Black Legion, The: (n.) a mythic group of displaced humans adrift at sea and in search of a new home, variably piratical or nomadic in design and intention. Used as bogeyman legend among the Atlantean people and propagated during the Fourth Interregnum in the Orin period (see Appendix III: 'Atlantis and Associated Mythography'). Can also refer to a supervillain movement in the early 21st century, also disseminated as a bogeyman myth among landside superhuman powers (Appendix IXII: The Justice League), and associated with the piratical terrorist codenamed 'Black Manta'.

Five Years Ago.
Luthor.

A thousand miles from Metropolis, out past LexCorp's seasisde research laboratories—repurposed oil rigs retrofitted with all manner of technology to probe both deep and high, marine biology and exobiology, stellar cartography and deep-sea stratigraphy—a man in a pressurised suit and a chrome helmet floated on a chrome platform.

Five years ago, this. Long time to wait. And to think of something to do with your power.

Underneath the chrome helmet and the burning red eyepieces, burning red even in a broad and burning Atlantic summer, the Black Manta scowled.

He was late.

Manta checked his chrono. Looked to the west and whirled the trident around in one hand. The trident he'd taken as war trophy.

From his enemy.

The wind chilled and scoured across him, sudden and unbidden. Atmospheric compensators in the suit shielded him, kept him guarded and away. Away from the world, away from the enemy. Away from feeling or thought or touch.

By choice.

The wind whipped again. A purple flash near him and an electric sizzle, shaping into a man.

It burned brightly for a second and Manta readjusted his eyepieces filtration to compensator. It burned, and then faded.

Luthor, in a black trenchcoat, glowing purple and green underneath, stood scowling at the Black Manta.

"Well," Manta said. "Old times."

"A bygone relic," Luthor said and made a face at Manta. Richly condescending. "Old school teleport technology, barely worth scrap."

"Your facility is ready?"

Luthor smiled. "It's an older one, but it works for you."

"And Aquaman is there?"

"What's left of him, yes."

"Good," Manta said. He pressed a switch on one neon gauntlet and a green bubble sizzled around him. "I'll take you down."

Manta banged the hilt of the trident against the platform—twelfth generation Nth metal, stable up to a thousand atmospheres and a million degrees—and it descended silently into the sea, that dark mystery.

Manta and Luthor reappeared in a city. Subterreanean. Suboceanic. Empty, heavy, fetid air closed in around them, artificial, obnoxious sunlight above them. Artificial skyscrapers lining artificial streets. Not a body in sight or screaming child or errant dog to offend the eye.

Luthor looked around and his mouth crooked into a scowl. "He's done a man's work, I'll give him that."

"He says all he's waiting for is your go-ahead."

Luthor looked up at the fake Empire State Building. Blocks down stood a fake Hancock Tower. This city, you see, was all. And none.

"Let's worry about transference later down the road. Where is he?"

Manta rapped the trident's hilt on the ground once more.

A moment passed.

Then a green-electric sizzle, not unlike Luthor's own energy field. Burning into fake asphalt in a tripartite pattern, three lobes connected with single lines in the shape on the earth letter V.

The sigil of the world computer.

At the lowest lobe, a chrome and Nth skeleton apparated from nothing. Eyes burning green, claw hands clasped behind its back, its head high and disdainful of biologicals. It didn't have to tell you. You just knew.

Brainiac arrived.

"Speak, Luthor."

"Show me the bodies," Manta said. Low and livid.

Brainiac waved one claw hand. Another electric green sizzle near him, and a pile of corpses appeared.

Luthor looked bored. Looked at the artificial city and, intermittently, at the pile of bodies before him.

Green Lantern on the bottom, desiccated and sprawled, Hal Jordan's saddened dead face staring at Luthor from a shredded domino mask. The Martian Manhunter, in pieces. Wally West, the Flash, an equally sad face staring slack-jawed in Brainiac's direction. Wonder Woman lying on top of the martian, sprawled and sacrificial, her head staring into the city, her suit mangled, burned. A dagger buried hilt-deep between her breasts. And lying over Wonder Woman, headless and demolished and broken as the rest:

Aquaman.

Black Manta stalked toward the pile. Flipped his trident in one hand and jammed it sideways into Aquaman's neck. Started twisting.

Costumes shredded, torn, destroyed. Burnt, ripped. Bodies limp, lying unnaturally on top of each other, hips twisted, legs and arms missing or stripped of flesh and costume. Gruesome, even by Luthor's lofty standards. Bones.

And memories.

"And Batman?"

"Unknown," Brainiac said.

Manta said: "What about Superman?"

"What about him." Luthor scoffed and started pacing. "He's adrift and hopeless. He'll stay that way."

Manta, still twisting Aquaman's head from his body: "You're so sure?"

"I am," Luthor said. "And what is that you're doing exactly, David?"

Manta stopped twisting. The neck had popped clear of the rest in a wet, slow snap. Manta kinked the trident to one side and shoved against the mass of the whole pile.

And then he brought the trident up. Aquaman's face, jaw loose and almost falling off, eyes rolled back, glossed and sunken, skin white and tight, hair matted and darkened either from blood or rigor, Luthor had stopped caring which.

"War trophy," Manta said. "Now. You wanted the meeting. So go."

Luthor regarded Manta coolly for a moment.

Brainiac didn't move. His eyes, Nth shutters that passed for eyelids on a biological, narrowed. Luthor spoke:

"This was part one of a plan to transform the face of this planet. To kill its old gods and remake ourselves in a better image. Phase two begins right now, with us. Because, gentlemen, you see I lied a moment ago. Superman will not stay gone. It's not in his nature. He will come back. Oh yes he'll return. And when he does, I intend to be there. I'm going to reduce this planet and its cities to ashes and I'm going to make him watch. And then I'm going to kill him. Thus always to the enemies of Lex Luthor. Gentlemen, this is my mercy. Stand with me as I do this. Give me the lands of this earth, and David the seas. And Brainiac, for you - all the stars in the sky. Do we have an arrangement?"

Brainiac watched Manta.

"For old times' sake," Manta said. "I'll get the Legion on board. Your alien friend comes back, I want a piece."

"Agreed," the world computer finally said.

Two Years Ago.
Lex and Berkowitz.

The LexTower stood silver and gleaming, obnoxious, against a midday haze. Its topmost floors contained Luthor's executive office, a sprawling, sparse affair in deep purples and greens. The western wall was all glass, six panes mounted into the façade, ceiling to floor, perfectly square. Between the wall and the entrance, double doors, also glass, sat Luthor's desk. As old as time and cannibalised from the remains of a redwood to be in the shape of the White House's own Resolute Desk. At night, or when he wanted to, Luthor activated a small remote which polarised weather and reality beyond the glass and converted the panes into wide-screen visual monitors. Could be GCN, could be WLEX, could be surveillance footage from the men's room. Technology and his building were privy to his whims.

Right now it was surveillance footage. Of Metropolis' illegitimate six term mayor, the tax-cheating wastrel Francis P. Berkowitz, esquire. A portly, worrisome man, aviator glasses loose on his nose, ill-fit to a suit, dowdy in a trenchcoat, pushing his way into the lobby. Making a fake little frown and storming forward. The concierge at the desk perked up and saw him, and knew him, and simply held out a hand. He's waiting for you, Luthor had lip-read.

Bird's-eye surveillance in the elevator. Berkowitz looking down at his phone, sending a text to some discriminating aide. Checking his Seiko for the time. Always somewhere to be.

Luthor sat back in his chair and supported his head on a steepled arm. The King Lear look.

Teschmacher on the intercom: "Mr Luthor, Frank Berkowitz is on his way up."

"Thank you, Eve."

The thing about going into Luthor's office was that you could see him. A few years ago the entrance foyer and Teschmacher's desk had been architecturally cramped. Painted in harsh beige and with a single, lonesome seat across from Teschmacher you could wait in if for some reason Luthor wasn't in his office. Few years ago though, after one of his customary adventures with the Man of Steel, renovation was in order. The glass double-doors remained, etched with an art-deco variation on the company logo—a single capital L in a bevelled circle. Teschmacher's desk was expanded, the ceiling raised, the square footage increased. Previously, the third and fourth tenants on the floor had been Luthor's private washroom, done in priceless and impossible green marble; and a private laboratory, to which no one save Luthor and Mercy Graves had access. In a report to the Board of Directors Luthor attributed this to 'new advances in the field of miniaturisation and physical expansion into tesseracted hyperspace'—by which he meant moving his lab, and whatever private science lay within, into a pocket dimension.

So it was more spacious. You stepped out of an elevator coated in brass, and stepped forward, Teschmacher and her desk to your right, an easy and harmless smile on her face and she said, 'he's expecting you'.

She always said that.

So Berkowitz stepped forward. His grip tightened around the briefcase and he looked through the glass doors.

Luthor was sitting in his chair, behind his desk, reclined. Staring out at an opaque afternoon and the sprawling city underneath it.

Berkowitz pushed a door open. Kept walking.

The chair rotated around slowly.

Berkowitz sat.

"Well?"

Berkowitz took a deep breath.

"Did you ever wonder why I brought you back?"

"Um," Berkowitz said. Immediately his survivalism kicked in, that amazing capacity for self-deception and toolery, and he devised an instant plan to save himself. "You run this town. Everyone knows it. You always have—and it's gotten worse—"

"Worse?"

"More pronounced," he corrected. "In the last few years. You know what it's like on the streets. Tell me how you did it. You never did before—I want to know now. I want to know what made them all go away. How you got Superman off-planet. Where the Batman went. Let me guess. You recycled one of your old plots. Something that got you elected President all those years ago."

Luthor allowed a little scowl and zoned Berkowitz out and thought: you little prick, you don't know the first fucking thing I did, you think I was trying to save the world with the Presidency, get real you sh-

"You made yourself king again. Gave their kids scholarships. Gave their dads jobs and pensions. Gave me a job and a purpose again. It pains me to say it, Lex, but you…saved us."

The shadow in the chair frowned. "The city is very dear to me, for all its problems. And the way the rest of the world was going, well, I couldn't take the thought of a Metropolis burning with crime and death. Someone had to assert himself."

Berkowitz leant forward. "I know. I'm saying, keep me in. Please. I want forty more years. I know you, Lex, I know what you do to people when they're no longer useful."

The shadow frowned again. "Busy life. Keep swimming."

"I've been trying to figure that out for years," Berkowitz said. "How you must sleep at night. What you had to do to get where you are. The bodies. The lies. The mind you must have." Berkowitz sat back and made a disagreeable face; the lines creased across his mouth and his forehead wrinkled. "I was in awe of you. All those years ago."

"You were terrified of me," Luthor said. "And your terror cost me my life, my fortune, and my good name."

Berkowitz let out a nervous chuckle. Wiped the sweat from his face with one greasy sausage of a hand. "You make it sound as if you stayed in prison. You were out the next morning, what's to complain about?"

Luthor went to the window and clasped his hands behind his back. "Twenty years behind us or not. You made the Alien one of your cops, and he threw me in prison. Me." Quieter: "I brought you back. So you could see it, Frank."

"See what?"

"A world without him. And how insignificant your role in it truly is."

Berkowitz made a face.

"It was a response to age. One grey day you wake up and you see yourself slowing down. You look in the mirror and wonder who that hunched, wrinkled, thing is staring back. You feel it. And you decide to make the most of what you have left. Battle after battle, fight after fight, dead civilian after dead civilian. Until Superman has it one day and flies off. Is that—the story you've heard, Frank?"

"Sure."

Luthor scoffed at turned back to the window.

Ten minutes passed.

"Oh. Forty more years," Luthor said. "You want to live to ninety? What retirement system pays public employees to that ripe end?"

"Ninety," Berkowitz said. "You want more."

"I could live until the end of time, Frank. I would."

"Mind if I ask why?"

"Because he will."

Simple enough.

Berkowitz threw a hand up. "You said he was dead!"

"Is he?"

Then Berkowitz was out of his chair. He had gone from zero to flip-out in two seconds. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about, Lex! What the hell am I doing here? I should've never let you talk me into this! What in God's ass are you even up to?"

"I'm hoping," Luthor said. "You'll see."

"Yeah yeah," Berkowitz said and waved a hand. He idled away from the desk, pacing, shoving one hand in his pocket, using the other to gesture. "You know, if you would just talk like a, like sane person? It'd save us all a lot of trouble." Then he was quiet. He leant on Luthor's desk, his glasses slid to the end of his bulbous nose, and his jowls flapped as he choked out a sentence:

"Tell me, Lex," Berkowitz said. Out of nowhere he conjured a smile, fake and easy. "Everyone knows your dirty fucking laundry, Lex, just tell me. Tell me and I'll shut up and you can keep doing that voodoo that you do. There was one reporter at the Planet that came close, if I remember. Then he washed up on-shore, headless, nutless and dead. Olsen, was it? What did you build under the sea? I'd like to know. And I'd like to know why our superheroes are now dead and gone. Tell me."

Luthor's eyes narrowed. His head craned slowly forward. His head, its baldness, stark raving shiny, gleamed off the setting sun. "You were the benefactor of a leaked plan. I told you what I told you, because you would do nothing. Nothing at all, Frank. And you proved me right. I wish you hadn't. I would have loved to see your fat ass running to the alien and telling him what I was up to. What was going to happen to him—to all of them."

"Which was?"

Luthor spread his hands in an offertory. "Why does it matter now? My enemies are dead or gone. In one week I rid myself and this world of them for good. For the better. Look at us. Look at me."

"Exactly. Why do we even still exist? Crime, non-existent thanks to your Team Luthor gang of idiots. That statue of you in Centennial Park. And no superheroes to waste your time on anymore." Berkowitz sighed.

"The facts of life," Luthor said. "The problem with surviving, Frank, is that you survive. Alone."

Berkowitz frowned.

Luthor stood. "Does that answer your question?"

"Um."

"Why did you come here, Frank?"

Silence.

"You thought you could get me to talk? To you? Thought you could get some info from the horse's mouth? And in so doing, make yourself invaluable. You cockroach. I talk to people who deserve my attention, and I respect things that deserve my respect. You're a dog wearing a sweater."

Then Luthor pointed behind Berkowitz. "Get out."

Without noise, without protest, sunken and little, Berkowitz fled.

Luthor scowled and shook his head. Pulled his mobile from his pocket and dialled the only number he needed.

Ring. Ring.

"Lex."

"Jesse," Luthor said and smiled. You could always feel a smile through the phone. "I trust you're nearby."

"Coffee down the block, what's up."

"How's Alex?"

"He's good, sir, thank you for asking."

"My pleasure," Luthor said. "Berkowitz will be walking out in five minutes. You know what to do."

"You got it."

Down below, among the plebs, Berkowitz sent his car away, "Get outta here, I need to walk," and stalked up Fifth Avenue, toward City Hall. A Sundollers Coffee lay ahead, across the street, the intersection of Fifth and Moore.

Berkowitz bundled his trench coat around him. A chill wind scoured down Moore. He glanced up only once to see someone—a boy? Sliding out from one of the outdoor tables, buttoning a denim jacket, throwing a hoodie up over his face and his aviators and checking his phone. Rifling through his wallet for a tip or something. Berkowitz flipped out his phone.

A hand on his arm. Strong and young and stopping him dead.

"Your Honor—"

"I'm sorry son, I'm terribly—"

"So am I."

"Huh—"

"Mister Luthor sends his apologies."

Then Berkowitz's side exploded. Pain. Cold metal pain, a seizure in his spine, a yelp; he fell on his back. Staring at the sky.

Jesse grabbed his cane and limped away down Moore.

Years before, Luthor had shot Jesse through the stomach, a lazy shot that shredded his spine and nearly paralysed him. Oh he got better, as so few do, but he'd taken to using a cane these past few years as a steady form of insurance. How like a geriatric, he often thought. He used the cane as an affectation. A reminder of what he'd lost, next to what he'd gained. A new lease on life courtesy of Lex Luthor. A young man, he was. But these days, with everything being what it was, he felt slower. Older and bitter. Years and thousands in physical therapy. A long and inglorious story.

In a back alley behind another Sundollers, he dialed 911. And started acting.

"Team Luthor, this is Agent Reeve, how can I assist you?"

"OhmygodIthinkIjustsawadeadbo dyonFifthAvenuePLEASEyouhave tosendsomeoneRIGHTNOWohmygod Idon'tthinkhewasmoving—OHMYGOD!"

"Sir, sir, calm down, we have three units en route right now. Do you wish to remain anonymous?"

"Y-y-yesthankyou."

Then he disconnected the line.

Redialed Luthor.

"It's done, sir."

"Good. Stop in later, won't you."

"You got it."

Disconnect.

Jesse Wright stood for a moment in the alley. He regarded the cane distantly, then tossed it, caught it, and stuck it back at one side.

He walked freely down the street toward the Tower. A smile on his face and hope on his mind.

For once.

Continued...