Disclaimer: Aberrant, owned by White Wolf and Onyx Publishing. Justice League Unlimited owned by DC and Warner Brothers.

Author's Note: Okay...David's "arrival" into this world. And yes, Waller is a bitch.

CADMUS Headquarters

Sante Fe, New Mexico

The first thing he was aware of was voices.

"He's waking up, inform the director."

Then he was aware of the pain in his arm and chest.

"Damn, look at the readings on this guy. He's been out for four days and his body has halfway recovered from the bullet wounds. These will be mere bruises by the end of the week for sure."

David tried to open his eyes, only to be greeted with a sudden flash of images tearing through his brain.

Ricky's headless body on the floor...Ashley lying in broken heap, dying and bleeding, Larry...Larry was dead, a gaping hole where his chest should have been.

And then there was that blond haired nova in a unitard, standing there with a sneer on her face.

Another flash and he was outside, his vision nothing but a field of red as he held the blond nova captive in one of his Zero Point fields before smashing her into the pavement a few times.

"You came to my home."

With a gesture of his right hand, he raised a her a few more feet off the ground, channeling more quantum energy into the field, knowing full well the energy surge was tearing through the lady's nervous system like a hot knife through a stick of butter.

"You hurt people close to me."

A slashing gesture threw her into a parked car, knocking the vehicle on its side, metal screeching and sparking as it slid several feet from the impact.

"You KILLED people I considered family!"

He had the field pick her up out of the wreckage of the car and slammed her into the pavement of the parking lot again, this time putting her at least a foot and a half into the ground and dragging her several yards before lifting her up off the ground again. He had the field bring her up a few feet in front of him forcing her arms and legs to spread out away from her body so she was splayed out in front of him.

"Your body can apparently take a lot of damage. But you're still experiencing a lot of pain because I'm channeling a shitload of quantum energy into your body via these Zero-Point gauntlets of mine. It's also allowing me to neutralize most of your muscle movements. Give me enough time, I think I might be able to stop your vital organs. But for now, I think I'll start with this."

Though a small part of him screamed in his mind for him to stop, he ignored it. This bitch had killed and maimed people he had considered family. He felt satisfaction when her mouth opened up in a silent scream as her fingers were forced backwards to the point of being broken.

"How does it feel, BITCH!?"

Oh, it felt so good to take his rage out on this bitch. For a moment, he didn't see her. Instead he saw Phillipa Lavielle, then Mirage, then Caestus Pax, and several other enemies he had nothing but cold hatred for. Again, the voice of reason was begging for him to stop, but he shoved it aside as he remembered Larry's dead body lying in the lobby. He knew he should demand answers from this lady, but all he saw was someone who killed members of his family and that demanded only one solution. With another gesture with his gauntlets, the woman's hands were then bent back and he had more pressure applied.

"I'm going to break every bone in your fucking body. First your, fingers, then your hands, then your-"

BLAM!

BLAM!

BLAM!

There was pain in his arm, back, and chest as his world suddenly spun out of existence and dissolved into darkness.

His eyes snapped open and he was now fully awake. He tried to move and found himself being restrained. He saw a couple people in surgical masks looking down at him.

"Oh shit! He's spiking and his body trying to overcome the sedatives. What the hell is this guy?"

"Doesn't matter, crank up the dosage by sixty percent."

"That could kill an elephant."

"Well, it's not working right now and we've already increased it by forty. Do it!"

"No need," said a new voice. The two doctors, at least they looked like doctors, suddenly stepped aside and the blond bitch that David had fought suddenly stood above him, an evil grin on her face. "You're not supposed to be awake, asshole."

Then David barely saw the blur that was her first before pain and oblivion claimed him again.

Standing in the small room a few feet away from the prisoner's bed, Amanda Waller studied the young red-haired man who was sleeping peacefully (well, it looked peaceful but that was probably due to the painkiller/sedative cocktail being pumped through his body after going through surgery and then being punched out by Galatea).

It's funny how some people don't look like a threat when they're unconscious. This boy looks like some slacker college kid who would probably hanging out at a frat house and getting drunk.

And yet, according to the after-action reports by Lawton and Flagg, this "boy" had advanced technology that pretty much wiped the ground with Galatea. The fact that he apparently created a device that could hurt a clone of Supergirl impressed Amanda and reaffirmed her decision to have this young man extracted.

It was an added bonus that we even got those gauntlets he was using against Galatea. If that kind of tech can take down Galatea, then we have something that we can use against Superman and it's not even connected to Kryptonite.

She remembered the look on the faces of Hamilton and the rest of the R&D crew as she presented the gauntlets to them. Luthor was there as well and even he looked impressed after a cursory examination of the gauntlets (and that was all he was going to get, Amanda knew better than to have someone like Luthor get full access to technology like that).

However, she also remembered the conversation with Floyd Lawton when he confronted her in the hallway outside the infirmary a few minutes ago.

"What do you want, Deadshot?"

"Nothing, Waller," the mercenary replied as he gestured over his shoulder at the room that the man called David Pine Flynn was in. "Though I am going to give you an opinion. Sure, you may not think it's worth much, but I'm going to give it to you regardless."

"And what would that be?"

"That kid, David Flynn...we shouldn't have taken him. In fact, I'm going to level with you, I think this was a clusterfuck the moment you people discovered this 'parallel world'."

Amanda rolled her eyes, but she knew deep down that Lawton's observations usually had a valid point most of the time. "Okay, convict," she said, emphasizing the word 'convict' so Lawton would remember his place in the organization. "Let's hear it."

"You said you wanted technology to face off against the Justice League and, using technology you confiscated from various sources, alien and otherwise, you created a 'boom tube' that lead you to an alternate reality where there was no Justice League, but a world that had supers of their own."

"Is there a point to all this, Lawton?"

"I'm getting to it. I'm sure that you researched this world, sent some operatives out to scout the world and get the lay of the land, right?"

"We did. In fact, we made several small recon missions into this world. That's how we got intel on David Flynn and his people."

"That's well and good, Waller, but let me ask you something? Did the possibility ever occur to you that we might be underestimating the kind of people we're dealing with? Case in point, the so called 'detailed' intel you gave us said that while Flynn's company did employ metahumans, they were eggheads and not very likely to pose a threat. Well, they would have wiped us out if we didn't have Galatea backing us up."

"We weren't that naïve," Amanda snapped, not liking where Lawton was headed. "We knew from some of the intel that they could put up a fight, that's why I had Galatea assigned to you."

"And yet, though she did take out most of the people with her 'shock and awe' and 'let's kill and maim for shits and grin' tactics, Flynn didn't hesitate to take her on and would have fucking killed her if I hadn't intervened and shot him."

"He got careless and you took him out."

Lawton shook his head. "No, Waller," he said. "The kid was enraged. Yeah, that gave me an opening to take him out, but the problem is that he is now here, in our world, in our facility, alive. And I'm certain that he still has that rage inside."

"He's just one man, convict," Amanda said evenly. She really didn't like what Lawton was saying. "And with the implants we put at the base of his skull, he's hardly in any position to act out on whatever rage issues he may have with us."

The mercenary smirked at her. "I saw the look on his face, Waller, especially his eyes. You may think we have him under control, but we don't. He's a wounded animal in a cage and I'm telling you, he's one of those wounded animals that will bite your fucking hand off when he gets the chance."

"Then we'll just have to make sure he doesn't get that chance, won't we?"

"I'm telling you, Amanda," this time, Lawton spoke softly, "kill him. He's too dangerous."

For a moment, Amanda said nothing. Then she smiled at the man. "Why Floyd," she chuckled, "if didn't know any better, I'd almost say you were scared of the boy."

Lawton shook his head again. "If that's the way you want to play it, Director, then it's all on you." He turned around and started to walk away, but then stopped and glanced back over his shoulder. "I just hope that I get to be around to say 'I told you so'. It might even be worth you setting off the bomb in my neck."

Now, a few minutes after that conversation, Amanda was studying this so called "caged animal" and wondering if Lawton had a point. She glanced at the monitor above the bed and the hint of a smile pulled at the corner of her mouth as she read the vital signs. "I know you're awake, Mr. Flynn, so you can spare me the act."

The young man's eyes immediately opened and, for a moment, she saw confusion and anger as he looked at her before they suddenly became cold and dead...like a predator looking at its prey. "So, you're the one who ordered the attack on me." Not a question, a statement based on an observation.

"Yes," Amanda replied. "I'm Director Amanda Waller of an organization called CADMUS, Mr. Flynn. And don't bother trying to place the name, because you are not on your world."

For an instant, something flickered across Flynn's face, but Amanda couldn't place the expression. Perhaps is was confusion.

"Not on my world?" Flynn repeated. He then chuckled as he looked at Amanda. "Let me guess, you're actually some sort of Roswell alien dressed up in an overweight shell."

"Ah, this must be the smart-ass facade you present to your enemies in Project Utopia, right?" Amanda asked as she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a small black box with a single button on it. "Well, welcome to the big leagues, Mr. Flynn." She pushed the button and smiled as the electrical charge surged through the base of his skull and made him thrash around uncontrollably for a couple seconds. "That was the lowest setting, Mr. Flynn. The others are a little more intense and the highest setting just detonates the nano-explosive which rips your head off at the shoulders."

She studied Flynn's expression and could see the hatred in his eyes, but she was used to that. All convicts inducted into CADMUS had that same look on their face. The hatred gave way to understanding, but she noticed the one expression she saw on most CADMUS operatives' faces was not present on Flynns.

There is no fear, she thought. His eyes...you can tell that he's looking at his options, planning.

After a couple more seconds of silence, Flynn sighed and finally spoke. "What do you want, Director Waller?"

"Your help, Mr. Flynn."

Flynn glared at her for a moment. "You have a funny way of asking for it. You could have scheduled an appointment instead of having your pet nova kill my people."

"It was necessary. We needed you and we wouldn't take no for an answer."

Again, Flynn fell silent and Amanda could see that he was seriously contemplating something before he spoke again. "And what is is you want me to do, exactly?"

"We're in a war, Mr. Flynn, against super-powered beings who are basically modern day gods with an orbital satellite station with a planet-killing weapon pointed down at us. They claim to be heroes, but I don't trust the Justice League, not after the last few years."

"The Justice League?" The tone in Flynn's voice caught Amanda by surprise. For a moment, there was no anger. In fact, it almost seemed like a combination of recognition or disbelief, but she couldn't be sure.

"Yes," Amanda replied. "What I want you to do, Mr. Flynn, is make weapons for us that can neutralize the League."

"I'll save you the trouble, Director Waller," David said. "Might as well use the highest setting and kill me now."

For a moment, Amanda said nothing. Then she took a slow breath before she said, "I was expecting an answer like that."

"Maybe so, but it's not going to change it."

"Oh, I think you will."

Flynn arched an eyebrow at her. "Really?"

"Yes, I do."

"Care to explain that to me?"

"It's very simple, I'll give you forty-eight hours to think about it. If you're smart, you'll agree to help us."

"And if I don't."

Amanda gave him a cruel smile "Well then," she said, "we'll just have to arrange another little trip for Galatea. She's that young woman you tried to kill in your world. She's a little pissed off at that."

"That's okay, I still plan on finishing the job."

"Kind of hard for you to that while you're here," Amanda said. "But as I was saying; you don't cooperate, I'll send her back to your world, to your so called home, and I will order her to level the entire town and kill everyone there."

And once again, silence dominated the room as Amanda and Flynn stared at each other, each studying the expression of the other. After a minute, Amanda saw the fear she was looking for, but she also saw the hatred as he spoke.

"You bitch," he growled. "You would kill a city of a hundred and seventy thousand people?"

Amanda smiled at him again. "Not my world, not my problem," she said. "The world that matters, is mine and the people on it. I will do whatever it takes to protect them." She then turned and started to walk out of the room. "But I'll still give you forty-eight hours to think about it."

She was about to close the door behind her when she heard Flynn say, "Director Waller."

She stopped and turned around. "Yes, Mr. Flynn?"

"When this is over, I'm going to fucking crucify you."

Amanda snickered as she turned back around and walked out the door. "Forty-eight hours, Mr. Flynn. Try not to spend it being delusional."

David waited until the door closed behind the woman and leaned his head back into his pillow. It took all his effort to control his emotions. Anger, fear, hatred, and...of course...disbelief.

Were I a baseline human, I'd either be freaking out or laughing hysterically

He closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated, reaching out with his cyberkinetic link...he could feel the firewalls of the network to this facility. Though they felt familiar, they also felt different and he knew it would take time for him to break their coding to bypass them. He could also feel the connection from the network to the unknown cyber-organism at the base of his skull.

And that would be that little nanite bomb implant you have in my head.

He allowed himself a tiny smile as he mentally scanned the coding coming from the organism.

It will take me awhile, but I'm sure I can break it eventually. But that's not the bigger problem.

David prided himself on being a firm believer in logic and reality, despite some of the wondrous things he had seen in his world. But this...this was different.

This world, this place...this must be the world Mitchell Carter had come from. These were the people he was warning me about. But it's not possible...it can't be possible.

Though David sometimes questioned his own grasp on sanity, he liked to think he was in possession of most of it. However, now, as he asked himself this one question, he was starting to wonder if he actually lost it.

How does one escape from a world that is a work of fiction and is not supposed to be real?