A/N: reviews keep the muse happy! :)

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Cartwright lead her to the lowest level of the labyrinthine spiral that was Cold Station 12. There at the end of yet another brightly lit, blue-gray corridor, armed security officers stood vigil by a containment cell two sizes smaller than the ones in the brig of Constitution class starships. The entrance was barred by a force field. The only furniture inside was a biobed with a connected holographic monitor displaying vital sings and other medical readings.

Carol walked faster, her heart picking up speed again. Her leg was still smarting, but it was nothing she could not manage. She only stopped when the forcefield kept her from entering the cell. The man on the bed lay absolutely still and did not seem cognizant. Either way, movement would have been impossible, as his wrists and calves were restrained by metal handcuffs. A band of translucent alloy had been placed over his neck as well. He looked pale, cheeks sunken, facial bones unnaturally prominent. The skin around his eyes was bruised and his lips were discolored to the point of being almost white.

She sucked in a deep, startled breath, when she noticed rapid ocular movement under the closed lids.

"He is in an induced coma, but his drugs have to be resupplied at regular intervals. For all their limited resources, 20th century geneticists sure knew what they were doing, when they made him," Cartwright voice floated to hers ear from somewhere behind her. "It's not easy even for our medication to keep him under."

She heard him, but the words registered only briefly, as she was unable to tear her gaze from the augment lying helpless and heavily sedated on the bed. There was nothing of the ruthless man, who had taken over the Vengeance with a few effortless blows before callously threatening the crew of the Enterprise with a slow death, left in the one before her eyes. His face was devoid of commandeering arrogance or of the furious cruelty of the moments before her father's skull had broken apart in his hands. When she had tried to reason with him, he hadn't even bothered to pay her any heed and stepped over her foot as though merely swatting away a mild nuisance, instead of crushing living flesh and bone. And then... then... .

Pain coiled low in her leg, traveling up to her thigh. She remembered the terror etched on her father face, as he had died, despair crushing her as she had been powerless to help him, her lungs seeming inflated beyond capacity as an involuntary scream had been ripped from her body. In that moment, Alexander Marcus had not been the admiral who had betrayed Starfleet and fired upon the flagship, but the man who had held her tiny hand in his large one, as she had taken her third steps, because he had missed the first two occasions, the man who had first told her of Zefram Cochrane's flight and the dream of the stars, who had gifted her a model of the first Enterprise when she had been ten, and had had tears in his eyes the day she had graduated from the Academy. And this... creature had taken him away from her in the most horrendous fashion.

Cartwright was right: there was something unlike anything she had seen in both human and aliens in the augment and she knew it better than anyone. She had glimpsed it, when the man on the other side of the force field had murdered her father: something so ferocious and so senseless, that the wildlife on the most inhospitable planets could not hope to match. There was no sign now of that viciousness on his ill-looking face; instead, it had been replaced visible distress. Perhaps he was in physical pain. On the footsteps of that realization, a new feeling rose in her, one she had never before experience to such a degree: satisfaction. Her heart stuttered in her chest, as she became aware that she was glad of her enemy's suffering, so much that it burnt, setting aflame a dark place within herself, one she discovered from the first time.

She swallowed against the bile pushing at her throat, as stark fear batted at the riveting triumph. A man was hurt, subjected to undoubtedly illegal medical tests, and instead of her conscience screaming at the injustice of it all, she was exuberant. For one terrifying second, she thought she had gone mad. She had no time to dwell on it, however, as a woman in hospital shrubs brushed past her without a word and keyed a code on a panel on the wall, dissolving the forcefield enough for her to take the tray of hypos she was carrying inside the cell.

Carol turned to Cartwright. His knowing look made her stomach roil with nausea. He had clearly noticed her reaction to the augment's condition. Carol let it pass. "What could possibly justify the risk of taking him out of cryosleep again?" she asked tersely.

"Doctor McCoy's report on the serum that revived Captain Kirk made for an interesting read. The extent of the regenerative abilities of Khan's platelets are an invaluable source of vaccines against some of the worst viral threats we've encountered." He took a step closer to her. "As I'm sure you know, space exploration didn't just take us into the path of hostile powers, but also into contact with diseases that could render entire races extinct. Remember that outbreak of neural parasites on the Deneva colony? It was your ship that answered the distress call, wasn't it?"

Carol shuddered. That had not been the kind of mission one forgot, especially since it had carried additional gravitas due to the fact that Jim Kirk's brother and his family were stationed on Deneva. The crisis had been averted, before it could properly begin. No soon had the Enterprise reached orbit, that Starfleet medical had sent over an antidote to the violent disease, saving the lives of everyone on the colony and allowing Jim and his brother an unexpected time together.

"You infected him with the parasites," she said, making it a statement rather than a question.

"It's all very humane," Cartwright assured. "The drugs made sure he wasn't aware of developing the symptoms. And all those people on Deneva and who knows how many others got to live to see another day. After everything he did, he owes us that much."

Carol gritted her teeth together, spying from the corner of her eye the woman leaving the augment's cell and typing in the code that put the forcefield back into effect. She thought of Phlox's words about ethics both human and alien and the inalienable rights inscribed in the Federation's founding documents. They all seemed so distant and artificial, words on pads and paper, nothing more. What had substance were the graves of those a homicidal tyrant had killed in two separate centuries, leaving a trail of blood whenever he went. It was only fair that he contributed to saving other lives in exchange, whether he liked it or not. After all, it was not so different from what she had helped McCoy do, when the doctor had taken blood from the unconscious augment in order to save Kirk.

She looked Cartwright in the eye. There was another question weighting heavily on her mind. "And if I refuse to cooperate, then what? Are you going to bury me somewhere on this asteroid as a small sacrifice to make for the safety of the Federation?"

The commodore straightened himself and shrugged unconcernedly. "Don't be melodramatic, Doctor Marcus. If you refuse us, we'll simply return you to your ship and let you go wherever you please. You could, of course, go public with what you know, but then we'll make sure documentation surfaces showing that Khan has not been removed from his cryotube in the facility housing the rest of his crew. Besides, without any evidence backing your claims and considering your psychiatric diagnostic, how much credibility can you expect to have?"

She glared at him. "Are you threatening me?"

He smiled slightly. "I'm merely stating the facts, should you decide to be a hero in a situation requiring none. I think we both know how easily your being cleared for duty can be reversed, your Starfleet commission suspended on grounds of mental instability, followed perhaps by recommendation of involuntary commitment." His tone was neutral, nothing menacing filtering through, and his whole demeanor remained amicable. He might as well have discussed the weather rather than the wrecking her career.

She pushed aside a fresh bout of anger. "I need to sleep on it."

He nodded, not looking at all surprised. "I think we can lend you quarters and a proper place to dock your ship. However, given the limited time we both have until you have to report back to the Enterprise, I'm sure you'll understand, when I say that I can't give you longer than 24 hours to make your decision."

# # #

The Cold Station 12 equivalent of living quarters included a tiny spartan bedroom with a claustrophobic en-suite bath. Cartwright had confined her to it but given her his word that she wasn't under armed guard or video surveillance. Once alone, Carol staggered into the fresher, the pain in her leg unbearable by this point. She dropped to her knees by the toilet and violently emptied the contents of her stomach. Her hands gripped the porcelain bowl with all the strength she could muster only to realize that there wasn't a muscle in her body that wasn't shaking.

Her mind was whirling in circles, always returning to that dark delight of seeing the miserable condition of her father's murderer. She had never in her life even entertained the possibility of rejoicing into someone's pain. That she was capable of it made her feel that she was somehow worse than him... than Khan. At least, he had the excuse of his augmented aggressiveness and lack of moral compass for what he had done. But she knew better. The Carol Marcus she thought she was did not condone torture and using someone as test subject for the galaxy's worst pathogens; she did everything in her power to stop it. She would not allow grief and loss to tarnish that crystalline column that was what she stood for and what was right.

As she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, steeling herself for the difficult journey of getting up on a leg in awful psychosomatic pain, she wondered if this had been how her father's degradation had started: one small allowance after another under the excuse of safeguarding their way of life, until it had all snowballed into justifying just about everything. Her knuckles turned chalky on the edge of the toilet, as she managed to drag herself upwards, careful not to rest her full weight on the leg that her treacherous mind considered still injured. The effort made her vision blurry for a few seconds, before she could properly stand. Her stomach cramped, her disgust at her almost giving into the temptation of Cartwright's poisonous promises mixing with her anger both at her failing body and at the man who had caused her such deep physical and metal wounds.

She almost toppled over, while straining herself towards the sink. She rinsed her mouth, the foul taste at the back of her throat stubbornly refusing to go away. She could swear she had fire ants devouring the flesh of her leg. "You're fine," she told her living reflexion in the bathroom mirror. The downside was that she was also alone with only her pain and determination for comfort. She decided it was all she needed.

She squeezed her eyes shut, digging into her mind for the relaxation exercises M'Benga had been teaching her. She would not give into the pain. She would not give into any thirst for revenge. She would not become Khan, Cartwright or her father. She could do this.

# # #

Carol keyed the frequency Cartwright had provided her with on the ancient communication panel on the wall of her would-be quarters on the station. "Commodore," she began, infusing her voice with a calm she did not truly feel. "I'll work with you... on one condition."

TBC