"Ah, Lena," my father said. "Have you heard? It appears our city's 'angel' is an alien."
Why yes, father, I've known that since the day I left the cloning tube, I most pointedly did not say.
I swung my legs off the chair and landed on the floor, looking up at him as he passed me the newspaper. "Superman speaks," I skimmed, my reading comprehension far beyond my physical age- either six or whatever physical age I happened to be right now. "Man of steel from alien world of Krypton, empowered by sun's energy, declares duty to use his powers for good." I snorted. "Do you think he just has to glide every time he enters a shadow?"
"Please, it's not going to be something so... mundane, as that," he said, passing off a clipboard to Mercy. "His story is... Too neat. Too... convenient." He stood up. "Personally... I don't trust him. Not when he says it's natural. No biological organism would be able to evolve a system like that- I expect he's taken some sort of alien technology for himself. Preparing to put himself in a position of trust."
"Or he's a magical alien with magical biology," I pointed out. "Maybe his planet's in a space ley line, or some other type of concentration of magic."
He gave me a look. "Space ley lines. Really."
"Dnimer rehtaf tahw denneppah tsal emit eh deirt ot teg em ot pots gnihctaw me le ep," I incanted, waving my hands around.
He paused a moment to translate, then glared some more- my spell had obviously been successful. "It's been made very clear. You can cast a few party tricks- just like the man who finally managed to convince me," he said. "Him, though?" He snatched the paper from my hands, and spread the pages, staring at Superman's visage in a way that no shipper would fail to misinterpret. "I suspect he's hiding the real source of his power- a technological source. If I can convince him to share- or, failing that, wait for a weakness..."
I clambered back up onto the chair, and returned to my project. "Neprahs ekil cinaclov ssalg," I muttered as I picked up the scalpel, letting both smugness and a little bit of mana flow through me as I near-literally waved said weakness in front of his face. I certainly wasn't telling- I had... concerns about Superman myself, but Lex was more the 'shoot first and let the press ask questions to make me look good later' type. But anyway... "He doesn't seem like the type who would be a willing hire," I pointed out.
"Every man has their price," he replied. He took a meaningful step towards the windows- looking out towards the city that belonged to him. "Every single one. Even Superman. I just have to find it first."
"Well, that's technically true," I agreed. "He's got some price. Maybe you can give him enough money. But he's an alien- who said he wants money in the first place?"
He chuckled. "My dear, the price is always money," he replied. "Money is the key to power- with a few transitions, I can get him anything he wants." He leant over, looking at what I'd been toying with. "...Apart from getting your little pet project to work, perhaps." He wrinkled his nose in disgust at what I had before me. "It amazes me you still bother with it, when you could do everything and more with a little robotics."
Before me was a desiccated rat on a plate- the little bones had pierced through its skin, and it was shriveled up in a little ball. "It's coming close. This one is a lot better than the last attempt," I noted. "Lasted a lot longer before the cryptobiosis process began. I'm not far off a working formula- I know it."
As I started to pry apart the tissue layers, father turned to the window. "You could gather a lot more information from conscious subjects," he said. "Watch how movement affects the process, or see if their behaviour can stabilise the process. It could be the key to your success."
I rolled my eyes, and replied, "If I felt like being needlessly cruel, sure. A formula that works on an unconscious subject will be much more stable anyway."
His eyes weren't visible from this angle, but I knew what he'd done anyway. The little tut of annoyance just confirmed it. Like father, like daughter, I suppose. "Nothing is needless in the name of progress," he told me. "If you can do it, then-"
There was a sudden sound of a ringtone- my father's ringtone. He frowned slightly, and turned for the door- pausing slightly as his favourite bodyguard whispered something to him, getting a brief nod before he left continued.
"Excuse me a moment." The door closed behind him as he would-have-hustled-if-he-wasn't-Lex-Luthor'd out of the room.
I pouted. "...I had a speech and everything."
"You always have 'a speech and everything'," said Mercy, who'd remained in the room.
Mercy was what most people would consider 'a good person', apart from when she was performing, ordering or preparing to order or perform the wheneverly assassination, espionage or whatever other criminal act my father felt like today. On one hand, that amount of time was quite frankly excessive. On the other, he meticulously concealed such shenanigans from me, despite how many different ways I'd learned to hack the lower parts of his systems- meaning I got along with Mercy pretty well.
"If I didn't have a speech at every available moment, he'd never hear one. And really," I said, "who doesn't want to hear one of my speeches? So it's only him that's missing out."
"And yet you always complain about not being able to do them."
I raised an eye brow. "Of course..? Why wouldn't I try and complain at every possible opportunity?"
Mercy chuckled. "When you put it that way... I concede the point. Anyway..." She strode over to my table, and poked some of the fur on the rat. "So, you were going over some sort of... super-serum. Supposed to let you mix your DNA with whatever you want. What's it doing that causes," she asked, "this? His skin's nearly popping off like a wrapper in some places..."
"It's based on the genome of Milnesium primarily," I explained, before I remembered to explain the explanation. (Explanations are far more complicated than they should be. Unless they're too complicated.) "It's a type of animal called a tardigrade, sometimes known as a water bear."
"A water bear?" she asked. "Like a seal with claws or something?"
"It's to bears what jelly babies are to real babies, unfortunately. They're microscopic," I explained, putting down the scalpel so I wouldn't start gesturing with it, "and they're famous for the sheer strength of their DNA. They can resist radiation, heat, cold- they undergo cryptiobiosis, which is sort of like hibernating, I suppose."
"You said the cryptobiosis was killing them earlier," she asked- Mercy was nothing if not attentive. "Doesn't look like anything a nap would do to me."
"The big difference between cryptobiosis and torpor is that the tardigrade has to dry itself out first," I said. "But tardigrades don't have more than a toughened outer skin- in rats, and I presume in people too, implanting the DNA makes their flesh dry out and shrink without the bones being able to compensate. Thus..." I pointed at the rat. "This happens. I tried taking out the genes necessary- I read a paper on tardigrades being able to take in foreign DNA, so I thought it'd act like a solder. It's still the only way I can find to splice in new DNA and keep it stable- but it's the cryptobiosis genes that are doing it." I sighed. "The paper was wrong, they'd just found some other cells' DNA by accident."
Mercy frowned. "If they got it that badly wrong, why'd they publish it in the first place?"
"Honest mistake," I explained. "Anyway, I found another animal that could do the same job- it's called Adineta, and it's pretty much just a miscellaneous microscopic pond thing. There's a few things in there, actually- rotifer, lobster, some flatfish, a bit of shark. This is just a general health jab," I said, shrugging- "No super powers beyond frostbite immunity- long life, cancer resistance, that sort of thing. Without the tardigrade DNA, though, it all just falls to pieces."
"See, this is why your father wants you doing engineering or chemistry rather than biology and geology," Mercy said, somewhat amused at my failures. "You're as smart as your father- and you pick one field that's too chaotic for it and another that's already tapped out industrially."
"You never know," I said as I cut into the coelom, having had my fill of picking through muscle fibers. "Maybe we'll find a rock that we can use to brain Superman. I get the impression father would pay a fortunate for that, at the very least."
"Maybe you will find a rock like that," she said. "Or maybe you'll just find another one of those conglomerates you seem to hate so much."
Ah, yes. Conglomerates. The worst type of sedimentary rock. "Anything's better than conglomerate. Apart from psamite. I've told you how much I hate psamite, haven't I? Worst thing in the world..."
Mercy went quiet. Slowly, I turned towards her.
She was smirking. She knew something. "What is it."
"There's one thing you hate more than psamite," she noted.
What could it-
Oh no. No no no no no.
"We've got another evening social event coming up," she told me, her voice full of carefully-concealed glee. "Three days. Make sure you've set an alarm."
"...Thank you for the warning," I told her. "Also, I hate you."
"I know you love me really," she said. "Now, I've got to make sure your dad stays in one piece- enjoy the dead rat!"
"...I will," I said solemnly, glaring at it as I waved her off.
...Now... Back to figuring out what went wrong this time. It had to be ready soon. I knew that between my father's latest robot being thoroughly explodificated (which would be roughly now) and Superman beating up a giant robot tyrannosaur, he'd be weakened enough by kryptonite to bleed... and that meant kryptonian DNA.
It was a thought I most certainly had never squee'd at.
The only thing was... I had a nagging feeling that I'd forgotten something important. Sometimes I had dreams- reminding me of what I'd forgotten- but the only recent one had been about Lobo, and he wouldn't be here for a good while at least. And I'd already accounted for that a while ago. So what was it...?
...Eh, it couldn't be too important if I'd already forgotten it. I sharpened my knife again.
