I didn't look behind me. Looking behind would weaken me, and anything that could weaken me, would eventually lead me back to the easy way out. So I kept looking ahead, because the Hard Way Out was the only chance for the human race left. I'd got it into this mess I would get it out as well. I think that I believed that stopping Khan was the only way I could possibly come to terms with John's death. The one thing I yearned for more than his voice telling me that it was okay (which it wasn't but it would still have comforted me) was for the weight of his death to stop crushing me with guilt.
But it would soon, I knew that; because soon either I would die, or I would stop Khan and even if the latter seemed so painfully impossible, I still had to give it my best shot. I could now, because I knew what it said on the piece of paper Khan had ripped off.
They weren't far behind me, still believing that I was the criminal here. As I passed doors of the HGMA I had never had the time to open and find out what was inside, I attempted to come up with a plan, but failed to miserably. Spontaneity had to do. After hiding behind a corner of a corridor, they finally lost my track. I exhaled deeply, slowly catching my breath again and tried to figure out what my location was. I was in the hospital wing, where the men had brought me not a day ago. Pressing my lips against each other, I silently made my way back to the main part of the institution, where I was more familiar anyway. Deductions about the last people to have touched the doors around me popped up and I wanted to fill someone's ears with them but I realized again that no one was with me, that even if I did save the world, I would do it alone, and I would keep on living alone and everything I did from then on would be alone. It felt like punch in the stomach, thinking of the weight John had left me; but that was the nature of hard ways out. They may hurt, but they're necessary.
I took out the phaser I had stolen from the room; it was set to kill. I held onto it and aimed it at everything that look like it was moving, but never fired. While running as quietly as I could down the hallways of the broken academy I racked my brain. There was still something I was missing, something that Khan would use to destroy humanity. There was a bigger picture that he had been working on, bigger than those weapons he created and bigger, much bigger, than the 72 homo superia he created. I searched room after room, finding nothing of the sort. What could he be planning?!
My question was answered when I opened the twelfth door and before me, in a hall big enough to hold five airplanes, stood one gigantic space ship. I dropped my phaser in awe of the craft. I knew that evil was planned with it, but it was beautiful, you had to give it that. White, shiny, with a nice balance of round and straight. Under what seem to be the navigation room of the ship was a huge engraving reading: BOTANY BAY. I never found out why he named it that.
There were a couple of windows on it, through which I caught glimpses of an all too familiar blue; the others were in there, still in their tanks. I guess Khan had never had enough time to finish them. Wearily, I approached it, looking for a way to enter. He had to be in there somewhere. For a second, I contemplated how ridiculous I would've found this whole situation a year ago. I was trying to break into a spaceship designed by my evil, better-looking twin for God's sakes!
Hiding behind the legs of the ship, I got closer and closer to what I imagined had to be the entrance of the craft. I waited as close to it as I could be without revealing myself. For minutes and minutes nothing happened, but suddenly a square of the floor of the ship lowered its self, showing that they were in fact steps to the rest of the vessel. I watched as Khan came out from a corner of the room I hadn't seen and walked up the stairs. Deeming the time correct I silently followed him, the phaser constantly aiming at him, though I wasn't sure it would even work on him; why would he create a weapon that could kill homo superia? Luckily, he didn't notice me, or at least hid the fact that he had. I was aboard the space ship now, and that's what counted.
He really was a genius. He built all of this in nine months at most. How could anyone do that? Well, I presume the Organization With Too Much Money provided all he needed. I suppose I wasn't his only ignorant servant. I snuck along the hallways, keeping my distance from Khan, but never losing sight of him. There was a sting in the back of my head, and first I thought it was some kind of dart, shot at me by the security system of the space ship, but soon I understood that it was just the loss of John. I let out a tiny wince, quickly realizing my mistake, but Khan didn't seem to notice. After some more following, we entered a large room, filled with switches, buttons, blinking lights, levers; this was the Bridge. There was a screen with eight rectangles on it, of which one was notably smaller. In the larger oned were ten dots each, and in the small one two; these were the tanks with the Superhuman, scattered all around the entire ship. Khan walked over to a single chair in the middle of all the buttons. I didn't know what to do anymore. I just made my way to the screen with the tanks on it. However, when I was about half way there, he turned around and stared at me.
For the first time I saw surprise on Khan Noonien Singh's face. However, it was soon replaced with sheer fury, as he ran towards me. My eyes widened and I sprinted towards the screen as fast as I could but he was far too fast for me to have a chance. He crashed into me, and with his strength threw me to the floor. It felt as if the pain was resonating through me. I lay on the clean metal, wanting to get up but unable to.
"Oh poor, poor detective. You never give up, do you? Even when you're faced with a version of yourself you can never, ever be, your only friend is dead, and your entire race is doomed anyway. Even when you're finished!" he hissed, "Don't you just want to stop? Get a break from it all, one more time? Take one last breath?"
"My last breath will be taken, fighting you." I finally pushed myself into a sitting position, staring at him.
"So what are you planning to do? You can tell me now," I asked, looking for the right moment to pounce, as my rage at him slowly grew. Khan provokingly grinned. He'd worn that same grin right after killing John. I wanted nothing more than to wipe it off his face.
"Aboard this ship, I have enough weapons to destroy every human on this planet, and once I've done that, we will fly and find a new home, destroying every imperfect race we find in our way." It seemed so surreal, his plan, but then I guess every plan by a homo superia must. Anger boiled inside of me, but curiosity won. Astrophysics may not be my specialty but I do know the basics of outer-space;
"How are you planning to get there? Even you can't fly that long."
"I can cryogenically freeze myself and my brothers and sisters. The ship runs automatically, I just need to give it a destination, and we'll fly away, sleeping the whole time, waking up as if no time had passed." He was still smiling and my fury, before, a small flame within me, felt like the wind, weakening it, had finally stopped blowing; it was only really burning now. I threw myself at him with a roar and punched, kicked, hit him anywhere that would be the most painful but he simply stared at me blankly. At some point I stopped, exhausted, and wiped my nose with the back of my hand.
"Why did you stop? Noticed how useless this all is?" he asked. I breathed out heavily through my nose one time.
"I stopped because I can't defeat you that way. I know your weakness." His eyes glimmered with anger; anger twice as powerful as my own was.
"What's this talk of weaknesses? I have no weaknesses!"he spat at me and grabbed me by the ears and pushed me down to the ground. I let go of the phaser and held onto his arms, trying to pull them away but he was far too strong for me. He started pulling at my head and it hurt. It hurt so, so, so, so much. My face felt like it was being ripped apart and I could've sworn I could hear my skull cracking. I tugged more at his arms but nothing happened. My eyelids were so stretched I couldn't see anything anymore. I fondly said farewell to life and waited for it to end.
But, however hard this was, it was still taking the Easy Way Out. The thought pained me even more than the eternal yanking at my head, because I was breaking a promise to myself. I closed my eyes as tightly as possible, as I reached down and felt my way around, searching the phaser that I'd dropped. Screaming at the pain, knowing I didn't have much longer until death, I found it and with my last strength aimed it sort of at him, and shot. Like I thought, it didn't kill him, but it caused him enough pain to flinch away, incidentally letting go. I could still feel his nails digging into my skin but I was relieved. I took a deep breath as Khan winced, his eyes closed, holding onto his left thigh, where the weapon had hit him. Though the agony of the ripping was still far from gone I took my chance and started running towards the screen again. I caught him off guard, and he didn't have enough time to stop me. When I finally reached the screen I pointed at the FREEZE ALL TANKS button but didn't press. He looked at me in shock, scared, and just before he wanted to attack me or even kill me, I pulled out the phaser and pointed it at him.
Unsure, I finally said something:
"Surrender or I will kill every single one of your dearest crew."
"It doesn't matter to me, I can make newer ones, better ones if I want," he tried to bluff, but I knew better.
"We both know that isn't true."
"Liar!" he roared, walking towards me.
"One step closer and I freeze them." Khan stopped.
"You care about them, don't you?" I asked, "More than you'd ever admit? They are your family, and what wouldn't you do for your family? Now surrender." He looked scared, properly terrified now. I felt more powerful than ever.
"You aren't strong enough! You know that!"
"Right now, while I'm the one with the weapon and the one with access to the button, I am."
"How... How did you know? About the weakness? I even made sure you wouldn't find this," He took out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and threw it to the ground. It read:
However hard we try to make him not care, Khan has a deep and passionate affection for all 72 of the homo superia he's created up to now.
I stared at him quietly for a while.
"Oh, I see," he smiled again, "You know because of that inferior human friend of yours." I felt my face flush with anger.
"Don't you dare talk about him like that! He is stronger than you, and stronger than I and stronger than anyone else will ever be!"
"No, he is dead," he continued to try to provoke me and get me away from the screen but I didn't move.
"If you don't surrender so will your crew be."
"You don't have what it takes to commit genocide, detective." He took another step.
"Try me?" Once again, Khan refrained from moving when I reinforced my threat. I think he was weighing out his options. I had him now, I had won.
"With great pleasure." Or not. He smiled in delight, like he was playing a game.
"I'll do it right now!" I yelled shooting once at his foot, which had just taken another step towards me. He grunted reaching for it, but the pain only lasted a moment.
"SURRENDER!" I screamed with all of my rage at him for killing John and my fear of him for being able to kill someone in such a horrifying way. He was getting closer and closer and the weapon wasn't helping, so I closed my eyes and asked to be forgiven for the way out I was about to take. It wasn't the hard way, but it wasn't easy either.
"Commence tank freezing and life extermination in fifteen seconds." A mechanical voice rang out. The Leader's smile dropped, his eyes widened and for a moment, he forgot I was there. Only one thing counted for him then: save the homo superia. He ran towards the screen, past me, and started typing code after code into the screen, desperately trying to save his race. I realized that this was the time, the only time I could possibly get him. Just as he managed to stop the freezing from ever happening, I held the phaser up, aimed straight at his head and shot, the ray strong enough to knock him out. With little time left, I grabbed him and pulled him down the floor, to the closest tank and through him inside like he had with me a few days before. I stood in the large room of the space craft in silence, simply thinking about what had just happened with a blank look upon my face.
