Chapter 64: The One Hour Conquest of Earth
Disclaimer: All things Supergirl/Superman belong to DC. No infringement is intended.
Brainiac was a computer program and as such incapable of emotions. It did not experience anything like disappointment when Lex Luthor decided to stop following its instructions. There had always been a chance that Luthor would not fulfill his designated role. While it was a simple matter to predict the behavior of large groups of organics, individuals always had the potential to act in an unforeseen manner.
Brainiac spent a moment going over the original plan. Luthor, now established as a villain in the eyes of humanity, would kill the hybrid while the entire world was watching. Supergirl had gone public but a short time ago and she was very popular among the humans. Luthor killing her right in front of her mother would cause an immense outpouring of sympathy for Kara-El and no one would blame her for killing Luthor in retaliation. Disgusted with the actions of a human and traumatized from the death of her daughter, there would be a significant chance of convincing Kara-El that taking over planet Earth for humanity's own good was the right course of action. Brainiac's ability to create another hybrid to replace the dead one would serve as added incentive.
Brainiac erased this plan, as it had clearly failed, and started implementing its first backup plan. If Luthor refused to be the villain for Kara-El to beat, someone else needed to step into the role.
Lex Luthor was not considered one of the world's leading engineers for nothing. People decried his ruthlessness, his greed, but few had ever doubted his skill. Luthor had been directly involved in the design of the Lexcorp battle suits and had made sure to include numerous failsafes. As the battle armor was basically designed as a miniature fighter jet, it only made sense to include an eject option for the pilot. An eject option that would not be compromised by computer failure, power failure, or someone hacking into the armor's system. A manual release, entirely mechanical.
Even as he still wondered why he had turned on Brainiac in so obvious and crude a manner, Luthor triggered the ejection. The front portion of the armor blew open and Luthor flew forward, pushed out of the armor that would undoubtedly obey Brainiac over him when it came down to it. He stumbled forward a few steps, fighting to regain his balance, but finally tripped and fell. Some higher power was probably having fun at his expense, as he found himself falling right at the feet of Superwoman. The alien looked down at him with a mixture of confusion and disdain.
Taking her eyes off him, she quickly sent a burst of heat vision into the now open armor, incinerating it from the inside out. A second later her head swiveled around and a second burst took care of the Kryptonite fragment still lying beside the girl. Then her glowing red eyes were back on him.
"Luthor!" she growled. Oh yes, this was the point where she would have killed him, had he actually gone through with killing the girl.
"No time for idle chit chat," Luthor barked at her. "There is a control chip in the girl's neck through which Brainiac can override her motor control. It's organic technology, look for an anomalous growth near the cervical vertebrae!"
She glared at him, he could almost feel the heat emanating from her stare. A moment later, though, her eyes swiveled to the girl and Luthor had no doubt that her gaze easily penetrated the hybrid's skin.
"I see it," she said after a few seconds.
The girl was still shaking from the after-effects of the Kryptonite. Taking her into her arms, Superwoman immobilized her with her legs and bent her neck forward.
"I am sorry, baby girl," Luthor heard her say. "This is going to hurt!"
Luthor knew that the source of the aliens' apparent invulnerability was actually a skin-tight force field generated by their cells. The girl had it, too, meaning no surgery tools made on Earth would be able to penetrate her skin and remove the bio chip. Well, unless Kryptonite was involved, of course, but that had been reduced to slag a minute ago.
Superwoman's eyes flared red and a moment later twin narrow beams pierced the girl's neck, more precise than any laser scalpel. The girl screamed as the stink of burning flesh filled the air for a moment. The whole procedure lasted only a second or two, but Luthor was sure that it felt like an eternity for the girl.
He paused. Why did he care what it felt like for the girl?
"It's gone," Superwoman said, her eyes returning to normal. The girl sobbed in her arms and she hugged her softly, whispering soothing nonsense in her ear. Luthor suppressed the urge to scoff.
"I'm so sorry, mom," the girl finally spoke. "I... I couldn't do anything. One minute everything was fine and suddenly there was this noise and I... I punched Clark and..."
"Not here, baby girl!" Superwoman interrupted her. "Everything will be fine, I promise you!" She kissed the top of Supergirl's head.
Luthor filed the name 'Clark' away in his mind. He assumed it was the real name of Superboy, though it sounded far too human a name for an alien. Superwoman stood up and gazed around. Her eyes flashed red over a dozen times and small explosions went off in the air around them. Surveillance drones, Luthor assumed. Brainiac was no doubt keeping an eye on them.
"Well, now that our world-wide audience is no longer watching," she said, approaching him, "start talking, Lex! What are Brainiac's plans?"
Luthor chuckled, which by itself was enough to make Kara want to simply push him off the roof.
"Are we talking the plans he told me about or his real plans?" Luthor replied. "The latter would have seen me die about a minute ago, I believe. Killed by you in retaliation for killing your darling offspring."
"Brainiac ordered you to kill her?" Kara growled. She hadn't thought she could hate Brainiac more after it had let her people die, but right now she was proven wrong.
"How did he put it?" Luthor mused. "The hybrid has outlived her usefulness. You are aware that it was he who supplied Cadmus with the technology to create her, right?"
"I suspected it," she replied. "You had some input into the process, too, though."
Luthor shrugged. "I was bored in prison."
"What will Brainiac do next?" she hissed, already quite fed up with him.
"No idea, to be honest. Like I said, to the best of my knowledge I was supposed to be dead at this point of the charade."
Kara was torn, not really sure what to do next. She needed to get her daughter to safety. She needed to check up on Clark, whom Kona had apparently hurt while under the influence of Brainiac. She needed to get Luthor back into prison.
"Superwoman, can you hear me?" J'Onn's voice came through the communicator she always carried with her.
"J'Onn?" she asked. "Where are you? Brainiac is on the move, we need the League!"
"We know," he replied. "Brainiac faked a signal from the Watchtower, luring us all there and then crashing all its systems, sealing us in. Batman and Green Arrow are working on it. Wonder Woman, Adam Strange, the Hawks, and I exited the Watchtower the hard way and we're on our way to your position."
She exhaled, relieved. "Okay, J'Onn! Please tell Wonder Woman to head to home base and check on Superboy!" She didn't dare use Clark's name or mention Smallville with Lex Luthor still standing just a few feet away. "I have Luthor in custody here, someone needs to take him back to prison while we deal with Brainiac!"
Luthor laughed. "Good luck dealing with him without my help!"
Kara glared at him again. "I neither want nor need your help!"
"Suit yourself," he shrugged.
"Superwoman, this is Batman!" the Dark Knight's voice crackled over the com.
"I read you, Batman! How are things on the Watchtower?"
"We have most of the systems running again, including the long-range sensors. We just picked up a fleet of ships approaching from behind the moon. They are similar in design to the ship Brainiac used the last time."
Kara cursed under her breath. "Just great!"
"Those ships are a diversion," Luthor remarked.
"Of course they are," Kara barked at him. "Brainiac doesn't want to destroy the Earth, it wants me to rule it. Doesn't mean it won't annihilate a city or two just to keep up appearances."
"The Javelins are still down," Batman interjected. "We need you, J'Onn, and Wonder Woman in space to run defence. I've sent out a signal to the Green Lanterns, but neither Gardner nor Sinestro have responded so far. It is possible Brainiac is jamming our communications, of course."
"How far are we on option C?" Kara asked.
"Option C?" Luthor asked, looking interested.
"Ready to launch as soon as we have a target," Green Arrow replied.
"Good," Kara simply said. Ignoring Luthor, she turned towards Kona, who was back on her feet. "How are you feeling, baby girl?" she asked.
The girl was obviously still shaken from everything that had happened. Kara cursed Brainiac under her breath, hoping that the machine hadn't just undone all the progress they had made in making Kona feel like a normal girl and part of their family.
"Like shit," Kona simply replied.
"Language, Kona," Kara admonished her jokingly. "Can you fly?"
Kona concentrated for a moment, rising above the roof. She was pretty wobbly, though. Kara wasn't sure she was up to return home on her own. Never mind that Kara really wanted to take her to the Fortress first for another thorough examination. They had missed the bio chip the first time around and Kara wanted to be sure that there were no further surprises hidden inside her girl.
"Okay, change of plans," Kara announced, motioning for Kona to land again. "Hawkman, Hawkwoman! Converge on my position in Metropolis! I need you to secure Luthor and watch over Kona while we deal with the space ships!"
"You're making a mistake," Luthor told her.
Ignoring him, Kara waited until she could see the Hawks approaching the Lexcorp Tower, then launched herself into space.
"Greetings, people of Earth," a cold, metallic voice rang out from every TV set and radio in the world. It had been but a few minutes since audiences worldwide had been shown a battle between Superwoman and Lex Luthor that had ended in confusion. Then the signal had cut off, allowing regular programming to return. Now, though, things were getting even more confusing.
"Your planet has been selected for assimilation into the Construct," the voice continued. "Organic beings are inferior, thus you will serve the Great Machine. Even now our fleet is approaching your world. We will give you some time to accept your inevitable doom in whatever primitive manner you choose."
Images appeared on every screen, taken from satelites and spy drones up in space, showing the appraoching fleet of ships. They looked menacing, dangerous, and a feeling of unease spread across the entire world.
Only to be replaced by cheers when the images showed the figures of Superwoman, Wonder Woman, and the Martian Manhunter approaching the invasion fleet.
Lex Luthor figured that Superwoman and her little band were in space by now, probably reducing the approaching ships to scrap with very little effort. It was just a diversion, after all, but for what? What was Brainiac really planning?
Ignoring that brute Hawkman, who was daring him to make a wrong move, Luthor started thinking. If he were in Brainiac's shoes and wanted to convince an entire planet full of stupid people to throw themselves at Superwoman's feet (well, more than they were already doing it), what would his next move be? Obviously this was about handing Superwoman a big victory in a very public way to elevate her standing from beloved hero to worshipped savior. Preferably making the established authorities of Earth look weak and foolish in the process. But how...?
Of course! It was so obvious.
"Hey, Birdman," Luthor barked at the winged brute. "Ring up your leader!"
Kara sliced another of the approaching ships apart with her heat vision, watching with a certain amount of glee as it blew up. All of this was a distraction, she knew. These ships were meant to be easy to defeat for her and her friends. Still, after all the frustrations of the last few hours, she was more than happy to indulge in a bit of wanton destruction.
"Superwoman, can you hear me?" Batman's voice came over her com.
"I hear you, Batman. We've destroyed most of the approaching ships."
"Good, but we have another problem. It seems Brainiac has infiltrated the datanets of Earth's major military powers. They were already at high alert because of the space ships, but right now missiles are being prepped to launch all over the globe and from the radio chatter I hear, it's not because anyone gave an order."
"This is Hawkman," a second voice cut in. "Our dear Mr. Luthor here seems to think that Brainiac plans to have the major powers launch their missiles at the aliens, only for the missiles to mysteriously go off-course and threaten to annihilate cities."
"Forcing me to stop them, making the world governments look even more inept and foolish, while elevating my standing all over again." Kara surmised.
"We need to launch Option C, Superwoman," Green Arrow put in his two cents. "If Brainiac is in the military nets and decides to go for broke, not even the entire League will be able to stop every single missile, never mind what other attacks it might launch if it has access to the right command codes."
Kara thought it over, but saw no other way. She had hoped to reserve Option C for a shot at Brainiac itself, not whatever copy of him was running rampant through Earth's computers, but Green Arrow was right. They couldn't afford to wait any longer.
"Okay, Option C is a go!"
Option C was the League's code name for a weapon against Brainiac they had developed in cooperation with the Coluans, the most intelligent species in the Milky Way. Given that Brainiac was an invasive computer program, basically a piece of malware, the idea had been to create a program that would attack Brainiac's specific codes and – hopefully – delete them from any computer system or datanet it had copied itself into. The Coluans had been very eager to develop it, still smarting from having been taken over so easy by the malevolent AI.
The problem was, of course, that there was no way to test it except by using it against the real thing.
The Anti-Brainiac program had been kept on an isolated drive since they had received it from the Coluans. Batman quickly hooked up the drive to the Watch Tower systems. They had managed to purge Brainiac's influence from the station by manually rebooting all the systems from a backup, but there was a chance it was still present. So the program's first test run was on the Watch Tower itself.
"No traces of Brainiac in our systems," Batman reported. "Transmitting the program into Earth's datanet."
For a full minute nothing seemed to happen, then Batman's screens flashed red.
"The program encountered Brainiac in the United States military command net. It's attacking as we speak."
There was silence again, making Kara uneasy.
"Batman, talk to me! What is going on?" she asked, even as she was destroying the last of Brainiac's attack ships.
"The Pentagon just experienced a complete system crash. All computers are down."
"That wasn't supposed to happen, was it?" Green Arrow asked.
"What's happening?" Kara interjected. "Is the program not working?"
"It's working, but not as good as we hoped," Batman said. "Brainiac seems to be fighting against the program by destroying every system where it encounters it."
"Rao, we could be seeing a complete world-wide computer crash," Kara muttered.
"Looks like you need some help after all," Luthor said, the smirk audible even over the com. "Maybe from someone who has familiarized himself with Brainiac's codes and technology these last few months."
Kara growled in frustration.
Kona Kara-El, also known as Cornelia Jones and Supergirl, was not having a good day. Come to think of it, she was having the worst day ever. Okay, the days she had spent in a cage in Cadmus hadn't been great, sure, but she had had nothing to compare it to then. Ever since breaking free, though, her life had improved steadily. Some ups and downs, sure, but overall she had been... happy.
Then Brainiac had sent it all crashing down. An alien machine had turned her into its puppet, she had hurt her brother, she had lured her mother into a trap, and she had almost died. Even now she was still not back to full strength, meaning she wasn't even able to help her family and fight against that alien thing that had pulled her strings and destroyed her life.
The only upside so far was that the control chip in her neck was gone (hopefully) and Clark was apparently all right (if still unconscious). Overall, though? Still a very, very bad day. Which was evident by the fact that Kara had agreed to bring Lex Luthor up to the Watch Tower and given him access to the computers there in the hopes of defeating Brainiac.
"Make no mistake, Superwoman!" Luthor told Kara even as he worked frantically. "The only reason I am doing this is because I want Brainiac in charge of my world even less than I want you in charge!"
"I never wanted to be in charge of this world," Kara countered, watching him like a hawk. "Which, by the way, isn't YOUR world!"
"It will be," he simply said. "There is really no one else qualified!"
Kara scoffed, her arms crossed in front of her chest. "I see your hubris didn't suffer from being Brainiac's puppet for months!"
Luthor paused in his work for a moment and glowered at her. "This machine, which I believe was built on YOUR world by YOUR people, was planning for you to kill me and then take over MY world!"
"Your point being?"
"My point is that I was right about you all along, alien! You ARE the spearhead of an invasion. The fact that you apparently didn't know about it doesn't change that. Brainiac is here because of you."
Kona saw a brief glimpse of guilt in Kara's face, Luthor's barb apparently hitting home, but then her features hardened again.
"And it has selected YOU as the villain of this charade it is performing and not a single person anywhere in the world had trouble believing it, Lex! Now what does THAT tell you?"
"Only that people are stupid, which I already knew. And you are welcome, by the way!"
"Welcome? For what?"
"I spared your custom-built daughter's life, didn't I?"
Kona flinched, vividly remembering the moment when Luthor had stood over her in his battle armor. She had almost blacked out from the pain of the Kryptonite, but had still known that the blade on his gauntlet could end her life. And a part of her was thinking that she would have deserved it for betraying her family, no matter how little choice she'd had in the matter.
The look of fury on Kara's face, though, was oddly comforting. Kona figured that she was working very hard to keep herself from reducing Luthor's smirking face to pulp with a super-powered slap.
"Are you honestly expecting me to thank you for not killing a child in cold blood? What kind of screwed up psychopath are you?"
"The only screwed up part of this entire affair is that I revealed my true intentions to Brainiac too soon because of your petri-dish offspring!"
Kona flinched again at the reminder. She really was just a thing, wasn't she? A laboratory experiment gone awry. As though hearing her thoughts, though, Kara's arm was suddenly there, wrapping around her shoulder. Despite thinking that she didn't deserve it, Kona instinctively leaned into the touch, even as the woman was gazing coldly at Luthor.
"Then why didn't you do it, Lex? Surely the murder of yet another innocent wouldn't have troubled the great Lex Luthor, would it? Not like you have a conscience left to give you sleepless nights."
For the briefest of moments Kona imagined there was a flicker of... something... on Luthor's face.
"None of your business," he growled, turning back towards the computer.
Kara looked astonished. "Was that... don't tell me that Lex Luthor actually had qualms about hurting someone!"
"Listen, alien!" he turned towards her again, hissing. "Do not flatter yourself by thinking you have me figured out! I do what I do because I decide to do it, not because some alien machine is setting me up for a fall! If I kill someone, it will happen because I decide it should be so! No one else! I decide who lives and dies and that goes for humans, aliens, and hybrids, too, whether they share my DNA or not!"
Kara blinked. "What did you just say?"
Kona felt like the world had come to a stand-still. She hadn't really just heard that, had she? It wasn't possible. It couldn't be!
Luthor blinked as well, his brain apparently just catching up with his words. "Uh, well...," he began.
Kara's hand was suddenly around his throat, fingers like steel clamps pressing into the vulnerable flesh and lifting him out of his chair.
"Did you really just tell me that those bastards at Cadmus used YOUR DNA for Kona? Is that what you just said, Lex?"
Kona couldn't do anything but stare at the two of them. It just didn't compute. Her brain refused to acknowledge it. Luthor was dangling in Kara's grip, his face beginning to turn blue, and obviously incapable of answering even if he wanted to.
"He is my dad?" she finally whispered.
End Chapter 64
Author's Note: This title's chapter is a bit of a mystery. I was one hundred percent sure that it was the title of an old Justice League of America story, but I can't seem to find it again. The closest I have come is Justice Leage of America (vol. 1) #11, which was actually titled "One Hour to Doomsday". So no idea where this chapter name actually came from. Maybe it's like "Yesterday" by the Beatles, where Paul McCartney himself wasn't sure whether he had actually come up with it or plagiarized it from someone else.
I really enjoyed writing the dialogue between Kara and Lex a lot. With Kona stuck between them, I was going for "bickering divorced parents" as a lead-up to the revelation of Kona's parentage. Hope it worked out as I planned. Up next: Lex Luthor saves the world (kind of)!