for reviewing.
try to remember the very last time
Khan never imagined that he would miss the compound, but after a week in which he appears on every TV show, visits every big city, and shakes hands with every celebrity who begs the program to be seen with him, he's glad to return. His injuries have healed nicely; he has full use of his wrist, x-rays reveal that his cheekbone is whole once again, and the punctures in his back have vanished with nary a scar. He returns to the compound late at night and sleeps harder than he's slept since Chalice's fight, and when he wakes up, he feels oddly content. It's good to be home, he thinks as he walks through the familiar halls. Home.
As he makes his way down to the mess hall he can feel people staring at him. Young trainees, peering out of the rooms they share with three of their fellows. Older ones, who have survived the gauntlet of tests, watching him with undisguised envy. Even the white-coated researchers look at him differently. Khan knows his story is one of the stranger ones; most of those who become champions start at the top of their class rather than struggling to get there. He makes an effort not to let the attention get inside his head. He doesn't want to make the mistake of buying into his own press.
Baikal, despite his loss to Khan, came out of the fight relatively undamaged, but he has had a bad week. In his fight with Azrael five days after the bout in Rio, he lost resoundingly when the Sinai champion played injured, tempted him into a bear hug, and proceeded to throw him much more elegantly than Khan had. It was Azrael's first victory, and Khan felt satisfied to know he'd had a hand in it.
Chalice was less than thrilled. She'd called him from the compound the minute the broadcast was over. "Please tell me you had nothing to do with that."
Khan had done his best to explain his reasoning, but he still got the sense that Chalice believed he'd made a mistake. "Don't do it again," was all she'd said before hanging up.
When he meets her in the mess hall, he's glad to see that she's not angry. It was hard to tell over the phone. "Hello, Chalice. How is your back?"
"It's good," Chalice says. She tugs out a chair for him and he sits down. "They think I might have to use the cane on and off for a while, but I'm eighty percent functional. So what was it like out in the big bad world?"
Khan tells her about the highlights of the trip. Seeing the ocean in San Francisco, the mountains in Denver, and a special side trip to the Grand Canyon in the southwest. He tells Chalice about his fans, mostly women, who showed up wherever he went carrying signs that read 'We love you, Khan', and she laughs. "What's so funny?"
"After my first fight, I got two hundred and sixty-eight marriage proposals," she tells him, chuckling into her water glass. "You're getting off easy."
"How are things here?" Khan asks. An attendant sets a plate down in front of him and he starts eating, surprised to find that after days of exotic food, the bland program fare doesn't turn his stomach.
"They're all right," Chalice says. She glances at the doors, then back to Khan, then at the doors again.
"What is it?" Khan asks.
"Dr. Singh is introducing your partner today," Chalice says. "They finished running tests two days ago and everything looks good, but they wanted to wait until you got back before they brought her in."
Khan glances around the hall and realizes that it's busier than usual. Instead of just the older trainees eating in the hall, there are large groups of young children, dressed in gray uniforms and glancing nervously at the older trainees. "Is that why everyone is here?"
Chalice nods. "It should be any minute now."
Dr. Singh enters the hall four minutes later, but he is alone. Still, the eyes of all the trainees, young and old alike, follow him as he walks to the platform at the front of the room. He clears his throat and begins to speak. "As most of you know, UN resolution 72 is expected to pass the General Assembly and take effect next year. The doubles rule, as I believe it is known, hands a large advantage to the Russian and Far Eastern fighters. We aim to remedy that."
Khan looks around at Balanchine's trainees, seated at a table in front of him. Most of them are watching Dr. Singh with blank expressions, and Khan is absolutely certain that they have no idea what is about to happen.
Dr. Singh continues speaking. "In order to give ourselves the best chance under the new rules, we have created a new champion, who will serve as Khan's partner in the doubles fights. You are about to meet her. Masada?" he calls. "Come in."
The doors open again, but Khan can't see the person who walks through because everyone else in the hall springs to their feet, craning their neck to get a look at the newest trainee. He sees Midway's usually calm features turn bright red with anger and wonders if the other man only just realized that he is farther away from the arena than he thought.
Masada. It's a strange name, nothing Khan is familiar with, and he's about to ask Chalice what it means when Masada climbs onto the platform and he finally gets a good look at her. She is wearing a gray uniform, just like the rest of the trainees, and her hair has been cut short, but it is undoubtedly Malak Campbell, the woman he met at Chalice's last fight.
"I know her," Khan hisses at Chalice.
"That's not possible," Chalice responds, clapping politely.
"She was sitting next to me at your last fight," Khan says. "Her name used to be Malak and she somehow guessed that I was part of the program."
Now Chalice looks at him, surprise coloring her features. "Singh let you out of the compound?"
"Never mind that," Khan says, but Chalice's response to it reminds him just how unprecedented it was. Trainees almost never leave the compound, and when they do, it is under heavy guard. Dr. Singh allowing Khan to leave, accompanied only by the doctor himself, is downright bizarre. Khan turns to Chalice again, an idea forming in his mind. "Do you think -"
He stops, because Singh is making his way toward their table, accompanied by Malak - no, Masada, he reminds himself. "Here," the doctor is saying to the new champion. "Sit with Chalice and Khan."
Masada sits down across from them and a plate is immediately deposited in front of her. Dr. Singh looks at them, his three champions all together, and nods, satisfied. "I will see you all later," he says, and walks away.
"Masada," Chalice says to her, because the other woman is sitting there staring blankly at the table, "this is Khan."
Masada looks at him, and for the first time, Khan sees a spark of awareness in her eyes. "I've seen you before," she says.
"Yes, you have," Chalice says. Khan gives her a look, but she ignores it. "You watched him fight last week, remember?"
"No, before that. I -" Masada starts, but then she shakes her head and glances away. "You're right. It must have been from then."
Khan studies her intently. He's seen young trainees fresh from their memory wipes, but never an adult, and it's bizarre to see one staring down at her plate as though she doesn't remember what silverware is for. He hopes the memory wipe hasn't permanently damaged her mind. It will be hard enough surviving a doubles fight with an inexperienced partner; surviving it with a brain-damaged one will be nearly impossible.
Furious whispers from the table where Balanchine's trainees sit attract Khan's attention, and he sneaks a glance at them. Midway is talking intently, and the rest of the trainees - Antietam, Marathon, Alamo, and Normandy - are listening. Antietam looks faintly alarmed, but Midway's rage is mirrored on the others' faces. Undoubtedly Balanchine's trainees are angry that someone else has been advanced to a position that they all covet, but Khan is sure they'll get over it soon.
"When do I start training?" Masada asks Chalice, and Khan turns his attention back to his own table. Thankfully, Masada seems to have figured out how to use silverware and she's picking through her food.
"Today, as soon as you're done eating. We have a lot of work to do," Chalice tells her. "I'll be observing everything."
"Any advice?" Masada says. One hand lifts and she scratches at her upper arm through her sleeve.
"Don't," Khan says, and she looks up.
"Don't what?"
"Leave your tattoo alone," he tells her. "If it's damaged you will face consequences."
After scratching at it for days, Khan managed to obscure one of the numbers in his own tattoo as a child, and he was punished severely; he spent a week locked in his room with no food and one cup of water per day. He hopes Masada won't inquire as to what the consequences might be, and he's in luck. Masada just nods and leaves the tattoo alone.
Two attendants come for Masada and lead her down to the practice rooms. Chalice starts clearing her plate, but before she leaves as well, she looks at Khan. "What do you think of her?"
"Something is not right with her," Khan says.
"Of course it isn't," Chalice says patiently. "She had twenty-two years of memories shaping her personality and now they're all gone. She hasn't got a clue who she is."
"She will recover?" Khan says uncertainly. Then he remembers Chalice's earlier jabs relating to this topic and qualifies the question. "I only ask because it will be difficult to see her as indispensable if…"
"She will," Chalice says. "You don't remember, but you were just like this after they cleared your memories. It'll be fine. By the time the doubles fights roll around you'll have the best battle partner in the world."
Khan stays put as the hall slowly empties around him, trainees being marched off to their tests, attendants leaving to deal with other responsibilities. Soon it's just Khan and the table of Balanchine's trainees; they are the only ones who are capable of setting their own schedules. Khan can't stop thinking about the blankness in Masada's eyes. It was as though there was nothing at all behind them, and Chalice and Dr. Singh expect to turn that shell of a person into an effective champion in less than a year? He can't imagine how it will be done, if it even can be done.
"Khan!"
He looks up, surprised, and finds Midway's angry face inches away from his own. "What?"
"Did you know about this?" Midway demands, and beneath his anger, Khan senses something else; betrayal. Midway truly believed that he would be advanced, and for a second, Khan feels sorry for him.
"No," Khan lies, and he gets up, deliberately turning his back on Midway and leaving the mess hall.
He has no clear destination in mind, but he's not surprised when he finds himself in the researchers' wing, heading for Dr. Singh's office. He passes the labs, where a new crop of trainees are lying senseless on long rows of cots, waiting for their genetic enhancements to begin. Khan stops for a second and looks at them. They are both genders and all races - Singh must have had more control over choice this year - and they are all young, not a one of them over ten years old. A quick count reveals that there are fifty of them. By the time they are Khan's age, their numbers will have been cut in half.
He keeps walking. The door to Dr. Singh's office is open, and so he goes right in. The doctor looks up at him. "Yes, Khan?"
"Did you set me up to meet her?" Khan says, going straight to the point.
Dr. Singh doesn't pretend to misunderstand. "We had several candidates, and she was our top choice, but I believed that the two of you should meet before we made the final selection. One of her professors is an old friend of mine. I called in a favor and made sure she would be at the fight. Is there a problem?"
"No," Khan says quickly.
"If that is all, then, I must return to work," Dr. Singh says. "This year's crop of trainees is the largest I have ever seen. Good day."
Khan nods and retreats back down the hall, mulling it over. He can understand Dr. Singh's logic - in fact, it would have been strange for the doctor not to make sure they met before he forced them to trust each other with their lives - but there are multiple holes in the plan. What is going to happen when Masada is introduced and her mother realizes that her daughter is not dead after all? A scandal of massive proportions will engulf both the program and the government. Perhaps they plan to change her face using plastic surgery, but if that had been their plan, why did they not make the adjustments at the same time as the genetic enhancements? It makes no sense, so Khan goes to find the person who always helps him straighten things out.
He finds Chalice in the practice rooms, supervising a class of twelve-year-olds who are training with staffs. She's watching them through a thick window and occasionally conversing with the researchers.
"Eighteen's improved a lot," she is saying as he enters the room. "Take her off the list."
"You have to cut the class by three trainees," one of the researchers objects.
"Yes, and we have four on the list," Chalice says. She hears the door close and looks up. "Ah. Maybe Khan can help us settle this. What do you think of number eighteen?"
It derails him for a second. "Which one?"
"Eighteen," Chalice says, and points to a stocky brown-haired girl who is wielding a staff with a look of intense concentration on her face. "Watch her and tell me what you think."
Khan studies the girl, making note of her reaction time, her grip on the staff, the position of her arms and legs. Physically, she does not look like much, but neither did Khan at her age and he knew twenty ways to kill with his bare hands. "She seems to be progressing on schedule."
"I told you. Take her off the list," Chalice says. The researcher scowls and deletes trainee Eighteen's name.
"Is this your final selection?" another researcher inquires. Chalice nods. "We'll take it to the directors."
The researchers get up and file out of the room, but Chalice stays, watching the trainees, and so does Khan. He sits down in one of the empty chairs. "I went to see Dr. Singh."
"Why?" Chalice doesn't take her eyes off the practice room. "To find out that he set you up to meet Masada?"
Khan doesn't answer the question. "It's strange," he says instead. "I don't understand why, when so much is at risk, they chose to create a new champion who might not even be ready in time. I could have fought with you as my partner."
"That wouldn't have worked even if I hadn't gotten hurt," Chalice says. "I'm too protective of you. And besides, I'm too old. But that's not what's bothering you, is it?"
Khan stays silent for a second, trying to phrase the question in a way that won't come across as offensive. "Taking unwanted children and turning them into champions is one thing, Chalice, but an adult? It is wrong."
"Would it be more wrong for you to get killed because your partner doesn't protect you?" Chalice looks at him at last, and her gaze is diamond-hard. "Would it be more wrong for us to lose a fight with Russia, not over oil or territory, but over something important like water, or food? And tell me, Khan, would it be more wrong to lose millions of lives in a world war? One person's life isn't a good enough reason not to do something."
She shakes her head, and that coldness disappears from her face. "And besides, Khan, what makes you think all of us were unwanted children? I came from a foster home, but there are plenty of others who didn't."
"What do you mean?" Khan says. He hasn't thought much about where he came from, since he doesn't remember anything. "Do you know where I came from?"
"It's not my place to tell you that," Chalice says, looking away. "You can access your file and see if you want."
"The files are sealed."
"Not for you," Chalice says. "There's no file in the facility you can't access now. But it won't make you happy, and it won't change anything, so think about it before you look."
Her wristband flashes and she looks down. "They just sent Masada into the maze. Want to observe?"
Khan suppresses a shudder. Even after all these years, he still avoids the maze, and he's not the only one; most of the older trainees stay away as well. He shakes his head. His interest in his new partner is not so great that he will go into the labyrinth again.
Chalice nods. She reaches for her cane and levers herself up, beginning the slow, unsteady walk to the door. As she passes him, she lays a hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry so much, Khan. It'll be all right."
It's not, thinks Khan. He thinks about the enormous class of trainees he saw waiting in the labs, Balanchine's power plays, Taiga's insanity, and of course, Masada. He has been in the program for as long has he can remember, and in that time, precious little has changed; but now things are changing too quickly for him to master. And he must master them. He is the U.S. champion. And if the recent fights have taught him anything, it is that there is no place in the arena for mistakes.
As Khan leaves the viewing room, his eyes are drawn to trainee eighteen. He wonders if she knows now, or if she will ever know, that today her life was spared.
After leaving the practice rooms, he tracks down a researcher and requests access to the trainee files, half expecting to be refused. Without batting an eye, the researcher gives him the room number, warns him that voice identification is required for entry, and offers to draw him a map. As he walks through unfamiliar hallways, Khan marvels at how things have changed since his victory. Before, the researchers ignored him, and now they do whatever he wants.
The room he's seeking is down on the second-lowest level, and he has to pass the viewing room of the labyrinth to get there. He feels an unwelcome chill as he walks by the closed door. According to the researchers, the maze is supposed to teach flexible thinking, but as far as Khan can tell, it only inspires terror. He wonders how Masada's handling it, and almost as soon as he forms the thought, he pushes it away.
When he finds the room he's looking for, Khan stops. The motion sensor flickers, and an electronic voice orders him to identify himself.
"Khan Noonien Singh," he says.
"Voice match confirmed."
The door swings open and Khan steps into total darkness. He backs up, intending to leave, but the door closes and he's left with standing still, peering into the black for some landmark, but even his enhanced eyes cannot pierce the dark. Khan retreats until he reaches the wall, then feels for a light switch and flips it on. The fluorescent lights reveal a massive room that appears to be filled with coffins.
Idiot, Khan chides himself. He takes a second look and realizes that the shapes aren't coffins; they're simply boxes, lying in long rows on the floor, organized by year. Even the ones nearest to him, files on last year's trainees, are coated with dust. All except for one.
Khan kneels down beside it and studies the label. ID#170116 CN Fortress. He hooks his thumbs beneath the lid and opens it, revealing multiple compartments. He picks one at random and opens it, finding a flash-frozen case containing two vials of blood; one labeled pre-enhancement and the other labeled post-enhancement. Another compartment contains a series of printouts, which upon closer inspection turn out to be test results on a variety of subjects. The third compartment he opens holds a profile, and on the first page of the folder is a photograph of Masada.
This must be her file. He flips through the folder, scanning each page. Date of birth, father's name and country of origin, mother's name and - Khan stops, frowning. Why on earth would the birthplace of Nadezhda Peres be classified? He puts it out of his mind and sets the file back in its place, turning his attention to the fourth and final compartment, the largest of them all.
For a moment Khan has trouble understanding what's inside. A pile of clothes, a pair of boots, a book, jewelry jumbled together, a battered leather wallet; what place do these objects have in a scientific file? Then he looks at the book, realizes that he's seen it before, and understands. These were the objects Masada had on her person when she was taken. This is all that remains of her old life.
Irritated with himself, Khan slams the lid of the box shut and pushes it back into place. He's letting himself get distracted. He should proceed directly to his own box, find out what he wants to know, and leave.
Despite his best intentions, however, Khan remains distracted, especially when he reaches the boxes from his own year. The program keeps all the files, even those on trainees who were terminated, and as he passes each box he recognizes the number and remembers the person who was not so lucky as he was. The CN designation appears on only a few boxes, and it occurs to Khan that it's yet another name for each trainee who reached adulthood. CN Island - Midway. CN Race - Marathon. CN Slaughter - Antietam. He has to fight the urge to open all the boxes, forcing himself to concentrate on his objective. And there, last on the row, is ID#139476 CN Conqueror; Khan's own file.
He sits down in front of it and opens the lid. Flash-frozen blood sample; test results; profile. He selects the profile and is startled to see a picture of himself as a child, dark-haired and pale with wide blue eyes. Below it lies his date of birth, something he realizes he doesn't know, and he commits it to memory. At last he can correctly place his own age; he's twenty-two, ten years younger than Chalice and the same age as Masada.
His parents' names are Peter and Elizabeth Harrison, from the United States. There are headshots of each of them, and Khan studies them intently, noting that he resembles his mother more closely but has his father's eyes. Beneath their names and photographs is a single line of text, and Khan has to read it multiple times before he understands. Parents volunteered their son for the program.
Volunteered.
In the back of his mind, Khan always assumed that he was an orphan, like Chalice; that he'd lost his parents somehow and the program had taken him in. He struggles to marshal his thoughts, force them to accept this new reality. He hadn't lost his parents. They'd given him up of their own free will. With more control than he knew he possessed, Khan closes the profile and replaces it in its compartment, resisting the urge to lift the entire box and smash it into tiny pieces. He's furious - no, not furious, confused - not confused, hurt. Hurt. What a ridiculous feeling. He has no recollection of these people, their faces stir nothing in his memory, and yet he's upset because they gave him away.
Chalice's words echo in his mind, reminding him that this is a bad idea, but he ignores them. Instead he opens the last compartment and beholds the detritus of his old life. Children's clothing, shoes with wheels on them. He has less in this compartment than Masada does, but that makes sense; children rarely carry their own belongings. The clothes are neatly folded. He can see something poking out of the pocket of the pants and he reaches for it, coming away with a tiny model of a space shuttle in his hand.
Khan sets it in his palm and studies it. The paint has been worn away on the sides, but the name of the shuttle is still visible, as well as a tiny American flag. Endeavour. He's read the instructions for the delivery of new trainees to the program, and they clearly state that trainees are not to bring personal items. Like Chalice had all those years before, he must have snuck this along. For the life of him, even though he thinks about it for a full five minutes, Khan cannot remember why this toy was so important to him.
Chalice, as usual, was right; going through his file was a mistake. Khan stands up, ready to leave, and he moves to put the space shuttle back in its compartment. He pauses; then he slips it into the pocket of his own uniform, closes the lid of the box, and leaves.
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