A/N: That's right, folks! NEW CONTENT. Only took, like...years. I've got to finish their story though...I love them too much! So, bear with me, because it's gonna be a slog. My life is busy, but I am determined to get this written. I can't guarantee a regular update schedule, but I can promise that I'll be writing as much as I can, as often as I can.

As a note, please make sure you re-read Chapter 1! It's been thoroughly edited and updated.

Beyond that, I hope you enjoy Chapter 2!

And much love to my not-so-baby-anymore sis...she's tackling the editing of this beast all over again. Trust me, without her, I'd be lost!

Lake Inari, Lapland, Finland

(Stardate 2258.321)

Alone.

As a word – as a particular arrangement of vowels and consonants – he knew precisely what it meant. Its definition. Its etymology.

But as a concept…

In his life before, it had been utterly foreign to him. He and his fellow Augments had spent their youth cloistered away, living and learning and growing in an environment of perpetual togetherness. So much so that it had become second nature to remain that way once they had left the confines of the Shimla facility behind.

His first taste of it, though he'd had no proper word for it at the time, had come aboard the Botany Bay. As he had walked amongst the already-filled cryotubes that held the slumbering remnants of his family – hearing nothing at all, save for the whir of machinery and the sound of his own breath – he had felt a faint press of…something. A distant tremor of some unknown emotion, clawing at his insides and spurring his step; urging him into his own designated cryotube with far more speed than necessary.

It had been a relief to close his eyes and join his brethren in their medically modulated sleep. The far side of the journey had held nothing but the darkness of uncertainty, but at least they would be facing it together, when the time came.

Of course, he had been swiftly disabused of that notion when the time had finally come.

During the first, agonizing weeks spent beneath Marcus' thumb, he had begun to more fully understand the glimpse that he had been given aboard the Botany Bay. Alone had become something far more concrete; something far more insidious.

But then…

Then had come Rebecca and with her, a thoroughly revised lexicon had been laid out before him, begging to be learned – and alone had been banished as if it had never existed within his vocabulary.

Now, as he lay awake, staring up at the blank, white ceiling above him and drowning in the merciless roar of silence…now he understood the full, crushing truth of what it meant to be truly and completely alone.

His people were dead. Rebecca was dead.

He had nothing left.

Nothing but the memories of what had been, the shattered dreams of what could have been…and the soul-withering certainty of what never would be again.

Blinking dry, red-rimmed eyes, he traced the tiny cracks in the plaster over his head, a leaden hollowness sitting heavy in the center of his chest. His mind, always his greatest ally and sharpest weapon, was similarly burdened; heavy and fogged, trapped in the black mist of his misery.

Once, he would have scoffed at even the suggestion that such a thing could be possible. In war, loss was inevitable. And while it was always painful to lose a treasured ally, it was hardly debilitating and certainly not something one lost themselves to in so maudlin and banal a manner. Such was the folly of lesser mortals – never of one such as himself.

He had been a fool, in those days. Arrogantly unappreciative of his blessings and entirely too confident in his own infallibility.

Until yesterday, he had believed himself to have grown past such astonishing conceit; that the frustrations and adversity of the past year had tempered his pride. He had thought himself become more – a better man for fighting so long for his people, who he had once taken for granted. A better man for loving a woman he would once have dismissed without a second thought.

Swallowing hard, he closed his eyes on the sudden burn of tears.

A fool then.

'This was a good plan, Khan. I know you do not see that now, but you will. There's more to life than battle and blood.' Joaquin's smile was wide, easy and surprisingly relaxed for a man who had just tucked himself into an experimental cryopod, while aboard an experimental spacecraft, whose course was set toward regions unknown.

Khan shook his head, sparing only a small glance for his friend as he began the sequence that would see him soon sinking into cryostasis. 'We have ceded the field to those we were designed to rule,' he snapped, still unreconciled to their retreat. 'I doubt I shall ever see the so-called good in this plan.'

'You do not have to,' Joaquin said with a shrug, 'not right now, at least. Simply take my word for it – peace is out there. One day, we will find it.'

Khan stopped for a moment, meeting the eyes of the oldest and truest ally that he had. 'You all may be satisfied with peace,' he snapped, the words faintly accusatory. 'But I cannot be. The world was ours, and one day, it will be again.'

A fool now.

'Let's just go,' she said, the words spoken in a rushed jumble against his lips. 'We've got them. We've got ourselves. When the transport gets here, let's just take it and go like we'd originally planned. Please?'

He sighed, frustrated not only with her stubborn refusal to drop the subject, but even more so with the way her tenacity drew his own misgivings to the forefront of his thoughts – a weakness they could ill afford. 'We have discussed this, Rebecca,' he said firmly. 'I will not give up the Vengeance.'

'Khan…'

'No!' He pulled away from her, frustration turning to real annoyance as he put her at arm's length, large hands gripping her biceps tight and pressing her away from him – refusing to allow her touch to sway him away from his plan. 'Stop it, Rebecca. The Vengeance is mine and I will have it. Nothing, not even you, shall change my mind on that score.'

And how Fate had punished him for it, taking from him the only things he now truly longed for. Robbing him of the very people he had taken most for granted; sacrifices made on the altar of his own avarice.

At that thought, a wave of such overwhelming culpability crashed over him that it turned his stomach, and he rolled to his side, breaths heaving as he tried desperately not to add a further layer of humiliation to his agony. After several moments of slow, deep breaths, he opened his eyes…and was confronted with something he had been trying very hard to ignore.

Rebecca's battered pack lay just as he had left it the night before – shoved away, out of his sight, beneath the table. He'd had just enough energy to banish it there, before collapsing in a heap and falling into a short, stilted but blessedly dreamless sleep. That pack, which she was never without, was as potent a symbol of just how greatly he had failed her as any he could imagine. Despite that…it was not the pack that he could not tear his eyes away from...

No. It was the hastily folded slip of paper that lay on the floor in front of it that he could not look away from. The hastily folded slip of paper that had his name scrawled across the front of it in Rebecca's looping, messy scrawl.

Part of him – the part that had loved her with a fierceness that he had not previously imagined himself capable of – ached at the sight of it. That part longed to reach out toward it, draw it to himself and devour every thought she had relayed, every syllable that she had placed upon the page. But another part of him – the part that had ignored her caution and overlooked her concerns and watched her die because of it – looked at that paper and felt nothing but dread. A fear so bone deep and true that it promised nothing less than complete and utter devastation. That part of him wanted to run far and fast from whatever was writ upon that sheet of paper, so clearly torn in haste from the notebook she always kept to hand.

That note – the last bit of her he would ever be privileged to – was the most precious thing he had ever laid his eyes upon…and he wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.

With trembling fingers, he reached out toward it, capturing the small, oblong shape between his hand and the floor and sliding it slowly toward him. For a long moment, he stared at it, tracing the lines of his name, memorizing each slant and curve. Finally, he forced himself to sit up, wincing at the pull of the nearly, but not quite fully healed wound above his right hip. Turning, he shifted until his back hit the wall nearest to him, legs splayed in front of him negligently. Before him, he held the note, index finger slipping between the folded sides and pressing them open.

Ten seconds passed, as he sat thus, eyes staring straight forward at nothing as he worked up the courage to lower them to the now open page in his hand.

Twenty seconds.

A full minute.

You owe her this, something cold and jagged hissed from the darkest corners of his heart. You owe her every, single drop of the guilt that this will surely wring from you.

Tears blurred his eyes once more at that and he blinked them away, let them fall unheeded down his face. With one long, shuddering breath, he steeled himself, and lowered his eyes to the page.

The sun was coming up.

Faint fingers of pre-dawn light stretched out from the cloud-choked horizon, reaching across the snow-dusted ice on the lake and up into the shadowed darkness of the needled canopy. Overhead, a goshawk turned lazy circles, its distant cries nearly lost to the gusting winds that kept it aloft. Below, a squirrel – already swathed in the thick, grey-white of its winter coat – leapt from a low-hanging branch and onto the pristine white expanse of snow that blanketed the roof of the small, silent cabin.

From below, there came a short, sharp bellow of sound, followed by a far louder crash. Then, almost immediately, there came an ear-splitting bang that sent the little rodent scurrying back up into the trees with a screech of protest.

Khan saw none of it as he bolted down the porch stairs and out into the snow, blind and deaf to everything but his own grief and rage. Breath coming in short, sharp gasps, he plowed forward, over buried rocks and barreling through drooping branches, clumsy and stumbling in his wild desperation to escape the maelstrom of his own emotions.

Suddenly, the tree-cover gave way to the vista of icy lake and steel gray sky, thick with clouds that carried with them the promise of even more snow. With a broken cry, he flung himself forward to the very edge of the lake shore, hands and knees crashing to the icy ground. From somewhere deep inside of him, a low, guttural sob wrenched upward, clawing at his throat. Leaning forward, bent low now beneath that yoke of utterly crushing culpability, he pressed his face into the snow-dusted ground and screamed his fury into the Earth itself.

I don't blame you for it…

I don't blame you for it…

Those words…she had written them, believed them…and he doubted he would ever be free of them. He could feel them, carved into the very sinew and bone of him, and he knew with a vicious, unrelenting certainty that he would carry the weight of them until the moment he joined her in death.

I don't blame you for it…

The words echoed in his ears, clarion clear – they looped back and around again, repeating again and again and again. In his mind's eye, he could see her hunched over that scrap of paper, scratching out a hurried message to him, brow pinched in concentration and teeth worrying at her lower lip. He was all too familiar with what a pensive Rebecca Duval looked like. She had presented that very image to him repeatedly over their last few weeks together.

And now he knew why.

Pressing himself upright, Khan sat back on his knees, shoulders drooping beneath the weight of his guilt. Staring out across the lake and seeing nothing but the glaringly accusatory memory of stacks upon stacks of ration packs and a stockpile of weaponry. He had laughed at her for that, had even expressed to her his annoyance at the unnecessary additions to their perfectly streamlined plan. Rebecca had taken his teasing and his taunts and had shrugged them away, all the while continuing to add to their already overfull coffers.

She had seen the potentiality of their failure – and with it, her own death – and had deemed it great enough to warrant mitigation. Or at least, as much as she could manage.

And he, selfish and blinded by arrogance, had laughed.

A tear slipped from the corner of his eye, cutting a warm path down his cheek. Blinking, he set loose another slow crawling tear and swallowed hard against a wrench of misery in his gut. She had not deserved his dismissiveness then…and he did not deserve to reap the benefits of her prudence now.

It would be very little trouble not to, he knew. Quite ridiculously easy to simply…stop fighting. Particularly now that he had nothing left to fight for…

But she had outmaneuvered him there as well.

Focus on staying alive, please. I like you alive, she had written.

"Promise…me," she had said, barely twelve hours later, as she lay dying in front of him. "Use it…escape…live."

The first had been a request; the second had been, unquestionably, an order – spoken with very nearly her very last breath. Rebecca Duval was an inherently careful woman – with her actions, with her emotions, and most certainly with her words. She would have known the effect of such messages.

By her command, he could do nothing but live in this world that he had been abandoned to – even though every, single thing that had made his life worth living was either newly dead or long gone. The only thing left to him now was a cold, sterile future that he detested and a society that had neither the desire nor patience for a man of his tastes and talents.

Lifting his head, Khan turned his eyes to the heavens, the frozen tracks of his tears burning his cheeks. "You wish me to live," he rasped out, "and so I live. But what did you wish me to live for?"

He had fully expected that the only answer to his question would be the wind in the trees. Instead, his ears were quite suddenly ringing from the detonation of a plasma charge. It was perhaps five seconds later that his brain registered that he was now lying flat on his stomach, face once more pressed to the frigid ground. Lying there, he took quick stock of his situation, allowing one moment of confusion for how he'd gotten there before banishing it as ridiculous. A quick physical assessment came to one sure conclusion – he had been hit with a single blast from a plasma rifle, just beneath his left shoulder blade. Aiming for the heart, he supposed.

Sensible. Utterly ineffectual, but sensible.

Not that his attacker need know that. Not yet at least. There could be only one explanation for this attack – he had been discovered. He had known it was a possibility, even with his wiping the memory banks of the trans-warp device. Earth's warp sensors would have registered his transport, though he had been uncertain exactly how traceable a trail it was going to leave.

He supposed he had his answer to that now.

Lying still, Khan took care to neither move nor breathe as he waited for his assailant to approach. Beneath his unmoving exterior though, his body was abuzz with energy – the flash-bang of that plasma rifle having burned through the fog of his grief, igniting the rage that lay hidden beneath.

"I'm telling you, I hit him. Square in the heart. Pop!"

The first voice was clearly the shooter – his would-be executioner. Khan grit his teeth and held back the overwhelming urge to rip the man's head from his body. If nothing else, these men had information, and information was a precious commodity for him at present.

"You shot him in the back," a second, far less jovial voice said. "Not sure I'd be bragging about that, if I were you."

Both men were very close, from the sound of it. Perhaps no more than five or six feet away. Close enough that he would be more than capable of eliminating them both with extraordinarily little effort, particularly with the element of surprise so thoroughly on his side.

"You really think Marcus gives a shit where I shoot him? No, he just said he wanted him dead. And this," the shooter's foot came out, shoving at Khan's side, "is very dead."

"Yeah. I know Marcus doesn't care," the second voice declared sharply. "I'm just saying maybe it wouldn't hurt for you to care. I repeat, you just shot the bastard in the back."

The shooter snorted, and Khan could feel that booted foot come to rest on his lower back, could feel the man press down. "Yeah, well…since this is the bastard that took out half the fucking Section, I'm not all that bothered about playing fair here. Too bad Duval's already dead – it would've been an honor to cut that fucking traitor's throat."

The words rang in his ears, and Khan focused on them; repeated them to himself over and over and over again until they were all he could hear. They drowned out his fear, overwhelmed his sorrow, and fanned the flames of his fury until he was nearly incandescent with rage.

Snorting sharply, the second man moved closer to him, kneeling at his side. "Yeah?" Reaching beneath Khan's body, he grabbed hold of his shirt and pulled hard, turning Khan from his stomach to his back. "You never saw Duval fight, did you? She'd have taken you out in a heartbeat." The man reached out, flicking Khan's hair off his brow and pushing his chin upwards. "There, that should be good enough for ID. Send Marcus the image."

"Working on it," the first man huffed, and Khan could hear him fiddling with something – some form of comms device, no doubt. "And no, I didn't, but I don't see how that matters. You make it sound like she was invincible, but someone killed her."

"Not just someone," the second man scoffed. "Byrnes – and she still managed to take him out after he'd buried a knife in her chest."

The comm device chirped. "Positive ID from Marcus – it's definitely Harrison. And Jesus, Malone, you got a hard on for Duval or something? She's dead y'know…you might actually have a chance with her now."

Gritting his teeth, Khan began to plan his attacker's death – in painstaking, minute detail. The other man would, of course, have to die as well, but Khan would be generous and make every effort to keep his death clean and painless.

"Yeah. Pass, thanks. Duval was impressive as hell, but she was also scary as shit. I try not to fuck around with women who know more than five solid ways to kill me."

The comm chirped again, and the first man cursed. "Marcus wants the body."

"Are you serious?"

"Read it for yourself!"

Khan could hear the comm tossed from one man to the other.

"Son of a bitch. Fine," and now he could hear it tossed back again. "You shot him, so you can carry him. I'll carry the gear."

"Or – and hear me out here – we both carry the gear, and we both carry him. Teamwork, Malone." He was typing something into the comm, fingers flying over keys with a steady tap-tap-tapping. "Told Marcus to give us twenty and we'd be on our way back. He doesn't look all that heavy – bet we can have him on board in half that."

"Fuck you and your teamwork, Dillard," the second man – Malone, apparently – snipped. "I'm not the one who – oh shit…fu…"

Khan was on him in the space between one heartbeat and the next, moving with every ounce of speed he possessed. It was the work of a moment to snap Malone's neck, giving the man the clean death he had promised that he would, if only to himself. Lifting his eyes, he met those of the first man – the man who had shot him. The man who had guaranteed his own far more painful demise with the sharp edge of his tongue.

"Oh my God…oh my God…"

Smiling viciously – almost grotesquely satisfied by the sheer terror he could hear in the other man's voice – Khan held Malone's limp body with one arm, his broken neck listing unnaturally to the right. "Allow me," he said coldly, voice icier than the lake water at his back, "to offer a word of advice, if I may, Agent Dillard."

He tossed Malone aside, launching forward and catching Dillard by the throat, knocking the rifle from his hands. Pressing just hard enough to block his airway, Khan's smile grew as he watched terror fill up the much younger but far more foolish man's eyes. "When ordered to provide proof of death, it would behoove you to seek physical confirmation, rather than merely assuming the superiority of your own aim."

Dillard's hands wrapped around Khan's wrists, and he was opening and closing his mouth desperately. Khan's smile folded downward into a disdainful sneer. "Though I do thank you for your appalling lack of common sense. Rest assured, I shall put it to the best of use."

And then, without another word, Khan simply…squeezed. As hard and as tightly as he could possibly manage until he heard the distinctive pop of vertebra snapping. Much as he had wished to make the fool pay for his words, his creativity had far outstripped his stomach for violence at the moment. It was one thing to cut swathes through armies or to eliminate threats as needed…it was quite another to find enjoyment in the act of killing itself. Down that path lurked a Darkness that even he had no interest in exploring.

A monster he may well be…but not of that sort. Never of that sort.

Dropping Dillard's body down beside his partner's, Khan turned away from the sight of them, eyes seeking the peace of the forest vista once more as he took a long, deep breath. Breathing it out slowly, he allowed his eyes to fall shut, taking a moment to gather himself. It pained him to admit it, but he was in no condition to confront many more such threats – his emotions were ragged, his control tenuous at best, and his upper back was throbbing from the plasma blast he'd just endured – and, knowing Marcus, more threats would come.

Once these two assets were discovered missing, Marcus would assume that it had been him. And once Marcus assumed that he was alive, the entirety of Section 31 would undoubtedly be rallied against him. It would be a relentless onslaught of Agent after Agent, chasing him to the ends of the Earth and beyond. For it would be Agents that he sent, Khan knew. His blank, faceless army of lost souls, all of whom believed they were doing evil work for noble purposes.

All of whom had been grossly deceived by the true monster in their midst – Alexander Marcus.

Alexander Marcus, who deceived without thought or compunction; who used those closest to him as nothing more than pawns to achieve his own ends. Who believed in nothing save for his own glory and brilliance and to whom the concept of family was so foreign as to be non-existent – the man had, after all, used his own daughter as a pawn in his games.

History might decry Khan and his people, condemning so much of what they had been attempting to achieve…but Marcus…

Marcus was far more a tyrant than he had ever been. And tyrants, he had been reliably informed, were meant to be overthrown.

Violently, if need be.

Khan blinked his eyes open, all traces of his earlier guilt pushed deep down inside, buried beneath the absolute, incontestable certainty of what needed to be done. What was going to be done, cost be damned.

Alexander Marcus would watch his legacy brought to ruins; would watch everything he built crumble. And then, when only the ashes of his aspirations remained, then, Marcus would face his fate – would look upon his executioner, the very architect of his ultimate downfall…

And it would be Khan's face that he saw.

Thirty minutes later, Khan stood on the ground and watched as the small, Section-issue ship disappeared into the thick layer of clouds that lay low over the forest, swollen and heavy with imminent snowfall. He glanced down at Rebecca's PADD – another of the 'gifts' she had left for him to find in her pack – and watched the small blip of the tracker he had placed aboard the craft gain speed and distance.

He stood, waiting patiently, as the tiny shape drifted further and further away, reaching the upper atmosphere in only a few short minutes. A few minutes after that, the ship's autopilot function engaged the warp drive and it jumped into hyperspace, well on its way back to Io. By the time it had reached deep enough into space for his purposes, the snow had begun to fall, carried on a swiftly gathering breeze and swirling around him. Khan, far too focused to be charmed – and diligently ignoring the memory of her laughing delight which echoed up from inside of himself – pulled up the operating program connected to the three small plasma charges he had installed fore, mid, and aft of the ship.

A moment later, he watched as the ship – and her crew compliment of two deceased Agents – approached the mid-point of their journey. Then, he slowly and carefully typed in the access code, triggering the detonation sequence.

The tiny blip on the screen flashed once, twice…and then, was gone. And it truly would be gone. Marcus might manage to scavenge a bit of wreckage here and there, but a ship exploding at warp speed would leave extraordinarily little of itself to be found. Certainly, there would be no hope of recovering any bodies.

And even if Marcus believed him to have had some part in the explosion, he would have no reason to believe he had survived it.

That done, Khan turned back toward the cabin, knowing that it was time to leave it behind for good. It was entirely likely that Marcus would send a clean-up crew to scour the location, ensuring that nothing of import had been left behind. He wished to be gone long before that eventuality became a reality – practicalities aside, he was not certain he would be able to stomach the dismantling that would inevitably occur.

This place was hers…for them to touch it…

No. It was best that he leave immediately, little as he wished to.

It was the work of only a few minutes for him to gather what little remained in the cabin proper. Rebecca had been, as she always was, prodigiously thorough and painstakingly organized in her preparations. How he had not noticed the three extra bags she had left beneath the small dining table was a mystery he was happy to never solve – in all likelihood, it would be yet another exercise in guilt, and he had decided to set that particular emotion aside for the present.

For now, he was content to accept the bounty Rebecca had provided without reflecting on why she had needed to.

There would be time enough for that once Marcus was dead.

As such, he did not allow himself to linger. After making sure everything was packed away, he shouldered the two newer bags. Then, it was Rebecca's pack – old, careworn and slightly ragged – that he lifted from the tabletop. He meant to slip it onto his shoulder immediately, but found himself caught by the sight of it; the gaping hole of loss and longing at the center of him pulsing with a fresh wave of raw, shivering grief. Permitting himself the indulgence, he tipped his head forward and pressed his face to the beaten material, inhaling deeply - breathing in the lingering scent of her.

Long before he was ready, he lifted his head, blinked away tears and slid her pack onto his shoulder. Running his eyes over the small space around him one final time, he turned toward the door, pausing only a moment longer to lift Rebecca's final note from the tabletop. Folding it as he walked, he tucked it carefully – reverently – into the inside pocket of his overcoat, ensuring it was well secured.

Not that he needed it – he had already committed every word to memory. Could picture every crease in the paper, every whorl of ink. Indeed, he could hear them, given life by the still vivid memory of her most beloved voice.

If you're reading this, you don't need me to tell you why I wrote it.

He walked out the front door, closing it gently but firmly behind him. He did not bother to engage the lock.

We both know that if you're back at the cabin, things went very wrong.

Walking swiftly, he lowered his head against the now heavy fall of snow, grimacing at the cutting whip of the wind. Thankfully, the barn that Rebecca had retrofit to act as a makeshift hangar was only a short trek away.

What I do need to tell you though, is that I don't blame you for it, whatever it was that happened to me. Things happen and plans fail – that's just the way it goes sometimes.

Slipping in the small side door, he took a quick second to shake himself free of the snow that had accumulated on his clothing and hair. He then moved into the large, open space of the converted hangar, which held the slightly larger and far sleeker ship that Rebecca had procured for them. Fast, easily maneuverable and packed to the brim with supplies that he himself had secured in the holds – had it really only been two days past? – it was the ideal vessel for his needs.

I'd tell you not to blame yourself either, but I doubt you'd listen to me. You're too stubborn sometimes and you also put way too much on yourself.

He stowed two of the three bags back in the hold with the rest of his supplies – he still had not examined the entirety of their bounty, though he doubted he would be disappointed in what he found. When he reached his destination, he would need to take a thorough inventory of what he had at his disposal.

Do me a favor though, would you? If you're reading this, it means you're alive…and if you're alive, it means you got away. I doubt Marcus will just let you go quietly.

Moving into the cockpit, he slid into the pilot's seat, setting Rebecca's pack on the co-pilot's chair…and actively ignored the wailing anguish the sight of that empty seat ignited within him. He could not completely hide from it though, and grit his teeth hard against the regrets that threatened to pull him down once more. She was meant to be there. She was meant to be beside him, always.

You're going to need to stay sharp and smart and you're not going to do that if you're focused on things that aren't there anymore. So don't do that. Focus on staying alive, please. I like you alive.

Before the misery could swamp him, Khan turned sharply forward, furiously slamming the doors inside his mind shut and locking as much of her away as he could. Reaching out, he flipped switches and threw levers, bringing the ship to quiet, humming life beneath his fingertips. Moving through the initialization sequencing, he retreated into the process, finding solace in the simple, mechanical movements of routine.

I love you, you know. I hope I managed to say it at some point, but if I didn't, I needed to know that you would at least be able to read it in my own words.

It didn't take long to bring the ship to readiness. Once all system checks came back go, he reached up and pressed the button to engage the flight doors installed in the ceiling of the old barn.

Probably a moot point, because I'm pretty sure you've known that for a long time. Probably longer than I've known it myself – I told you I was horrible at this.

The ship lifted off with barely a shudder and only a soft hum of sound, and Khan directed it straight up and out of the barn. This time, he did take the time to close the doors behind him – best not to tempt fate by leaving even the suggestion that someone had recently left this place behind.

I've written down a list of a few other spots I've had tucked away, just in case this place gets compromised. I promise, they're all warmer than here. There's a few other things I've put away for you as well. I think I've given you as good a chance as I can, all things considered. I hope it helps.

Taking care to engage the cloaking system – moderately efficient, though based on the readings he was seeing, in need of fine-tuning – Khan then proceeded to input the coordinates of his chosen destination. The list of potential hideaways that Rebecca had left for him was not long, but it had not needed to be. The very first location listed had jumped out to him as the most obvious choice.

Hot. Humid. Not precisely home, but close enough to be getting on with.

I love you. Always.

Khan hit engage and the ship shot up into the clouds, course set for northern Thailand.