Alternate Agendas, Part 2
- - - November 25th, a few minutes earlier - - -
Lex Luthor's face betrayed no emotions, as he watched his wayward son and his team of meddling teens enter his Cadmus institute. His camera feeds were crystal clear, and he could listen in on every spoken word. After Superboy's previous visit, he had significantly upgraded the facility's technical surveillance system, cursing Desmond for only relying on G-sprites before.
Somehow, the team had found a way to collapse all of his precious emergency tunnels, even those that not even Desmond had known about. They had also banded up with the solitary G-goblin, which had apparently learned to defy orders. Intriguing.
"Project Kr! Stand down!", one of his many pawns bellowed. Rolling his eyes, Luthor braced himself for the inevitable.
"No", Superboy replied.
And of course the idiot had to give the trigger words away in front of the entire congregation.
"Red Sun!", he yelled.
Yet, unbelievably, Superboy stepped closer.
Luthor took a deep breath, his mind rapidly recalibrating. He was suddenly very, very glad he had not followed through with his earlier plan of attempting to confront his son personally this weekend.
The League had found a way to reprogram his clones.
He kept watching, as the G-goblin approached the ever-faithful Guardian.
"Cadmus does not control you any more", it said.
"No, of course not. Did they?"
This meant that the facility was lost.
Luthor could only thank his stars that the delivery of his most precious current project to the institute had been delayed by a few days. Yet if the League, or that cursed Goblin-creature, were able to circumvent his genomorphs' commands, all other secrets currently hosted at the institute were already forfeit.
The Light would not be amused.
A familiar coldness settled over Luthor's mind, as he weighed all possible scenarios. He would be angry later, potentially even furious, but now was the time to cut his losses.
Most of Desmond's projects had been irrelevant, on the large scale of things.
Yet they would find Speedy.
And they would come for Red Arrow next.
There was only one logical course of action. He reached for his phone.
"Sportsmaster? Our pet has lost its value. Dispose of him quickly."
What a waste of potential.
She liked the puzzled look in his pretty blue eyes when he woke up again.
It made him look younger. Almost innocent.
For a moment, he had no idea why he was here, back in Gotham.
Just for me, she tried to tell herself.
Of course, she had commanded him to meet her here today, before she released him the last time.
Didn't that count?
She knew him well enough by now to discern the exact moment he remembered the story she had fed him, something about red herrings and a stolen starfish. His determined expression returned, the youthful look vanished.
He checked his bow, then his arrows, then his mask. Always in that order. Next, a quick tap against his ear ensured him that his League communicator was still present. Of course he was oblivious to the fact that she had temporarily disabled it with a well-calibrated EMP much earlier this morning, as she had been instructed to do.
He patted down his pockets next, feeling for keys and phone and wallet, without ever actually taking them out. As planned, her replacement went unnoticed. This had not been part of her instructions, but a girl deserved a bit of fun, didn't she?
Simply asking for his number wouldn't be her style…
Red Arrow pulled himself to his feet.
If her dad had not been watching them, Jade would have liked to show herself again, to flirt with him a little longer. As it was, she would just have to get back to that later, privately.
She activated her in-ear comm device. "Update complete."
It had been a long set of orders this time, changed at the last minute yesterday, in response to the unexpected arrest of the Bialyan Queen in Qurac. It had taken her a while to read the list to him.
Not that she'd complain.
"They changed their mind", Sportsmaster replied.
"What, again?"
"Not his orders. Him. He lost his value."
Cheshire froze.
"Dispose of him quickly."
"Sure." The only possible answer. "Will do."
Every word gave her yet another moment to think.
Of course her father was watching her, but she was standing with her back to his vantage point right now. Turning ever so slightly, she pulled the pawned phone out of her pocket, her torso shielding it from view.
Four missed calls, who would have thought?
One of the numbers she recognized.
Cheshire typed a very urgent message in reply.
Then she deleted the traces of her disobedience, hiding his phone on her body once more.
"What are you waiting for?", Sportsmaster growled.
Turning off the comm, she stepped out of the shadows, onto the grey concrete of the deserted terminal.
"Already leaving?", she called after him.
She knew she would pay for that, later.
Yet she was known as a Cheshire cat. Wasn't she expected to play with her prey just a little?
"We could certainly do with more women on the Justice League", Wonder Woman proclaimed.
"Hear, hear!", Black Canary and Hawkwoman applauded.
Nodding calmly, J'onn noted down each proposition. Their assembly at the Watchtower had started well, everyone was excited at the prospect of adding new members to their League. The more difficult debates would follow later, they all had a long day ahead of them…
Suddenly, he felt the mood shifting. Superman was rising from his seat, emanating dread and apprehension.
"This meeting is adjourned", he stated.
"What?" Wonder Woman shot him a puzzled look. "Kal, we've barely even started!"
Batman pulled up a file on the room's central screen.
"We've both received an urgent message from the team. Have any of you heard of an organisation called 'the Light'?"
Like all the others, J'onn could only stare at the image attached to the team's dispatch.
They'd found a second super-clone.
He was fast, she had to give him that.
Not fast enough, though.
Dropping to one knee to evade his swing, Jade kicked his leg out from under him. Her triple-bladed sai left three bloody marks across Red Arrow's chest, slicing his costume neatly.
"Honey, don't bring a bow to a knife fight", she purred, leaning over him.
He brought his knees up without warning, only narrowly missing her masked chin, then used his own momentum to spring back into action.
"What do you want, Cheshire?"
He was panting heavily, as he brandished his re-enforced bow to block her blades once more.
"Getting tired already?", she teased, feinting a low blow with her right, then swinging her left sai up suddenly, snapping the straps of his quiver. With a clatter, his arrows scattered on the floor.
He dove for one of them, or so she thought, but when she attempted to bar his way, he yanked his bow between her feet, sending her sprawling.
She landed on her hands, cartwheeled out of his reach and regained her footing immediately, yet it had been a momentary weakness.
Which meant…
"Broken Arrow", Sportsmaster called out from behind her.
Red Arrow collapsed on his side, his eyes glazing over, as the shut-down command took effect.
Curse you, father.
"That's enough." He stepped closer, one of his heavy javelins in hand, the metal spear pointed straight at the fallen figure.
"Don't you dare", she hissed. "This is my kill."
"Then end this", he demanded, gesturing at the blades in her hands.
She turned her voice to oil.
"What, simply slicing this throat? Really, dad, are you trying to ruin my reputation?"
His full-face mask conveyed no emotions, yet she knew her tone had gotten his attention.
She pulled a tiny blowpipe from her pocket, nimbly freeing a fragile missile from its stem.
"Remember these, dad?"
Of course he did. The perfect birthday gift for his ten-year-old daughter, oh so long ago.
She broke off the dart's hollow tip, careful not to spill its lethal contents.
Rolling Red Arrow onto his back, she dripped the deadly venom into the red gashes on his chest.
"That's more my style, don't you think?"
He nodded approvingly. "Trying to build a brand?"
And then a motorbike fell out of the sky.
Artemis' arrow missed her father by a whole inch, due to the Supercycle's turbulent descent. They'd collected Sphere at the cave, knowing they'd need her to get from the Gotham Zeta Station to the distant harbour quickly. Aqualad jumped off before Sphere had properly landed, bearing down on Sportsmaster, his twin water-bearers crackling with arcane energy. Artemis and Wally followed right behind him, trying to take in the scene.
Red Arrow lay sprawled on the floor in front of the old terminal's warehouse. Cheshire was already disappearing into the building's shadows. Her father blocked Kaldur's attack expertly, attempting to carve in the Atlantean's head with the butt of his spear.
"Wally, check on Red Arrow, then help Kaldur", Artemis yelled, then sprinted off to follow her sister.
To her surprise, Jade was waiting for her behind the first corner. To avoid a sharp kick to her chest, Artemis dropped back onto the dusty concrete. An awkward position for firing an arrow – no wonder Cheshire dodged it easily.
"A flying motorbike? Really?"
Artemis kicked her sister's right blade out of the way before jumping back to her feet, feeling the second sai tear through the fabric of her trousers. Jade was clearly holding back – she would have lost the leg, if they'd been fighting in earnest.
She laid another arrow on her string, a sticky one this time.
"Trying to capture me, really?" Cheshire taunted, her left hand casually pointing at her ear. "Are you sure you want your ignorant little team mates to interrogate me? We both know which side you really belong to."
Artemis nodded briefly, silently acknowledging her sister's message. Still, she kept her arrow trained at Jade's prowling form, still unsure what to expect from all this. As they circled each other slowly, she caught a flash of desperate urgency in the dark eyes behind the Cheshire mask.
Jade's hands were forming the signs for danger, and retreat.
"Cat got your tongue? Come on, tell me why you're really here?"
She pointed at her ear once more.
Finally understanding, Artemis fired her shot widely, encasing a distant wall in quickly hardening foam.
"Half the League is in their way here", she bluffed, loud enough to be heard through her sister's comm device. "You've gone to far this time, they've come to hunt you down."
"Well, we couldn't have that, now, could we?" Cheshire nodded gratefully, sheathing her blades, then stepping closer. "A shame we have to cut this short."
"What about Red Arrow?"
Her sister's eyes bored into her own, two hands grabbing her arms painfully, only her voice sounding perfectly calm.
"He's already dead."
A casual twist of Sportmaster's pole knocked Wally off his feet, sending him stumbling into the nearest building's wall. Why did that guy carry so many weapons? And how had he even seen him approach - you'd think a full-face hockey mask would impede your peripheral vision?
In quick succession, Sportsmaster brought his telescopic pole down on Aqualad's water-bearer shield, then dealt him a blow with the metal throwing hammer he'd been twirling with his other hand. Of course the man was ambidextrous, too. Unable to find an opening, Kaldur was forced to take yet another step backwards.
Wally was rather grateful that their team leader had insisted on joining him and Artemis on their rescue mission, after Robin's awesome hacking skills had confirmed that Red Arrow's League communicator had indeed gone offline in the vicinity of the Gotham Harbour this morning.
Yet even together, Wally and Aqualad were hard pressed to counter Sportsmaster's relentless assault.
Direct attacks were barely working out. Shaking his head warily, Wally dashed over to where their adversary's spear had almost impaled him earlier, trying to retrieve the ranged weapon for his own use.
It was lodged in the wall.
Okay, this was getting embarrassing.
Wally turned back towards Aqualad, just in time to watch Sphere – still in form of the Supercycle – trying to run Sportsmaster over. To his utter amazement, Sportsmaster simply rammed the tip of his pole into the ground and vaulted – okay, yes, it was a vaulting pole, but still, who did that? - vaulted straight across the approaching Supercycle, landing softly on his feet behind her.
Sphere tried to stop herself, brakes screeching, but her momentum would have knocked Aqualad over if Wally had not pulled the Atlantean out of harm's way just in time.
When they both regained their footing, Sportsmaster had vanished. For a few wary moments, Wally and Kaldur stood back to back, carefully surveying their surroundings. No sneak attacks, no flying javelins or hammers – it seemed that the masked mercenary had truly disappeared.
Right on cue, Artemis came running from behind the old terminal building. Cheshire was nowhere to be seen, which could only mean that father and daughter had made their unexplained exit together.
Wally groaned as he reflected on his underwhelming performance. Way to meet her family…
Panting heavily, Artemis skittered to a halt beside Red Arrow. The speedster dashed to her side.
The red-haired archer still lay on the ground where they'd found him. Wally's earlier check-up had revealed no injuries beside some shallow gashes at his chest, hence Wally had only taped up the cuts and heaved his friend into recovery position before rejoining the fight.
"He's unconscious but stable. Just a few scratches", he reported.
Kneeling down, Artemis leaned over his old friend's face, scrutinizing his heavily dilated pupils.
"He's dying, Wally."
"What?" No, that couldn't be happening.
She picked a tiny item from the ground, the hollow tip of a broken dart. "Naga poison stops your heart within fifteen minutes, if you don't take the antidote."
Wally jumped to his feet. Naga meant snake, right? How long had Red Arrow been lying here before they arrived? Fifteen minutes were plenty of time for a speedster, there had to be something he could do – last minute rescues were his job! Speedy had always had his back, had gotten him out of trouble countless times over the past years, he just had to return the favour now. Why had he never read up on poisons and their antidotes?
Wally felt cold dread clench his heart. One of his oldest friends was dying, and he should be running already, time was of essence, but he didn't know where to run to, had no idea what to do...
"Stop fidgeting, Wally, I don't want to spill this." Artemis had pulled a small, well-padded medpack out of her costume's pockets, picking a blue phial out of a choice selection of colourful vials and syringes. "Three drops should do."
Wally found himself standing perfectly still, as he watched his most self-reliant team mate calmly and capably save Red Arrow's life.
When she was done, she met his eyes. Some of his earlier panic must have still been written on his face, cause she smirked at the sight.
"We're a team now, remember?"
Patience, he reminded himself, she'd asked for patience.
If Aqualad had not chosen that moment to join them, he was not sure if he'd been able to comply.
After cleaning up the other archer's wounds as well as she could, Artemis was about to feed her little emergency medpack back into the small bag strapped to her side, when her fingers brushed against an unfamiliar item. Something small and rectangular.
Smiling wistfully, she pulled Red Arrow's phone from her pocket and returned it to its rightful owner.
Her sister had always excelled at sleigh of hand.
'Kaldur, Wally and Artemis are bringing Red Arrow to the cave', Robin summarized the Atlantean's message. 'He is still unconscious, but the antidote seems the have taken effect. Mary will be able to nurse him at our HQ's medbay.'
'Why is he unconscious?', Conner inquired. 'Because of the poison? Or was he shut down by his handlers?'
Robin frowned. It was still hard to believe that Red Arrow was a clone, but the fact that they'd found the original Speedy frozen in a Cadmus pod allowed for no other conclusion.
'If it's the latter, what is he going to do when he wakes up?', Megan inquired.
Robin paled, as he imagined what kind of contingency orders Cadmus could have implanted in the archer's mind.
'I'll tell them to keep him sedated for now.'
Mere minutes after receiving the team's missive, the full force of the Justice League bore down on the Cadmus institute. J'onn had taken his customary place in the line between Superman and Batman, as the twenty costumed heroes strode into the facility's reception hall.
Four very brave G-elves tried to bar their way. "No one leaves or enters here today", one of them proclaimed with a raspy voice.
J'onn stopped politely, regarding the grey-skinned figures curiously. Everything about them was pointy – their long tipped ears, their slender tails, their elongated claws. Behind them, he spotted three lab-coated human Cadmus employees sitting near a wall, handcuffed to a water pipe, guarded by the team's white wolf. A fourth scientist had been encased in pink foam.
"Please let them through, Clawdius", a man in a blue uniform requested, his face hidden by a closed helmet. This had to be Guardian - another Cadmus clone, according to the team's dispatch.
"I believe the Justice League is welcome here – just to be sure, though, what is your stance on breaking Cadmus' control?"
"Over whom?" Batman demanded to know.
J'onn briefly placed a hand on his dark-cloaked friend's arm. "None of us serve Cadmus, and we are all able to declare freely that liberating genomorphs from their control is, indeed, an option."
The others nodded.
"Very well." Guardian beckoned the genomorphs to step aside. "If you are looking for Conner and his friends, I believe you'll still find them at sublevel 26. Let me show you to the elevators."
As they began their descent, J'onn noted that Batman and Red Tornado stayed behind. "These people tried to leave?", he heard the Dark Knight ask.
"They did, despite our request to stay in their offices. Of course, there are not many humans here today because of the holiday…"
"What were they carrying with them?"
Everyone fell silent, as Superman approached his sleeping clone. J'onn tried to gauge his friend's emotions, yet they were too raw, too turbulent.
"He's fully Kryptonian", Superboy noted silently. "Like you."
Meeting the League at the elevators, he and M'gan had already giving a short report on their brief journey into the poor boy's fractured mind.
Superman placed a hand on the pod's frost-covered glass, watching the pale figure within twitch in his sleep.
"Can you help him, J'onn?"
Slipping into the super-clone's mind, J'onn found himself confronted with the same horrid scene that his niece had described. For now ignoring the sleeping figure shivering in his chains, J'onn turned to survey the mental fabric that surrounded him. Large swaths of mind space had been crudely jotted together, many of them painted blue and adorned with a familiar emblem, splattered with red paint and pierced by icy shards. It was clear whom the boy had been made to fight. J'onn leaned in closer, inspecting the mnemic fabric more carefully. The pieces looked torn and ragged at their seams, barely vital.
"He might still heal", he reported, returning from his short survey. "Yet it would take years for him to fully recover, after that abhorrent compulsion is removed."
"I could not hold him that long", Superman admitted. "What options do we have to keep him calm, to stop him from endangering others?"
He glanced around, and J'onn knew he was looking for Batman. Bruce had contingency plans for everything, including restraining a rampant Kryptonian. Yet the Dark Knight had stayed upstairs.
"Green Lanterns, what about your shields? No, wait, we shouldn't be discussing this audibly in a building run by Lex Luthor. Please, J'onn?"
'Mind link established.'
Somewhere not too far away, a bald man cursed.
'With a fully charged power ring, our shields might be able to restrain him for three or four minutes', Hal reported, careful to say him instead of you.
'Diana, your Lasso of Truth is indestructible, right?'
'I could bind him with it, but that would not stop him from flying, throwing himself into things, or shooting heat rays.'
'Any other ideas?'
'Could he be drugged?', the Flash wanted to know.
Conner shook his head. 'Dubbilex said that Cadmus found no chemical compound that could knock him out, except for Kryptonite, which would kill him.'
'What about magic?', Captain Marvel inquired.
Everyone turned towards the Lord of Order Nabu, including his host's daughter Zatanna.
'With the Duplication Gem back in my possession, I could currently disable one person magically for an indefinite time. Yet his mind would be completely dormant – he would not grow, nor heal.'
'In that case, we could as well leave him in this pod', the Flash commented drily.
'We can't', M'gan spoke up. 'The G-gnomes guarding him are already picking up on the fact that more and more of the other genomorphs have been unshackled. They are telepathic by nature, and they are now practically surrounded by anchors who have been freed from Cadmus' control. It might take a few more days or weeks, but eventually one of them will break his bonds himself – and once that happens, they won't be able to order Match to sleep any longer.'
'What about a mental simulation, like the one the team was caught up in?', Aquaman remembered. 'Would that hold him?
'Possibly, but if his mind attempts to resist it, upholding such a scene would be most strenuous', J'onn explained. 'My telepathic power would be drained within an hour.'
'Could more Martians help you? What if we brought him to Mars?', Green Lantern Hal proposed.
Everyone pondered the idea for a moment.
'I don't think the people of Mars would be very pleased by that prospect', J'onn cautioned.
'May I ask a question?', Zatanna asked shyly.
'Please', Superman allowed.
'Um, well, it's an honour to meet you all… Anyway, do I understand it correctly that we've got a strong, healthy boy here who needs time for his mind to heal, yet his body must be controlled to keep him from lashing out in rage and accidentally hurting somebody?'
'Yes?'
'I'm sorry, but what about the obvious solution?'
"How do you feel?", Red Tornado inquired.
Guardian looked up, clearly startled. They were currently resetting the institute's surveillance system together. "Me? You mean, with Dubbilex telling me telepathically that I'm a clone and all that?"
"Indeed."
"Not great, actually. It's a lot to take in."
Red Tornado nodded, hoping the inadequate gesture could convey his understanding. "You have found out today that all you were led to believe about your past was merely a fabrication, that your whole identity was just a front, established to hide the fact that you were created by a enigmatic entity to obey its sinister commands."
"Well, yeah, that kind of sums it up. I suppose I'm lucky they didn't feed me any false memories, though, just a fake name and a few vague keywords…"
"And yet, despite your makers' commands, you have also done good and purposeful work, attempting to help others where you could", Red Tornado continued.
"You think so? Well, I suppose Dubbilex and the others did approve of my attempts to reform the institute… Did you know the genomorphs didn't even get vacation time before?"
"From my experience with a very similar case, continuing your good work might help you cope with the situation, and regain your sense of purpose."
"Continuing my… Wait, what do you mean, a similar case? Who?"
"I shall ask him if he wishes to make your acquaintance."
His brother would surely see the parallels?
"He looks so young", Green Arrow whispered.
Black Canary stood closely behind her partner. While the others had wanted to meet the second super-clone right away, Ollie had insisted on seeing Speedy first.
The one-armed boy floated at the centre of his transparent tube, wearing nothing but a pair of white shorts. He looked uncommonly thin and small, just a bit taller than Robin. The Boy Wonder had led them here, accompanied by the long-horned genomorph called Dubbilex.
"The cryogenic fugue has preserved him in this state since he was brought here", the G-goblin explained. "He has not aged for the past three years."
"Three years!", Ollie cried out. "But that means… I've only known the real Speedy for a few months then? I've trained a clone, all these years?"
Dubbilex nodded calmly. "The man you know as Red Arrow had no knowledge of his true heritage. He was provided with all of the original's memories, believing them to be his own."
Ollie closed his eyes, pressing his forehead against the cold glass container.
"What happened to his right arm?"
"From what I learned from the older genomorphs, it was removed two years ago when Desmond began conducting experiments on body memory. We should find its remains in one of the storage rooms at sublevel 34."
"Of course. At the storage room." Green Arrow shook his head hazily. "I want to see that storage room. I want to see every storage room. I want to see every bloody project or experiment those bastards Desmond and Luthor have been conducting down here, and if there are any other people sitting around in test tubes, I'll find them, and then I'll tear this whole place down!"
His voice was thundering now, his eyes alight with righteous fury.
Dinah held his gaze. "That's why we're here. We're going to look in every nook and cranny, scan every folder, leave no leaf unturned. We'll take shifts, we've got the whole League's support and a long weekend ahead of us. Together, we'll turn this facility upside down, I promise."
"The free genomorphs will assist you in your search", Dubbilex offered.
"Batman has already started screening the upper floors", Robin reported. "He's currently interrogating the employees."
Green Arrow nodded grimly. "Good. Cadmus is finally going down."
Author's note:
I told you there would be more archer-centered chapters eventually, didn't I? There are three of them now... Of course there is no way I'd leave Speedy in a pod for eight years!
Was it very obvious that Cheshire sent the message to Artemis, or did I manage to surprise a few of you?
Please review!