Chapter Ten: Up in the Attic, Down in the Cellar
"March," one of the guards behind Clark ordered, jabbing him in the small of the back with one of the non-electric batons. The metahuman boy glanced around. His friends were in position, or at least they were as close to 'in position' as they were able to get without alerting the scientists and guards to what they were planning.
Bruce made direct eye contact with him and just barely inclined his head into a nod.
That was all the signal that Clark needed.
Lunging forward before the guards could react, Clark grabbed one of them and then threw him, taking down the woman behind him as well. As he did so, he reached his hand up to his neck, where the inhibitor collar was clipped around it. Holding up the card in his pocket, he briefly closed his eyes, despite knowing how much of a risk it was when he still hadn't taken out all of the guards. This was the moment of truth. They had never tested the keys out before out of fear of them being discovered.
Beep.
When Clark's eyes opened again, they were glowing bright red. He ripped off the collar in one fluid motion and then rose up into the air, twin red lasers firing from his eyes. The guards screamed and scattered, some of the scientists and higher up guards (who wore brown uniforms instead of grey ones) pressed buttons as they radioed for backup.
Dr. Sivana's eyes widened, and he grabbed his experiment-Strange had given the metahuman back to him after he ran several successful experiments. He held it up by the back of its neck. "Stop struggling, freak!"
#1333 glared at him with icy blue eyes that held more determination in that moment than they ever had in a lifetime, and that was when Dr. Thaddeus Bodog Sivana realized that he had just made a very big mistake. "Shazam!"
Shayera let out a loud whoop of euphoria as she swooped down on a pair of scientists, who screamed and covered away. She smirked in satisfaction and kicked a guard in the chest, sending them backwards into a part of the obstacle course. There was a flash of green light behind her and she spun in the air, wings opening defensively only to stop and stare at the bound forms of a huge guard that looked almost like he could have bent steel beams with his bare hands.
John smirked at her. "Remember to watch your back."
Shayera lunged at him, grabbing the scientist that stood behind him and was about to hit him with an electric baton. She grinned back at her friend. "I could say the same to you."
Back to back, they plunged back into the growing fray.
More and more guards began to fill the room, lashing out at any metahuman that they could reach. One in particular tried to grab a girl with pale green skin and darker pine hair. He hooked his hands around her shoulders and dug his fingers roughly into her skin. "You're coming with me, meta bitch."
She glared up at him, eyes glowing brightly with power. Her body suddenly lit with green flames, and he screamed as his hands were severely burnt.
"Don't count on it," Beatriz growled, spinning around and launching an emerald fireball out of her palm. Beside her, a girl with white hair and eyes like chips of blue ice smiled as spikes of frozen water started to grow on her fingers.
"Ready?" Tora asked her friend.
"Ready," Beatriz agreed, launching a second fireball.
Renee launched a kick at the head of a woman before she could aim a gun at her chest, the remains of her now much-too-small combat boot making solid contact with the side of the lady's skull. There was a small impressed whistle from behind her. "Nice hit."
"Thanks," Renee said in reply, spinning around and punching another guard in the chest. "I'm Renee."
"Kate. Look out!" Someone jumped over her head and punched a guy in the face before whipping around and roundhouse-kicking somebody else in the ribs before they could land a hit on her. Kate smiled at Renee, and-oh, no. Oh no. This was bad.
She was really cute.
Bruce and Diana fought back-to-back, a little over three whole years of living with only each other as company telling the two dangerous metahumans exactly how to best deliver the most crippling blows in the worst/best places while still having each other's backs. They didn't even need to speak anymore, communicating entirely in nods and near-imperceptible muscle movements. Diana momentarily broke their impromptu formation to scoop up a small child, which she then slung onto her back before blocking a bullet with one of her wrists. Bruce grabbed the kid, who was a blond-haired girl with bright blue eyes, and pushed her towards the door. One of the metahumans that was streaming out of the room and out into the hall scooped her up, nodding to the pair before running out towards freedom.
A thin scream rose up from where a guard held a tiny girl in his grasp. She was twisting and struggling, eyes wide with fear. At once, Diana and Bruce lunged.
They reached the man and the girl at the same moment, although Diana landed the first blow while Bruce tugged the small child away. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his chest. He sprang away from another guard who was trying to grab her again and ran towards the hall. He would have liked to stay behind and help his friends keep fighting, but… This kid, whoever she was, needed to stay alive. She had survived this long in the Meta-Max, and he wasn't going to let that end now.
"What's your name?" Bruce asked her gently as he dove out of the way of a crackling baton. The outside hall was still practically a war zone, with escaping metahumans clashing with the sea of guards that were answering the distress call from the training room. A young woman with black hair and sparks drifting out of her hands was defending an injured boy with what looked like blue and black armor that slowly receded back into his skin. Two people clapped their hands together and then attacked a trio of guards, one of them elongating into a python and the other melting into something akin to a tidal wave. A girl with green skin, the same one that had been electrocuted on the order of the scientists the second time that they were in the training room stomped her foot, causing vines to swarm up the wall and hook around several guards, allowing a young metahuman boy with gills to sprint for the other end of the hallway.
"Mai Miyazaki," she whispered, looking around fearfully.
"I'm Bruce," the older metahuman replied, looking around for someone who could keep her safe. "What are your powers?"
"Water stuff."
"Water stuff, huh?" He spotted a girl launching spikes of ice at her opponent. "You see that girl over there? Go over to her and do your water stuff, okay?"
Mai nodded and hopped out of his arms, body suddenly turning into liquid. She slipped across the floor, in between legs and through tangled limbs before she reached her destination. The older girl blinked at her in surprise before a grin flitted across her face, and the two froze a guard's feet to the floor together.
Bruce turned around and scanned the crowd for Diana or any of his other friends. A blur of motion appeared beside him, and Wally beamed at the older boy.
"Come on, this is fun!" The speedster cried, practically humming with excitement as his face involuntarily began to vibrate.
Bruce nodded to him before lashing out at the guard who was creeping up behind his redheaded friend. Wally flinched back, green eyes jerking closed. When no blow fell, his shoulders relaxed before immediately tensing again as he went after a woman that was trying to electrocute a cowering boy. Bruce watched him for a moment longer, or at least as long as he dared without being hit.
As soon as J'onn's collar was unlocked, he rose up into the air and closed his eyes. Letting the familiar cold trickle of intangibility wash over his entire body before the soft comfort of invisibility enveloped him. Closing his glowing red eyes, the green teenage boy reached out with his mind. Sending out tendrils of thought, he let his brain touch the minds of those around him. Friend and foe alike were touched, although only brain's the scientists and the guards were lingered on.
He could feel his friend's emotions.
Diana's savage pleasure as she punished those who had hurt her friends and family. Shayera's sharp euphoria while she dealt vengeance that had been a long time in coming. John's muted delight coupled with amusement at Shayera's antics. Wally's too-fast thoughts flying at top speed, even faster than he could move, darting around as he left a trail of unconscious enemies in his wake. Clark's guilty glee as his fists flew, landing devastating blows every time. Bruce's constantly shielded emotions finally breaking free from their mental protection, sending out quick bursts of joy. And then there were the thoughts and emotions of the other experiments-happiness, fear, anger, delight, excitement, sadness, grief, and horror all swirling together into one awful soup of mental power.
It was almost overwhelming to feel, but he pushed past it. There were more pressing matters to attend to than the thoughts of children and young adult who were facing freedom for the first time in what felt like forever.
When J'onn blinked his eyes back open, his eyes glowing even brighter than before. He raised one of his long-fingered green hands into the air and clenched it into a fist.
The room was immediately filled with screaming, then crushing silence.
J'onn opened his eyes to be faced with stunned looks and wide eyes. Every single guard and scientist was unconscious on the floor, leaving only the metahumans conscious. Well, only the metahumans that had been conscious when he started his mental assault-there were several knocked out metas on the floor that were already being woken up by their friends and cellmates.
Wally stuck his head into the room. "What happened-J'onn, did you do this?"
His voice was laced with disbelief, and J'onn couldn't help the small bubble of pride that began to expand inside of his chest. "Yes, yes I did."
"Nice job, man!" Wally said, beaming. "Now c'mon, Bruce is probably already gone by now."
As J'onn alighted on the floor in front of the speedster, he was joined by the rest of his cellmates (except for Bruce, whom he could sense at the edge of his mind running down through the hallways and corridors at the head of a pack of metahumans). "Where is he going?"
Wally shrugged. "He said something about finding the door and making sure that nobody got left behind. Now let's go, there are a bunch of metahumans in the cells! I wonder if these guards have keys in their pockets… Wanna find out?"
Clark flew low to the ground, plucking metahumans out of harm's way while delivering blows that could have been deadly if he had really put all of his force behind them to any guards, scientists, or 'doctors' that stood in his way. Despite the fact that the job that he was doing was incredibly crucial to their mission (he was one of the most instrumental people, in fact) to break every prisoner out of the Meta-Maxes, his mind wasn't really on the task at hand.
Instead, he was thinking about Lex Luthor-and what he would do once they escaped.
So what if the dangerous man didn't have his six close friends as bargaining chips anymore? There was still his parents, his loose acquaintances, hell, anybody that lived in Smallville. He may not have really cared about any of them outside of his parents, but they were only human, and they deserved to live despite their many flaws. The things that they had threatened him and his family with were nothing compared to what Luthor would do to them once he got his hands on them. He'd make paltry threats and broken windows look like child's play as he crushed them beneath one of his black dress shoes.
Which meant that he needed to make Luthor think that he didn't care anymore, somehow. But he had no idea how he was going to do that.
First things first-he needed to find an exit to shoo people out of.
"Clark!" A familiar voice called across the chaos, somehow cutting right through it like a hot knife through butter. "There's an emergency exit that way, and another one to your right. Take as much as your group as you can down that hallway and open the door. Leave someone to guard it before coming back for more."
The metahuman boy nodded to Bruce, and his friend nodded back before splitting a large chunk of people away from the others and then herding them down one of the hallways where there was supposedly an emergency exit. Clark swivelled in the air and gestured down the corridor to his right where Bruce had said that the other exit was. Several metahumans of varying ages had heard his instructions and were already racing down it, pulling smaller or older cellmates and friends along with them. "Go that way!" He called. "There's an exit down there!"
A boy vanished from by the mouth of the corridor and reappeared in a shimmer of yellow light much farther down, repeating the process until he came to a corner that was marked with an exit sign. There was a flash of dark green and a emerald young lion bounded past him before shapeshifting into a falcon and swooping for the escape route. Someone pushed past Clark as they flew after the green bird.
Clark landed on the ground and pushed several young boys towards his emergency exit as Bruce reappeared and pulled a woman in the direction of his. Flashes of motion went back and forth from the intersection in between them and the main training room, as well as the ones near it that they didn't go to nearly as often. It also dropped of previously-celled metahumans that had since been liberated through a combination of telekinesis (J'onn) and hitting the doors from the outside until they gave in and fell open (Shayera). John provided bracing support when he could while shielding his two friends and any of the newly freed metahumans from the occasional stray bullet and electric prod. But his efforts weren't his best, seeing as how he spent quite a bit of his time looking for Carol and Hal, neither of whom had been in the training room when they started the riot.
Before Clark knew it, he was alone in the hallway. Bruce ran past him towards where the cells were, as well as where Diana, J'onn, Shayera, John, and Wally were freeing the people who were still trapped inside of them.
That was when Clark heard the clapping.
It wouldn't have registered to anybody who couldn't hear as well as he could, but it was still there. Soft, slow, and almost… Condescending.
Clark's heartbeat sped up. No.
He couldn't be here. Luthor never stayed in one place for longer than he had too, and especially wouldn't do so now because of Clark. Unless… Had he wanted them to find the keys? Wanted them to escape, to free the other metahumans who were trapped along with them?
But if he had, then why? Why go to all of the trouble of allowing them to escape? Was it just to torment them even more, dangling the tantalizing thought of freedom just barely within reach before snatching it away at the last possible second? Did he want to break their spirits even more? And what about the ones that had already made it out alive? Where there gunmen in the shadows, more guards waiting in a ring outside of the facility, ready to stop them the minute that they stepped out of the doors?
That was when pain began to race through his body, making his limbs seize and his chest clench.
Clark had felt pain before, both emotional and physical. He'd given himself up to the Hunters, and despite what most people thought about his nigh-impenetrable skin, it did still hurt to be stabbed, whipped, and beaten, even if the marks didn't actually show up on his body. But that was nothing compared to this. He had never felt pain this intense before. He didn't know where it was coming from or what was causing it, all that Clark knew was that he had to get away.
So why wasn't his body listening to him?
"Well done, Mr. Kent," Lex Luthor said from somewhere nearby, but he was in too much pain to lift his head up and look around. "I must say, I'm surprised that you were brave enough to try to escape. Unfortunate that you and your friends won't make it to safety, even if you did release some of my prized specimens."
"They're not specimens," Clark managed to choke out through the agonizing pain. "They're people. Human beings, like you. Only… Better."
"I don't pretend to be an angel," Luthor said, unconcerned with the metahuman teenager's convulsions. "But do you really think that every metahuman that you've just released will be content to stick back to the shadows? They won't want to stay back and let the normal humans walk all over them. They will try to rise up and take over the world, you know. And we will crush them."
Bruce and Diana may have heard the screaming first, but J'onn was the one who sensed Clark's pain.
The green boy gasped and faltered in his flight, barely managing to stay aloft as he clutched at his head and squeezed his crimson eyes tightly shut. J'onn could feel that there was something wrong with his friend, something beyond what a simple injury would cause. His friend was in agony, and there was nothing that he could do to stop it.
Bright green translucent light cupped him, holding him upright. John frowned at him. "Are you okay?"
As one, Diana and Bruce stopped in their tracks (or in the air, in Diana's case) and looked at each other.
"Something's wrong," Diana began spinning around in the air and pulling back to take off back down the way that they had come.
"…With Clark," Bruce finished for her, racing off after his friend.
Wally looked at the remaining three metahumans and shrugged his shoulders. "So, are we going to follow them or not?"
"Of course," Shayera replied with a smirk, wings shivering with anticipation. She flew back down the hall, wingtips accidentally clipping John in her hurry down the narrow corridor. "Race you there!"
"That's a race you're going to lose!" Wally shouted after her, zooming after Shayera in a blur of red hair and freckles.
John carefully set J'onn back down on the ground. "Do you need me to help you? I can make another light construct if you need help flying."
J'onn shook his head. "No, thank you. I will be fine flying on my own. Although I do thank you for your help."
John wasn't entirely convinced that the smaller metahuman teen wouldn't fall on his face when he tried to fly again, but humored his friend's request. J'onn was more durable and powerful than most people gave him credit for anyways, especially now that that awful inhibitor collar had been removed from around his neck.
As he rose up into the air beside John, J'onn's body rippled and stretched. His body elongated and his eyes narrowed, and the light manipulator watched with fascination as his teeth lengthened into sharp white fangs that gleamed under the reddish artificial emergency lighting of the facility. Before John knew it, his friend was a huge snake-like beast that was floating a few feet off of the ground, dull dark green scales sleek and smooth as his tail slowly swung from side to side like he was swimming in the air as he floated forward. J'onn's neck turned and his red eyes met John's odd green ones, making the hairs on the back of the metahuman's neck stand up on end even as he assured himself that his friend would never hurt him no matter how intimidating he may have looked.
"Coming?" A voice that sounded like a more eerie and echoey version of J'onn's suddenly spoke inside of John's head, and the boy jumped (well, sort of jumped. He was still floating in the air after all).
"Yeah." Then John frowned. "Wait, I mean…" He closed his eyes and tentatively thought, "Yeah?"
"Good." The two took off again, following their friends.
Wally almost tripped over Clark.
The redheaded young teen was sent sprawling onto the ground before picking himself back up and turning around to help the older boy up to his feet. Then he froze, brain registering the group of people that were behind him.
Making a small squawking sound that wouldn't have been out of place coming from a startled cat, the speedster scuttled backwards before accidentally running backwards into the wall behind him. His bright green eyes widened as his freckled face paled. He had never seen Luthor in person before, but before his capture he had seen their captor many times at important speaking events on TV. The channel was almost always changed to a news station or some sport or other (although Wally had never really minded the latter), and it wasn't like he was going to risk changing it. So he was incredibly familiar with what Luthor looked like.
But the man was so much more terrifying in person, although a part of that might have been contributed by the small squad of armed guards that stood in a protective ring around him or the intimidating woman standing at his shoulder holding a gun at his head. Just because he could usually dodge bullets didn't mean that guns weren't freaking terrifying, especially when they were pointed in his direction.
Glancing down at his friend, who was still on the floor and glaring weakly up at their shared enemy with hate-filled blue eyes, the young metahuman made a snap decision.
Wally launched himself at Luthor.
The world 'slowed down,' the same way that it always did when he used his powers. Everything moved in slow motion, making it easy for Wally to see all of the different things that were happening around him. For example, the fact that the guards weren't moving nearly fast enough to stop him. Or the way that the woman didn't look nearly as worried as she should have. Or that it was the glowing green thing that Luthor held in his fist that was the cause of Clark's pain.
So that was what he went after first, ducking the woman's gun (and knocking it out of her hand as an afterthought) and snatching it away before darting back to Clark's side. Wally studied the green glowing whatever-it-was. It seemed almost like a rock inside of a capsule, like a bright green glowstick. Weird. But how was he supposed to get rid of it…?
Beside him, there was a small whoosh of wings, and Wally turned to Shayera (as well as Diana and Bruce) with relief. "Thisisthethingthat'shurtingClarkandIcan'tfigureouthowtomakeitstop!"
Shayera blinked, while Diana and Bruce nodded in unision. "Got it," Diana said. "Give it to me."
The younger teen eagerly handed it over to his friend, watching Clark with worry. "Are you gonna throw it in an incinerator or something-" His voice died as she crushed it in between her hands, leaving only a paste-like material that was almost like liquid dust. "Or you could just crush it. Whatever works best, I guess."
Shayera and Bruce, meanwhile, had started to circle Luthor and his guards, looking for an opening to attack but not wanting to get shot by said guards, or by whoever that lady was. (Bruce had seen her on TV before, little snippets in store windows while on the run from Hunters or mercenaries. She was Luthor's bodyguard, although he didn't actually know what her name was.)
Luthor looked unconcerned, although he was watching Clark to make sure that the boy was well and truly unconscious, which he was. He looked at the two-now four, since Wally and Diana had joined in-teenagers in front and to the sides of him and sighed. They were such good assets. But Clark Kent had been a good asset too, as well as one that he had assumed that he could control. And these ones were much more wild than he had ever been. Which meant that there was only one, albeit unfortunate, solution.
He looked at his guards, as well as at Mercy. "Kill them all."
Wally raced forwards, grabbing Shayera and yanking her backwards while dragging her back down the hallway. He blinked harshly a few times, trying to push the realization that neither of them would survive being riddled with bullets by Luthor's men and woman. That was when a voice hissed through his mind, slithering through his thoughts like a venomous serpent. "No!"
The boy immediately skidded to a halt, letting go of Shayera and letting her catch her bearings. The two of them looked back down the hallway, terrified of what they knew that they would inevitably see-only for their mouths to drop open in shocked amazement.
All of the bullets were hovering in midair, just outside of a green force bubble that they both recognized as having been made by John. Which meant that the reason that the other reason that the bullets weren't currently ripping holes in their friends was… The giant fucking snake that was floating just behind John. Was that J'onn?
Both of the two metahumans were confused. "So," Shayera said awkwardly, breaking the tense silence. All eyes turned to her. "Back to fighting, then?"
And the whole world erupted into gunfire.
Wally was vaguely aware that while John was protecting them with his shield, J'onn was the real reason that they weren't all full of bulletholes. The telepath seemed to be wreaking havoc on the minds of the guards-but not, however, Luthor himself, or his bodyguard woman, whatever her name was.
(The reason for that, although Wally didn't know it, was the mental shields that Lex Luthor had carefully constructed and cultivated inside of his head. Not even the strongest telepath in the world would be able to get through them.)
But for all of their efforts, he knew that there was one thing that could define the outcome of the entire battle. And from the looks of it, Bruce, Diana, and J'onn had all already realized what it was. Which meant that hopefully they would have his back while he tried to fix the problem, because he doubted that John would be able to expand the shield in time, before their enemies realized what a powerful trump card they had in their hands.
Because Clark was still on the outside of the shield.
Even though Wally knew that his friend had bulletproof skin, he didn't have any idea if Luthor had any more of that freaky green glowy-rock that had been the very thing to knock him into unconsciousness in the first place. And that bodyguard could take him prisoner, since it seemed like J'onn's powers weren't affecting her in any way no matter how hard he tried.
"Drop the shield," Bruce muttered to John.
John gaped at him before wincing as another round of bullets struck his shield. Didn't these guys need to reload like normal people? "You want to get shot full of holes?"
"Just do it!" Bruce growled, getting into a ready position as Diana did the same beside him, wrists raised and ready to block attacks.
The green glowing bubble suddenly shrank until it was covering only Shayera and John himself. Wally immediately ran forwards, body-slammed all of the remaining guards as well as that bodyguard lady into a wall as hard as he could before dragging Clark's body back to the safety of John's expanding shield.
The six conscious metahumans stood shoulder-to-shoulder and glared at Luthor as one, ready to attack and take down the person who had captured them, tormented them, made them grow up far too fast, and hunted them down mercilessly with mercenaries and Hunters. Nobody was going to force them to undergo hell against their will ever again.
Luthor smirked and raised his hands in the universal symbol of surrender. "Alright, alright. I know when I've been beaten. Nicely done, by the way."
Satisfied that his friends would take care of Luthor, Wally turned around and looked down at Clark, who was starting to stir and wake up. His blue eyes cracked open and he groaned loudly, squinting against the emergency lighting. Wincing as he lifted his hand up to his temple, Clark moaned in pain. "Ow, I think that this is what a hangover feels like…"
Cracking a wide smile, Wally took a few steps backwards, unwittingly taking a few steps closer to Lex Luthor. "Rise and shine, sleeping beauty," he said softly. "Good to see you're up again. How do you feel? We got that freaky glowstick rock thing away from Luthor, and then Diana crushed it, which was pretty cool."
Pushing his upper waist up on his hands, Clark grimaced. "I've been better," he muttered, swallowing down bile. "Ow, everything hurts." Then he looked over Wally's shoulder, widening eyes suddenly starting to glow bright red. "Look out!"
Jerking slightly in surprise, Wally's green eyes narrowed before suddenly widening. His hands jerked up involuntarily as he took a sharp and shaky breath.
Luthor slid the long, thin knife out of Wally's back. "Unfortunately, it's not quite good enough."