"I know what Starfleet does to my kind." There's heat in his words, grief buried beneath barely-leashed fury. The hand around Julian's throat twitches, just slightly, and he opts to grip the collar of the doctor's shirt in lieu of involuntarily strangling him.

He lets his curiosity be subsumed, keeping his grip but putting enough space between them so as to better survey Julien - this isn't the time to pick away the doctor's denial, not when the man is working for the very institution he'd attempted to destroy. Khan allows his features to slip back into chilly impassiveness, eyes and voice hard. "If you think I'm going to allow myself to suffer that fate again, you are dangerously mistaken."

He'll tolerate neither slavery nor death at Starfleet's hands.