Ch 20 – Damascus
Lex Luthor laced his hands together and focused his attention on the man who had just been escorted into his office.
"Mr. Black, you look a little worse for the wear."
Tony smirked and casually approached the desk. "All in a day's work."
Lex tilted his head and narrowed his eyes in scrutiny. "So what do you have for me?"
"Nothing much actually," Tony replied, running a hand over the top of Lex's desk. "Your friend Clark Kent is above… reproach, I would say." His hand lightly brushed the edge of the laptop before he pulled away.
He strolled over to a side table where a chessboard was sitting, the pieces arranged in mid-play. He reached out and moved the white knight, placing the black king in check.
"He's remarkably…normal. I'm sorry if that disappoints you."
Lex rose from his seat, his patience waning. "What is the status of the other project?"
"Yeah, that. Um, regrettably, it has been sidetracked a bit."
"Sidetracked?"
"Yes. There was an… altercation at my club today. Hence my appearance," he answered, gesturing at his disheveled clothing. "At any rate, I'm pretty sure that the police have bagged and tagged everything there by now, including what was in my lab. But hey! It's only a minor setback. With a little more funding and a new headquarters, we can have this thing running in no time."
Lex released a short laugh. "There are two things that I have no tolerance for. One is failure. The other is a person who wastes my time. Unfortunately, you have done both."
Tony's arms were grabbed from behind by two large men. As they pulled him from the room, Lex turned his back on the scene. He had no time for imbeciles. Manton Black was too much of a loose cannon.
Sitting behind his desk once again, he opened his laptop and pressed the button to power it on. When the machine did not respond, he pressed the button again. He heard the fan start and sat back.
Smoke began seeping from the back of the computer and a clank was heard before the fan sputtered to a stop. Gritting his teeth, Lex slammed the top closed, and reached for the phone. The hard drive on this laptop held his only remaining copy of the information he'd been collecting on the Kent family.
Tony's final minutes of life were spent reflecting on all of the knowledge he had usurped from people over the years. None of it compared to what he had learned from Clark Kent. He regretted having to mar the beauty of Lois Lane by shooting her, but it had been a necessary evil.
Clark Kent's purpose was greater than his own. He wasn't sure if Kent knew it yet, but their paths had crossed for a reason. Even without the aid of his supreme insight, Tony knew that Clark had been extremely close to crossing the line and killing him. By making the decision to not take another's life, Clark had taken a step closer to what he would become.
"It has begun," Tony said to himself, unsure of where the thought came from.
As his vision faded, he smiled, remembering how he had used his remaining drug-enhanced power to fry Lex's laptop.
In the end, no one would know that Manton Black's final act had been his greatest.
Damascus Road: The place where you decide to serve that which you once persecuted.
tbc
