Home at last, with internet and time and more than five minute showers. Hey guys, long freaking time no see! So, after the long journey I'm home in time to deliver the last chapters of this story to those of you patient enough to put up with my disgustingly long absence! Your all amazing, and I hope you enjoy the latest installment! It took me a long time to get it right, so I hope it's all it should be.
23 17 46 11. 2258, 112.
His eyes lifted to her own, brows raising in a question telegraphed across the room of baffled researchers.
"Is this all?"
Eve tried to focus on her underling, babbling on about the impossibilities John was preforming.
"- running six hours," the scientist squeaked. "His body sweats to let out the toxins but he never tires! No unsteady breathing, no slowing in pace... He's our own Superman and we haven't got any Kryptonite!"
"He has a weakness." She said shortly, giving the man an look which clearly showed how onerous she found him to be. "Nature always provides a weakness, otherwise that species would inherit the Earth. Or Space."
She wanted to be understanding, to simply enjoy the shock of those who had never had the chance to marvel at what John was capable of. But the bitter taste of satisfaction at finally being proven right was given so grudgingly by her colleges it was difficult to enjoy.
Surely the machines had malfunctioned, a private practice doctor could misread the information that he was suffering major organ failure and recovering. They all thought she was inept. None of them would ever apologise to her for being wrong.
A part of her was sad, to have to include all these self-entitled knuckle dragging mouth breathers into the inner sanctum of possibilities John represented.
"He has a fifth nitrogenous base in his DNA doctor." The man tried to catch her eye as she and John stared at each other in mutual agreement of the stupidity of the company. He was bear chested, plastered with disks which wirelessly transmitted information to the computers as well as strapped into a complex clear breathing mask with several tubes coming out of it leading to different parts of the machine above his rotating track in the central prison chamber.
Her lab coat was rolled up and wrinkled as always, her clothes the only unique colour in a sea of blue uniforms.
"I don't think nature created him." The man before her hissed.
"We all have to answer to nature," Eve sighed, unfolding her arms and returning her gaze to her assistant. "He may have been genetically altered, but we can't synthesis a whole person. At some point we have to admit our own short comings and enlist what the world already possesses, and there by?"
"Allow in a weakness." The man said like an over-encumbered school boy. "So we keep running him?"
"No." Eve took the man's data pad, typed in her override, and locked him out of their shared information pool before dropping it onto the table beside them. "We tell Marcus he has no evident flaws, and return to work with more point than giving the Admiral something to lord over John Harrison's head."
She moved out of the observation room, down the metal stairs, and onto the testing floor. A few covert eyes went her way as she mounted the steps up to the pentagonal shaped central chamber, ignoring the outcry from the scientists running scans on the display panels attached to each of the chamber's walls. She unlocked the door with her senior staff identity chit and entered John's latest solitary cage.
The door shut immediately behind her, but she walked quickly up to the controls regulating the machine John ran on and shut it down. He slowed with the track, turning to look at her as he climbed off. "Doctor Swan, you've been absent a long time. I hope something useful came of this exercise."
"Well, you were getting a bit flabby sitting about all day. And I think you've managed to terrify and emotionally scar my staff more than you have already." She offered, walking over and unlatching his mask. She had to go on tiptoe to remove it as he refused to bow his head, moving it off and letting it dangle behind.
"Not you, though." He observed in return as she moved around him detaching the small silver disks. "All my other doctors come with an armed escort. Look at your colleagues; they're positively askance at your recklessness."
"You're not going to hurt me, John." Evelette laughed. "Even if you tried to use me as a hostage, Marcus only sees me as useful in that I'm the only one you seem inclined to behave yourself around. He'd happily see me dispatched to keep you here; a simple matter of which of us is a more important asset."
"I could take that card from you." He nodded to the chit attached to her coat by a retracting cord.
"Only opens doors from the outside." She said apologetically, walking over and sliding it through the lock to prove it, the light on the latch remaining unhelpful red. "I'm afraid I'm only slightly freer than you. Marcus is careful of where his independent mind gets to."
"Is that an attempted to comfort me?"
She frowned, disks collected in her hands clattering as she shifted them about. She walked over and deposited them on the control desk, looking over his face. He was always less somber after their talks. She didn't like that their banter served Marcus' agenda. "No John, you shouldn't ever let yourself get comfortable with me. I won't with you. The moment either of us slips with that, one of us is going to disappear. And I very much still need you."
"For your niece?"
That it was a question gave her pause. She was aware the entire medical science team was listening. How many understood what the question really was?
"Of course." She said, then turned and strode back to the door, waiting to be let out.
The USS Vengeance 2259, 57.
The rumble knocked her sideways, and Khan was too absorbed in his utter calamity that he made no attempt to catch her as she feel back against a control board. She slid to the floor, watching as he pulled at his hair, wild animalistic insanity transforming him into something she'd never seen before.
It was the only moment she was ever truly afraid of what he might do to her.
The alarms of the ship were going off all around them, the ship warbling as space sucked the oxygen out of the lower levels along with the shattered remains of seventy two incinerated souls.
Marcus was dead. But his vengeance was complete.
The screen flickered to life, but the image was garbled and failing. She could see fractions of Kirk's face – some yellow of his uniform, one of those burning blue eyes. Whatever he first said was impossible to make out, but somewhere she heard her name. Evelette stared at the screen numbly.
Khan was right, as he had ever been.
They should have murdered the crew of the Enterprise when the opportunity was theirs for the taking.
"Doctor – no need – sacrificed – Marcus."
She could feel the seething maelstrom of Khan's fury turning towards her. Everything perched upon a glistening edge. Eve's eyes lowered to the controls in front of her, the display flashing red over her face bathing her in the sinister glow and then plunging her into darkness.
She knew hardly anything about the ship. She'd had the barest of training in the basics of how a star ship operated. But finding the already armed final strike weapon on the Vengeance was strangely simple.
Only a moment ago, she'd have done anything to stop Marcus from ordering the button pressed.
She tapped it, and from somewhere deep beneath them a massive purple ball of energy expelled. As it collided with debris it didn't slow – much, much worse, it expanded. Anything it touched it began shooting off of in a chain of violet lighting, spreading in a cloud toward the Enterprise. The light engulfing the ship opposite was the last thing Eve saw before the Vengeance plunged, finally giving way to the pull of Earth which had been dragging both ships in.
She hit something hard, but nothing shattered as she was slammed against a wall. Khan managed to get into the command chair, pressing a series of displays rapidly as the atmosphere of Earth began superheating the metal all around them. She saw him in flashes as the ship fought for power, and then a terrible realization hit.
He was struggling. Khan was struggling, and she'd never once seen him do so.
Who would have thought, the assistant had been right. Khan had no flaws.
But she had been right to – nature gave him a weakness.
And that was her.
They were all each other had left. He knew they were going to crash, and they both knew he was going to survive it. But Eve wasn't genetically superior. She wasn't remotely lucky. The crashing of a star ship from space would be the greatest horror Earth had seen in a very long time – millions of tons of steel and electronics, not to mentioned a radioactive core, the ship's crash would be a violence to streak through a generation.
Streak.
Blood.
Blood!
She looked about frantically, crawling across the floor gripping the walls for support as the deck swayed dangerously. She heard Khan call out to her, telling her to get into one of the chairs to strap in, but didn't dare. Once they hit, the case would be gone forever.
Managing to get to the bloody floor where Carol had nursed her, she looked around frantically. With all the rocking it had disappeared, and so dropping to the floor she began crawling, scrabbling at the dark corners.
And then she saw it.
Khan was screaming for her now, but it seemed strangely distant compared to the alarms of the machine, and the trap of time which seemed to have gone astray, the world moving all too slow as she saw the case dangling on the edge of the open door, ready to take the plunge into the halls of the toppling giant.
She fought the tug and sway as the artificial gravity attempt to keep them steady, gasping and lunging as at the last moment it thrust her forward at violent speed to slam into the wall, fingers closing around the case as she spiraled forward. She screamed as any sort of ground came out from under her, about to drop into the darkness before an hand closer around her arm, jerking her to a stop.
Khan dragged her up, gripping her against him as they smashed through Earth's atmosphere and went tunneling into the clouds. Mist was leaking through the cracked front window, the Vengeance screaming bloody murder as they came closer and closer to impact.
"Make them suffer." Eve gripped his shirt, her lips by his ear. "If I don't survive, see that they pay for this. And then find somewhere safe and warm. You deserve to be… happy."
His fingers tightened, breath halting. She shut her eyes, and the world exploded around them in dust, and fire, and devastation.