Summary of previous chapter:

Khan wakes up restrained in a hospital bed and realizes where he is when he sees Dr. Marin. Admiral Marcus arrives. He's furious, sticks electric collar on Khan, then gets Khan show the technicians how to get Khan's people out of the torpedoes. Aware of how tenuous his position is, Khan does so.

Marcus rants at Khan and hits him, then kills two of Khan's crew. Khan gets him to stop by kneeling and begging him to stop. Marcus then makes him swear that he won't try to rescue his family or escape himself. The guards then take Khan back to the cell where he first stayed when he'd been an experimental subject, leaving him wondering what was going to happen next.

Note: Zedille made useful suggestions, some of which I incorporated into the chapter. Thanks Zedille. Basic events have not changed.

Back to this chapter:

Meanwhile, Carol had woken up in the main Hanger of the Vengeance when medical personnel started fussing over her. She sat up, holding her painful head and trying to remember just what happened. John had attacked them? And something about her father...

Over the next couple of days, Carol pieced together a better picture of what exactly had happened. Five people dead at John's hands, others wounded or simply stunned with a phaser. And he'd kidnapped a little boy named Jo from the daycare center. Why? It was confusing, not least because a host of rumors appeared, most of which contradicted each other.

John was working for the Klingons, John had experienced a psychotic episode and thought he was Superman and Admiral Marcus was Lex Luthor, John wanted to sell the Vengeance to the Romulans for lots of money, John was going to join the Orion space pirates and give them Jo as a peace-offering, John was being blackmailed by someone... never let it be said that Section 31 was inadequate in the gossip category. Information was their stock-in-trade, after all.

She also took another look at John's file. There was no mention of any family, held hostage or otherwise. It was a rather empty file. In fact, there was precious little information on him before the accident, and even afterwards it seemed like there was a lot missing. Carol was willing to bet there was a more-classified file that told a lot more about John, and that some of the things in it wouldn't make for pleasant reading.

Admiral Marcus arrived within a couple of days and gave an official announcement: John had suffered a psychotic episode and/or severe flashback and was undergoing treatment in the secure section of Sickbay. No visitors allowed.

It was possible, but if it was true Carol suspected it would not have happened if John had not been pushed beyond his capabilities - beyond anyone's, really. She had warned her father, but did the man listen? And that would mean that the blood of the security team killed or injured was on her father's hands as surely as on John's.

If it wasn't true, and her father really was holding John's family hostage... she needed to find John's real file. People had died because something had gone awry. Whatever plan of her father's this was, it had gone too far. Her security clearance wasn't high enough, which meant she'd have to get hold of someone else's. And she had better not get caught.

Christopher Pike ground his teeth in frustration, then stopped, remembering that the dentist had told him he was damaging his teeth. It had been five days, and Khan had vanished without trace beyond him being in the care of Section 31.

They had had a bit more luck with getting information out of Jo. Dr. McCoy had analyzed the kid's DNA and Khan's in detail and had come to some very interesting conclusions. He'd also put the kid through a few tests - nothing invasive of course, the child was far too young to give informed consent and they didn't want to put him through more than he'd already endured. It was obvious that the kid was no stranger to medical curiosity and being poked and prodded.

Both Jo and Khan were both genetically altered, and not to prevent a genetic disease. The enhancements included sensory perception, strength, reflex times, intelligence, something to do with blood generation that fascinated McCoy, and disease resistance. Totally illegal, and likely to have cruel side-effects for those altered.

For one thing, Khan's need for sunglasses at night suggested that the sensory alterations had gone wrong in his case. Interestingly, apart from the augmentations, Khan and Jo did not appear to be closely related. But Khan's words allied with the alterations made Pike's blood turn cold.

The most obvious conclusion was that Admiral Marcus was trying to create something similar to the Augments of the late 20th century. Heck, Khan's name was even close to that of Khan Noonien Singh, the most powerful Augment leader! But surely that was ridiculous. Alex might be ruthless sometimes but he was nobody's fool, and everyone knew how well creating genetically engineered superhumans had turned out the last time. And in order to have already produced an adult, the program would have had to have been going for at least two decades unless they grew a lot faster than normal humans.

Whatever was going on, it must be stopped immediately before the damage got totally out of hand. That assumed that things weren't out of hand already. It wasn't as if Khan seemed terribly fond of those who sought to control him... Chris shook his head at his dark musings and thought what he could actually do.

He needed access to someone inside Section 31 to find out exactly what was really happening - and he'd better be prepared for the worst. For that, he'd need allies among the Starfleet brass, and access to more than the Enterprise.

He needed to contact Carol - she'd grown up calling him Uncle Chris, and she had always been more ethical than her father. He couldn't be sure she wouldn't simply report his interest to her father, but she was the best option he had. He didn't exactly know many people in Section 31 and asking Alex was obviously out of the question.

Carol was surprised to get a call from Uncle Chris, not that she called him that in public anymore. She was surprised to get a call from off-base, for that matter. Most of her friends didn't have the security clearance.

"Hi Uncle. It's been a while, what prompts this call?" She asked, leaning back in the armchair in her quarters.

"Thought it had been a long time since we last spoke. How are you?"

"Well enough, though things have been sort of rough lately."

"Oh? That doesn't sound good. Nothing world-breaking, I hope?"

"Oh no, just people problems. You stick a lot of people on one small station for months or years, working very hard on projects, and of course some of them will fall out with each other or even snap."

She wished she could tell him about the situation with John, but she doubted he was cleared to know the details of that - although for all she knew he might know more of it than she did. She wished she could ask him. For that matter, she might be able to find out if he knew Harrison from before.

"Have you met a Commander John Harrison? Tall, thin, black hair and pale skin."

"I can't say I have," said Chris. Then his eyes widened. "Does he wear sunglasses and have a nephew named Joachim Weiss?"

"He does wear sunglasses, but I don't know anything about a nephew."

"I might have met him under another name, but if so it was only briefly. Is this Harrison the person who snapped?"

"Uncle Chris, are you fishing for information?" asked Carol. If he didn't already know, it definitely wasn't up to her to tell him.

"What? Oh no, nothing you aren't allowed to tell me. But since you mentioned Harrison immediately after people snapping..."

"I suppose that would be a logical thing to think." Carol strongly suspected that seeking information is exactly what he was doing. What she didn't know was what information he was seeking, or why. Something involving Harrison, certainly. The man seemed to be at the center of an ever-increasing mystery. Gah! She hated not having all the pertinent information.

They returned to more innocent topics and soon ended the call, leaving Carol to brood on the little she had learned. John's more-classified information was likely under another name, but she had no idea what it was. On the other hand, she could go look up Joachim Weiss. Suddenly she gave a most unladylike snort. She didn't need to him up. When he left, John had kidnapped a small child named Jo.

Did that mean that Chris had run into Jo and John during John's aborted escape? It would explain why he was asking. And if Chris was worried enough to go fishing for information from her, then something was going on, likely something big. Something potentially career or even life ending for her, her father, Harrison and now this child Jo and maybe Chris as well. She was getting in way over her head.

But just because you were ignorant didn't mean something couldn't kill you.