I waved goodbye to Superman and the Question with exaggerated cheer, as Mercy led me back to the car. (Supes didn't have to know my plans to steal his DNA from his beard.)

Beyond the crowd of reporters that had parted like the Red Sea before Lex Luthor's favourite bodyguard, I entered the car. The difference in temperature was telling- as was the difference in atmosphere. Outside it was stifling. Within the confines of my father's limousine, though, it was frosty.

"Lena," said Lex, not turning to look at me from the seat beside me as the car accelerated away from the scene. "You shouldn't be associating with vigilantes."

"Mr Volkner- at least, I assume he's Mr Volker?-" I paused to say, a level of accusation in my voice- "-intended to utilise a dangerously unstable serum on me. The same one that mutated him." He didn't respond beyond slight changes in facial expression. I frowned, trying to make him look at me back. "You could at least be somewhat grateful to them for, if not saving me, then at least making it considerably more convenient for us all."

"When you say 'a dangerously unstable serum'," my father growled, "you mean your serum."

I gave him a flat look. "No," I said succinctly. "I'm guessing it was seabird, scavenger and clawed frog DNA you added, plus boosters to the lobster and shark, to be specific on why."

"We tried your original version," he said, returning to that calm, almost-sarcastic tone of voice I so rarely heard... directed at me, anyway. "The DNA fragments were far too fragile to remain embedded- it was only when I amplified them did they even start to remain stable." He looked at me, ice in his eyes, and by reflex alone I leaned away. "You've had long enough. Even with the contributions I made, your project is worthless. A failure."

I opened my mouth to retort. Then I took a breath and tried again.

"Your research has been sent to the archives in the unlikely scenario of it becoming useful in the future," he informed me. "Now, what are you going to do to make up for your failure?"

I glared at him, and prepared my answer. Instead, I hiccuped and wiped my face, which all things considered was not exactly a satisfying answer for either of us.

This is the second time in two months that this has happened, I berated myself. When Braniac comes for a visit, I am stealing the hell out of his archives, for the sole purpose of identifying that can set those stupid ducts to manual.

His voice came from that direction I was distinctly trying not to look in, while I tried to get back into my standard, generally-capable-of-speech state. "You should be focusing on the task at hand, Lena! You should be planning! Not whimpering," he scolded, "like a lost pup!"

This was, as you can imagine, distinctly unhelpful for my biological state of emotion regardless of whether my conscious mind considered it of any relevance. I made some generic gestures of 'please wait, speech box is currently down for maintenance' in his general direction while I attempted to plan what I could do.

In this case, the main problem was thinking of something that involved neither genetic engineering nor accidentally acting as the five-year-old adviser on behalf of Lex's Evil Overlord List. Whilst sniffling, which is (as you may have gathered) a major pet peeve as long as I'm the one doing it. Very bad for focus and whatnot.

I considered rolling down the window- fresh air is good for mental state and whatnot- but, alas, neither is an angry multi-billionaire telling you to get your head back inside before the reporters notice.

"Okay, I-" I stopped and coughed for a second, since teenage sighs of irritation got old eventually and I had to mix things up at some point. "If the tardigrade DNA d-doesn't work, then-" I sniffled again. Stop interrupting me, interacting non-sentient biological systems, you're stupider than I am. "Then-"

"No genetic engineering," Lex decreed. "You're awful at it."

At that moment, Mercy interrupted from the front of the car. "Lex," she said, "she's just a kid-"

"And I was 'just a kid' when I first opened that hole-in-the-wall repair shop," Lex snarled, the facade breaking for a brief moment. "She has resources from across LexCorp- if she can't manage even one success, then she is a failure."

Mercy went mercifully silent. Being banned wouldn't stop me anyway. It wouldn't take that long to get a gengineering setup in my secret base- and with a minimal number of unplanned accesses to Star Labs and old peoples' homes (well, a particular old person's home), I'd be able to find at least one alternative to simply mixing DNA, making a few interpretations and adjustments, and repeatedly hoping it worked.

"So." Lex's tone returned to that calm, steely tone. "What will you be working on, Lena?"

Umm.

Err.

Hiccup.

"...Ps-psionics?" I ventured.

"Go on."

"Th-there's a school for-" I hiccupped again. Oh come on, I thought as I continued, really? "-for psychics. At the Center f-for Paranormal studies," I specified. "I-it keeps files on psychic abilities, which could be u-used as a base for a research pro-" Hiccup. "-project. MRI scans, g-growth progression, things like that."

"Hmm." Lex considered it for a moment. "And you're confident you can obtain these files?"

I nodded, trying and failing to avoid another hiccup in the process.

"Acceptable. Now all you need to do is ensure this project is actually successful. I'm expecting you to move to testing soon, but research will begin as soon as you're through the door." He paused, and I got the impression this was more for Mercy than me- "No interruptions." The car slowed to a halt, and I had a sudden realisation that we had, in fact, been taking the scenic route back home up until I could actually provide an answer. Now that's just petty, I thought.

Most of this was, in fact. But when you're a small child and the opposing party is the most influential man in the world, shutting up, dealing with it and later finding a way to completely ignore it was really the only option.

I attempted to be the first one out, for purposes of being in front. Unfortunately, the car finally had the child-locks on- meaning that this time, my never-ending battle to get out of the car before Mercy did was in vain. More fortunately, we apparently had some extra bodyguards (who were already at the entrance) to keep the reporters off our backs this time. I nevertheless made sure I looked extra-glarey as we returned to the building.

I followed the others on autopilot as I considered what I actually knew about psionics. By all indications, it wasn't necessarily metahuman in nature. There was that Doctor Destiny guy, after all-

The elevator... closed in my face, and I walked into it, hitting my nose on the door. Ow, I succinctly thought.

My frustration, fueled secondarily with the mild shock of walking into something, immediately attempted to launch a rebellion to free the sniffling and general other displays of sadness that were entirely inappropriate for my internal emotional state. It unfortunately enjoyed huge success in its campaign against conscious thoughts everywhere as I had to go and call an elevator of my own instead, leaving me basically as upset-looking as before I'd provided a decent answer.

But, I thought as the door opened, I have things to think about other than facial expressions and whatnot.

The Materioptikon won't be invented for another few years at the very least, I considered as the elevator travelled up to my room-slash-lab, thinking back to the psychotic dream-murderer fellow. But it does prove it's possible to develop psychic powers without any base metahuman genes. The elevator opened again with a pleasant chime, and I stepped through into my workspace.

Which had been stripped bare apart from the computer and some spare parts. Typical.

After one last wipe of my face and a moment to blow my nose, I sat down at the computer and started getting down to work. This was proto-Cadmus I was dealing with, here- they might not have the full funding while Superman wasn't an obvious threat to the government, but I doubted how much their morality would get in the way of shutting me up if they noticed me snooping around.

I started by sneaking in through lower-level operatives- exploiting a few emails between the headmaster of the Paranormal Centre and some lackeys here, a giggle at how badly people secured their passwords there, and I had basic access. That was when I hit my first wall.

From here, I could download files from the research institute- a pretty good array of neural scans, hypotheses, practice methods and genetic markers, for the most part. Volcana had already escaped- Good for her, I thought, though I doubted I'd be in a position to recruit her any time soon.

The problem was that- at this point in time, anyway- proto-Cadmus seemed to be organised into cells rather than a single, unified superstructure. Sure, I could hack the CIA to get to their command structure, but it sounded more reasonable to find a way that wasn't incredibly stupid and an even more blatant breach of national security. So I was effectively stranded on an island in the network, unless one of the higher-ups- who were a lot less lenient in leaving important emails lying around- got in touch with another cell.

Not hacking the CIA didn't imply that anything I was doing wassensible, of course. But lines had to be made somewhere.

Temporarily stumped by the security measures outside of the Firestorm cell, I settled for leaving a few viruses scattered around. They'd log things of interest- passwords, reports, unexpected network connections, things like that- and I could check up on them when I got back. It appeared my entry methods were quite secure, so I was confident I'd be able to.

With the lines set, I left my metaphorical fishing rods to go fish and started poring through all the other peoples' intellectual property I'd mysteriously stumbled upon.

The gist of it seemed to be somewhat similar to the Speed Force, in that it seemed to require creating a model of an object in a human frame of reference. Unlike the Speed Force, though, psionics was less mental and more neurological. Brain cells, by chance or metagenome influence, created consistent shapes- conduits to the Ethereal Plane, for lack of a better way to refer to its origin.

(I could use 'Psi Force'. But really, that was reserved for something sufficiently XCOM to deserve it.)

Which suggested that an external influence- such as an electromagnetic field- could prompt an otherwise normal brain to develop these 'psi structures', activating a previously-absent psychic ability.

Comparing it to the Materioptikon, the hypothesis seemed to be a good one- it fit well with the evidence. An ionised gas cloud and electrical arcs contributed to the suggestion of it being performed via electromagnetism, while the actual function of the device fit with it effectively brute-forcing a neural pattern. Low exposure was weak and temporary- like seeing something for a brief second and being asked to draw it five minutes later- but long-term exposure both strengthened and ingrained the power- like drawing a picture of your family.

All I'd need to do now would be to extrapolate the required magnetic fields to produce the necessary patterns. My only issue was that there was no apparent way to provoke a specific power- explaining why the government kept an eye out for useful psychics and training them rather than just making their own.

Hopefully I'd get something more useful than 'turn people insane via eye contact' if it ever reached a point of usability for myself. But that was still a ways off. For now, I had my research and lacked a way to apply it- I requisitioned the necessary items for a high-fidelity magnetism doodah, which would inevitably let my father know I'd finished my research, and moved onto more productive things. Creating some sufficiently stealthy robot probes, for one- there were still enough spare parts laying around to mess with. Once that was done, it'd be late enough to be worth sneaking off to the secret lair and taking the bike to Gotham.

After all, I'm sure the Bat Family was less than pleased about me getting temporarily kidnapped by a supervillain...

Which reminded me. I still hadn't confirmed if my father had been planning to get me a completed project for my birthday. Ah well, I decided as I took a break to wash my face, I guess the Question will have to figure that one out himself.