Down The Rabbit Hole

Warnings: Some violent and explicit content. Also some instances of bad language. There is also a reference to the Holocaust and the Nazis.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

A/N: Doing some research on the Eugenics Wars, I realised that my entire timeline for this story is a bit wonky, so if you notice any discrepancies with canon, I am very sorry. I also didn't realise there was only a year's difference between Star Trek and Into Darkness in the story's timeline either. And there is a little TOS reference for those who'll know it. Hope you like!

Cassia was surprised when she was taken to her quarters and allowed to shower, once they returned to the Enterprise. She was covered in grime and blood from the fight, of course, most of it Klingon blood at that; but she hadn't thought Kirk would allow her that considering her all too obvious siding with Khan and use of her abilities during the fight.

Guards were posted outside her door, and she amusedly chuckled to herself. After her display, she would have thought Kirk smart enough to realise that two guards would not be enough to stop her if she wanted to run. Or maybe that was exactly why he knew she wouldn't harm them. She had nowhere to run and what she wanted was onboard anyway.

Kirk was smarter than she thought.

After she had dried off, she eyed her gold command uniform, before putting it away with a firm shake of herself. That life, that lie was over.

She dressed in similar attire to that she had worn down on the planet, tight-fitting black trousers and a tank top, leaving her hair loose down her shoulders. She felt the presence of the Security officers at her back, as she turned and faced them questioningly.

"We're to transfer you to the brig, Commander. Captain's orders," one of informed her coolly, his hand close to the hip where his phaser nestled in its holster. She smiled and inclined her head.

"Lead the way, gentlemen," she purred, anticipation rising within her at the thought of being with Khan again, even if it was in separate cells.

She encountered Kirk just as he was leaving the brig, his eyes raking her coldly. She met his gaze with all the arrogance she possessed, refusing to bend her will before him.

"Put her in with him," he barked to the Security offers abruptly, before he turned back to her with a sneer. "All traitors together."

"I could say the same of you and Admiral Marcus, Kirk," she breathed softly, as he whirled and snapped at her.

"You stood in that room, Mason. You watched him murder good men and women, and you helped him," he snarled. "Don't talk to me of betrayal. You've helped the man who murdered your own commanding officer, though now I'm guessing most of that bullshit you fed me was a lie."

"Not entirely," she replied. "I do mourn Henry Tregannan's death, but good people die in war all the time. I've watched most of them firsthand. Starfleet committed a far greater crime than anything I have done, as you'll soon find out."

"Get her out of my sight," he snapped in disgust.

"Despite what you try to pretend, James Kirk," she smiled softly. "You are not a cruel man."

"Keep talking and I might change my mind," he muttered, as he stalked past. Cassia's last words before she was marched forward, made him pause for a second.

"You may think I have betrayed you, and you're right," she called, her eyes on his straight back, the muscles flickering with tension beneath the gold command shirt. "But what I did, I did for one I love and the only family I have left. What would you do, in my place, Kirk, for the ones you love? For your family?"

He didn't look back as he walked away, and Cassia mentally shrugged. She wasn't entirely sure why she felt the need to speak anyway.

The brig was a large, echoing chamber in the regulation white and chrome, a crewman sat at the desk monitoring the security feeds, although the cells were empty but for one.

Khan was sat on the bunk in his cell, but his head shot up when he heard their approach, his eyes widening imperceptibly at the sight of her. The door to the connecting passageway, added as an extra precaution by Commander Spock when he assisted in the design of the brigs onboard Starfleet vessels, opened and locked behind her, and she quickly stepped through the other, into the almost blindingly white expanse of Khan's, now their, cell, the door shutting and locking behind her with a sibilant hiss.

Silence fell, tense and thick, as Cassia defiantly met the angry eyes of the man so calmly sitting opposite her. Kirk's blind rage had nothing on him. Besides, two could play this game.

It was obvious Khan too had been permitted to clean up, before being imprisoned, the dirt and sweat gone from his flawless skin, his hair, where it had been lank and wet from the fight, was once more neat and set back from his face. The sight of it always made her palms itch.

"Why did you come after me?" he finally broke the silence, his voice rumbling over the space between them. "I told you to stay on Earth-"

"As if I ever do as I'm told," Cassia rolled her eyes. "After three years of believing that I am one person, and discovering that I am in fact another, finding you again and being sent away, did you really believe I'd just obey your orders like some meek little servant? Do you even know the woman you claim to love?"

"Cassia," he growled warningly, as she turned away, folding her arms as she stared out the observation wall.

She sensed him stand and stalk to her side, his lips brushing her temple, as she shuddered, closing her eyes at the feel of him so close to her.

"Cassia, you have never been and never will be my servant. I cared only for your safety," he whispered the words against her ear, as his arms slipped around her waist.

"I needed you, Khan," she breathed. "We may be better than ordinary humans, but even we fall prey to our emotions, or have you forgotten that drive?"

"Since the day I thought you dead, my only thought was to protect the others," he told her, quietly and fiercely, his arms tightening around her waist. "Since the moment I saw you again, standing and glaring at me, as you used to do whenever I angered you, amid all the destruction, my only thought has been to protect…and love you again, as I failed to do so before."

Cassia was not a weak woman. Any propensity she might have had for weakness had quite literally been erased from her DNA, and the life she had lived since the day she awoke from the DNA augmentation procedure would have destroyed it anyway, or destroyed her if she could not transcend it. But the silken voice in her ear, the feel of his arms holding her around her waist so tightly, his arms locked in an unbreakable loop around her hips, she felt safe and protected. She always had.

"Were it not for the fact that the sight of you, naked, in my arms is one for my eyes alone, I would have no hesitation in showing you how much I need you, Cassia," he whispered in her ear, as she smiled coyly. That was more like the Khan she remembered.

His lips skimmed the curve of her neck desirously, as she felt ready to burst out of her own skin. But they were being monitored, and just as she was Khan's, so he was hers and no one was allowed to see him the way she did.

She arched her neck back, bringing their lips together, tenderly at first before it inevitably escalated, her hand sliding into his hair and grasping hungrily, just as his hands tightened on her waist enough to leave bruises. She tore away with a teasing smile. "Down, boy," she muttered breathlessly, before putting some much needed distance between them and taking a seat on the bunk. "What did you tell Kirk? And what exactly is in those torpedoes?"

Khan followed her to the bunk, sitting down beside her, their hands intertwined but nothing else. "Kirk, despite his attempts to prove otherwise, is a good man. He would not execute one who had done him wrong without answers, so I gave him just enough for him to find out on his own. The truth about Admiral Marcus, and why I did what I did," he explained, as she listened. "You will know soon enough, I promise you that. As for what are inside those torpedoes Marcus supplied Kirk, I think you know very well, Cassia."

"Then…they're safe? Alive?" she breathed, and he nodded. Joy bloomed deep inside of her, and she smiled slightly before carefully erasing all emotion from her face. "What do you plan to do now?"

"Marcus. If I am right in my reading of Kirk, he will take me to him," Khan murmured, barely audible to anyone but Cassia. She nodded imperceptibly.

"Kirk is…a good man," she began, feeling her lover's gaze on her as she spoke. "Better than I anticipated. There is little he would not do for those he loves. He is not unlike us. The humans have changed."

"Not all of them," Khan growled lowly. "And Kirk's kind are too few for us to be safe, Cassia."

She sighed, leaning back against the wall of the cell, closing her eyes. She knew the future implied in Khan's words, and despite all that had happened, all that she remembered and a part of her desired fiercely, she wasn't sure she wanted it, anymore. She just wanted her family.

But would they have to fight for the rest of their considerably lengthened lives to get it? Even if they returned to Earth and conquered it once more, that would not mean safety, and the humans were no longer alone in the galaxy. The Vulcans might be too few to provide assistance, but there were other races out there now. It would mean war without end, and the thought didn't appeal to her any more. A warrior needed a cause to fight, and during their reign they'd had one, to maintain order and peace on Earth, and Khan had done that for all the humans branded him a tyrant after they were betrayed and exiled. Now the humans had made peace for themselves.

They were no longer the frightened children Cassia remembered. Their superiority to them rested now, only in their physical and intellectual skills.

She felt fingertips run along her hand, over the knuckles, gentle and almost ghostly, as she felt his lips against her hair. "Cassia, I need you with me in this. I have only just found you again and I do not wish to lose you," he whispered against her hair, as she let herself slump into him, his arms coming around her, just for a moment.

"You'll always have me, my love. Always," she breathed, leaning into him and pressing a kiss against his throat, over where his pulse thundered against her lips.

Her words shivered in the air between them like the vow it was, but only Cassia knew its full significance. She closed her eyes and sighed.

They remained in silence after that, comforting and close, although she left his embrace to feel just a little more focused. She never could think straight once enveloped in his arms.

The sound of footsteps had her turning where she sat, as both Kirk and Spock came running up.

Kirk wasted no time with pleasantries. "Why is there a man in that torpedo?" he asked, his eyes intent on the pair inside.

Cassia inhaled sharply. So it really was true. Her family were alive.

"There are men and women in all those torpedoes, Captain," Khan replied. "I put them there."

She frowned, turning back to her lover.

She saw Kirk glance at Spock before he asked, "Who the hell are you? Both of you, for that matter, considering that little display you gave on Qo'noS?"

Cassia stood, facing the two officers coolly, as her lover spoke again.

"A remnant of a time long past," Khan explained, his voice almost sad, a sadness Cassia felt in her heart, for all that had been lost. "Genetically engineered to be superior, so as to lead others to peace in a world at war."

"We were created from humans, taken as test subjects by scientists working for the European Alliance," Cassia added. "Our memories were erased by the augmentation, and our only purpose was to do what the humans could not. We succeeded."

"But we were condemned as criminals, forced into exile," Khan continued. Cassia glanced at their audience, saw the disbelief in their eyes but they were unable to stop listening, to break free of her lover's hypnotic voice. "For centuries, we slept, hoping that when we awoke, things would be different," he glanced at Spock, a tinge of venom entering his voice as he stared balefully at the Vulcan. "But after the destruction of Vulcan, your Starfleet began to aggressively search distant quadrants of space, my ship was found adrift, we alone were revived."

"I looked up John Harrison," Kirk put in, drawing their attention. "And Cassandra Mason. A year ago, he didn't exist," he nodded at Khan, "And three years ago, she didn't exist. All your test scores, your Academy records, everything, was a very good fake."

Cassia snorted softly.

"John Harrison was a fiction created the moment I was awoken by your Admiral Marcus to help him advance his cause," Khan stood, icy anger radiating from him as he marched up to the glass, eying Kirk coldly. "A smokescreen to conceal my true identity. My name is Khan."

"And what about you?" Kirk asked, looking at Cassia as she stepped forward, her arms folded defiantly. "Were you with him all this time?"

"No," she breathed. "I was awoken along with Khan when Marcus found our ship. I was taken away while still weakened from the revival process, and my memories and DNA suppressed, before I was inserted into human society as Cassandra Mason. My true name is Cassia."

"Why?" Kirk asked, frowning. "Why did he do that? Why, for that matter, would a Starfleet Admiral, ask a 300 year-old frozen man, for help?"

"Because I…we are better," Khan replied.

"At what?" Kirk asked with a derisive smirk.

"Everything," was her lover's cold, cool reply and she could see Kirk's slow-burning anger beginning to build at Khan's arrogance. She inwardly shook her head.

"It is in our DNA, Kirk," she explained softly. "The very essence of our being. The technology of 300 years is nothing to us, your mathematics and theorems barely a challenge to us. Our minds were designed to possess the analytical capability of the most powerful computers with all the creativity of the human soul. There is nothing we cannot do."

Kirk snorted. "And people say I have an ego," he muttered.

"Alexander Marcus needed to respond to a uncivilised threat in a civilised time," Khan suddenly continued, turning away as his voice became more savage, heated with some distasteful memory as Cassia watched him. "For that he needed a warrior's mind, my mind, to design weapons and warships."

"You are suggesting the Admiral violated every regulation he vowed to uphold, simply because he wanted to exploit your intellect?" Spock asked, clearly disdainfully disbelieving of the notion and their story. Cassia felt the burn of anger deep within her, but held it back.

"He wanted to exploit my savagery!" Khan snarled at him. "Intellect alone is useless in a fight, Mr Spock, you…you can't even break a rule, how could you be expected to break bone?" he turned back to Kirk again. "Marcus used me to design weapons to help him realise his vision of a militarised Starfleet. He sent you to use those weapons, to fire my torpedoes, on an unsuspecting planet. And then he purposefully crippled your ship in enemy space, leading to one inevitable outcome. The Klingons would come searching for whomever was responsible and you would have no chance of escape. Marcus would have the war he talked about, the war he always wanted."

Khan's revelations made the anger inside of Cassia burn all the brighter and fiercer as he glanced at her, and she clenched her fists. What hell did her lover undergo at Marcus' hands? She wanted to tear the bastard limb from limb.

Kirk was still disbelieving. "No," he breathed. "No. I watched you open fire on a room of unarmed Starfleet officers. You killed them in cold blood!"

Khan's features turned into a pained snarl as he closed his eyes and turned away with a twist of his head, Cassia watching their interrogators with a glare.

"Marcus took my crew from me!" he growled.

"You are a murderer!" Kirk shouted but Khan ignored him, burning a hole through the back wall of their cell with his gaze as he retorted heatedly.

"He used my friends to control me!" he snarled, before he looked at Cassia, and she met his gaze, with the same pain and grief inside of her, as she sensed Spock and Kirk's gaze on them both. "Our cryotubes were primed to deactivate together should one of us awaken. He took her from me, suppressed her memories and hid her away to use her as a last resort bargaining tool. He would have set her to hunt me, knowing full well I could not harm her, even as he let me believe her dead! It was only the others that kept me from retaliating, I tried to smuggle them to safety by concealing them in the very weapons I had designed. But I was discovered, I had no choice but to escape alone. And when I did, I had every reason to suspect that Marcus had killed every single one of the people I hold most dear! So I responded in kind."

Cassia's eyes traced the tear as it fell from Khan's eye, and she ached to go to him. In truth, she had been luckier than him. She had not believed the man she loved and her family dead. She had not known.

"Do you know what it is to have your life stripped from you, Kirk?" she breathed, glancing at the human with pain in her eyes as disjointed memories flashed across her mind. "To have everything that you are and were, and could be, taken from you and there is nothing you can do to stop it? To be unmade? The agony of loss, felt every moment of every day and you cannot even remember why."

She felt Khan's hands reach for her, tracing her wrists, and she stepped into his embrace, uncaring now of Kirk or Spock, as Khan lightly held her arms, his forehead against her own as she closed her eyes. "My crew is my family, Kirk," Khan breathed softly, unknowingly echoing Cassia's own words to Kirk only a few hours before. "Is there anything you would not do, for your family?"

Cassia's breath shuddered from her lips, as she felt a reciprocal tear slip down her cheek, as Khan pressed his face to hers, his lips lightly resting on their skin. She glimpsed the Vulcan slightly stiffen and his cheek blushed a tinge of green. They were not kissing, but their contact would be seen by a Vulcan as something as intimate as a kiss. Slowly an idea took shape, and she stepped away from Khan, his hand lingering on hers.

"If you do not believe us, Captain, I have a proposition," she murmured, as Kirk looked to her with a nod to continue. "It is known that one cannot lie in a mind meld. If you wish to verify the truth of our story, perhaps you would prefer it from the one you trust most onboard this ship. Perhaps Commander Spock will consent to meld with me."

She felt Khan spin around at her proposition, as both of their interrogators stared at her. Spock stirred first.

"You are aware that I would have full control of the bond? You cannot hope to either harm or take information from my mind, Cassia," he told her gravely, as Kirk stared at him.

"You're not actually considering this?!" he snapped, but Spock inclined his head.

"It is a logical suggestion, Captain, and one freely made," he replied.

"That's what worries me," Kirk muttered under his breath but shrugging. "On your own head be it."

"Cassia," Khan murmured her name behind her, as several security officers amassed at Kirk's command, Spock watching her with that cool, unconcerned façade she suspected little broke through.

"I know what I am doing, Khan," she whispered with a smile, as she was escorted out and cuffed, before being brought before Spock, just outside the cell. The Vulcan took a step towards her, and she was achingly aware of Khan's dagger like glare as he watched them, Kirk watching just as intently.

"You are resolved on this?" Spock asked one last time, as he raised his hand. She nodded and he closed his eyes, as his fingers pressed into her face, one at her temple, the other on her cheek and jaw.

She gasped as her mind was overloaded with a deluge of memories, Spock stiffening as his eyes snapped shut.

All she felt was cold.

In the very cells of her bones, she felt it, her body bristling with suppressed energy as she became slowly aware, her mind awakening from its long sleep.

How long had they slept? A year, ten years, a century? Or more?

Where was Khan?

As hands suddenly gripped her, she opened her eyes and saw him, his hair damp from the ice, his own body as weak as her own from the cryogenic stasis, being similarly manhandled by more men in black and blue uniforms.

Enemy.

Her mind identified them as such, but she had no strength to fight. She wrestled to reach Khan, and as he became aware, he fought to reach her too.

"Khan!" she cried out, just as a cold, unfamiliar voice speaking with an American accent, Midwest from the sound of it though her memory of accents was still dim, and her head snapped around to see a tall, muscular but aging man, in the same uniform, watching her with cold, disinterested eyes. "Sedate her. It's the male we want."

"Cassia!" her head snapped around at Khan's shout, desperate and pained, as she felt the sharp pain of a hypospray entering her neck. Her voice echoed around the chamber their tubes were stored in, as her vision went dark and her limbs soft, and she knew nothing more…

They had no choice. Their numbers were decimated and the humans too numerous even for their advanced abilities to subdue.

Their reign was over.

London lay in ruins around them, as they stood together on the roof of what was once the Houses of Parliament, looking down at the carnage below, gunfire and screams filling the air as the city burned.

Europe was lost. Their territories in Asia and Africa were gone, and their stronghold in America was barely hanging on. They would go there next.

She looked to him, his dark hair ruffled by the wind, his features set with rage and impotency, feelings they had never experienced before, as the people they had fought for and protected, at their own cost, turned against them.

It was not unexpected, after what had happened…

They had found it in Area 51, a prototype sleeper ship that could be used to escape. Barely a handful of their original number had survived, and the few who had gathered there now.

Cassia felt vengefully satisfied that Gabriel, the traitor and root of all their troubles, was not there to share in their escape. He had died at Khan's hand.

The cryotubes sat waiting for them, open and shining in the dim light of the chamber where they would rest. Only she and Khan would stay awake, and only long enough to make sure they escaped Earth's gravity.

They could only hope that when they awoke, things would be different.

As the others slid inside their cryotubes, and the process began, she sighed and looked out of the windows one last time, to see the dry, arid deserts of Nevada recede, the roar of the ship's engines almost deafening to even her advanced hearing.

She turned and left, walking with smooth, unhurried strides to the bridge, the hallways dark but for emergency lighting. She found him there, at the controls, and she wrapped her arms around him from behind, pressing a kiss to his neck.

Earth receded behind them, and she felt a momentary pang as her home disappeared, before Khan stood from his seat, the autopilot engaged and programmed to take them out of the solar system.

"It is time," he whispered, and she nodded reluctantly. Hand in hand, they walked back to join their family, passing the peacefully blank faces of Jason, Arya, Cal and so many of the others.

72. 72 Augments were all that remained. Noonien Singh's legacy to the galaxy, the legacy of the Eugenics Wars, the rest destroyed by their own pride and arrogance.

Soon to be 74. Their cryotubes were side by side, as they stopped, eying the open pods with dislike.

"When we awake, it will be different, my love," Khan whispered, as the unnatural roar of the engines faded as they journeyed into space. His lips brushed her hand in his, and she turned to kiss him, one last time.

"I love you," she murmured against his mouth, before breaking away and forcing herself into the claustrophobic tube. The last thing she saw before her vision went dark were the tender, icy blue eyes of her lover, her Khan, as he smiled gently down on her…

Spock's fingers tightened on her face, as Cassia gasped, her hand shooting up to clasp his forearm, the bone creaking under the strain of her grip. In his cell, Khan started forward, his eyes burning.

Smoke and gunfire filled the air, the earth groaning as it exploded and rent around them, as they rushed towards enemy lines, ducking grenades and mortar attacks, sliding under tanks and machine gun turrets, leaving them smoking in their wake.

This was the final push, the final battle.

She fixed on a soldier, bloodied and struggling to re-load his rifle, glancing up at her in terror as she rushed towards him, using the flat of her hand to bat the muzzle down, flicking it into her arms.

She slammed the butt of the rifle into the soldier's face, driving him into the mud, as she stepped over him. A few moments later, the ground behind her exploded into muddy hell, taking the solder with it, as she walked away, face cold and uncaring of the death she caused.

Her bullets tore and ripped into weak flesh, and not even courage among the few to fight back was enough to stop them. They were not made to be reliant on courage or fear to win the day. They were born to kill.

And when the smoke cleared, and she wiped the blood from her face, she met the eyes of Khan across the battlefield, and they nodded as one.

This was just the beginning…

The silk against her skin exhilarated her.

The war was over, the world trying to recover, as the inevitable infighting began among the squabbling humans. This was just the start of it all, a supposed celebratory dinner at the United Nations in Geneva. All the world's leaders who had fought against the Asian Faction were there, as well as those who had surrendered willingly or sided against their compatriots.

Cassia cared little. It would happen tonight.

They had no choice. Rumours were already circling as to what would happen to the Augments now, and none of them pleasant. They were slaves and pawns, to these humans, Cassia a desirable object, a killing machine soon to be turned to other uses, dressed up in scarlet silk.

Even Singh was there, in the crowd, proudly showing off his creations to the world.

Ignoring the cloying attentions of the Intelligence chief beside her, insistent and dripping innuendo that made her skin crawl, Cassia looked out, to her lover across the room, dark and handsome, ignorant of all the lustful gazes in his direction, hoping to catch his eye.

They both nodded.

Singh and his friends should have known, that the troublesome things about slaves…they always fought back eventually. Spartacus, the French, the American colonists…and now them. The only way they would ever be free would be to take power for themselves, and fulfil their final destiny.

Singh had created them to bring peace and order, and so they would do.

Khan nodded, and when she felt the Intelligence Chief's hand wander down her back, she dropped her champagne glass and snapped his wrist.

That was the signal, as every Augment in the room turned on their human masters, screams, angry shouts and pleading filled the air. Cassia felt nothing as she killed human after human, taking savage delight in the murder of the women who had looked at her Khan so salaciously, and the men who looked at her and saw nothing but a trophy for their beds.

Finally, the room was silent, the marble floor stained with red, red as her gown, as she stepped over their cooling corpses to the two figures left behind, as the others went to subdue the others in the complex.

Khan and Singh. Father and son.

The Indian scientist was snivelling and crying, his eyes wide and fearful. "B-but I created you! Both of you!" he protested as his eyes snapped between Cassia and Khan.

"Thank you for that," Khan drawled as Cassia smiled. Scorn flashed in her eyes. "Did you really think we would simply become mindless drones, slaves to your every whim?"

"But the war is over!" Singh shouted.

"And we will never be free as long as you and your kind believe they can rule our kind," Cassia replied coldly. "We belong to no one."

"Goodbye, Doctor Noonien Singh," Khan smiled coldly, as his hands crept around his creator's neck. With a swift snap, Singh collapsed to the floor.

Khan held out his hand to her, and she took it eagerly, as he led her away, and the sound of explosions filled the air. "First here," Khan breathed, "then the world. Soon, we will be free."

Cassia smiled and wiped her bloodstained hand on her skirts as they walked towards the command centre…

Their new empire was safe and secure. After the fall of the human governments, the people had been quickly subdued, and peace now reigned.

Until now.

It had begun in Africa, when two of their kind began fighting over territory, destabilising their hold over their people, and riots and massacres ensued.

Cassia had believed Khan's hold over their territories too pervasive and strong to be challenged by the difficulties in the South and East of the Earth, but it seemed rebellion had seeped its way even into the heart of their empire.

It had only been a single man, who had tried to kill them both in an assassination attempt, but a spark had been lit. Now it had to be contained.

Khan was not a cruel ruler. He saw the humans under his dominion as his to protect and keep, and yes they were not given many freedoms they possessed before the wars, but that was half the reason most of them were even alive. He was a good ruler, but his control was absolute, and if any tried to subvert it, then no God could help them against his vengeance.

The attempt angered her, but she was wary of too severe a retribution. Earth's most peaceful civilisations internally were those that allowed a modicum of free expression to their citizens, and punishments more lenient that deserved.

Perhaps they might better defuse the rebellion if they spared the man's life than if they executed him.

All this she had told him, but he refused to listen. Rage, hurt at the betrayal, pride and arrogance dictated his actions, and the fact that they had targeted her. Not just him, but Cassia also.

He was deaf to her advice this time.

The assassin was publicly hanged, they had watched together as his body swung from the scaffold. That was where it began, as riots broke out and screams and cries for justice began to ring around Parliament Square.

That was the beginning of the end…

Outside the theatre of Cassia's mind, she gasped and stiffened, almost falling to her knees, as Spock's face contorted in pain, Kirk rushing to his friend's side, trying to prise his hands off of Cassia's face, while the security guards rushed to help. Khan's fists clenched but he was helpless in his cell, his gaze fixed on Cassia as she trembled in Spock's meld.

A deep tear in her mind ripped open, raining pain over her and she was lost, unable to find her way back.

Hands were forcing her along, tight and restricting, and she knew she'd have bruises in the morning. The hands crushed in her own struggled to keep up with her, as she held on to them tightly.

Her father and brother were gone, now it was her time to protect them. Her vulnerable mother and her little, innocent sister. Kayla.

This was all her fault. If she hadn't been so damned determined to find out exactly what Singh and the others were up to, so driven by her journalistic instincts…

Mother was right. She should have just become an academic, used her history degree for it was made for. Then she would never have dragged them into this.

Ever since her father and brother were conscripted into this blasted war, she had felt increasingly determined to do something, contribute somehow. She'd always been a curious child, and her insatiable curiosity had been the undoing of her often enough.

Suddenly, hands wrenched her away from her little sister and mother, the latter's soft brown eyes wide with fear and pain. "Marla!" she shouted, reaching for her, but they were dragged away.

Even as she screamed for them, hearing her little Kayla's voice shouting her name long after she had been dragged away, she knew she would never see them again.

She had been caught trying to break into Singh's research labs in London, and though she had escaped immediate capture, the government's security services had caught up with them before they'd escaped the country.

Now they had been taken here. Camp 21.

A prison camp right in the heart of the Highlands, exposed to the harshest of the climate. Rumours were rife, fact dim and uncertain, but one thing was known. No one who came here, ever came back again.

And she'd condemned her family to this. No doubt, her father and brother would be consigned here too, or ordered on a suicide mission. Or maybe they would not tell them the truth, just send them a message that Georgina, Marla and Kayla McGivers had died of the flu epidemics sweeping the country.

The days of democracy were a distant dream. Marla barely remembered them.

She was forced onto her knees and chained at the wrists, the chains loose up to a point. Enraged, she waited for whatever came next.

A familiar, hated, face soon entered and she lunged at him, almost dislocating her arms at the wrench. "YOU!"

Doctor Noonien Singh chuckled amusedly at the sight of her, dishevelled and bleeding from the guards' maltreatment, burning with anger. "You have been a nuisance, Miss McGivers. But at least you could finally accept my invitation," he told her silkily, as she glared at him. He eyed her admiringly. "You are a very lucky woman."

"Where are my mother and sister?" she demanded.

Singh sighed, as he began to pace around her, hands behind his back. "You know, despite what people think, Hitler had a point about humanity's superiority," he began. "But he was too limited, too narrow. He believed only certain characteristics enabled such superiority, and all that silliness with Jews…wasted,"

Marla felt his hands on her hair and flinched away, glaring at him heatedly. "You're insane!" she snapped. "I know exactly what you've been doing, what you've been experimenting with!"

"Ahh yes," Singh sighed. "My greatest triumph and my greatest failure. Alas, the use of embryos in the augmentation process has proven too inefficient. The growth accelerant develops the body but not the mind, leaving them as children. And children cannot fight."

"I saw what you did to them!" she breathed in disgust. "Destroying them like sick cattle. The UN will never sanction this!"

"On the contrary my dear, they already have," he told her laughingly, as he swung to face her. "However, now it is time to utilise Plan B. Embryos are too time-consuming, so we have decided to try another route. Human test subjects."

"Where are my mother and sister?" she growled again. Singh walked to a table, opening a case and she felt fear rush through her as she saw the bottle and the syringe.

"You have a great destiny ahead of you, Marla," he told her as he drew a little of the liquid from the bottle. "A glorious future, but first you must relinquish your old one. Your tenacity, intelligence, cunning and courage, even now, have made you worthy. But unfortunately, accepted test subjects cannot any ties to their former existences remaining. Poor little Kayla and Mrs McGivers will soon be the latest victims of the swine flu pandemic, I am afraid to say."

"NO!" she screamed, lunged forward again. "You insane, sick bastard!-"

He turned and smiled as he advanced on her with the syringe. He produced a slim, black device from his pocket, and with a flick of one of the buttons on its surface, the chains tightened until she couldn't move, and she could do nothing as Singh came towards her with that sick, anticipatory grin.

"I will enjoy working on you, Marla McGivers," he told her. "But such a name is unworthy of the goddess you will become."

She cried out at the sting of the needle in her carotid artery, and no matter how she tried to fight, the sedative was too powerful, as she slumped to the ground, barely away of Singh's musing as she slipped into unconsciousness, the last words she heard as Marla McGivers his own.

"I think you shall be called…Cassia…"

Cassia gasped and tore away from Spock's hand, panting and trembling. Spock stumbled back from her as she collapsed, barely aware of rhythmic blows against the glass observation wall as Khan demanded her.

Pain, greater even than the agony she had felt when Khan used his blood to return her memories, washed through her and she closed her eyes.

She moaned Khan's name, and dimly heard Kirk's orders to put her back in the cell. She flinched away from the cold white lights, as the weak arms of the security guards suddenly gave way to those of the strong, warm arms of her beloved.

She moaned and curled herself into him, and he held her tightly. She was vaguely aware of Spock's voice, exhausted and shaking himself, as he said to Kirk, "They speak the truth, Captain."

Cassia whimpered, eyes shut tight against the pain and the images, as Khan cradled her close, whispering her name over and over.

"Cassia…Cassia…"

Marla…Cassia…Cassandra…

She shut her eyes and forced it all away, as she opened her eyes to those of her lover, deep blue and filled with worry.

"Khan," she sighed, pulling him close, as the pain peaked and she waited for it to ease.

Gradually it did, and with it the sense of displacement, of confusion and loss, as her breathing slowed, and she met Khan's gaze once more, conscious of the others watching them too.

Questions glowed in his eyes, and she didn't know how to answer them, coupled with a fury and possessiveness that she ached to soothe, even as her mind still whimpered and fought to stabilise itself.

She opened her mouth to speak-

"Proximity alert, Sir!" Sulu's voice came over the comm, calm and unruffled. "There's a ship at warp heading right for us!"

"Klingons?" Kirk asked.

"At warp?" Khan remarked, never taking his eyes from Cassia's, until the last moment, still cradling her to him. "No, Kirk. We both know who it is!"

To be continued...