Chapter 21

B-Level was complete chaos. It was pretty much a war zone. There were AHL's everywhere, using weapons and shields Mara had never seen before—she could only assume they were of their own design.

Facing them were white-coats and a new security force Mara had not yet seen. They were dressed in black body armor and bulletproof vests, with riot gear lining their arms and legs. They carried long Plexiglass shields and wore the traditional black riot visors. These guys seemed to be holding their own.

Mara kept her head down as she made her way to a corner that was being held by The 72. They had a front line established midway down the long open space, and not a single enemy could reach the corner. There, Mara spotted Lorran.

He wasn't fighting or even reloading. While the others fought to keep their ground, Lorran was ferociously working on wiring something to the ceiling and wall. As she approached, one of The 72 stepped forward, raising a gun.

"Kye!" Lorran yelled, stopping him. "She's with us."

Mara had a moment of shock and awe in which she truly considered who she was with. She was with Khan, heart and soul. But the people on the other end were her people… human beings. Was she really against them?

The man named Kye immediately lowered the gun, and shielded her with his own body as he escorted her to Lorran.

"Welcome to Hell, Ms. McGivers," Lorran said with a smile, turning back to his work.

She couldn't help but wonder what, exactly, Lorran knew of Hell. Had they read the Bible too? Something told her a group of genetic experiments wouldn't appreciate it very much.

"What are you doing?" she yelled over the gunfire. She heard a nearby scream, and turned to see Khan's Lieutenant-Commander Mirah fall to the ground, clutching a bullet wound in her abdomen. With the amount of noise on B-Level and the damage the bullets were doing to the AHL's that they hit, something told her they were high-powered rounds.

"To get to Paradise, one must first go through Hell….Dante," Lorran said with a smile.

"You too, with the quotes?" Mara asked, exasperated.

"No, Khan told me that one. When he asked me to do this," he said with sadness.

"What is 'this'?" she asked again, pointing to the mess-load of wires and odd objects Lorran was strapping to the wall and ceiling.

"I am going to simultaneously blow a hole into A-Level, and the access-stairway, as they've barred it off. With Rowen holding the ground near the elevator, we cannot get to Khan, and he told us that escape should be our priority. It is not mine, however."

"I could get back up to him," Mara said, fingering the key card in her pocket.

"And then what? All 72 of us ride the elevator out? In groups that small, they would surely stop us. And I am not about to sacrifice any of them," Lorran said, slamming what looked like a tiny white brick in the middle of all his wires.

"That looks like…" she gasped.

"C4," Lorran said, pressing a button on a display he held, and watching as the wires went active.

"But… you could kill him," Mara objected.

"And if we leave him, he has the same option. I will trust in his capacity for pain and regenerative capabilities," Lorran said, but there was sadness behind his eyes.

Lorran finished what he was doing, yanked the wires from his handheld display, and turned to his fellow AHL's.

"Crew, we have 45 seconds to be on the other side of this room before we're blown to annihilation."

With that, all of them pushed forward, guns firing and voices raised. With their combined might, the security force of Rowen was no match, some of them simply falling at the hands of Khan's weapons.

Lorran dragged Mara with him, and together, The 72 forced their way back as far from the corner as possible. When the employees of Rowen realized why they were so viciously being pushed back, it was too late.

Mara screamed as the most volatile and numbing explosion wracked the other half of B-Level. Flames filled nearly half the space, engulfing bodies that had been left there. Mara felt the air leave her chest as a shock wave erupted throughout the entire complex, and concrete and steel began collapsing inward. Mara's ears rang like nails on a chalkboard, and behind that there was simply static. As a physician, she subconsciously wondered exactly how much damage had just been done to her ear drums.

The collapse halted when almost half of B-Level had been obliterated, and Lorran wasted no time. He pushed back, leaving what was left of the Rowen security force to stare in shock.

"You lot, get out!" Lorran ordered, addressing The 72. They nodded, heading for the hole in the wall that now led to the access stairs. "Kye, get Mirah out. Kent, help me! Khan!" Lorran screamed, leaping nearly ten feet onto the pile of rubble and climbing into A-Level. Kent followed, shoving concrete aside like it was firewood.

Mara put her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming as she nearly stepped on the unmoving body of the guard that had stood watch in front of Khan's cell. He was trapped between two massive, car-sized hunks of rubble, and in his hand, still clasped tight, was his rifle. A sinking pity rose in her stomach, and she tried desperately to push it away. She loved Khan… she had to get him out.

But at what cost?

"Mara!" she heard Lorran cry, and she abandoned her pity to climb the pile of rubble into A-Level.

Much of it had collapsed, including the first row of cells. Mara's heart sank as she found Lorran leaning over an unmoving Khan.

His cell hadn't taken the brunt of the explosion, but it had collapsed downward, leaving the still-drugged Khan lying bloody on the uneven ground. The iron bars were mangled and hanging three feet above them, still attached to the ceiling.

"Come on, Khan," Lorran begged, yanking the IV out of his arm. Khan attempted to lean up, but was obviously in tremendous pain.

Lorran snaked a hand around his shoulders, pulling him to his feet.

No sooner had they turned to descend the rubble heap than a single shot rang out through B-Level, and Lorran screamed, dropping to the ground. Khan fell to his knees, but it was clear his worry was aimed at his first officer.

Mara spun around to see a bloody and beaten Pierce stalking toward them from the elevator. There were very few Rowen security guards left, but those who were slowly lined up with Pierce, raising their weapons once more.

"You!" Pierce shrieked, pointing at Khan. Khan was trembling as the drugs slowly wore off, but his eyes turned to ice as he stared at Pierce. Mara could see Lorran barely moving beside him, a wound directly over his heart.

"You ruined everything," Pierce roared as he stepped forward. Blood stained Pierce's face, and his clothes were torn. Khan slowly stood, but it was obvious he was weak. He looked down on Pierce, pure hatred pouring from his gaze.

"One must wonder," Khan began, slowly descending the rubble. He left Lorran, but Mara knew it wasn't because he didn't care. With any luck, Lorran would heal by the time Khan disengaged Pierce.

Khan took deliberately measured steps, and Mara could tell that if he didn't, he would fall. But it came off as simply dramatic. It could work.

"Was Daedalus truly distraught when Icarus plummeted to his death," Khan continued, reaching the bottom of the pile and approaching Pierce slowly.

"Or was he simply disappointed by the design failure?"

With that, Khan reached up and placed a hand on the side of Pierce's face, throwing him down to the ground so hard that Mara heard a crack as his skull hit the floor. He was not out, however, and Khan knew this. He leapt at him, practically snarling with rage.

The others knew that the guards and technicians would try to help him, so Kent stepped forward with one of Khan's guns, taking out three in quick succession. Mara knew she couldn't just stand there, so she leapt forward, grabbing a guard's gun by the barrel and yanking it from his hand. He had obviously never expected this from her, or he would have had a better grip on it.

However, as she spun the gun in her hand and pointed it at him, she found that she couldn't pull the trigger. Years of service in the hospital came flooding back—delivering the child of a car crash victim and managing to save both mother and son. Performing emergency heart surgery on a gunshot victim in a non-sterile sandwich shop, and managing to keep him alive until paramedics arrived. Keeping her hand firmly on the stab wound of a gang victim for two hours while gang violence was quelled by police. She had never killed a human being before. Saving them was her life, her passion. And taking it away didn't seem to be in her nature, even if it meant her own death.

He'll kill Khan. Just do it. If even one of them lives, it could ruin his escape.

Her hand shook, tears falling down her face as her finger trembled over the trigger.

Luckily, she didn't have to. A bullet hit the guard from the left, and she jumped, turning to look at its origin as he fell.

Lorran was leaning up, grimacing in pain and holding his chest. He held a gun in his shaking right hand, and he nodded to her as she looked at him.

Mara dropped the gun in disgust, looking up to find that every last one of Pierce's guards and technicians had been taken out or neutralized. She looked down to see Pierce desperately crawling away from Khan.

"If you wanted me to follow you blindly in servitude," Khan hissed, stalking after him slowly and kicking him over to stop his escape. "You shouldn't have given me the ability to despise you for it."

Pierce was on his back, still trying to crawl away. Khan pounced on him like a wild animal, and Pierce struggled against him to little avail. Khan's grasp found Pierce's throat, and he whimpered.

"Khan, please don't," Mara begged, watching as Pierce fought against Khan's strangling hold.

"I'd tell you to go to Hell," Khan growled. "But Hell is empty. All the devils are here."

With that, Khan spit on the ground to Pierce's right, and snapped his neck like a straw.

Author's note: I feel that at this point I should explain Khan's literary references. (FYI, that last one about the devils is Shakespeare). For those who aren't fans of the old movies, this faq is for you-the original Khan played by Montalban did this a LOT, namely with Melville's "Moby Dick." Famously, Khan's last words in Wrath were quoted from Moby Dick: "To the last, I will grapple with thee... from Hell's heart, I stab at thee! For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee!" So basically, with my story, I was trying to meld the two Khans together to form a kind of amalgamation of the two, one that combines the attributes of both that make them great. I felt that the lit. quotes did just that. I have dropped several in here that I didn't have him identify, just as easter eggs for all of you. :-]