Lola: thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Ellie stared hard at Harrison, looking for any indication on his face or in his eyes that explained who he was. She'd been so close, she'd had it. Now she had nothing, nothing but a strange and evil man staring intently at her.
"Think out loud, Dr. Davis," Harrison told her, wanting to hear the thoughts blazing in her mind.
Bones didn't like the way Harrison was looking at her, his dark eyes glued to her face. Bones felt rage boil in his blood when the man spoke to her, but his anger froze when Ellie responded.
"It has something to do with your crew in the torpedoes," she answered.
"Does it now?" he asked amused, thinking she wouldn't arrive at the answer on that train of thought.
"Yeah," she said quietly as she thought.
Bones kept his eyes on Harrison, watching as the man beheld Ellie as though she were a prize he'd won. Bones knew Harrison couldn't hurt her, that he couldn't get his hands on her with so many guards around and drugs to put him down; and yet Bones was on edge, thinking if given the chance to flee Harrison would take her with him.
While Bones watched Harrison, Harrison watched Ellie. Her eyes were downcast, her chin resting on one of her hands. Such a small hand, he thought as he looked at her. He could break every bone in her hand with only one of his. How very fragile you are. "What are you thinking Dr. Davis?"
She looked up at him, having thought over the possibilities of the idea she had. "You were frozen too." She would have missed the barely imperceptible upturn of the corners of his mouth if she had not been looking at him so severely; as it was, she saw it and knew she was right. "Admiral Marcus woke you," she told him. "Specifically."
"Why?" Bones asked having no idea how she was figuring all of this out.
"He wanted the best," she said looking at Bones, so enraptured in finding the answers that she missed Bones was talking to her again.
"For what?" Carol asked softly.
Ellie opened her mouth but second guessed herself at the last moment and she closed her mouth and sighed. "He sent us to the edge of neutral territory with 72 torpedoes so we could kill a man who hasn't been condemned to death in a trial. But our warp cores are disabled and engineering can't figure out why, and now we're stranded on the edge of neutral territory with torpedoes that have cryogenically frozen people in them that no one knew about," she said in one breath. "That's all very convenient," she finished and looked back to Harrison to see a pleased look on his face.
"That's all well and good but that doesn't explain why he had frozen people in the first place," Bones told her.
Ellie looked up at him from where she sat, bafflement in her eyes. "Well," she said looking at him uncertain, "they would have to be something no one would miss."
Bones raised a brow at her. "You think Starfleet put 72 people to sleep and no one questioned it?"
Ellie blinked as different thoughts began raging, images of news articles she had been shown in a classroom flashed, then a lecture from her teacher of a terrible time for Earth in the 20th century. "They would have been our enemy," she said.
"How can you possibly know that?" Bones demanded not seeing the connections she did.
"Think about it," she said turning to him fully, excitement on her face cause she had figured it all out. "You're being terrorized by someone and then suddenly they're gone. You'd question it but would you really care, you're safe again?"
Bones looked down at her confused, having never been able to follow along on her thought processes. "You're gonna have to explain it."
Ellie sighed unhappily. "Can you think of any time in Earth's history when we were at war with a group of humans similar to Harrison?" she asked him. "A time that had no answer for what happened to those humans?"
Bones stared down at her thinking; remembering what he had come up with when he'd examined the cryogenic pod he and Carol had found in the torpedo. "The guy in torpedo was 300 years old," he told her. "My guess is he is too," he said pointing to Harrison. "You're classifying that as human?" he asked, having wondered himself what exactly Harrison and his crew were.
Ellie smiled when he said they were 300 years old, now knowing for certain she was right. "Genetically enhanced superhumans," she told him, pleased with herself she had found the answer she'd lost.
"Augments," Bones said finally understanding what Ellie was telling him. "How the hell did you figure all that out?"
"The people in the torpedoes," she said simply.
Bones stared down at her astounded before shaking his head and taking it; a thought crossing his mind about Harrison's regenerative cells.
Ellie turned back to Harrison to see pleasure etched on his face, his mouth turned up in a half smile that chilled her to the bone.
Bones turned to Ellie to see her staring at Harrison, her eyes widened as she stood immobile; his eyes boring into hers.
"Go on, Dr. Davis," he said, his voice low and seductive. "Say my name."
Ellie opened her mouth almost obediently, his name on the tip of her tongue when Bones slammed his hand on the table. She turned to him, finding that she was now catching her breath, and he could see a hint of fear in her eyes.
It was in that moment that Jim broadcasted what the Captain of the ship that hailed them was saying. If there was any doubt that Admiral Marcus was behind everything it was cast aside as his voice was broadcast through the Enterprise as he threatened their lives for Khan to be turned over.
Ellie was surprised when she heard Jim say Khan was in engineering, that Jim had lied to him keep on board; Jim knew Harrison was Khan, therefore he knew the evil he had just lied to protect.
Khan was not the least bit surprised Marcus had come himself, nor was he surprised Kirk had lied about where he was being kept; Kirk was smart enough to know Marcus wouldn't just let them all go, not when they knew so much. He felt the small jolt of the Enterprise going into warp and his eyes fell on Dr. Davis.
His eyes raked over Ellie's form. So lovely, he thought, and so weak. Such an interesting mind. "Your mind is a beautiful thing, Dr. Davis," he told her. She had turned away from him but there was hatred in her eyes when she looked back at him. "How much knowledge do you possess; things you've learned, you've heard?"
Her anger slowly began to fade as unsettlement surrounded her, she didn't like the way he was looking at her.
"How many of Starfleet's darkest secrets could you unravel if given only a small push? You unraveled this one in less than day." His eyes were darker, heavier as they sat fixed on her; she was afraid. "How valuable you would be," he said so softly she didn't hear, though she read it on his lips.
"I thought I said I didn't want you near him," Jim hissed in her ear when he reached the sickbay.
"I'll go," she said and rushed out of the room without looking at him. Bones looked up as she moved past, he would have gone after her if he wasn't focused on the dead tribble he was injecting Khan's blood into; instead he let her go.
She clasped her hands together trying to make them stop shaking, hearing his deep voice whispering in her ear. "How valuable you would be." She knew what he meant, she knew what he wanted from her. Her brain was a fountain of everything she had ever learned, through books or what she'd heard, given the right bit of information and she could piece together all sorts of things. He was a madman, a murderer; he would use her well of knowledge until it ran dry and then he would dispose of her.
"I don't want you back in there," Jim told her after he finished talking to Khan, startling her out of her morbid thoughts. "I mean it," he said as he walked back toward the bridge.
Ellie watched him leave, berating herself for not listening to him earlier; all of this would have been avoided if she had just stayed away. "Excuse me," Carol said a few minutes later as she burst from the room and ran down the hall.
It was not even two minutes later that the ship jolted, falling out of warp when Marcus opened fire on the Enterprise.
So I'm not sure how it read, but that conversation in the beginning before Jim broadcasted what Marcus was saying was long. However in reality it only spanned maybe two or three minutes at the most. I tried to make Harrison (who's name is really Khan) seem really sinister in his way of looking at Ellie, and in speaking to her. Cause he was really great in the movie but again, I have no idea how that reads. Although I think it's safe to say that it's obvious he does not have good intentions, especially not with Ellie.