1. Rhona Buchanan

_Northwestern Kent, England, 2236_

A small girl and boy splashed happily with each other in a large bathtub, their mother smiled whenever her son told a joke and her daughter would shriek with laughter like it was the funniest thing in the world. It echoed off the walls, and while the atmosphere in the downstairs bathroom was a cheerful one, the children's father stood in the doorway, his mouth in a prim line of anger (not at his kids) and worry. The mother turned, and her brow furrowed at his expression.

A crash sounded downstairs.

The children stopped splashing, stopped playing. They looked to their mother, innocent eyes wide. "Mummy?" The little girl asked. Her brother was little more than a year older than her. He was grinning, excited. Their father cursed and the little girl began to whimper. "Mummy?" She asked again.

"Shush, Na!" Her brother whispered harshly to her. He was still smiling a little. Their mother scooped them out of the bath tub and dried them off, telling them to get dressed and stay in the closet, and to not come out no matter what they saw. They were holding guns, which should've been some kind of warning signal. "The closet? That's silly, Mummy." The little boy giggled and ushered his little sister into the closet, anyway. Their mother and father turned from the closet door just in time for men, dressed in black uniform, flood the hallway, dragging their parents away. The whining sound of phaser fire and things crashing echoed through the house.

The little boy stopped giggling, and stared in horror, holding his sister, whose tears fell quick and fast down her face. He looked down at her, and then back out of the shutters of the closet. "I'm gonna go see where they took Mum and Da, okay?" She shook her damp brown pigtails.

"No, Avie! The bad mans will hurt you!" She whispered in devastation and sorrow at seeing her parents dragged off like that. "I need you, Avie! Mummy said no!" He shook his head and slowly opened the door, slipping down the hall and around the corner a brief, blood-curdling scream and a muffled shuffle, before it was silent once more. The little girl cried for an hour, wondering why the night had taken such a drastic turn. Why did the bad men take her Mummy and Daddy away? Why had Avie left even when she begged him not to?

She finally gathered enough courage to turn the corner in front of the closet after no sound came for a few hours. She hadn't fallen asleep, even though her bedtime had long since passed. The moment she peeked meekly around the corner, she regretted leaving the closet.

Her Mummy was sprawled out, on the floor with a crimson stain leaking onto the floor from her ivory bathrobe. The woman's eyes that matched her own were wide in something akin to fear, and dread. A phaser lay not even a foot from her hand. Her Daddy was slumped over the table. A bloody laceration on his forehead revealed a hint of white, of bone. He was dead, clearly. Both of them were. The little girl backed up and stumbled, falling flat on her bottom, staring at her brutally murdered parents. Her brother was nowhere in the room. Had they taken him? Sirens blared from far away, outside. She barely noticed.

She didn't cry, but there were sticky tracks on her cheeks from earlier. She stared at the corpses, shocked and nauseated. Grief had barely even touched her system yet. She was... mad. She was... _furious _at what the bad men had taken from her. She let out a scream of anger and unbearable, gut-wrenching despair that sounded wrong coming from such an innocent little girl. Why had this happened? Why her? The sirens grew closer, and even as the authorities searched their house and attempted to get a story out of her, the girl simply looked at them, grey eyes dead and expression blank.

The bad men would pay.

_KG-701, early 2257_

KG-701 was a tiny prison planet on the edge of Federation space. It no larger than Earth's moon, and the surface outside of the slate-grey prison was rocky, and uneven. There was a shuttle dock that brought the convicts in and out. It was mostly used for thieves with mediocre skills and the occasional drunk charged with domestic abuse. They were all either riff-raff dragged in by the scruff of their necks or loons escorted with grins plastered on their faces. Both males, females, and nongenders were taken in; on opposite sides of the prison, of course. The Terran-established prison wasn't exactly maximum-security, and they only made contact with Starfleet and other minor local authorities once every month to update the criminals' records. Gertrude McLynn was arrested not one week ago, and was a thief...

Or, at least that was what she was hauled in for; thievery.

Gertrude was a brunette woman whose hair was messy and scattered over her face when she almost made away with over ten-thousand credits of expensive merchandise in her oversized sweatshirt from a weapon supply shop on Jaxx VI, a planet larger than KG-701 by a slight margin. It didn't take much to hunt her down after the shop's distress call- the girl, probably in her early twenties, was clearly intoxicated...

Or, at least she seemed to be.

Gertrude was currently draped lazily across her cot in her tiny cell unit. Even if it was constructed of steel and uncomfortable, she made it look for all the world like a luxury queen-sized bed. Guards that passed spared her confused and somewhat annoyed looks when she lounged about, laughing to an imaginary companion and happily pacing (it looked more like skipping) around in her small space. It was roughly nighttime when Gertrude exhibited any actual incriminating behavior. She watched, observed, and listened, quiet as could be. Her cell wasn't directly in sight of the camera on the corner, she noted. Only one guard came through at this time of day... roughly nighttime by Standard reckoning. It was hard to tell the time when there was no chronometer to look at. The fact that KG-701's skies were always dark didn't help either, but she had been keeping count. The guard was arrogant Lieutenant Harowitz, a man who boasted about all of his "grand" achievements (nobody cared; he worked at a low-security prison) and his silver Officer of the Month pin.

It wasn't a well-known fact that pure silver disrupted the source on most forcefields on the cells. A nugget of the substance could pass clean through, and if it was big enough, anything attached to it.

Lieutenant Harowitz, his hat tipped low over his eyes in some horrible imitation of an ancient westerner, crossed right outside of Gertrude's cell, and peered in to see if she was up to her usual odd habits. Tonight, she played pat-a-cake with her invisible friend, and Harowtiz smirked.

"Having fun there, McLynn?" He sneered, leaning close to the barrier. She looked up, brown hair as tangled and in the way of her face as ever, and grinned a wide, close-lipped grin that stretched her cheeks. She hopped up and gestured to her "friend" to do the same, skipping toward the barrier.

"Sure am, officer!" She happily expressed to Harowitz. Her accent was American. "You wanna join us?"

He rolled his eyes and went on his way, continuing his rounds. "What an idiot." He mumbled, not caring that Gertrude was still in hearing range. After he had turned the corner, Gertrude's mood and cheerful dispositon shifted.

Her shoulders, which had been hunched over, straightened. Her loony grin faded and was replaced with a cold, blank mask. Her messy, dark-brown hair was swept back behind her right ear by nimble fingers, revealing the piercing gray eyes that no officer or fellow inmate had ever seen. The same hand reached down as her feet rised behind her gracefully to remove her heavy, prison-issue boots. She straightened her gray jumpsuit so that it faced the right way on her body. Her fists clenched and relaxed around Officer Harowitz's silver Officer of the Month broach. This wasn't happy, dim-witted Gertrude McLynn... this cold woman was a genius whose deadly deeds were too many to count.

She turned the flat piece in her hand and held it up to the humming barrier. A small ripple, a disturbance. Her expression didn't change, except her stormy orbs focused intensely on the pin, pushing it further until her arm was completely out of the barrier. Quickly, she slipped out of her cell and pressed against the wall; the cameras that viewed the all displayed in black, white, and gray on screens in a surveillance room on the ground floor. She blended right into the wall, but she slinked right up underneath it and slowly turned it anyway, so that it only viewed the stretch of wall to the side.

The woman's mouth slanted in thought for a brief period of two seconds before she looked up and saw a vent. Tilting her head to the side, a cold smile worked its way onto her face. She braced her hands and feet on the adjacent walls that the camera was located in between. Her back faced the corner. She climbed, one limb at a time, until was close enough to the ceiling to open the circular vent door. It popped open, and she wormed her way in, closing it behind her.

The cold, hard metal underneath her hands and knees was oddly soothing. It would have been a deciedly uncomfortable sensation for any _normal _person, but that word didn't accurately describe her in the slightest. She was cold, merciless, and nearly unfeeling- her anger was directed at the people she hated most, and that anger was morphed into icy logic to take them down. She notice her tiny huffs of air took the form of mist, and she briefly wondered just how cold it was. She looked down at every grate she passed, until she reache done at a dead end. A man lay, asleep, on his steel cot. He had a big, scruffy, silver beard (even though he looked to be about in his mid-thirties) and broad, ugly features. His eyebrows mirrored the thickness of his facial hair, and his breaths were deep. He snored quietly. A fierce, angry scowl worked its way onto her face. She opened the vent and slipped out, feet first, into the cell and landed quietly on the floor next to the man's bed.

"Bogdan Golubev." She hissed menacingly in his ear. His eyes opened, bloodshot and groggy. The dark blue orbs immediately focused on her cold features and became startled and fearful, but it was covered with a poorly-constructed visage of calm.

"How did you find me?" His voice was hoarse. She smiled mirthlessly, her grey eyes as stormy as ever.

"You are predictable, and foolish. You thought you were safest in the place anyone can end up... or end you." With that, she wrapped her hands around his neck. Golubev let out a strangled gurgle, and reached large hands up to pry her little ones off of his beefy neck, but her hands were already closing tightly over his trachea. He tried to gasp, but all that came out were sporadic little splutters, and eventually nothing but wheezy, cough-like noises that were almost impossible to hear. She watched in morbid satisfaction and glee as the light of life slowly diminished from his eyes. His hands stopped trying to scrabble for purchase against her strangling hands. His body went limp, and she waited for approximately a minute before nodding to herself and removing her hands from hsi neck, knowing that Golubev was no longer alive.

It seemed ironic to her that the one time she had intended to land herself in prison, it was going to be easier to escape. She was simply too good to get caught, and it had taken several attempts at being sloppy in her work for the authorities to catch her. She had one more man to take care of... One in a rather high position. A cold smirk worked its way onto her face. It would take more than a little research and some careful planning to take this one down. This would take patience, and restraint, but the end result would be worth it. The last would have to be good...

A good challenge always kept her on her toes.


	2. First Sight

A/N: Really happy with the favorites and follows of the first chapter! :) It makes me happy that already, people have taken an interest in reading this. I hope everyone's still holding out for updates- School's been horrible lately... A big shout out to Otaku Addicted Dweeb for the first review!

Also, I'm trying the best I can with the dates. Bear with me, people.

...

Chapter 2:

_Jupiter Space Dock, 2256_

_"Sir, he killed a good number of our doctors with his bare hands when he had just come out of cryosleep! I don't think it's a very good idea to- "_

_"Lieutenant."_

_"Y-yes, sir?"_

_"Does my expression tell you that I give a shit?"_

_The lieutenant spluttered and he almost dropped his PADD, startled and a bit intimidated at the blunt dismissal of his concerns. He eventually quieted, but it was an uneasy silence. They, along with a handful of black-clad security officers, were on their way to an interrogation room. A room that held the current most dangerous being in all of Section 31. The lieutenant had every reason to be concerned as he was, but his worries would soon prove to be unfounded. The admiral wasn't afraid- not one bit, because he had leverage over their new prisoner._

_Admiral Marcus placed his hand over the scanner to the right of the interrogation room doorway. It blinked green, and the door slid open. There were no windows (not a surprise- Section 31 is underground) and no furniture other than two chairs with a small, circular table between them. One was already occupied by a man._

_His dark hair was slightly mussed, and his features were tight. His blue-green eyes were blank and cold. They stood out on his pale, angled face. He was dressed in black, all the way down to his black socks and boots. His hands were clutching the end of the armrests of his chair, and they twitched slightly when the admiral entered. The strange man didn't look up, even when the admiral stood in front of him, arms crossed and face void of any telling emotion._

_"I bet you're wondering why we woke you up," Admiral Marcus began. The man in the chair's left eye twitched. "You of all people should know, Khan, that war is violent. Starfleet's main goal is to keep peace among those in the Federation." His mouth set in a prim line before continuing. "That's great and all, but we're not prepared with a military or any weapons, should the others that don't exactly like us decide they want to declare war. Klingons could destroy every ship in the fleet and we wouldn't be able to do a meaningful thing about it." He backed away from Khan and sank into his own chair. _

_"You are genetically superior, Khan. And while it would be useful to have an army of people like you, I'm no idiot. I know exactly what kind of trouble you could cause if you got out of hand. So, you were picked as the best among your crew to be unfrozen. Your intelligence and practicality is needed to design a new ship, strictly for war, and new weapons to go with it. And if you don't completely apply yourself, if you don't work hard enough to build my demands... well..." Admiral Marcus pressed his fingers below his chin into a steeple, elbows resting on the armrests. "You killed some of my doctors, Khan. It'd only be fair if I cut the power on a few of those occupied cryoubes." He smirked at the man across from him._

_It was silent for a beat._

_"I will design your ship and weapons." His deep voice was too even, too calm to be believable. His face was still carefully blank. The admiral studied him for a few seconds before standing, and heading toward the door. On the other side of the door, the security detail stood attention. He ordered them to take Khan to his quarters. One of the men's face tinged green at the order, and the admiral rolled his eyes and gestured toward the still-open doorway. He turned and walked away coolly, stunned Lieutenant in tow._

...

_London, March, 2257_

Rhona walked briskly through the crowds in the streets of London. Her head was down, and she was dressed in black business attire. She was headed toward a very plain building among all of the bright, shiny skyscrapers. Her rushed path led her off of the doors of the London Archives, and she waited, subtly scanning the crowd of pedestrians for one particular familiar face.

For weeks, she had monitored the people who came and went into the archives all day long, looking for a pattern in who came and went. After the second week, she'd noticed one man that went in and out every day on a schedule from six in the morning to eleven at night. From observing and listening to his interactions off the clock (on weekends, she followed him), she learned his name and title were Lieutenant Commander Aston Bartlet. He wasn't well-known around the archives, from what she gathered, because the people he hung around were all civilians; no fellow officers or other people that she saw enter and exit the building. He wasn't all that tall at five-eight, and his features were plain. There was nothing extraordinary about this man. He wouldn't be missed...

Bartlet was just rounding the corner, and she briskly lunged forward, gracefully like a lean predator taking down its weak prey, with a hypospray filled with an undetectable poison in her hand. His form was tackled to the ground around the dark corner. Luckily, it was still dark at six in the morning. Bartlet obviously had combat training, because he put up a decent struggle at first, but his frantic movements began to slow as the fast-working substance took effect and he eventually went limp in Rhona's grip, foaming at the mouth and choking on his own saliva. She reached into his messenger bag, lifting the flap, and retrieved a small card no longer than her pinky finger- an entrance key to Section 31- and a PADD. Rhona grabbed him by the sides of his suit jacket and hefted him onto the side of the building, slumped- he'd stay that way for approximately five to five and a half hours, which was more than she needed. After fixing her own clothing, slipping the PADD into her own shoulder bag, and combing a hand through her hair, she quickly walked back out onto the street and gained access to the building, her face all business. A large hall, the entrance hall, was round with several corridors leading off from it. There was a desk in the center. Despite the clear lighting, the place seemed dim and sinister.

Everyone that passed by and mulled around was dressed in muted colors, like she. Greys, blacks, and some dark blues. It was a bit chilly inside the building, much like the weather outside. She walked toward the steady stream of workers and melted in with a purposeful spring in her step. She pulled out the PADD and kept her head down, like many of the others around her. It wasn't hard to bring up a map of the building on a device of a person who worked there. There was a lift at the end of the hallway she was headed toward, the one behind the desk.

While walking the length of the corridor, absentmindedly running her fingertips along the smooth wall, Rhona took a deep breath and reflected on every life she had taken to get to this point. It was easier to just not consider them as men or people at all. Just... mindless soldiers that obeyed the command of a monster. The fact that no one would miss mindless soldiers, was her justification. But deep down, she knew that those men were just obeying orders, and that they probably had families, too.

And Rhona probably would've cared, had she not had twenty-one years' worth of anger and despair trapped in her, festering and simmering for so long. Rhona boarded the lift.

It was all she knew, and the only way to let it go was to hurt those responsible. Had they not wanted to be killed, they shouldn't have gone and murdered her parents on command like a bunch of dimwitted puppets. Where were their consciences? Where were their backbones? For killing her parents, taking away Avie... they were nothing. If their hearts were shallow enough to kill and tear apart one family and believe their own should remain intact and whole, their lives were worth absolutely nothing. In her eyes, anyway.

The reflective doors opened to reveal a bustling lab. If anyone looked up, nobody seemed to care about her sudden presence- apparently new agents were common. It was a large room, but the clutter of some of the instruments made it seem smaller. There were flat, silver tables used to experiment and examine, and beeping machines and beakers and test tubes and heating devices. Rhona felt herself smile only a little before heading over to a vacant table. It faced toward the wall-to-floor window, so she could see the buzzing city of London. Setting her bag down, she reflexively tied the strap of her shoulder bag to the leg of the seat, to prevent easy theft- even though it was unlikely anyone here would have the motive to steal anything. Rhona tapped her chin for a brief moment, before grabbing up her own stolen PADD, and drawing up blueprints to fit in to the scientists around her.

She wondered briefly if Marcus was ordering them to come up with bio-weapons of some sort. It wouldn't hurt to make one of her own, just in case she needed a quick getaway by smashing something on the floor. Andorian Shingles in a bottle? It was possible. It wasn't like she was actually working there anyway. She just needed to bide her time. The admiral needed to be completely cornered before she went in for the kill. The lift doors opened again, and Rhona glanced up from her PADD. An uncomfortable sensation zapped through her teeth when a breath was sucked back in when they were gritted.

This is the part in any normal story when she would think, _Wow, he's handsome._

Good thing this isn't a normal story.

The cold, menacing air that ol' what's-his-name radiated sent a chill up her spine and made her skin crawl. His blank face and ice-blue eyes screamed serial killer, in her opinion, and though she did think he was handsome in an extreme, scary kind of way, that thought was overwhelmed by a healthy dose of something she hadn't had in a long time:

Fear.


End file.
