Sutton's mind raced. He wanted her to tell him the date? That was bad; really bad. She played through several different scenarios where she explained how she'd been in a coma for awhile and just woken up, told him she was from a hippie colony off planet that didn't believe in the concept of time, or to refuse to answer all together such an idiotic question. None felt like they'd go over well. And, as the pressure of his thumb on her neck continued, Sutton realized that he had not just placed it there to intimidate. The noticeable thrumming of her anxious heartbeat reminded her of lie detectors, and how they watched for a spike in heart rate to weed out untruths. But she couldn't pause in stunned silence for too long because that was a dead giveaway as well. Any other citizen would have spit the answer at him and took off running to freedom by now.
"That's a dumb question," she said slowly.
"And yet such a simple one, even for your feeble human mind. Answer it."
How did they even say the date in Star Trek? Wasn't it like, 'Star Date:insert random numbers here'? Did only Star Fleet do that, like howthe military told the time weirdly? Sutton swallowed thickly.
"The date, the date is definitely," she hurriedly considered the weather and stuck to her previous guess, "March, uh, fifteenth. But I'vebeen in the hospital lately so don't-"
His thumb pressed deeper into her neck than it had before and Sutton was flailing and gasping at the sharp pain and dizziness it caused.
"Give me the year, while you still can."
She'd watched the movie in New York, she'd gone to see it with Avery andMaggie and she knew that they'd flashed the year on the screen in the beginning. What had it said?
"Twenty! Twenty-two...twenty-two," she winced, gritting her teeth slightly, and made a wild guess. "Twenty-two thirty-eight!"
His thumb left her neck and his hand gripped her jaw, forcing her to lookup at him as he took a moment to truly study her eyes. Whatever he thought he saw in them caused him to raise one perfect brow in intrigue and Sutton bit down on her tongue.
"Not even close."
For a brief moment Sutton felt like she no longer inhabited her own body.It was like she was floating above herself, staring down at the pale frightened girl below in a distant pity. She couldn't remember a time that she had ever felt this hollow. Not even with Loki. Because at least when Loki had been trying to take advantage she'd had the Avengers around to give her hope. At least she hadn't been alone. She was pulled back into her own body, into the present, when she heard herself speak.
"Are you going to kill me?"
He wasn't touching her anymore but she had no more freedom than before .Still, she tried to straighten out her spine and loosen her shoulders. The idea of him killing her right here in this empty house where she was guaranteed to become a cold case had her chin quivering. But most of all she was angry with herself. She was the one who hadn't made it a point to learn the actual date, to not pay attention to where the young girls were shopping; she was the one who'd carelessly opened her big, fat mouth. Again.
"B-because if you do, you should know that-that you'll be just as much of a monster as you think humans are."
The light in his eyes flashed briefly and Sutton, still tightly wound and hyper alert, noticed his lips twitch fractionally.
"I haven'tdecided."
Sutton shifted and eyed the exit.
"Any chance I can convince you to forget all this?"
"None."
Irritation and desperation flashed across her face before she had a chance to conceal it. She was still gripping her bag for dear life, and she tried to transfer all the tension into her hand instead of wearing it out where he could see it. It was a delicate line she was treading, she understood that. One wrong word and he'd kill her, one wrong word and he'd keep her, and very few words that would convince him to let her go.
"How about-"
"Come."
His hand wrapped completely around her bicep and he was pulling her again, deeper into the house and up a set of bare, questionable stairs. Sutton was stumbling over her feet, wishing she'd snagged a Time Turner instead of a hair tie so that she could make it so this entire encounter never happened. The stairwell was dark, and by the time Khan had dragged her to the top of it she heard the sound of their footsteps change from the dull thud of falling on wood to the high ting of hitting metal. She watched as he entered a code into a panel onthe wall that opened a door into an upgraded room.
Where the outside of the house was old and dingy, this room had been outfitted with more up to date technology. It was dim, but lit well enough that she could make everything out thanks to a hazy blue light that spilled over everything in the room. Some scientific looking instruments sat on a table to the side of the room and Sutton recognized the space. This was the scene where he'd prepared a vialof his own blood for the sick girl.
He pushed her over near the science equipment and shoved her down into a chair.
"Sit."
Sutton complied because her legs were weak and she didn't feel daring enough to explore her boundaries with him.
Do what he says, be boring, be forgettable.
He left her in the chair and moved around the table to collect a few tools. When he re-approached her, he was holding a device that reminded her of a hypo-spray gun. She shivered as he stopped in front of her and held out a pale hand, palm up.
"Give me your arm."
Sutton hesitated, looked at his hand and then back to his face which was set in stone, and lifted an arm without enthusiasm. He put the device against her skin and there was a pinch as it hissed and Sutton watched as some of her blood leaked into a small vial. Khan took the vial, deposited a few drops of her blood onto a tray on another computer-like device and sat down to process the data. Sutton pulled her arm back close to her body and rubbed at the place he'd stuck her. She glared at him as she curled further into herself and the chair and felt a foreboding about what he was up to. The screen on the wall lit up with new numbers and charts and she hardly saw Khan's head so much as swivel as he took all the information in.
The chair she was sitting in was actually behind him. Sutton adjusted silently and placed one boot firmly on the floor.
"Don't."
She froze where she sat and huffed quietly in disappointment. She at least had to have tried, just to say that she gave it a go. The screen in front of Khan flashed through a series of numbers rapidly, as if it were scanning through something, and then settled on one serial number that it announced as the "closest biological match". Her toes curled in her shoes as he opened a new screen and enlarged an image in the upper lefthand corner. Sutton choked on her spit.
Khan stood, took a step forward to study the image, and then turned back to her with renewed interest.
"This is the closest biological match to your DNA sequence in all of Star Fleet's database. Does she look familiar?"
The woman in the picture was not Sutton Regan, because Sutton did not have pale green skin and her hair was light brown without red in it. But, with a little help from a makeup artist it could have been her. Sutton's mouth hinged open and closed as she blinked in shock.
"Wh-"
"Dashki Anota, half Orion, married to a Star Fleet officer, and has two children. Not you? Odd. Your DNA is almost a exact match, disregarding the Orion blood."
Sutton was having trouble looking away from what looked like an altered picture of herself. It had never occurred to her, she'd neverthought.... Sure there were duplicates of actors in the other universes, but her? Did everyone have a copy in other worlds?
"Even more peculiar is the sequencing beneath your DNA, your molecules function at an unusual rate. You're different than these humans, different from even myself."
Sutton stiffened and her eyes snapped up to meet his.
"So you know about it. Wonderful; explain."
Bad, bad, super-very bad.
Every cell in her body was screaming at her to run for her life or lie through her teeth. She didn't unfurl herself from her hunched position as she stared up at Khan uneasily through her lashes. There was no way she could tell him the truth. He already knew far too much. Any more information, if he knew what she could do, and this world would be done for.
"I don't understand it," she told him honestly. "Everything you just said makes no sens-"
He was suddenly in her face, nose only inches away and hands wrapped firmly around the armrests of her chair trapping her in place.
"Despite what you might think, I am on a delicate schedule. I have neither the time nor the patience for your games. If you do not answer my questions with complete honestly, and rapidly, I have no qualms with either simply killing your or prying what information I want from you by whatever means you force me to."
Sutton did not doubt a word he said. Another sharp pain shot through her heart and her mind began to swim. She had lived alongside the Avengers. They had considered her as one of their own, or at least kindly humored her with the idea. She had to rise up to their level. She had to be brave. And she had to find a way out that didn't involve telling the truth.
If only she could believe Khan weak or stupid. The thought crossed her mind, however brief of a flicker it was. But it would be near impossible for her to truly believe his character was either of those traits. And even if she could convince herself, there was no way anyone in her universe would support that belief. There'd be nothing for her to tap into and she'd have to change so much about this world for it to fit. She'd kill herself just trying.
But what else was there?
Khan's hand was back on her throat and Sutton's gaze snapped to the picture of the woman who wasn't her. That woman was a real person here. She was a character. Sutton was no one, but she was here. She was in this world and interacting with people and part of it now.
She could be a character. She was nothing so she could be anything. Couldn't she?
It was her only real option at the moment, given that Khan seemed to be truly losing his patience with her silence. But she had to be asstrong as him, she had to be able to fight back.
Since moving universes to Marvel, she hadn't quite been engaged in the online community as she had been before, but she did remember one thing: original characters, ocs. There were bound to be augment ocs after all the fangirls fawned over Benedict Cumberbatch and his arm muscles. She was even from the same general "time" as Khan originally was, perhaps that would help.
She was whatever she wanted to be. She was an oc, a rogue augment, equal to him. She was strong, strong, strong.
Perhaps it was her desperation to believe, maybe the universe was giving her a break, or maybe there were just tons of people willing to buy into more-than-one-augment stories. Sutton felt a rush fall over her. Her muscles lost their jello-like quiver and felt sturdy for the first time in awhile, her lungs held more air, and her eyes could see sharper than she ever thought possible. A new righteous rage burned out all other emotions that had been threatening to consume her. Her eyes snapped back to Khan's with a new hardness and he frowned as he continued to watch her.
Her strike was quick and unexpected given that she was human and Khan was not prepared for it. With her left hand she grabbed the hand he had on her throat and held him in place as she swung out with her righthand to land a blow right on his nose. Blood instantly began to gush and Khan cried out in an enraged surprise. But she didn't slow. While he was still stunned and fairly immobile she lashed out with a kick that sent him flying across the room and into the opposite wall.
Her muscles burned.
Sutton leapt from the chair without waiting to see if he'd get back up. She'd given herself a very small window of opportunity and she'd be even more of an idiot than she was to waste it. The door was close because the room was small, but Sutton took three long strides, determined and panting from the excitement, before her legs just stopped working and she dropped to the ground. Her heart squeezed in her chest and she could hardly breathe. She wheezed desperately twice and something hot ran down her nose and over her chin. She could already hear Khan moving again, rough and angry, and she tried to pull herself closer to the door.
No, no, no! She couldn't fail now!
Fat drops of blood landed on the polished floor near her face as she made minimal progress. Khan gripped the back of her dress and yanked her off the floor in one violent motion. She screamed as she arched through the air and landed limply back in the seat she'd just left. She was the one left panting and wheezing now; her chest was too tight and there was a sudden throbbing headache around her temples. Khan stared down at her with an already healed nose, mussed hair, and bright, bright eyes.
"Aren't you becoming more of a puzzle by the moment."
Sutton coughed twice and tried to push Khan away from her, but she was weaker than before and his stance didn't even shift slightly. He only seemed to catalogue the failed effort with a new eye, as if seeing her as an entirely new creature now. She gripped the strings of her bag tighter and prayed that the fob watch hadn't broken. She prayed for a way out.
But for the moment she was trapped, caged in a room with the worst person possible in this universe and a roiling tension that was more than likely to break in his favor.
No. Be strong. Don't give him anything.
Sutton set her jaw and tried to channel a bravado that she didn't feel. Khan looked almost pleased as he ran his hand under her jaw and tilted her head up higher.
"You're not quite human, are you? You're a little bit something else. And you know so much more than you're willing to say."
He paused briefly as if expecting her to deny or fib, but Sutton clamped her lips shut and refused to indulge him.
"It must be so isolating," he said slyly, "to not belong."
Sutton jerked her head out of his hand, because he let her, and clicked her tongue angrily. A copper tang splashed between her lips.
"There is a burden you carry," he continued, "that much is obvious. You have no skill in concealing your emotions. Do you think yourself noble for suffering for it?"
Sutton thought that it was just the right thing to do and that a couple universes were probably still doing ok because she didn't openly flaunt her knowledge, but she didn't say that aloud. She kept quiet and still because her fingers were trembling and she was at a loss with how to proceed next.
"You're not like the other humans. I can see that you're better."
"I'm not."
"Doyou seek to protect them? You shouldn't. No matter how high theythink they've risen, humanity hasn't changed. They never will."
"Not all humans are like- there are good, innocent people in this world."
Khan leveled his gaze at her, turned back to the hypo-spray and removed the tainted vial that held her blood.
"You will tell me what I want to know."
"I will not."
He clicked a new vial into place. This one was already full.
"Nothing?"
Sutton's nostrils flared as she refused to look at him. The cool surface of the hypo-spray met her arm. Sutton felt a pinch.
[][][][]
Khan left while Sutton fretted about what he injected into her bloodstream. In half an hour all that had happened was her skin started itching and her eyes felt dry; perhaps if she could be merely irritated into talking he would be making progress.
After scrubbing off as much blood from her face as she could with her sleeve, she forced herself to get out of the chair to stagger about the room and try looking for an escape route. It was a small room with a makeshift lab taking up most of the space. There was a device in one corner that reminded her of an odd microwave or perhaps a doorless oven, and across from that a small cot with the sheets pristinely folded. There wasn't much else to look at, and the front door was the only door in or out. It wouldn't open regardless of her efforts and the room had no windows to speak of. The one time she attempted to just believe the door would open created such a splitting pain in her head that she didn't dare try again. She resigned herself to sitting in the chair and trying to guess what the different substances in the various beakers were. If she couldn't escape and she couldn't overpower him, perhaps she could poison him back. Despite still feeling like her legs were boneless, she dug through a few cabinets on the science side of the room. There were so many beakers and liquids and colored powders at her fingertips. But she didn't know what anything was or how chemicals interacted with each other and her mind couldn't focus as it refused to stop replaying how she'd totally bit it on the floor and exposed herself to him further.
Dead. She was dead this time for sure.
"I shouldn't have picked the red dress," she said to herself. "It's always the red ones in this universe. I knew that."
Sutton scratched at her arms more aggressively as the irritation under her skin grew. When she pulled up on her sleeves the only thing she noticed was her skin had reddened from her own efforts to alleviate the infernal itching. Her breathing grew marginally easier the longer Khan was gone, until her heart had almost returned to a normal rate.There was nothing she could do to help herself at the moment. The room was a high tech prison and she was a prized captive.
No one would ever know she was missing because no one knew she existed. It literally couldn't be any easier for him. And she'd delivered herself right into his hands. Why had she even uttered his name?
She knew why. The marginal safety she'd felt in her previous universe journeys had caused her to be careless. The realization dawned on her the longer she replayed the scene over and over in her mind. There had been close calls, yes, with the Doctor coming closest, but to a certain degree she still saw them as characters. They were movies and stories and she was neither of those things. How could she be touchable to a fictional person?
Tony had told her. How many times had he said it?
These people were as real as she was. It didn't matter if she knew their backstories or had seen them on a screen. Their lives began and continued whether she was involved with them or not. They were corporeal and real and thought for themselves.
They could touch her and they could hurt her if they chose.
Why had it taken Khan's presence for that to fully sink in?
"I am in danger," she said to herself. The words were loud as theyrippled through the room. They felt disconnected and unreal despite her revelation.
It felt like a band had tightened around her chest and her eyes burned with the beginnings of exhaustion as she crawled over to a dim corner and wedged herself between two sleek, silver cabinets.
"I am actually in real danger."
The words still felt hollow.
[][]
The hissing of compressed air startled her awake. Sutton jerked into a seated position as the sound of boots on floor slowly made their way into the room. She rubbed at her still sore eyes, scratched at her legs, and glared up at an expressionless Khan. His eyes darted over her body and Sutton couldn't tell if he was looking for something or expecting her to be in hysterics over what amounted to an affliction of poison ivy and mild pink eye.
"I'm still not saying anything to you."
"The most fascinating part is that you continue to speak volumes without having to open your mouth."
Sutton stood and edged further away, positioning herself around a table placed between them, and tried to decipher what he said.
"I injected you with my own modified strain of Andorian shingles. It should have been more concentrated and at least three times more painful than the original."
"...with a case of Andorian shingles, see if you're still so relaxed when your eyeballs are bleeding."
Sutton's hand snapped up to feel around her eyes for blood, but they came away clean.
"Yes, very good; as you can see you are not bleeding from your eyes. Nor is your skin covered in an extremely painful, seeping rash. I would say you had an immunity built up, but you haven't received any vaccinations relevant to this age."
Sutton's hand left her face and dropped to her side as she maintained her composure. She'd been able to handle everything so far. Perhaps this was as bad as it got. Perhaps lying to herself would help her.
"So, where do you come from? It isn't from the alternate timeline because you would have known the date and at least had some sense of appropriate fashion. Especially since the event that caused the divergence happened a year ago."
"I don't know what-"
"Do. Not."
His voice had dropped to so low an octave and he had enunciated so forcefully that it shook Sutton to her core. Khan's gaze lost any sliver of lightness to adopt a sharp, intolerant glare. He strode forward with long, quick paces and loomed over her before she could so much as scramble for cover.
"Do not confuse me with the mindless humans that overpopulate this planet. I am more. I am better. And I will peel back every layer of you until you have no secret left to hold dear."
A feeling of weightlessness washed over her and she saw black spots for a moment. He wasn't lying. The words to save herself were pressing on the tip of her tongue, but would they be worth it? There was not a situation where she could be happily walking out the front door on her own.
"You would do that anyway."
Khan's lips twitched upwards and Sutton hated him.
"True. Now, shall we begin?"
Sutton's breath hitched, she bit her lip and dug her nails into her palms. This was it, her last moment to stop him from whatever was to come.The power was in her hands to save herself.
But the people here were real. Kirk, Spock, Bones, the Orion girl who wasn't her who had children to care for; they were all real.
Sutton let out a breath and blinked rapidly against still hot eyes.
"This isn't about me."
[][][]
She kept her mouth tightly sealed for another hour before it eventually cracked and she spilled out all of her priceless truths.