Department of Extra-Normal Operations
Washington, D.C.
Office of the Deputy Director
INTEROFFICE MEMORANDUM
DATE: 8-4-2001
FROM: BONES, Deputy Director
TO: Cameron Chase, Special Agent
Dear Agent Chase,
The accompanying material is confidential and approved for your eyes only. The preliminary dossier was presented to us on 2-4-2001 from a crime scene that is still under active investigation. All details of this situation are highly classified. It is being given to you for comprehensive analysis, cataloging and cross-referencing content against all known databases under Code Red measures. We believe the matters in the dossier constitute a potential threat to national security. Background: the case involves a series of correspondence and collated data from multiple media sources sent from the Metropolis metro area in the year leading up to the 2000 election and immediately thereafter. Please review and provide context within the appended guidelines and remit to me as soon as possible. Your prompt attention is appreciated.
Sincerely Yours,
[signed]
Bones
Years ago.
Sam Lane—
Had sent the letter asking for the introduction.
Glorious Godfrey ran out of WGBS in those days, his half hour show wedged between Donahue and Sally Jessie, meant to catch the low-information afternoon crowd. In the evening he went on NBC, ABC, CBS or if he was feeling spritely he'd go on with McLaughlin and join the yelling. The message was some variation on the same theme: the superhero community was made up of a bunch of essentially pugilistic and overgrown children who'd rather throw fists than solve the very real problems their world was facing. Hunger, deforestation, overcrowded prison populations. Even in the late Eighties when society seemed to be riding high at the dawn of Fukuyama's end of history, there was Godfrey admonishing. Morgan Edge was still the head of WGBS. He got Lane's letter. His secretary had delivered it, saying, "Do we know anyone at Nellis Air Force Base?"
Edge cocked an eye and said, "Probably some joke of Luthor's. Give it here."
He slid one calloused finger under the flap and ripped it open. Read it over. Looked at Betty, standing there like she was waiting for the bus. "We're going to have a visit. I'm going downstairs."
Down he went to Studio C: broadcast haven for Talking Heads with G. Gordon Godfrey. He waved past the stage crew, swung backstage to Godfrey's dressing room. He rapped his knuckles on the door and waited. No sound.
"Mister Godfrey," he said and cleared his throat.
"Enter."
Edge slid the door open. In those days he'd learned to tread lightly after a scad of disappointments for, well, how to best to describe it? An out of town interest.
Luthor had bought out the last surviving Gazzo years before, Tómas scrambling to the LexTower after the rest of his family had been slowly killed off by some crazy down Gotham way. So it wasn't from the old mob that Godfrey came, and his interests—and those of his boss—were no mere territorial pissing matches. No.
Edge knew where Godfrey came from. More precisely, he knew what Godfrey was.
Didn't he?
Godfrey was sitting on a brown leather davenport against the back wall, watching black and white footage on a television set. Next to him a magisterial turntable arrangement was playing a soft guitar line. Godfrey looked fixed on the television. Edge looked at him, and then at the screen.
Hard to describe. Riots. Police in riot gear, advancing on angry throngs. Kids—students. Guns. Flowers. Godfrey was scowling, his glasses reflecting the image. To Edge he looked like a white-eyed automaton.
"Uh," Edge said. "You got a letter."
Godfrey grabbed the remote and paused the image. The screen shuddered and froze on a woman, crying over a body at her knees. Godfrey looked at Edge.
"Kent State," he said. "Do you know why I'm watching this, Mister Edge?"
"Nope." He liked to think he knew better than to question.
"Because it engrosses me," Godfrey said. "What stops a bad guy with a gun, Morgan, a good student with a flower? A restraining order? Your society creates all these suppositions about what life should be and then people roundly break all expectations. Society is a trap, Mister Edge, and I've come to set you free."
Edge waited for a moment. HIs legs burned but he dare not move, dare not flinch. Godfrey could be cagey and just weird a lot of the time, and Edge didn't want to set him off.
"Uh," he said again.
"Give it here," Godfrey said and held out his hand. Edge pulled it from his coat and laid it in Godfrey's flat, pale hand. Almost robotically.
Godfrey flipped it open. His eyes grew behind the glasses and he smiled. Looked back at Edge.
"Major Lane, you say."
"It could be good optics."
"Indeed it could. Arrange it at once!"
Edge turned and went away. Godfrey watched him go, scowling.
A week later, Major Lane came to the WGBS Building. Edge himself directed Lane to Godfrey's dressing room. Even to Godfrey with his long experience it seemed so…what, parochial? Mechanical. He confessed he was getting tired of this place and their ways. But there was a mission to be done.
"Major Lane," he said and gestured toward the davenport. Reclining at one end and smoothing the wrinkles in his suit, he smiled and beheld Lane, sitting on the other end, as far away from Godfrey as he could. On the edge of the cushion. Such military bearing. Godfrey clicked his tongue.
"So," Godfrey said. "You're the famous Sam Lane."
Lane smiled and shifted in place. "It's a pleasure, Mister Godfrey. I just wanted to meet you before I leave town, and let you know…how highly I think of you."
"Before you leave?" Godfrey cocked his head. "But you've just flown in. Expressly for this meeting, have you not?"
"I'm afraid that's classified, Mister Godfrey. Let's just say for now that since I'm in the neighborhood I wanted to pass my warm wishes to you."
"I appreciate that," Godfrey said. "Very much."
Then Godfrey was standing. Lane paid attention to the contours of his suit, brown wool in three pieces, flaring about him as moved from the davenport to the turntable assembly. Godfrey said, "Do you listen to records, Major Lane?"
"Hm?"
"Well," Godfrey said and bent down in front of the rows. "I'm told you military types are all business, no foolishness, and I wonder if that extends to music. I do have some Gregorian chants here if you prefer a sobering experience. I just felt like perhaps we could enjoy some music while we talk."
"That'll be fine," Lane said.
"Buffalo Springfield," Godfrey said and stuck a finger in the air. "I've been reading on the civil unrest of the Sixties and as troubling as I find the whole affair—of course I confess my home was little different—I find the music of the era remarkable. So, Buffalo Springfield. For what it's worth." Then he chuckled as he put the record on. Resumed his recumbency on the davenport.
Lane gave a tight smile. "Good one."
"Thank you," Godfrey nodded. "So. What's on your mind."
"Well," Lane said. "Not to put too fine a point on it but beyond my personal fondness for your message I also wanted to come as a bearer of sorts."
Godfrey waited. He raised his head slightly, looking through the bifocals he didn't need.
Lane said, "You've been evangelizing, if that's the word, against the superheroes for a while now and not only do I personally agree with you, but I want to let you know there are people in positions of power who also agree with you."
Godfrey only said, "Yes, I know."
Lane looked around. "Are we, ah—"
"Of course."
"There is a Task Force dedicated to the missions the Justice League won't prosecute. Call it wetworks, call them what you like. Missions of a certain moral turpitude the superheroes can't by their nature be party to."
"Can't or won't."
"Both?"
"Ah."
"This task force is headed up by a woman named Waller, who has no great love for the super-hero community."
"Much like you."
Lane waited. "Yeah."
"And she sends their worst offenders to die on suicide missions?"
Lane nodded.
"That's the most deliciously evil thing I've ever seen!" Godfrey threw his head back and laughed.
"Mister Godfrey—"
"It's all right, Major. I see it in your eyes. You feel like you hate them. Not just the bad guys but these heroes too, these, what, Legends? Let me tell you—your hate is justified. What have they ever done for us? A few destroyed cities every Wednesday, creating or contributing to a culture of violence. But this is academic isn't it, Major. And so you come asking for my permission, and my willingness to join you. And you want to wipe out not only the heroes but this suicide squad as well. You only need world enough and time."
Lane shifted. And felt Godfrey's eyes upon him. Even through the Larry King glasses. He felt the eyes, the burn of them. His face felt flushed, and his skin hot.
What is—
"I'll join you. You already know it, you can see my thoughts as well as I can see yours. These superheroes…their time is up. It won't happen today, or tomorrow, but soon. Just like your Sixties. It will take the leaders of the free world decades to unravel it all. Do you understand."
"Yes…"
"Tell me everything."
Godfrey's eyes—Godfrey's words—Godfrey himself—burned in Lane's mind.
Do this Samuel anti-life justifies it
"Amanda Waller," Lane said. Blurted it out, a spasm of fire, of true belief.
"So you've said."
"Lex Luthor. Paul Westfield. Wade Eiling. Ah—certain loyalists at DEO, FBI, and CIA."
Godfrey breathed. Smoothed himself out. Looked back at Lane and his jaw was slack a little. He fixed it and said, "Major," like he was coming on to him. "Say no more. We can do business."
"I'm very glad to hear that."
"But my time is limited," Godfrey said. "I'm afraid my message here is just what the home office might call suggestive selling. Eventually it will falter, and I'll be summoned home for the next project. So. Here is what will happen. I will take your message of friendship back to my master. And we will not speak again. Not for many years."
Lane looked sad.
"But," Godfrey said and smiled, the lips curling away on his face, "When we do. It will be on the occasion of ending the age of heroes. Once and for all."
Department of Extra-Normal Operations
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Field Office
DATE: 3-15-2002
Background: An anonymous tip from our Portland Bureau indicated threats via letter, sent to Oliver Queen, chair of Queen Technologies roughly occurring around the time of President Luthor's inauguration in January 2001. For cross-referenced cases with the FBI please consult the attached summaries for known offender Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. Back to the issue: Queen's alter ego and attendant superhuman activity, colloquially the Green Arrow, is known to us, which is how we intercepted the information in the first place. However, the receipt of anonymous threats connotes a similar pathology to the Kaczynski case and causes action.
Comorbidity: LexCorp had been conducting Metahuman research as far back as 1986. This isn't new information, but no one in the super community or in the intelligence community has, as I've discovered, figured out what he's done with it. Within the available research covering the major members of the Justice League, two civilians are also named—Jesse Wright & Allen O'Neill (discussion forthcoming)—but only in a single line of text. We were able to access his servers and copy available files on Queen, a summary of which follows, with citations attached:
Luthor's file on Queen launches into five terabytes worth of biography, family history, social survey, history of Starling City, history of the Queen family, history of his known associates, history as a solo actor and with the Justice League, cross-referenced files on Hal Jordan, a detailed history of Queen's most well-known accomplice Roy Harper, as well as a philosophical consideration of superhuman activity.
However, mixed in with the survey of Queen's existence, I found the letters themselves. Letters we believe were sent by the aforementioned Jesse Wright (see attached profile but here's a summary: at the time of this writing he is a High School freshman in Starling City, California). Retrieval has indicated a large portion of blacked out data was sent to Wright via various payphones in the Starling metro area from what we believe is the President's personal cellular telephone.
Bear with me:
Exhibit A: Letter 1. "I have information you may be interested in hearing. Roy Harper. Respond for more." No response from Queen.
Letter 2 includes a polaroid of Harper's partially-desiccated corpse. Of note is a gunshot wound in the forehead; forensics we retrieved from Metro SCU did not speak to this injury: "What was he doing there? Come clean about your adventures away from the Left Coast."
Letter 3. From Queen: "Prove it."
Letter 4, from Wright: "Harper KIA, Random crime or premeditated—and what if they finger you? You disagreed with one another, the violence is well-published. Come clean."
No correspondence from Queen for three weeks. We assume he's thinking it over some more during this time. Cross-reference: there are no major meta-threats in Starling, and—casting a wider net for context—none in Seattle or Portland or much of the Northwest. We assume, discussed in the cross-referenced file codenamed Iliupersis, that meta-activity is on a sharp decline during this period as well as Queen's own focus on his civilian life as opposed to functions as the Green Arrow. Meta-profiling work sampled from Dr Ashley Zolomon (see summary, attached) corroborates a history of such obsession in Queen and his alter-ego. Digression: secret identities are a moot point in the discussion; DEO and Luthor's own research gained over a series of years rendered that particular mystery pointless. Wright's letters are leading Queen to a place, but it's not about unmasking. That would be too simple, I believe.
Letter 5 is Queen's reply: "You know who I am?"
Wright replies in Letter 6: "Doesn't matter. Find justice for Roy. And for Luthor's other victims."
Letter 7, Queen to Wright: "I demand to know who you are."
Letter 8:, Wright to Queen, not three days later: "The Ghost of Christmas Future. You sent Roy to LexCorp didn't you."
Letter 9, Queen back: "No. He went on his own."
Letter 10, Wright back: "To finally 'get' LL? You must have known it wouldn't work. Why send him to his death."
Letter 11, Queen back: "Enough. You're someone who knows me. Who are you."
Letter 12, Wright: "Someone who wants Luthor done in too. Reasons are my own. I'll give you a goodwill gift. A name. Research it and hit me back."
Letter 13, Queen out. He must have finally started paying attention to the stamp and Postal indicia: "You're in Starling. You're some punk kid thinks he's someone. Fess up."
Letter 14: "Maybe. Look into this would you? Melissa Dugan. She worked at LexCorp after the IPO in '85. Where is she now?"
No correspondence exists from Queen or Wright after this. We presume Queen got spooked and dropped everything—especially as we've seen no movement from either Wright or Luthor on the matter.
As to investigating Wright for malicious intent, I leave that to people assigned to do so. If any. Although, for the record, DEO has sat on a list of dead people known to be connected to Luthor in one way or another going back thirty years, and top of that list is Dugan herself. I wouldn't be surprised if Wright sent these names out to Queen as well, in an attempt to steer him someplace Luthor wants him to go.
Here are the names from the DEO file:
Melissa Dugan
Gretchen Kelley
Peter Sands
Sydney Happersen
Sasha Green
Dabny Donovan
Paul Westfield
Frank Berkowitz
Contessa Erica Alexandra del Portenza.
I undertook a brief microfilm search into the names and have summarized findings as below. Forensic summaries are attached & cross referenced.
—All but two—Westfield and Berkowitz—were at some point on LexCorp's payroll. Dugan was the earliest-employed among the list: dismissed from LexCorp in 1985 and found dead in her suburban home later that year.
Gretchen Kelley was Luthor's private physician for approximately six years in the late 80s before dying of aneurysm in 1992—however, competing information from an anonymous source points to her serving consecutive life sentences in Pena Duro prison in Santa Prisca.
Peter Sands we have working for the Metro-Ledger in Features 1986-1989 before divorce and alcoholism drove him away from high society. Found dead in his apartment in 1990, with Clark Kent's name written in Sands' own blood. Dismissed out of court 1990, by Luthor's personal attorney Joanna DaCosta.
Donovan was arrested for illegal cloning experiments in 1991 and died in a prison riot at Stryker's Island that same year.
Happersen died in 1993—competing sources place it as radiation poisoning or a nameless blood disease, possibly HIV; Taiwanese relatives claimed his body soon after death and the matter was considered closed.
Berkowitz—killed during a speech in Centennial Park in Metropolis, unknown assailant, 1997.
Sasha Green, Luthor's personal trainer for a number of years (at least 86-93) was found dead in mid-August 1993 in a LexCorp subbasement. Our research points to a settlement with the family, and no other information exists on the matter.
The Contessa del Portenza—a wedding certificate between her and Luthor exists from the island of Corto Maltese from 1997, but no other corroborating information has been found. Could be a ruse. Could be a super-joiner, wanting to hook up with Luthor's bank account.
Finally, Westfield: a civilian director for the same genetics firm Donovan claimed to have controlled, Project Cadmus, which has since been subsumed under the DEO umbrella. Directly responsible for the creation of Project: Rebirth—aka "Superboy"—as a genetic donor. Westfield has not been seen since an apocryphal sighting in Centennial Park in 1993.
Lots of death in a short time frame. Not the issue.
The issue is Wright feeding the information to Queen in an attempt to draw him out. More authentically troubling is my growing belief that this action comes from the president himself, as part of some gambit to fight the superhuman community using the full power of the federal government—starting with Queen and ending, putatively, with the removal of super-powered enemies entirely.
This concludes the preliminary report.
Respectfully submitted,
[signed]
Cameron Chase
1993.
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base sat too close to metropolitan centers. Not that anyone would really call Dayton a metropolitan center—too much decay, too many drugs, not enough opportunity—but it was a city none the less and carried a Malthusian problem of close quarter and the inability of certain segments of the government to do their work in the quiescence they preferred. The factories were gone. The good old days were gone. The rest of the state might be comfortable with agrarian peace but not this town. What remained in the Dayton area, having subsumed quaint Fairborn in its ranks in a curious mixture of dead industry and gentrification, seemed a sleepy populace latching onto the base for disposable income, comfortable in their lives of quiet desperation. Not un-industrial—almost like Cincinnati, which he knew ancestrally from a covert experiment below the Central Parkway, and its outspread grime: the detritus and forgotten places that scared the soul and caused the eyes to look away, anywhere, any safe place.
So it was an Air Force Base. Known, and unknown. It harbored a flight wing as cover for clandestine military experiments on the order of what Lane had come to investigate—it harbored the shell of a working base as cover for other activities the government undertook below ground. He thought about the rumor of aliens in cold storage on site. He thought about it as the Land Rover crested the freeway and made for the base.
Aliens. If only they knew.
Well, he supposed they did. They had the idea of an alien—one that looked like them and wore red underpants. The truth was more difficult. Lane was more difficult. He understood the world in a way few do. It was what endeared him to Luthor, who saw things similarly. A chaotic universe in need of a strong hand. A spinning death cult that needed to see the value of life. For Major Lane, life and death weren't just opposites, or things that happened to humans. Nothing so procedural. No. They were philosophical opposites. To be countenanced. He remembered his father dying: sitting there watching the functions of his body slowly stop. Like parts of an engine failing. One by one. Death was chaos, organ failure, oxygen deprivation and the slow desiccation of a great man. Indiscriminate. To be fought. And life, then, was to be controlled. By force if necessary.
Of course, Lois was Lois about such a thought. She broke free, tired and resistant of what he was trying to tell her.
Live free. The old motto. Or die.
Together, Godfrey had once said, we all can live forever.
The Land Rover passed through the gates. They came upon a row of great hangars, all painted white and a long wing of C-17s, flat grey behemoths, angled and pointing towards Fairborn.
Lane stepped out and smoothed his uniform as he did. Squinted in the afternoon sun, orange clouds streaked across the sky. He looked at the far hangar and there, stepping lightly in a perturbation, was a rail of a man in a white lab coat, Coke bottle glasses and a bowl haircut flapping in the wind. Lane took a breath.
"Doctor Happersen."
"Major Lane!" The way he said it. So harried, so shaken.
"I was told you were expecting us."
"Yes, yes," Happersen said. "I'm afraid just not so soon."
Lane waved a hand. Started for the hangar and Happersen fell in line alongside. "Can I see it?"
"Whu—the weapon?"
Lane cocked his head. Beheld Happersen for a moment and wondered where Luthor found him. He carried himself like a belligerent crazy person, the agitated sense of the over-shoulder look. Someone always watching him. Luthor must have destroyed his self-esteem. Among other things.
"Yes," Lane said. Slowly. For emphasis. "I'm told it's dead?"
"Quite," Happersen said. "Killing Superman, we think, really, ah, well, really took it out of it."
Lane made a face.
They went into the hangar, which held nothing beyond a single elevator shaft in the center. Happersen motioned toward the platform and once they were on, it began descent.
Lane looked up and watched the sidewall lights blur into three lines. He sighed.
Happersen was tapping something into his Newton. Lane crossed his arms. The silence was—
"Major Lane."
"Yes?"
"May I ask who sent you here?"
Lane looked back at him. "You might."
Happersen nodded and went back to his Newton. Eventually the lift slowed and stopped in an open laboratory carved into the earth, sediment and dyed limestone for walls. Black, with green effects for a neon lighting. Lane took it in. Cleansuits walking about, from lab table to lab table.
"I don't pretend to know what this is," he said.
"Of course not," Happersen said. "But we live in strange days, don't you agree? Four Supermen on the streets and who knows if any of them is the real thing. That is the purpose of your visit, is it not? Over and above what Westfield feels is appropriate?"
In that moment they locked on each other. Neither scared—Lane did not scare easy, and Happersen must have found his spine on the way down, inspired perhaps by the comfort of this lab. This one was curious, studying Lane as much as Lane studied him.
"Yes," Lane said. "Show me it."
They walked. The far end of the cavern was a tube filled with a green liquid, same as the rest of the lab. Lane knew the tableau. He felt as if he'd seen this in some film. Ahead lay the monstrosity.
Doomsday.
A hulking grey mass, rock and alien muscle, inert and entombed in this green death. Arms twisted at its sides. Dead eyes were glassed over and stared up at nothing. The mouth, scabbed over on one side, and drooped seizure-like to one side.
Lane walked up to the tube and laid a hand on the glass. Stared into the dead eyes. It looked—
Like it was screaming.
"What is the point of keeping it here?"
"Science."
Lane glanced at him. He said, "Luthor was right. You care only for your own schemes."
Happersen did that slow nod again. He started pacing.
"Maybe. But bringing Life out of Chaos has always been the mission of Project Cadmus, Major Lane. Fear, loneliness, desperation—they have created an untenable world. We believe that we as gifted stewards have the power to steer the world away from such barbarism."
"Barbarism," Lane said, his eyes still on the monster.
"You want to know if it can be revived?"
"How soon can you have something?"
"You won't care for the answer, Major."
"Tell me."
"Years."
Lane looked at him.
"Five," Happersen said. "At least. Cellular degeneration is too egregious. We're working on synthetic samples but to give you what you want would take time."
In five years he'd face retirement. Golf, and whisky, and the sweetness of going where no one needed him. It was a dream. But—
To dream of a life beyond this, beyond the uniform—
Lane only breathed, staring at the dead animal in the tube. He felt to some extent he was looking at the Devil himself.
And was he staring back?
Continued...