AN: I feel like every chapter I post, I comment on how long it's been since the last one. Oh well! Enjoy―IF YOU CAN.
The explosion rocked the entire ship and left it ringing like a bell. At least six different alarms began screaming in its wake, and the sound of running feet echoed in the hallway. Querl closed the panel in his arm and straightened his shirt. Crossing swiftly to the banks of computers set into his wall, he worked at them methodically for a little over a minute before shutting them off entirely. He settled into his chair, steepled his fingers, and watched the door, waiting. It was five more minutes before the door opened and Cosmic Boy rushed in.
"You―" he began, and cannoned into the force shield Querl had erected around his chair. It let off a vague purple shimmer where Cosmic Boy had struck it, then faded back into invisibility.
"Let's discuss this calmly, shall we?" Querl suggested.
Cosmic Boy's fists clenched and began to shimmer with power. Querl shook his head.
"You can try, but this room contains a magnetic resonator apparatus that will counteract your powers within one tenth of a microsecond. It's a little slow, I admit, but I've only been working on it for a few weeks, and I have had other projects to occupy my attention." The floor beneath his feet buckled briefly and halted. Querl smiled. "I see it's working."
Saturn Girl entered the room behind Cosmic Boy, her eyes glowing solid pink. A high-pitched whine began to emanate from the walls, modulating in uneven spikes and waves. Saturn Girl drifted to the ground, her expression confused, the glow fading from her eyes.
"And that," Querl said, "is a very distracting noise. I designed it to render the concentration necessary for the use of psychic powers nearly impossible. You can bring the entire Legion into this room, if you like. I've prepared for all of you."
Superman sped into the room after that. Querl sighed, downcast. "I'd prefer not to deploy my contingency plan for you, Superman. Please don't make me. I just want to talk."
"Kell is in the infirmary." Superman stated, his face dark with rage. "Riddled with splinters of kryptonite. If anyone else had been in that shuttle, they would be dead."
"Let me explain―" Querl began. Superman cut him off, relentless.
"A piece of the shuttle went through Cam's leg. Both of Timber Wolf's eardrums are ruptured. Lightning Lad is unconscious and bleeding internally."
"Superman." Querl's face was taut. The Man of Steel forged on.
"What would have happened if Shrinking Violet had been in that room? Can you imagine what that explosion would have done to her? Or Bouncing Boy? And if it had ruptured the hull, we'd all be dead! As it is, we've got four Legionnaires out of commission and at least six more injured." He strode to the force shield and crashed his fist against it, shaking the chamber and lighting up the entire cylindrical field for a moment. "You had better have a damn good explanation!" he roared.
Querl sat in silence for a moment, listening to Superman's heavy breathing while a small crowd gathered outside the door. "I didn't detonate that bomb." he said eventually.
"What?" Saturn Girl cried, rising into the air. The android regarded her coolly.
"I didn't." he stated. "But I knew you would all think I had, which is why I deployed the contingencies."
"Less stalling, more explaining." Superman demanded.
The truth will set you free, Querl whispered to himself.
The truth will get you killed, he replied, looking at the circle of angry faces around him.
"I've been framed." he said. "Again. Doubtless, whoever placed the bomb in the first place was frustrated by its removal. Hoping to injure as many Legionnaires as possible, they detonated it while it was being investigated."
"Liar." Saturn Girl accused. "You put that bomb there. You planted evidence to keep us occupied. You said it was non-functional!"
Cosmic Boy turned to her. "You knew about this?"
"Please, stop." Querl interrupted. "Much as I'd love to have the fingers pointing somewhere else, all of this is beside the point."
"And what is the point?" Superman asked. The force shield bowed inward as his fist pressed against it.
"There is an intruder on board this ship, and there are more bombs." Querl stated. "Ask Timber Wolf, if you can get the message across. I trust the explosion didn't damage his sense of smell."
"You're lying." Saturn Girl insisted. "I know you made that bomb. I know you set it off. I know what you were trying to keep us away from!"
Querl raised an eyebrow. "Really? Perhaps you'd like to inform the rest of us."
"You've been making a copy of yourself."
"You're confused. We found that doppelganger floating in the wreckage of Imperiex's ship. It was destroyed weeks ago."
"No! There was another one, one that you were making. Editing your own code to remove your ancestor's influences, or that's what you said you were doing. You've been working on it for weeks!"
His eyebrows knitting together, Querl replied, "When did I say this?"
"Four weeks ago, when you were first confined to quarters!" she cried, exasperated. "We can look up the footage. I was here. I went into your mind with you and found Brainiac 1.0. You told me you could rewrite your code to remove him. You told me you'd need a shell to test it on. You told me earlier today you've wiped Cam's memory four times because he kept walking in on you!"
"Cosmic Boy, if you would be so kind as to run back through the security footage of this room from the past four weeks." Querl said, then turned back to the blonde psychic. "Saturn Girl, I have no memory of any of these events. Now, perhaps my system is far more compromised than I've been led to believe, but it seems to me that you may have been the victim of a surgically precise psychic attack."
Meanwhile, Cosmic Boy was riffling through the security footage of the past four weeks, fast-forwarding. The only figure to appear in the room for a long time was Querl, going about daily tasks, programming thirty contingency plans into his room's computer, sleeping, constructing and deconstructing logic puzzles. Once, Cam entered under the door and had a brief conversation before leaving again. After a long few minutes, Cosmic Boy closed the screen.
"He's telling the truth," he admitted reluctantly. "No one else but Chameleon Boy has been here. He's been alone in his quarters."
"He hasn't!" Saturn Girl cried. "He tampered with the footage!"
"Doing so would require access to Computo, which I do not have."
"You do! I gave you access so you could work on your project!"
All eyes turned to Saturn Girl.
"You gave him access to Computo?" Cosmic Boy asked, his voice quiet.
"She didn't." Querl said. "Watch. Computo! Activate main screens."
From the room, a soft chime, followed by Computo stating, "Error: unauthorized user detected. Cannot comply."
Saturn Girl looked injured. "I don't understand. I don't understand. I know what happened. I know what I saw!"
"Can you be certain?" Superman asked gently. "We've all been fooled before." He put a large hand on her shoulder. "It's possible, isn't it? That you were attacked."
"I would have known!" she cried.
"Not if the attack was precise and insidious, as I suspect it was." Querl interrupted. "Someone who knew you very well crept into your mind and placed false memories. While there, they extracted the access override for Computo. Someone has attempted to frame me, and in the meantime has had full and unrestricted access to our systems."
"What about your experiment?" Saturn Girl demanded, rallying somewhat. "You said you ran a program to erase yourself from video feeds, to see if the intruder could have done it. You said you removed that bomb from under Superman's room and put it in the shuttle. You started an unauthorized launch to gather us all down there. What was all that for, if it wasn't part of your plan to distract us?"
"Distract you from what?" Querl retorted. "As you can see, I have no secret clone in my room. I have no access to Computo. I got Cam to run the code for me." He pressed two fingers to his temple, eyes squeezed shut. "Whoever did this was brilliant. And they did not act alone. We had best find the rest of the bombs before they, too, are detonated. And set course for Takron-Galtos."
"Why Takron-Galtos?" Cosmic Boy asked.
I have them, Querl thought, with a rush of triumph and a twinge of guilt. "There are few people in this universe with enough psychic prowess to infiltrate Saturn Girl's mind. It would be best for us to check their whereabouts, don't you agree?"
That night, the ship was dark and quiet, humming softly as it shouldered its way through space. Alone in his room, Querl could hear the faint bug-scratching sounds of welding torches in the shuttle bay, repairing the damage from the kryptonite bomb.
'Alone,' Querl thought, is not the right word.
On the table before him lay the Other Him, the one that in life had been Brainiac 5, its eyes closed, its metallic skin buzzing as he uploaded the code from his computers. One of its fingers twitched. Querl watched it like a hawk, unmoving; waiting, waiting, waiting.
An hour later, the buzzing quieted and a small dialogue box appeared on the main screen, simply saying, UPLOAD COMPLETE. Every synthetic muscle in Querl's body tightened; he could hear the whirr of his own processors, could feel every molecule of air as it ricocheted off his skin.
Brainiac 5's purple eyes snapped open, wide and staring.
"Annnntsssss. . . ." he buzzed, beginning to tremble all over. "My hhhhhead is fulllll of aaaants!" His voice rose to a scream. "Get them out! Get them out! Get them―"
Querl slammed his hand down on the kill switch and watched the Other Him collapse back onto the table, its eyes dark and dead, its mouth slack. He stood there for the span of forty seconds, motionless save for the violent trembling that had seized his limbs. Slowly, he removed his hand from the switch and breathed deeply. The trembling subsided. He opened a panel in his arm and said quietly, "Attempt One: failure. Neural mismatch led to tactile hallucinations." He paused. "Decidedly disconcerting."
He closed the panel in his arm and turned away from the Other Him as it lay inert on the table. Querl sighed. "It's going to be a long night," he said, and began typing.
Superman sat in the infirmary, placed equidistant between Kell-El and Timber Wolf. Across from him, Chameleon Boy lay beneath a pile of white sheets, his outline wavering as he dreamed. In the bed to Cam's right, Lightning Lad slept, an oxygen mask fixed over his angular face, a tube of clear liquid diving into his organic arm. Other beds in the infirmary also held occupants, sleeping fitfully, all their vital signs displayed on screens above their heads. Superman watched Lightning Lad's screen intently; the heartbeat faint, the breathing slow, the numbers to the sides worryingly small.
The door hissed open and Bouncing Boy waddled in. He spied Superman, waved, and seated himself at Cam's bedside.
"How are they?" he asked.
"They'll pull through." Superman said, as though he could make it so by the conviction of his voice. His eyes went back to Lightning Lad's vitals, and he repeated more softly, "They'll pull through."
Bouncing Boy sighed and looked down at Cam. "I'm surprised Violet isn't here." he said.
"Be surprised no more," came a tiny voice, and Shrinking Violet blossomed from the air vent overhead, growing to her full size, seating herself on Cam's other side. She looked down at the orange-skinned shapeshifter with a quiet tenderness that made Superman smile.
"The gang's all here," he said, crossing his arms and leaning back.
"Almost all here." Bouncing Boy corrected. "We need Querl to make it a full gang."
Quiet descended, kept from silence by the beeps and hums of the machines around them.
"Do you believe him?" Superman asked suddenly. "That he didn't plant that bomb? That he didn't detonate it? That Saturn Girl was attacked?"
"Yeah." said Bouncing Boy. "I've always believed him. Vi and Cam and me, we're out to clear his name. He's not a criminal. I trust him. I know him." He looked at Violet. "We know him. And besides, we found three other bombs, just like he said we would. I trust him."
Shrinking Violet nodded. "Querl's a little weird sometimes, and I'm not saying it didn't hurt to have my head slammed against a wall, but that wasn't Querl. That was Brainiac One. Querl is my friend, and a fellow Legionnaire, and I swore an oath to protect him."
Superman nodded slowly. "I want to believe him. But it all seems so . . . contrived. It's an awful lot of coincidences, don't you think? Saturn Girl had some pretty convincing evidence. She was convinced, anyway. And he has been acting strangely, you can't deny that."
With a small moan, Chameleon Boy sat up, rubbing his eyes. "I think the strangest thing would be if he started to act normal." he proclaimed. "Man, I don't know what kind of painkillers we use, but they're sweet."
"Cam!" Violet cried, and embraced him. Bouncing Boy gave Superman a knowing look. Both of them smirked.
"Hey, hey, easy on the merchandise!" Cam protested. Violet settled back in her chair, blushing. Cam smoothed back his antennae carefully. "Who knew shuttles had so many sharp pieces, right?" He shoved aside a pile of blankets to reveal his bandaged leg. The tissue around the injury shifted uneasily, as though unsure of what to do with itself.
"Eeew," said Bouncing Boy, recoiling slightly, his eyes fixed on the wound, "does it always do that?"
"I don't know," Cam answered, "I've never been hurt this bad before. Durlans heal fast, but we heal weird. I knew a guy who grew back an entire arm. But it started with the hand. He just had a hand sticking out of his shoulder, and then the rest of the arm grew out under it, schwoop, like a plant." He grinned. "It was real funny to watch him try and clap."
"Boy, those painkillers really do a number on the thinking, don't they?" Superman said, smiling. "Only time I've heard loss of an arm be funny."
"You should've seen when Arm Fall Off Boy came to try-outs." Bouncing Boy said. He, Cam, and Violet all erupted into raucous laughter. "Poor guy went to pieces."
"Literally!" Violet cried, and snorted.
"I feel like I shouldn't think that's funny," Superman hazarded, "but I actually do. Arm Fall Off Boy?"
The other three cried in unison, "Arm Fall Off Boy!"
From Superman's right, Kell-El's sardonic voice: "Not that I don't appreciate the humor of the situation, but people are trying to sleep."
"Sorry!" Cam whispered, still snickering to himself.
Once again, Superman found his gaze drawn to Lightning Lad's vitals. Was it just his imagination, or did the heartbeat seem weaker? He listened closely, focusing on his hearing; there were so many heartbeats, the rushing bellows-sound of so many bodies breathing, the beep and hum and whine and buzz of so many machines monitoring and tending, the uncomfortable squish and squeak of Cam's cells shifting, the faint crackle of Lightning Lad's electrical field. . . .
There, a little hiccup in one heartbeat, the slightest change in volume, pace; the drum slowing and quieting by nearly imperceptible amounts. Superman shot to his feet.
"Get Cosmic Boy." he ordered. "Get Saturn Girl. We're going to lose him if we don't do something."
Bouncing Boy and Violet were on their feet in an instant. "I'll get CB." Bouncing Boy declared, inflated, and cannoned from the room.
"I got Saturn Girl." Violet replied, and, shrinking mid-air, zoomed out through the air vent.
"What about you?" Cam asked. Around the infirmary, others were waking up, drawn from sleep by their concern for a teammate.
"I'm staying right here." Superman said, crossing to Lightning Lad's side. "Nobody dies on my watch."
Once again, the Other Him was buzzing on the table, its head filling up with the edited program. This time Querl was pacing, back and forth, back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back. The hour of upload time seemed to take an eternity, before finally there was the soft chime, the message from the main bank: UPLOAD COMPLETE.
Querl waited, intent upon the Other Him, waiting for it to become Brainiac 5.
Slowly, his eyes opened. He sat up as though he expected to fall to pieces at any moment. Querl held his breath.
"Where am I?" Brainiac 5 asked, looking around in confusion.
"Your room." Querl answered. Brainiac 5's head snapped around to look at him.
"You're . . . me?" he asked.
"In a manner of speaking." Querl replied. "Think of me as version 5.1, and you as version 5.2. Beta."
Brainiac 5 shook his blonde head, his face drawn with confusion. "I remember . . . I remember. . . ." His face fell blank as though a switch had been flipped. "I remember my purpose." Glowing pink eyes turned upon Querl. "This world is flawed."
Resignedly, Querl hit the kill switch again. The Other Him fell back onto the table with a loud clank and clatter, once more a dead hunk of metal and circuits. Querl opened the panel in his arm.
"Attempt Two: failure. Brainiac One-Point-Oh subroutine gained control in twenty-seven point six seconds." He snapped the panel shut and returned to the main computer bank, wiping the Other Him's mind blank as a starless sky and beginning, once again, to pick through his inner workings line by line.
"How is he?" Saturn Girl asked, entering the infirmary just ahead of Cosmic Boy. The lights had all been turned on, and all of the occupants were awake and watching, save Lightning Lad.
"Holding together." Superman replied, moving away from the bedridden Legionnaire to make room for Saturn Girl. "But getting worse."
Gently, she placed a delicate hand upon Lightning Lad's forehead and shut her eyes. A moment later, she opened them again and winced. "Superman, bring me that green bag from the cabinet. It's a stimulant, to increase his heart rate and breathing. Cosmic Boy, the defibrillator."
Cosmic Boy drew back. "His heart hasn't stopped. Why do you need that?"
She glared at him. "He's de-charging. His electrical force is draining away and his life is going with it." She smoothed the ragged hair back from his sweat-glazed forehead. "We need to hook him up to a battery."
Querl sat in his chair, glaring across the expanse of his room at the Other Him that lay stubbornly on the table, code pouring into its head.
Seven hours, Querl thought, third attempt. How many more? How long before someone comes looking for me? How long before we reach Takron-Galtos? How long before they figure out the lies?
And then, What if I can't make it work?
A chime, a dialogue box. Querl was on his feet in an instant, rushing to Brainiac 5's side.
The Other Him lay still, his eyes open and unseeing, his mouth slightly open. Querl waited, but there was no change. He snapped his fingers before Brainiac 5's face; he didn't even blink. Querl struck his face, hard. The head twisted to the side and remained there, still staring. A thin line of milky hydraulic fluid crept from the side of Brainiac 5's mouth and dripped onto the table.
Slowly, his limbs leaden, Querl walked to the main bank and pressed the kill switch. He leaned against the instrument panel for a moment as the light faded from the eyes of the Other Him. Eventually, Querl moved again, like a wind-up toy.
"Attempt Three: failure. Running of program resulted in non-responsive vegetative state." He sighed. "So much for 'third time's the charm.'"
"A defibrillator is not a battery." Cosmic Boy objected, bringing the machine to Saturn Girl's side.
"Not yet." Saturn Girl answered, then turned. "Bouncing Boy, do you think you can modify it to supply a small amount of current for an extended period of time?"
Bouncing Boy recoiled. "What, now? Maybe, if you gave me three weeks, two physics textbooks, and the manual, maybe." Seeing the angry glares, he held up his hands helplessly. "I'm sorry! I can't do it."
"We're going to lose him." Saturn Girl admonished.
"It's okay, BB." Cam piped. "Nobody expects you to be Querl."
Bouncing Boy's face set into a stiff expression of determination. "Give me ten minutes." he said, and swiped the defibrillator from Cosmic Boy before stalking out of the room.
Another hour of work, another hour of waiting, another upload complete.
"Attempt four: failure. Subject unable to produce or comprehend language of any kind. Communication only possible via gestures and images."
He wiped the mind of the Other Him, worked on the code for forty minutes, re-uploaded, waited the long hour.
"Attempt five: failure. No control over body. Could only think and speak."
Wipe, work, upload, wait.
Wait, wait, wait.
"Attempt six: failure. Program resulted in infinite logic loop and would not run."
Wipe, work, upload, wait.
"Attempt seven: failure. Vegetative state again."
How many hours? How many days?
"Attempt eight: failure."
The outside world faded to a quiet crackle of white noise. He was vaguely aware of people moving outside, voices in the hall coming and going.
"Attempt nine: failure."
His eyes burned, his fingers ached. Nothing had ever existed save this room, this bank of computers, this table, this Other Him. He could no longer recall the sound of any voice but his own.
"Attempt ten: failure."
Wipe, work, upload, wait. Brainiac 5 espied Querl and fixed his laser-cannon upon his progenitor faster than a human eye could blink. The kill switch was cold beneath Querl's hand as he watched the laser pulse fade from the cannon just in time. Trembling. Sinking to the floor. Head spinning, hands cold, eyes imprinted with the greenish afterimage of bright death as it had stared him in the face.
Voice shaking. "Attempt eleven: failure."
Breathe, focus, stand. Wipe, work, three hours this time. The Coluan symbols like gibberish before his blurring eyes. Ears ringing with the silence.
Upload. Wait. Holding his breath would have meant more if he'd needed to breathe.
"Attempt twelve: failure."
"Attempt thirteen: failure."
"Failure. Failure. Failure. Failure."
Slamming his head against the wall. The pain was meaningless.
How many days? How long before they come looking for me?
"Attempt twenty: failure."
The temptation to break the Other Him, to bash its brains out as it lay defenseless upon the table.
"A meaningless effort. It is already dead."
"No one asked you."
"This entire enterprise is foolish. Surely you must know by now that you cannot hope to remove me."
"No one asked you. I'm working. Leave me alone."
"Your expenditures are futile. Why not give in to the inevitable?"
"Attempt twenty-six: failure. Subject believed it was a human abducted by aliens and forced into a robotic body."
More hours, more code. No time to sleep. No room to think of anything else.
"Attempt thirty-three: failure."
Someone knocked, or perhaps it was only the sound of his brain rattling inside his head. He answered the door. A muffled conversation, as though through water, as though dreaming. This must be what it's like to dream, he thought. The interloper went away. The door closed.
Upload, wait. Ignore the buzzing voice. No room to think of anything else. Keep telling yourself that.
He was slumped in his chair, exhausted, not even watching as the Other Him awoke for the thirty-seventh time.
"Oh." Brainiac 5 said. Querl looked up tiredly.
"How many tries?" Brainiac 5 asked.
"Thirty-seven." Querl replied.
"How many days?"
"Lost count."
"Ridiculous. What do I have an internal clock for, if not to count the days?"
Sighing, he answered, "Seventy-seven hours."
The other scoffed. "You're getting slow. But I suppose it's worth it for the sake of being almost human." His eyes were bright, curious. "What's it like?"
Querl sat up a little straighter. "Do you know what's going on?" he asked carefully.
Brainiac 5 thought about it. "There's something wrong with your programming. You've been editing it and trying it out on me. I would assume, based on past events, that you've been trying to remove our ancestor's influence."
The android nodded. "Has it worked?"
Brainiac 5 smiled at him. "Indubitably."
Querl felt no elation, no triumph. Attempt twenty-six had almost convinced him it was well, before it began to speak of bringing order to the flawed human universe.
"Tell me something only I would know." he demanded.
Brainiac 5 thought for a long moment, then turned his pink-eyed gaze back to Querl. "You always wished he would be more than your friend." he murmured. "But you were too afraid of losing him to say so, knowing he could never accept it. Knowing he would have to go."
Querl waited. Brainiac 5 sighed.
"Green rocks killed the last son." he said, so softly Querl could scarcely hear him.
The almost-human android flipped open the panel in his arm. "Attempt thirty-seven," he said, "success," and fell back into his chair, fast asleep.
Bouncing Boy hurried into the infirmary, the defibrillator by his side, its electronic guts dangling from its casing.
"It should work." he said breathlessly, taking up a seat by Lightning Lad's side. Saturn Girl still sat with him, her hand on his forehead.
"Hang on, Garth," she murmured. "Just hang on."
In the ten minutes Bouncing Boy had been gone, Lightning Lad's condition had deteriorated rapidly. His heartbeat was weak and irregular, his skin was clammy and pale, his breathing ragged. Bouncing Boy flung the blankets from the redhead's body and plastered the defibrillator's electrodes to his chest.
"Okay, you heap of junk, don't let me down now." Bouncing Boy muttered, flipping the 'on' switch.
Nothing. Not a murmur, not a hum. The defibrillator showed no sign of life. Lightning Lad's heart skipped a beat.
"I don't get it." Bouncing Boy said, his voice hollow. "It should have worked." He kicked the machine. "Come on, you piece of crap!"
Still, the machine remained inert. Lightning Lad's heartbeats grew weaker, slower. The numbers on the screen began to decrease slowly.
"Garth, no." Saturn Girl pleaded. "Come on, Garth, don't do this to me. Pull through. You have to pull through!" She tore the oxygen mask away and held his face in both hands. "Garth! Damn you, Garth, you can't!"
Bouncing Boy was feverishly checking the wiring inside the defibrillator, muttering, "It should have worked. He said it would work. Here, and here . . . it's all the way he said!"
Quietly, Lightning Lad sighed. The beeping turned to a constant whine. Saturn Girl cried out and desperately pressed her lips to Lightning Lad's. Tears ran down her face. She broke away and laid her head on his unmoving chest, sobbing.
"It . . . didn't work." Bouncing Boy said numbly.
Heads bowed, the others wrapped themselves in grief, cut through by the beep and hum of the machines and the quiet sound of crying. Above it all, there was that terrible single note, wailing into the forlorn darkness of space.
No one knew who started singing, but soon the tune bubbled from every tongue in tremulous tones, the last farewell and the final comfort, not good enough but the best that they could do.
"The monkey rode on the rocket ship, rocket ship, rocket ship. The monkey rode on the rocket ship, and bumped his head on the moon. . . ."
Brainiac 5 shook him awake. For a moment, Querl experienced the tilting sensation of being separated from his own body before he recalled the events of the past four days.
"Someone's knocking." Brainiac 5 told him. "You should answer it."
"How long have I been asleep?" Querl asked, levering himself from his chair. His back ached and his head was splitting.
"What do you have an internal clock for?" Brainiac 5 snapped. "About eight hours."
"Not long enough," Querl griped. "Get out of sight." He opened the door. "Superman?" he said. Something was wrong; he could feel it in the pit of dread that gathered in his stomach.
The Man of Steel raised bloodshot blue eyes to look Querl in the face.
"Lightning Lad died this morning." he said, his voice raw.
Querl stood very still for a moment. He stared at Superman. I'm dreaming, he thought. This is a nightmare.
"How?" he croaked.
"His electrical energy . . . bled out. He just . . . stopped. Wound down and stopped. We tried to save him―Bouncing Boy tried to modify the defibrillator to act like a battery―but. . . ."
Querl's knees gave out. He barely felt Superman catch him. Who had come to talk to him before? What had they asked? What had he answered? He couldn't remember, couldn't think through the fog. All he recalled was wanting to get rid of them as quickly as possible, to get back to his work, to the Other Him.
Suddenly Querl hated himself. He filled up with hatred and it spilled over, flooding out until he hated everything. Superman, and Bouncing Boy, and Lightning Lad. The Legion. Brainiac 5.
Especially Brainiac 5.
He heard himself scream, and then there was only darkness.
