fateandfortune | Transporter Beam Accidents Do Happen

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Transporter Beam Accidents Do Happen

An anomaly.

Space was full of them, but all of the points of instability no matter how small in the Sol system had been exhaustively catalogued. Grade school children took field trips to collect redundant data on them to analyse over apple juice and animal crackers. Or kelp wafers, or whatever they fed people now. Khan had encountered a few undocumented anomalies in his longer-range scans and tended to avoid them whenever possible in his transporter experiments, but he hadn't even bothered scanning first this time. Why would he? The coordinates he was using were in the path of Earth's orbit, no region of space had been better studied than that one.

There were several distant anomalies in the known galaxy which could warp local space-time into crumpled aluminum foil, but this one didn't have the right energy signature. It wasn't a false reading, even though by all rational standards it should have been. These subspace energy patterns never occurred naturally, not in the vacuum of space. It looked almost like a life-form signature that had been abandoned mid-transport, no stabilizing beam either from point of origin or destination, and somehow hadn't disintegrated in the process.

Well, no sense in ignoring the interesting finding. Ultimately, Khan intended to use transwarp teleportation with living subjects anyway. While he wasn't prepared to start sacrificing lives at this stage, this wasn't his doing. Whatever this creature was, or had been, it essentially didn't exist right now. Its matter was no longer part of any known or theorized parallel universe. It wasn't alive, so rematerializing it in his test chamber wasn't going to kill it no matter what went wrong. He might as well bring the thing in and have a look at it before blasting it back out into the vacuum of space.

After recalibrating his instruments to lock onto life signs, Khan locked onto the signal with far more precision than the instruments currently in wide use could have done. Khan was alone in his workshop with no weapons and he really should have considered calling in a xenobiologist first, but he had no interest whatsoever in expanding the frontiers of shared knowledge for the rabid warhounds of Starfleet. A few more buttons punched and the golden swirls began forming on the platform inside the spherical force field. Khan would have to shut the field off in order for sound waves to cross the distance between them, but right now he should be able to see what was inside well enough to determine if it should be jettisoned immediately. That would definitely be necessary if it turned out to be too large for the containment field, no sense in triggering an explosion of guts all over the sensitive instruments.

Of course, if the life form reassembled correctly and actually possessed senses corresponding the the human visible light range, it would also be able to see him. It would appear at roughly his chest-height on a warm white disc three metres in diameter, the force field bubble completely transparent but hard as glass to the touch. The room was a small deserted hangar built of dark metal, well-lit but almost empty, with nothing else in it but a large desk sized console, a chair, and a dark-haired man with a quiet curiosity. Khan stood up from his console and took a step closer, watching the form take shape out of the whirling photon-emitting spirals.

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That was so completely unexpected that Khan couldn't help the stunned widening of his eyes. Which laboratory... no, which parents had made her? Khan's people hadn't done any investigation into their reproductive viability, they had chosen to hold off until there was enough geopolitical stability to allow the world to be safe for any children. Was she a natural-born second generation Augment? Even if she had simply been conjured up in a later batch, that implied his kind hadn't actually been swiftly annihilated the way they had in Khan's continuum.

"I might be able to get you back home." He could triangulate her physical location at the exact moment the Earth had passed through that section of space, along with the date and time, down to the millisecond. He wouldn't be able to beam her directly there, but it just might be possible to create a stable relay to do so. Why not? If it actually worked, Khan would have everything he needed and more to save his entire race.

He was as shocked as she was, it was there in his eyes and the way he looked at her. Neither of them had seen this coming, and, for Rogue at least, it felt like the room was spinning. Especially when he said that.

"What?" she whispered, suddenly very close to tears as the words threatened to catch in her throat. She must have imagined it. He couldn't possibly have said what she thought he'd said. "You might... Home?" The idea hadn't even crossed her mind. Ending up in this time was one thing, but making it back - was he serious? Could it actually be possible? Was there really a chance she might be able to see everyone again?

On further analysis, the chance that Khan was looking at someone of his own genetic strain was rather low. Augments may have their share of possible defects, but overly-maudlin behaviour wasn't one of them. Neither was being vulnerable to panicking in unusual circumstances, or having messy emotional breakdowns when discussing logistical possibilities for achieving practical goals. If anything, the genetic engineers were overly thorough in their attempts to eliminate these tendencies. The nature of the human evolutionary processes in Rogue's continuity was likely very different, but the two of them still seemed to have some substantial common ground.

"It won't be simple. I'll have to identify and map out all of the relevant space-time anomalies, including those you have never personally occupied. At least your presence here is unlikely to complicate matters, as I have reason to believe that you're much further from home than I first thought."

On a better day, Rogue wouldn't have been anywhere near as emotional as she was at present, and in retrospect she would be a little appalled at the way she'd behaved. She'd spent so many years learning how to be strong, both physically and mentally, but the war had broken all of that down and left her with nothing but a crumbled foundation upon which to build upon again.

It took a few tries for her to piece together his meaning, and when it finally hit her, she could barely breathe. "This isn't my timeline," she concluded in a hushed voice. She took a shuddering breath and hung her head. "I knew that seemed too easy." That should have been her first clue, really. After what she'd done, she didn't deserve for anything to ever be easy.

What? This sniveling creature was complaining about her miraculous luck? It wasn't as if Khan were being offered a chance to turn back time, choose better circumstances for his own people, and then have the opportunity to go back and join them. Khan's hands stayed down at his sides but curled into fists.

"So you don't actually care about going back? If you'd prefer to be disintegrated now I will be more than happy to oblige."

Part of her wanted to shrink back from his words, to follow the instinct to run when things got tough, but that wasn't an option now. She'd been through too much.

"That's not what I meant," she snapped back, raising her head to glare at him as her stronger instinct to fight won out over running. "Of course I care about going back. I have to know if it worked, if my family is still alive." Some of the steel leaked out of her voice as she continued, "I apologize, things have been... I'm not usually like this."

Seeing her life flash before her eyes as the Sentinels had barged into the temple hadn't exactly done her mental state any favors.

At least partly mollified, Khan gave her a quick visual once-over. "You'll have to stay hidden. Security is rather tight around here. If--"

Abruptly, Khan's gaze snapped towards the door. "Quickly. You need to hide." Without bothering to ask, he suddenly lunged for one of her hands so he could grab it and tug her over to the console. She could fit underneath it without much trouble, which was quite fortunate. There weren't a lot of options otherwise.

If he was worried about her being discovered, then she had to assume it was for a damn good reason and act accordingly. But she didn't expect him to lunge at her like that, grabbing for her bare hand. She only just barely managed to keep herself out of that grasp, dodging to the side and around him on pure reflex - she'd spent over a decade avoiding the touch of others, it wasn't something that went away very easily.

Rogue concluded on her own and quite quickly that the only viable option was under the console and she hurried to fold herself beneath it. She'd gotten pretty good at hiding over the years, too.

As much as Khan found it inconvenient for other people to refuse to follow his lead, he couldn't exactly fault her it. That she was fast enough to dodge his grasp in the first place was rather impressive. Even more impressive was how quickly she had assessed the situation on her own and acted in such a decisive and agile way. Khan might have been satisfied to be able to claim her as one of his own after all.

During the five seconds before his door chime went off, Khan moved his chair back into position and flicked a few switches on the console to boot it back up. He ignored the door for the next ten seconds, after which it chimed again in a longer, more insistent way. Khan finally made his way to the door and it opened with a swoosh, followed by a perky female voice with a British accent that sounded part South African and part fake. "Just thought I'd drop by! It's been awhile. Are you making any progress?"

Khan's voice was flat. "Doctor Marcus, you know that my data are automatically uploaded to the central computer every twenty-four hours. I don't need personal visits from the tax collector." With a smacking sound, Khan pressed his palm to the wall and the door swished shut in her face just as she had started to mount a protest. The room fell silent.

Rogue's pulse was racing as she waited under the console, her heart beating so loudly in her ears that she almost didn't hear the chime of the door. It took all of her years of meditative practice to keep her breathing calm and quiet so she could hear what was finally said after the door opened.

It didn't sound like a soldier, the voice too upbeat for someone to have noticed her presence and already be on the hunt for her, but she still didn't trust it. Even in the silence that followed the short exchange, she stayed right where she was, body tensed and ready to lash out if a threat appeared. It could be a trap, after all. Years of hiding from the soldiers and running from the sentinels had turned her into a soldier herself, and even after three years of being held prisoner in her own home, those instincts hadn't faded.

Khan backed away from the door, quite slowly and casually, letting his boots fall heavily enough on the floor that his fugitive might be able to hear that he wasn't approaching the console area. Instead, with an easy jump, he sat on the edge of his floating white disc.

He could hear her heartbeat, thudding so much louder than the prim little footsteps that had been approaching in the hallway on the other side of the bulkhead. He could smell her fear, permeating the room. He was already tired of her panicking, there was no sense in making it worse by going anywhere near her. "It's safe for you to come out."

It was only one set of footsteps that she heard crossing the room, going in a different direction rather than toward her hiding spot. Someone could still have been waiting inside the door, there could be a whole lot of someones, but she wouldn't know unless she listened to his all-clear and checked.

Her movements were slow and cautious as she peeked out, scanning the area she could see before just as slowly standing. It wasn't until she saw for herself that there was no one else in the room that she visibly relaxed.

"Thank you for not letting them find me," she said to him, lifting her hands to run them through her hair, smoothing down the striped locks. The unzipped lower sleeves of her shirt fell back to expose most of her forearms; if he looked, he'd see a tattoo there, M4827, the number they'd used to catalog her. "I don't exactly relish the idea of being locked up as a lab rat again."

Khan narrowed his eyes, giving her a rather sharp look from across the room. A lab rat? Khan may have been created as some military genius's science fair project, but their creations had staged a very effective coup before Khan had turned ten years old. Even before then, the use of coercion and physical restraints had proven fatally counterproductive with their hyperagressive retaliatory little supersoldiers. Even with the relatively wide berth given to him, Khan detested being someone's specimen. Rogue must have had it infinitely worse.

"Then you'd best be very careful around here."

The first step would be an interrogation, of course, as she would be suspected primarily of espionage. Any hint that she had unique abilities which could be exploited for the war effort would send her straight into a xenobiologist's cage. She wouldn't even have to be shipped out of the facility, their specimens and workspaces were housed one floor up. She would need weapons and an effective escape plan. Fortunately Khan could provide both.

Between the look Harrison gave her and the words he used, Rogue had a sick, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that she would bet good money wouldn't go away anytime soon. He'd confirmed her fear that she would end up exactly that if she were caught by whoever ran this place, and she was completely out of her depth in this time and place.

Best not to worry too much about it, though. She was stressed and exhausted enough without adding to it by overthinking a situation that she really couldn't do much about. Unless he managed to do whatever it was to get her back to her time, she was stuck here, and she'd have to keep her wits about her to make it out alive and in one piece.

"I'm sorry about before," she said, lowering her gaze to the floor as she seemingly changed the subject. But it was important that he knew so he didn't try anything again. "When you told me to hide and you... My mutation is in my skin. More than a few seconds of contact would kill you."

Khan's mind whirred along steadily in the task of forming strategies and contingencies for ensuring her safety. She might not enjoy some of the necessary restrictions to her actions and movements, but he was reasonably sure that she would find the situation tolerable.

At the same time, the current topic also had his attention. Not only would he have a better chance of planning strategies if he knew her strengths and weaknesses, but it was also an interesting conversation on an academic level.

"Are you poisonous?"

Khan would find Rogue extremely willing to do whatever it took to make certain she didn't end up strapped to another lab table. She had hundreds of psyches in her mind who had died in the agony of her touch and she would rather be killed herself than be forced to murder innocent people again.

"I wish it were that simple," she said with a sigh, scrubbing a hand over her eyes. "When I touch someone, I absorb their life force, memories, skills - it's like I have a copy of them permanently stored in my mind. With other mutants, I borrow their mutations for a little while." Crossing her arms again, she wore a somber but serious expression as she met his eyes. "It only takes about ten seconds to kill a baseline human. With someone enhanced, it's a bit longer, but not much."

He contemplated this for a few moments. "There are many sentient species in this galaxy who have frequent and mutually profitable interactions with Earth's people. A significant minority have stable psionic powers of various kinds. I wonder how your abilities might be related to theirs."

Khan slid off the disc to land on the floor, no longer concerned that his guest would react like a cornered animal. "Not that I'm any kind of xeno-neuro-psionic-bio-aura-reading-guru-ology expert, or what-have-you. I'm familiar the anatomy of humans and that of my particular subspecies, but I've only had brief interactions with other sentient species."

Rogue watched him move with curious caution, but his choice of words made her smile, the corners of her lips curling slightly upward. How long had it been since she'd last smiled? It must have been years.

"I've had a few interactions with the Kree and Shi'ar, two of the major intergalactic forces in my universe. But they mostly steered clear of Earth - there were extenuating circumstances for why they contacted the group I was with." Which was another long and complicated story. "From everything we've seen, my abilities are... unique. My mentor had never seen anything like them, and he'd been working with mutants for half a century when I met him."

"Half a century of individual breakthoughs in human evolution, no matter how numerous and diverse, can't offer the same insights as the gradual adaptation of thousands of unique sentient species over the course of billions of years." The mutant might be jumpy around Khan and with good reason, but he wasn't about to shy away from her. He would afford her the amount of space generally required for polite social interaction, but not a centimeter more.

Khan kept his eyes focused on hers and his hands at his sides when he approached. "This galaxy has entire civilizations of touch-telepaths, energy vampires, memory thieves, and absorbers of personality. We have parasites who take on the identities of their hosts, doppelgangers who can mimic physical abilities, those who can establish psychic links to gain access to the knowledge and experience of another, the list goes on."

Perhaps this mutant was afraid of social bias as well as being captured as a specimen? Khan could offer her some reassurance on that level, at least. "Humanity will always have more than its fair share of reactionary fear-mongering bigots, of course, and some separatist groups, as do many other cultures. In the greater galactic community, however, it's unspeakably rude to behave in a suspicious or fearful manner around such individuals. Tactful curiosity is usually acceptable. The automatic assumption is that any psion who poses an actual threat will take it upon themselves to steer clear of polite society."

Khan would never have to face the specific sort of prejudice that psionics were vulnerable to, but he was all too familiar with growing up in a world of humans where envy and murderous hate went hand in hand. "They will still exploit us if they can, but they don't band together to hunt us down like diseased monsters."

It was actually a little reassuring and almost comforting that he didn't keep a great distance between them, but didn't get closer than was polite either. Such a consideration was a great deal more than she was used to from anyone outside her very close circle of friends, and even they had shied away from her at times in the early days.

"It sounds like a very eclectic and fascinating universe," she commented, choosing her words carefully. "My Earth is still searching for proof that we're not alone. I almost wish I could live to see us become part of that community, to find out if things are as wonderful as they are here."

It was like a dream, the idea of being able to interact with other species and not have them automatically be terrified and assuming the worst of her. "I hope- I hope that we've fixed things. That our Earth survives to take its place in the universe, because it wasn't going to before. The governments of the world had come together to hunt us down, like you said. Anyone with the mutant gene, anyone who sided with mutants, anyone whose genetic line would eventually have the X gene... Most were just killed, but those of us with useful abilities were put into prison camps to be studied. Over three-quarters of the planet's population was dead or captured at last count, and they weren't going to stop."

She cleared her throat and looked away from him, quietly adding, "I hope we can make the world a better place this time. For everyone."

"It's dreadful. Humanity has lost its survival instinct. Some create excuses to set off pointlessly destructive conflict. Others are so sheltered they don't recognize danger under their noses." He broke eye contact and took a diagonal step forward so he could fiddle around with his console switches again.

"I wouldn't worry about whether or not you succeeded. With my help, you'll have access to every place and every time you've ever touched, or ever will touch. We might discover that your better world came about in part because I was able to restore your continuum by repairing the damage in the fabric of space-time that managed to annihilate you."

Rogue honestly didn't know what to say to that. His words whirled around in her head, mixing with everything that had happened that day, and she suddenly just felt heavy. The walls in her mind groaned under the strain of the day and she sighed as she pressed fingertips to her temples.

"I apologize, I don't mean to be rude," she said quietly as she closed her eyes, still pressing against the ache growing in her mind. "Things are a little rough in here right now."

"You'll be safe in my quarters, but it will take the better part of an hour for me to clear a path to get you there." A few more button presses and a three dimensional display screen made entirely of projected light appeared in the air. Khan started manipulating the image with various gestures in front of it. "You can do what you like in the meantime, so long as you stay in this room."

She looked up as he spoke, watching as he changed the display and seemed to get straight to work. It was fairly impressive and Rogue couldn't help but stare for a few moments, not having seen anything like it outside what the X-Men had developed themselves. Their technology had always been at least a decade more advanced than that available to the general public, for the simple fact that some of the greatest minds of her time belonged to mutants.

Shaking herself out of it, she glanced around the room before finally just sitting on the floor a few feet from where he was working; close enough to duck into her hiding place if need be, but with enough space between them to be out of the way. Crossing her legs, she set her hands on her knees and closed her eyes, jumping right into the familiar practice of meditation that had helped keep her sane all these years. There were a lot of weak spots in her mental defenses that needed tending to, and if she didn't do it soon things would get a hell of a lot worse. The last thing she needed was to be even more of an annoyance and burden to the man who seemed so willing to help her.

She wasn't any kind of annoyance or burden. The mysterious mutant from between dimensions not only provided the most promising avenue of escape yet, but she was very decent company in a galaxy completely devoid of it otherwise. Khan was disappointed that she didn't seem interested in having a conversation while he worked, but he wasn't going to bother her unnecessarily.

Only fifteen minutes had passed before he spoke, this time navigating two different virtual screens at once and more quickly than he had at the beginning. Things were falling into place. "Can you see in pitch darkness?" Maybe she wasn't listening, and he would have to let go of his data streams to get her attention. If she did respond now, that would save them a good thirty seconds that would be useful, but they didn't actually need them.

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