United States Air Force
Heavy Arms Disposition and Disposal
445th Airlift Wing
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Fairborn OH
Colonel Richard Flag Jr, Commander
Colonel Flag,
You are hereby served notice that in accordance with Executive Order 75.1993 the biological weapon in question code-named Doomsday, currently housed on-site at the Air Force Research Laboratory, is to be transferred effective immediately to Joint Base Andrews. Proper logistical recommendations from the Depart of Extra-Normal Affairs can be found in the attachments. Any questions should be directed to Director Waller. Your prompt attention is appreciated.
Regards,
Maj. Sam Lane
Secretary of Defense
The Pentagon
Cc: The White House
Cc: DIR/DEO Waller
Cc: DIR/CIA Eiling
Morning. November the eighth.
The crowds that had stayed in the LexCorp Plaza the day before remained into the night and the next morning. Sleeping bags littered the campus in intermittent groupings, the stages and the bands and the DJs kept going. The news channels kept going. At seven in the morning they started the cycle again, this time with a new message.
Victory.
Jenny was there.
She stays in on Election night, while Tim Drake, Roy Harper, and Jesse Wright carry out separate missions in the LexCorp Plaza. She stays in her room at the Metropolis Plaza Hotel, staring at Wally's twenty-two on the mattress. She sits on the bed, drinking black coffee, and she stares at it for hours. Waiting for some sign. I travelled all this way. Give me some sign that this is what I'm supposed to do. She moves from the mattress, slides down to the floor and smooths the wrinkles of her dress and kneels at the foot of the bed. She props her elbows and links her fingers together and presses her forehead against her thumbs. She breathes. God. Give me a sign. Please. I've tried to be good I swear I can.
She presses her eyes shut.
Please.
He ruined my life he—
Do it
What?
Do it pain justifies your actions
But—
I can't.
He took your life and made it a dream and now the dream is dead
I don't know. And she starts weeping.
Loneliness plus alienation plus fear—
What?
She opens her eyes.
Looks out the window. It's morning. How long was I kneeling there?
Looks at the gun.
She says okay, grabs it into her purse, and leaves. Before she can even think about it.
And she walked.
It had rained overnight, but only a little, and all the odors of the city, every rancid garbage can, every pile of dog shit, every littered soda or coffee seemed to assault her senses. The sun shone in between the buildings, twilight mixed with the day. She thought, this is Metropolis. Warts and all. Funny. From the brochures it looks so clean. Visit Metropolis, they said. Safest city in the world, they said. It's clean and it's safe, she always had heard, not like Gotham, I mean Jesus that place is like Hell through the pavement.
It's a lie.
He's just covered the problems.
She passed the Daily Planet building and watched two guards flying up the street—power suits, purple and green, and men, she guessed, inside. Team Luthor. Private security. Lex, she thought. My god.
Lex.
You must call me Lex.
She breathed and closed her eyes. And forced herself to keep walking.
Keep your head down. Eyes down.
Mustn't—
Do it
I don't feel good.
Do it
No.
You can't you know what he's done you have to end him come on he ruined you
No.
He made you into this not really alive not really dead you're between two worlds crying out you need to do something
She looked up.
She was there. At the edge of the crowd. She stuck her hand out like a fin and pushed through the bodies.
Do it he tried to possess absolute control over you and you're not really alive when that happens you're not alive you're not part of life you're anti-life
What?
So do it do this
She was nearing the front.
Someone was talking.
Men were coming.
Oh god.
She got to the front row.
Someone was talking. A woman with blonde hair curled over one shoulder, she was talking into a handheld micrphone, the kind Jenny had only ever seen on the evening news. The blonde lady said: "…And it's my pleasure and my honor now to introduce to you—"
The rock the chain and the lightning
What, no stop it what—
Who is your new god now and forever
"—The forty-third President of the United States! Mister! Alexander! Luthor!"
The blonde lady stepped to one side and far ahead the doors of the Tower opened, both of them, on cue. And out he came.
He looked younger. And yet.
Still the same.
She brought her purse around and held it just below her navel. She opened the flap and stuck her hand down in it. Felt the cool metal of the barrel under her fingers. She breathed. She heard it in her head again.
This is a gift Jenny it's the right to point the finger or the gun
Those eyes.
He—
Loneliness
It wasn't just that he remembered her. Or the flash in his eyes when he recognized her. No.
Alienation
It was much worse.
Fear
He never forgot her.
Despair
He glanced at her in the moment before she fire and his face seemed to light up.
Do it Jenny all of life is an equation that must be balanced and you have to balance this
In the moment before she fired—
They locked eyes.
And was it a smile she saw there on the devil's face?
She pulled the twenty-two out of her purse, thumbed the hammer back expertly. She was impressed at herself.
Off to one side she heard screaming. He did too, his head cocked only slightly. She saw his arms open up, a wide offertory.
Shall I tell you your life story?
Lex.
She closed her eyes.
He smiled.
She fired.
Wrapped her finger around the trigger and squeezed—not pulled, she remembered what Wally told her no one pulls a trigger for Christ's sake you squeeze it. So she did. And for the next moment, which stretched on for her for a thousand years, nothing happened.
And then.
The plaza exploded. Screams. People running.
And above it all a single sound rang out. How best to describe it. A weapon of death doing what it was made for. Jenny standing there in the crowd, alone and apart. And the twenty-two in her hands, heavy as a brick and she felt herself staring at it. Not weak. Not ashamed. Just.
It makes you feel it.
She thought to herself: my god.
And she heard something else
You've endured enough indignities Jenny known enough pain suffered enough nightmares its all over now there will be some discomfort but I promise you'll be free now you'll be justified and one day you'll join me at the Wall
Who are you?
In the moment before the Secret Service tackled her, slammed her head into the pavement, grabbed up her arms and dislocated her shoulders in the process, and cuffed her like a dog—
Godfrey
She turned the name over in her mind, as they slapped the cuffs on her and hauled her to her knees. She was stretching out now in her mind. She didn't know any—
Of course you don't but you will Jenny there's a wall and it contains all we are and all we shall be and I will see you at the end
Yes.
Yes she thought as they hauled her up.
To see him.
She.
He smiled.
She looked around, as much as she could. Her head hurt. Her knees hurt. Everything—
"Jenny."
"You," she said. "You remember me?"
"I do," he said. Those green eyes burned so bright and scanned the plaza, empty now. They both heard sirens in the distance. He looked back at her. "You missed." And he gestured to the dead thing on the steps, her body twisted out at a hideous angle, blood dripping away from the hole in her chest.
Then he looked at Jenny. "Her name was Cat. I'll make sure they remember it."
She spit on him.
He scowled and wiped it off his face. Looked at it and then at her. "And I'll make sure the world forgets you, Jenny Hubbard. Forever."
She screamed and threw herself at him and the Secret Service agents hauled her back to her knees.
"Goodbye," he said. "You should have said yes."
Then he gestured to the agents. She was almost sure, in the haze of a concussion, that the agents were going to kill her then and there.
It's okay. She lied to herself. This was—
"Superman," she wheezed out and Luthor stopped halfway up the stairs. He turned and looked back at her.
"I hope," she said and coughed up blood. "I hope he kills you."
She felt a dull smack at the base of her skull.
And was gone.
Noon of a winter day. Middle of December and the snow had come in droves, white drifts along the freeway sliding down on themselves until they became black sludge in the gutter. The sky was a great grey sheet and the air around him felt crisp and quiet. He thought of Kent. And Kent's mother, stuck in that snowdrift all those years ago. Imagine if she stayed, Man of Steel. Imagine if they never found you.
A world without Superman. That's all I've ever wanted.
He had decided to ride down from Metropolis to DC instead of the customary fly-in; Bill had mentioned it in passing in December: you could fly in on Marine One, we'll be on the lawn to welcome you in, could be a nice photo op. Luthor said no thank you, I prefer to ride in, and we'll keep security to a minimum. Something about being closer to the road. He told Bill he wanted to feel it, and it was so hard to feel the enormity of the thing from air. It was a line of humility, and bullshit.
And so he drove. Or more precisely, Jenner drove the Lincoln, in those days a simple black town car. Out of the city. Into the countryside. Over the bay. Into the district, as he'd come to call it. To some extent he felt like it was a district. A quarantine. All the apparatchiks and their offices were here, the mechanisms of the government he now controlled.
But. Maybe control wasn't the right word. After all there were such things as checks and balances. Partisan bickering, the quotidian detritus of the bureaucracy. Their beloved system. This democracy.
Watch, Man of Steel.
Watch as I take it from them.
He considered it.
Clark Kent.
Horus.
Apollo.
Jehovah.
Kal-el.
A lord of light. A creator, and a creation myth alongside. Superman. The immigrant from the stars who came here to save us from ourselves. Disgusting. I used to be able to predict your moves, pathetic as they were. But it's been two years. Two years since the No Man's Land and your ridiculous throwing down of the gauntlet. We haven't spoken and you've become a mystery. I used to be able to read your mind.
Can you read mine?
He looked out the window. They came upon a row of pine trees covered in snow. He plucked a pair of aviators from his jacket and slid them on. Slid down in the seat and dozed, thinking of Kent. And Lois.
Eventually he slept.
And eventually he woke. Jenner was calling back to him.
"Sir," he said. "We're entering the city."
Luthor straightened up and looked out the window. The city passing them by. Old buildings, or buildings meant to look old, standing alongside the new. He told Jenner to take the long way.
The Cathedral. The Supreme Court. Even Ford's Theatre.
A corner of the Capitol Hill landscaping. The Lincoln passed a spot of flat grass, snow driven to the sides, and a group of students maybe fifty deep lying concentric in the grass, the ringleader bellowing into a bullhorn towards the building. They were doing a lie-in. Maybe a die-in.
"Slow down," he said.
He lowered the window and watched the students lying there in the snow.
"Rich."
"Yes, sir?"
"Find out what they're protesting. I want to know if we can do something for them."
Rich looked at him in the mirror and nodded.
They came to a red light by the Capitol and Luthor beheld a gaggle of tour buses in a parking area—students coming and going for tours. Congresspeople coming and going. Lobbyists. Protesters. He considered getting out. Going for a visit. He made out one of the names on the buses: Gotham Public Schools. And a host of kids there milling about in the snow.
He lit a cigarette.
"I suppose I'll have to stop doing this."
"Sir?"
"Smoking. What do you think."
Jenner looked in the mirror. "I think you can do whatever you want, sir."
Luthor looked out the window. Tamped the cigarette against the frame and watched the kids. Some of them glanced over. And what, he wondered, did they see? A hand and a Lucky Strike from the blackness? Could they see his face and if so what did they think. A couple of them seemed to notice—one slapped his friend's shoulder and gestured toward the car. They gave a what's-up nod, and Luthor dipped his hand toward them.
They don't know.
They will.
The light turned green. He threw the Lucky Strike out into the slush.
The Lincoln went on.
Another few minutes and they were there. Jenner waved at the gate house. The gates parted and the Lincoln idled up the drive, a grand oval on the south side of the White House. Lex stepped out of the car and stood there on the drive. He wasn't sure what he was feeling, beyond some perfunctory exterior sense that he was watching things happen. And being watched.
Bill was out on the lawn, no overcoat in the chill, a flank of Secret Service agents behind him. They fanned out on the lawn, their backs to Luthor and Clinton. He grabbed Luthor's hand in a solid two-shake grip.
"How are you," he said and smiled that Bill Smile.
"I'm well," Luthor said. "Thank you for inviting me."
"It's my pleasure. We just want to make sure you have the tools you need to succeed, Lex. Let's come in and get a coffee."
Then.
Above them, like a sick joke, the clouds parted. The sun shone in, casting Clinton and Luthor in a halo.
No.
Luthor growled and looked.
Up in the sky.
No.
So help me god he growled and balled his hands into fists and tried to contain the fire inside.
He breathed.
And down came the alien.
Luthor did not move but every inch of him was alive. His hands were tight fists at his sides. His shoulders tensed, a condor over some carrion, his legs shoulders apart. His eyes, burning green on a good day, gleamed even more in the light of a snowy day. They were stuck on Superman. Floating there. That cape. That hair. That body.
Sickening.
Superman landed perfectly, smiled perfectly, walked up to the President of the United States and shook his hand perfectly. "It's nice to see you, sir."
Superman smiled and looked between Luthor and Clinton. He said, "May I have a word with the President-elect?"
"Of course," Clinton said and nodded and strolled away. The agents followed.
Superman watched until they were inside.
"You think they'd honestly walk away from the conversation we're about to have? They always listen. And you stand there with your smile and your—"
"Lex. Shut up."
"You're so full of shit, Kent."
"You almost broke me. Made me doubt myself."
Luthor waited.
"I wanted to tell you, Lex. I know who I am. I know what I stand for. The symbol on my chest means something. It's all some people have. The ideals I fight for are beyond both of us. Beyond good or evil or your wildest dreams. You can fight them all you like, you can scream against me and try to remake this world in your own graven image, but ideas never die. Truth and justice never die, Lex."
The breeze kicked up between them. Luthor said, "Are you finished?"
"Yes."
"Because I want to ask you, Kent. Does it burn in your chest. That this democracy, your democracy, elected me. You allowed it to happen. You could have stopped me anytime you wanted but I'm glad your purity kept you away. And now you float down here with that prepared bullshit and want to engage me? I think not."
"I've been here for years, Lex. I'm here right now."
Luthor rolled his eyes.
"You could walk away," Superman said. "Give it to Pete. Say you ran to prove that you could, and you did it and you're going to back to private life now."
"Suddenly you care. Convenient. You sat this one out and it's cost you your moral center, Kent. After this you'll be lucky to save a cat from a tree. And how does that make you feel? They wanted a messiah, you settled for being a sideshow."
"I could say the same thing about you."
"Oh I'm sure you could, couldn't you?"
"I don't answer to you, Lex."
"But you answer to them!" He pointed down the lawn at the south fence. "And not me?!"
"I'm trying to save them!"
Superman said it again, quieter: "I'm trying to save them."
"From what!"
Superman was looking at the ground. When Luthor spoke, he drifted up and stared into those horrible green eyes.
"From you."
Luthor seethed.
"You never believed in me," he said. "After all this time."
Superman breathed. This conversation was over. Before it began. It was now wasted motion.
He lifted into the air and felt the breeze rise to meet him.
"Lex," he said. "You may have them fooled, but you'll never fool me. I'll be watching you. Closely."
Then he was gone.
And so in 2001, at the dawn of the new millennium, the human story went on. Unabated. Uninterrupted for once by superhumans and their higher concerns. The story went on. Had always gone on. Would always go on. There will, he discovered, always be another story. Another life to save. Another mission. Another disaster to avert. Another crisis to solve.
It ends when you wish it to end.
What matters then is command. And discipline.
And courage.
Right?
Superman landed in Metropolis, across the street from the Daily Planet building. He ducked into a nearby phone booth and in a blur he stepped out as Clark Kent. An impeccable blue suit, white oxford, red tie in a four-in-hand. He tipped the fedora at a jaunty angle. For once, the suit fit. For years it hadn't—part of the illusion.
But to some extent that was done now.
Lex Luthor knew who he was.
And of course he knew quite well who Lex Luthor was.
It was a freeing thing. No secrets anymore.
He smiled. The street was dark for once. No hum of life to it. Ah, but he still felt it. Through his shoes, in the sidewalk. He knelt and laid one hand on the cement. And felt the world sing to him. The sidewalk. The earth beneath it. Death, that feeds new life. The roiling hum of the subway. Deeper. A tectonic plate. The spin of the planet, the warmth of the molten core, the electromagnetic harmony of its existence and this dimension.
He admitted it all kept him pretty humble. It's an exercise in smallness when we ponder the universe and our place in it. Even with gods, aliens, and all the monsters besides—
Father.
I think I understand now.
It's a privilege to be among them.
He stood. Straightened his jacket and righted his posture; for years he had stooped, slouched, hidden inside Clark Kent. Now he stood straight and true. No more secrets.
He took a breath and looked ahead. The building was lit up like a Christmas tree. He looked at the newsroom there on the thirty-eighth floor. They were waiting. He thought of Ma's tree, always a Douglas fir from the Horne farm two towns over, the real thing, all those lights twinkling from nests in the tinsel. It was a beautiful memory.
He crossed the street. Stuck his hands in his packets and let out a long sigh.
it was like a weight had been lifted.
In spite of everything.
He crossed the street, and as he did he saw Lois slink out from one of the doors. She shut it behind her and sauntered down the steps. She smiled when she saw him. And when he saw her he opened his arms and she leapt into a hug and a kiss.
He put her down and said, "What's the occasion?"
"Perry wanted to throw a little honorarium, said we deserved it. Everyone's upstairs."
"Everyone, really?"
"Yeah," she said and smiled. Rested her head on Clark's shoulder. "Who knew the big guy had it in him."
Clark cocked his head. He looked in and through the building: thirty-eight floors up Perry was leaning against his office doorjamb drinking something from a lowball, talking to Troupe and Lombard. He was—
"Oh wow," Clark said. "He's laughing."
"I think after the election he's determined to find joy where he can," Lois said. "He's a man after my own heart, I don't mind telling you."
He thought about it.
"Hey," she said. "Are you okay?"
He waited. He noticed he was slouching. It was all hitting him again.
Lex.
Himself.
All of this.
"I don't know," he said. Stayed looking down. "I went down to talk to Lex."
"...Oh."
"I can't help thinking. What if I was wrong?"
She frowned. "What do you mean?"
He shook his head. "For years I've hoped that one day the planet would no longer need us. That maybe, we'd save all we possibly could. Society would reach some kind of stasis. This age of superheroes would have an endpoint. And the world would..."
She was quiet.
He shook his head. Shook himself out of it. Looked at her and smiled.
"We," she said and waited. The word hung in the air, waiting to be picked up. "We'll keep our eyes on him. It'll all be okay, Clark."
He looked at her.
Something Bruce had said came back into his mind.
When the time is right—
We'll take Luthor down.
He slid one hand around her waist, pulled her close. "I love you, Lois Lane. Till the end of time."
She smiled, one corner of her mouth up at a cute angle.
"I love you too."
It was the way she said it. So casual, and so meaningful. He knew she was conflicted about it, too. All the years of their lives and all of them so affected by this man. But he could also tell it was important to her to move past her reservations. His too, he supposed. He never once doubted her intent, or her resolve. And resolve was always the word for Lois Lane. That fiery spit of hope, that determination. How human. How could he not fall in love with her? And what was it she saw in him? The last son of Krypton? The sole survivor of a dead race? Once upon a time he had merely been a professional rival for her—while, hilariously, Superman became a personal rival.
Eventually it all came out okay.
Everything does.
He stooped to kiss her, and she met it. He watched a million atoms dance across her skin, a million skin cells die and flutter away. The fabulous internal systems that allowed this miracle to happen—this human to exist. The quantum powers beyond any measure that brought people together. Kept them together. The bonds of affection that create society and allow love and kindness, truth and justice, to exist.
Together they went inside, to see what lie ahead.
And in the White House, President Luthor holds a closed session. Ostensibly it's for Cabinet selections. And yet. The briefing is not on his official schedule, nor does it exist on any public register or anything that may be traceable. No staffer will remember it. No presser will mention it.
He storms past Mac there at the door, in his obscene plaid suit and straw hat, and Mac says, "I think they're ready for you, Mister Lewthor."
Luthor nods and opens the door. Shuts it back behind him. Stands there for a moment—
The beings around the table look at each other, and at him. He sits, unusually, at the head of the table instead of the big chair on the side, the one with President Luthor on the name plate in front of it.
"Now," he says. "Let's begin. Imagine a conspiracy not of rogue nations or an intelligence apparatus but of a brilliant man and his old friends playing billiards with the universe. Geopolitics bores him, human lives are beneath him, the only thing that satisfies is Power itself. The problem of absolute power. And the ability to remake the world. Who's with me?"
Sam Lane—
Amanda Waller—
Wade Eiling—
They all nod and say yes.
Luthor looks at the far end of the table. At a man in a tan suit and orange hair swept forward on a prodigious cranium. He had done this sort of thing before, been among these people and believed he knew their secret hearts better than perhaps they themselves did. The Source, in the end, reveals all things.
"And you, Mister Godfrey?"
Godfrey smiles. His thin lips curl away from his teeth. He offers up his hands. "You know, my master supports you, Lex. And he always has."
Luthor smiles.
And says, "Welcome back."
Continued...