From the Office of the Vice President
Number One Observatory Circle
Washington DC 20008
15 April 2001
Dear Lex,
I hope you forgive the impertinence of using your first name. Rest assured it will be Mister President hereafter. I merely wanted to extend my thanks for our conversation last week, and if it will please the physicians at Walter Reed and their medical reports which they have conducted by now of all Cabinet-level positions, I will gladly submit to psychological profile. I have also sent a copy of this letter to the Surgeon General, the Attorney General, and the Speaker of the House. As you are no doubt aware, I value transparency at all levels of government—and my own position should not be immune to inspection. I look forward to working with the Surgeon General in the days and weeks ahead on selection of a suitable physician. My thanks to you as always for your friendship and oversight.
Kindest Personal Regards,
Pete
Midnight at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
He stood alone on the tarmac, a line of hangars far to his left side, and on his right a rolling green landscape that stretched towards the city, butting up to a chainlink fence and a conglomeration of Cape Cods beyond. Those houses, he thought, squat pastel affairs in which people probably lived in their whole lives. Lives...in which they made do. In which a simple city life with familiar cozenages sufficed. They were happy enough.
He frowned.
There was a time before, when he might have wanted such a thing. Now he wasn't sure.
Rick Flag was forty-four.
He felt old.
He had been in the Air Force in one capacity or another since he was seventeen. Eighteen, officially, but he had gone to the recruiters a month before his birthday.
He thinks of it often. "Give me a chance," he says and the officer just points at the door. Rick looks at it and back at the officer and says, "I want to prove myself." The officer bothers to look at him. He says, "Millions of guys like you do. Do you know what happens to them?" Rick shakes his head. The officer says, "They die. They get a rifle, they think it's a license to kill, and they stand up too soon in the redzone and I have to write their mothers. Tell them Johnny never even fired his goddamn gun." "You sound jaded," Rick says. The officer says, "Maybe. Realistic. What about you?" "I want to prove myself," Rick says. "I feel like—" "Like what?" "Like I can't be a man unless I join." The officer leans back in his seat and judges Flag. "No." "No?" The officer says you heard me and he goes back to his paperwork. And Rick spends the next month going down there. Every day, nine to five. He sleeps under the eaves some nights, when he can get away with it, using the Fawcett City Post for covers. He sleeps and doesn't eat and he waits to turn eighteen. One day, the officer brings him out a ham sandwich and Rick devours the thing. When he's done he looks up and the officer says, "Let's talk."
He thought—
Well, he thought about a lot of things.
And out of a life that seemed to stretch far away from him, away from his control, he thought about himself. Like always. He thought about himself, sitting on the stoop outside that recruiter's office. Waiting for an explanation. Waiting for absolution.
That would never come.
He wanted to join and prove himself. He wanted to save people, or made up a lie that he wanted to. He even told June the lie. And she believed him—a sick codependency. And now here he was pushing old age. And what to show for it?
He supposed—
Maybe the Squad was good for that.
After all. If you die, you die young.
Sometimes, Waller told him once, surviving is the hard thing.
He breathed.
He thought about himself.
Because now he was all he was ever going to have.
The Squad, gone. Waller, elevated—gone away professionally, whatever collegial relationship they had, gone. June…
June was gone too.
He was alone.
Administrating this base alone.
He looked up. Midnight. It's better this way. Air traffic is low, and the city is quiet too. Less of a chance for "questions" or "concerns" or any of their bullshit opinions they think they have. A ring of floodlights surrounded the tarmac and this particular hangar. Official release for tomorrow would speak to a late-hours training exercise. It would keep them quiet.
He breathed. Fixed his eyes on the stars for a long moment.
June. The sky is so beautiful. You'd love it. I swear you would.
Eventually the hustle of the base came back to his senses. The wind scoring the tarmac, distant voices. It all felt so right. And yet.
He looked over to one side. Straightened up.
Doctor Teng, Happersen's slightly more competent replacement, and a fleet of the Cadmus cleansuits were wheeling out a circular chrome slab. In the flashes between the floodlights, he saw it. And the thing upon it.
He knew it only through word of mouth. Waller had forbidden the use of the Squad back in ninety-three in fighting the creature called Doomsday—unnecessary waste of life, she'd said, to which Harkness bitched in his Australian brogue: "Wut are we then, ey?"
Flag chuckled, surprising himself. And watched Teng direct the Cleansuits and the slab toward the nearest C-17.
He supposed he should be closer. Actually supervising. But—
He had seen the visuals, years before. If that thing was any kind of alive, distance would be the only defense. It could break out of whatever restraints the Cleansuits had made for it. Kill them all and jump the hell away to go kill Superman again. It seemed drawn to him in the first place, from what Flag could tell. Maybe it would try again. If it could.
Who knew.
He breathed.
And made a face when he saw Teng running up to him.
"Colonel!" he yelled and waved one hand.
Flag put on his work face. He said, "Yes?"
"Message from Washington," Teng said. "They want to express their thanks for the orderly transition and ask that you do not speak of this action on any official record."
So that was that, then. He nodded. "Anything else?"
"Just that we will be vacating your base within the next twelve-twenty-four hours. Cadmus will relocate to an offshore concern."
"That'll be fine, Doctor, thank you."
Internally, Flag exploded. Get the hell off my base. Your superiors exiled me here. To shut me up. Mission accomplished. Now get out.
Teng nodded and turned and rushed back to the C-17.
Flag watched them close it up. Watched it taxi down the runway. He waited as the night closed in upon him and he stuck his hands in his pockets, not regulation at all, and stiffened his joints to cope with the night chill.
He watched the C-17 until it took off, angling over Fairborn in a shallow arc and heading east.
He stood there for a long while afterward.
He was thinking of June. And looking up at the stars.
The sky is so beautiful. You'd love it.
In Gotham City, Wayne Enterprises held its quarterly board meeting.
The usual detritus of it all bored Bruce Wayne. And it always had. He knew the inner workings of his company better than perhaps Lucius did—which in his own estimation meant he could sleep through these things. Doing so came at a cost, like it always did: the Board would take his disinterest at face value and every so often the idea of a vote-off was considered. Was considered—in that bland, past tense way, where no Board member would officially make the motion but rather bring the idea up in committee. But then it was usually dropped. Daggett or someone would back off when challenged. And Bruce would go back to sleep. And dream.
Dream of the past. The future—or at least the one he imagined was coming.
Dream of mistakes, and successes. Of old friends, new alliances, and—
Slowly, and surely—perhaps even irrationally, he was starting to think—
Father.
—That he couldn't remember them.
But then.
How could he forget.
He tried to think of Thomas Wayne as he was in life. Just one man. Powerless, human, afraid. Of course when you're eight everyone is huge and you create myths to explain your world and the people in it.
Which meant—
In Bruce's memory, Thomas was just—
Larger than life. Like fathers are.
It was a joyful childhood. One of freedom and play but also duty, responsibility, the knowledge that the station into which Bruce had been born did not mean it was to be a free life. No. We have a social chair, Thomas used to say. We have a responsibility to make Gotham better than we find it.
The sound of the board meeting around him, Bruce stared out the window at the Vauxhall Opera House. He remembers it.
Late at night. Alfred turns the lights down and Thomas and Martha are with Bruce by the fireplace, after the Grey Ghost Action Hour on WGBS, after teeth-brushing and vespers. They are winding down, and telling stories—Father always has these amazing stories from when he was a kid and Gotham was bright—Bruce sits, enraptured. He listens to Thomas' story about meeting the Green Lantern in his own youth. In those days Alan Scott carries the light. Thomas tells him how he met Alan Scott, and got caught in a tussle between the Lantern and a bad man named The Icicle. Thomas tells him how Alan Scott stopped The Icicle and left young Thomas with some parting words. Words I'm going to tell you now, Bruce, and I hope you remember them. Yes father, I will, I promise. Thomas says: if you see something going wrong, son, don't turn your head. You face it. Can you do that for me, Bruce?
He breathed. Looked out the window. Grey clouds low over the city.
He looked back at the Board. Daggett was pointing at a pie graph on a Powerpoint. Bruce rolled his eyes. Powerpoint is boring. Daggett droned: "…And our defense contracts are up over last year, and we're just barely into third quarter, so, good news, yes?"
The Board nodded along.
Bruce made a face.
He knew his company. How could he not? He knew of the Applied Sciences division in subbasement twenty-seven, but it seemed like everyone knew about that. That was where the work of the Batman came to be: the technological accoutrements that allowed Bruce Wayne to exercise his war on crime.
And it was a war. He knew this, too.
Very probably a war he would never win.
Because he was just one man. Powerless. Human. Afraid.
He thought of Jason.
And Dick. And Tim.
And his parents.
Failure, alongside success.
Father.
I confess this business with Luthor has affected me. More than I think I care to admit. Even after al these years and all I've done. Because whatever he does, or doesn't do—to his city, his people, the planet—
None of it compares to the torment he puts Clark through.
Clark is a good man, Father. He's strong and wise. And we don't agree on everything but he is my friend. I have a responsibility to help him. And a responsibility to resist Luthor. You taught me to face my problems head on and I fear there may be no bigger problem now than Lex Luthor. Running this country. He hasn't changed, Father. The veneer of respect is worse than his true face. I know there are people who love him. He gives their kids scholarships, he creates opportunity and wealth—Metropolis would not be what it is without him. But that's not enough.
He is everything wrong with us.
And he must be stopped.
The Joker.
Lex Luthor.
They're animals, father.
Animals.
I can't let that pass.
Those contracts. The Department of Defense is our largest buyer, by a wide margin. Over and above other private security firms in the country and our NATO allies who all wear some variety of WayneTech body armor.
Bruce breathed.
Father. Forgive me.
He stood.
Daggett must have seen him stirring because his own speech dropped off and he just watched. They all turned to behold him. Lucius, Tate, even Ted Kord there in his honorary spot.
Daggett said, "Mister Wayne?"
"I'd like to put a motion on the floor."
They all waited. Eyes went among each other.
Lucius nodded.
"That we immediately suspend our military contracts with the government."
The room exploded. They knew the truth. Even though it was a motion, it was nominal at best, and once he made up his mind on something Bruce Wayne rarely changed. The contracts would be nullified by the end of the day.
Daggett seemed to take a deep breath, Miranda Tate and Lucius leaned into each other and started whispers, others started shouting. The same trope it had been with his old dismissal calls. Someone shouted out, "you don't know what you're doing!" Someone else: "Foolish!" Someone else had the temerity to say, "this is not how Thomas would've done it!" Ted Kord looked lost.
Bruce raised his voice above them.
"This company cannot stand to do business with Lex Luthor any longer."
"Bruce," Daggett said.
Lucius spoke up. "Bruce, those contracts are a significant part of our revenue. Beyond losing the hard dollars, the government could sue us out of existence if we walk on a contract."
"I know," Bruce said. "I'll go to Washington myself if I have to, and explain it. I don't want to be in the company of death any longer."
Then he buttoned his suit and was gone. The board stayed squabbling. Lucius seemed to take point and called for order.
Ted Kord leaned forward and interlinked his fingers, staring down at the table. He looked around with a frown. He thought of his own father, and how things might have been different were he still around. Well. Maybe a lot of things would be different.
Downstairs, Bruce was already in his Lamborghini and driving home.
To his father's house.
Luthor.
Was standing alone behind the desk. Staring out the window. It was a habit he developed in the early days, really when LexCorp was only himself and Lois on the top floor of the Planet building. It cleared his mind. Standing. Observing.
He preferred Metropolis to this.
They were beneath him in Metropolis. Here he was on their level. A conscious choice, no doubt, by the ancient architects of this place.
Ancient by his measure—the only measure that mattered these days.
He was looking out the window, one of the three tall affairs directly behind the Resolute desk. He'd had a section of the landscaping cut away so he could observe the South Lawn all the way down to the fence. The midday sun shone in, beaming across his face. He felt its warmth and imagined it was how Superman felt—basking under this yellow sun like the poor, stupid reptile he was.
He frowned. Down at the fence and Constitution Avenue beyond it. There were always small groups of people down there, crouching on the stonework, leaning against the ironwork fence. One caught his eye. From this distance it was hard to make her out. She looked old. Hunched there. Away from the others. He saw a square, no, a box, next to her. Some rollaway luggage perhaps.
Behind him the door opened. He turned and saw Pete, and Mac behind him.
"Pete."
"Sir, they're ready."
"Let's do the meeting here."
Silence.
Pete said, "uh, they're all in the Situation Room…uh…sir."
Luthor turned.
He just glowered at Pete. But it was more than that. More than a hard stare or a dirty look.
Luthor was burning into Pete's soul.
Pete shuffled from foot to foot. "They're waiting, sir."
"The Joint Chiefs," Luthor said and went for the garden door, "serve at my pleasure. They can wait in hell for all I care. Mac, walk with me."
"Sir," Pete said. "Lex!''
Luthor was gone, Mac following him and Mac's red pinstripe doing its damndest to contain his frumpy mess of body. They were walking down across the lawn, Luthor deep in his Purposeful Walk, the one that took about three feet to each stride, his arms swinging forward and back as he went, his eyes narrowed, his face unmoving. Stern. All the synonyms. The Secret Service gang followed behind him and Mac in a wide flying-V—they had come to understand his systems. Had come to understand that look in his eye.
A Great White Shark hunting.
And so they kept their distance.
Followed him on the far crest of the Ellipse. Past the basketball court, currently in the process of removal. Down to the wrought-iron fence. Luthor turned back and there was Mac, breathing hard but still with him.
"Still with us, Mac?"
Mac huffed. He said, "Doing my best, Mister Lewthor."
Luthor looked at him. "Take a note, Mac. I want a sidewalk installed. My office door down here to the fence."
"Taking a note," Mac said and pulled a tattered notepad from his back pocket.
Luthor turned his head and looked at the long fence row, and a gaggle of protestors beyond it. Some holding signs—he thought he made out a "Not My President" one with some decent handiwork to it. Another said "Investigate Lex!"
The sun was setting. Perhaps in other places, normal people went home and made dinner and spent time with their families. But these people.
"They hate me," he said. Looked at Mac. "Don't they?"
Mac seemed to consider it. "Well, you know, Mister Lewthor, they're kids. Probably don't know any better, right?'
Luthor scowled. These people. They come here. Spend their whole day here. The Luthor they think they know. And the Luthor nobody knows.
Lois, he thought. They're like you.
"Look at what we've done, Mac. That is your name isn't it?"
"Well," Mac said. "Nathaniel Mackelvaney. But that sounds so...you know."
Luthor scowled and looked back at the distant crowds. He said, "It's been three months and we've done so much. We've put a ten year moratorium on fossil fuels. We balanced the budget. We started skills training and placement options in Coal Country for jobs that will die and resources that won't renew. We've put a cap on emissions. The Supreme Court is about to legalize same-sex marriage. We're even working on metagene detectors so kids born different won't have to face persecution, run away from home and die on the streets—they can get the help they need, Mac. Do you see it?"
Mac scratched his head. "I think so, Mister Lewthor."
"People," Luthor said and his voice drifted. "Get ensconced. In their lives. They think they have a good handle on things. But do you want to know the secret of the universe, Mac?"
Mac nodded.
"Change," Luthor said. "Always difficult. Always worth it."
He observed the protestors for a moment, and still thought of her. One seemed to notice and slapped another's shoulder, and together they gestured toward Luthor. He looked away.
He turned and found her. Far down across the other side of the fence, almost at the corner of Executive Avenue. He walked slowly toward her, and as he neared she did not move. She looked like she was reading. He breathed and approached. She was on the white stone, kind of sitting and crouching on it. She was a bigger woman. A long burgundy cloak, a shawl, hung about her. Her hair was alternately grey and black and in a loose perm—a style she had perhaps made for herself decades ago and kept up ever since. He saw her hands, her arms, tanned and weathered, one of them propped up on one leg cradling her head, hanging low there and studying a tattered paperback on her lap. As he approached he slowed down. Crouched down. He stuck one hand through the fence line and touched her forearm. It struck him as the action of a convict penitent.
He stared at his own hand on her beaten leather skin, and—
Perhaps we are both prisoners.
"Hello."
She was slow to react. He kept his eyes on her and said it again.
She looked up at him. Like she was seeing another person for the first time.
Her eyes.
Bright blue within a face as weathered as the rest of her.
She said, "Hello," and it came as a cracked whisper.
"I was out for a walk and noticed you. I hope you'll forgive the intrusion."
She made a face. Looked around and back at him and said, "It's…not a problem."
"I'm Lex."
Those eyes rolled in their sockets. She was looking for meaning. "I'm…"
"Surprised?"
She looked away.
He looked at Mac.
Mac was shocked. His face was blanched, his jaw slacked. What was going on?
"Lex?"
"I'll be fine, Mac. Please excuse us."
Luthor looked back at the woman.
She looked at him and looked away. Down at the sidewalk. He looked at it too and frowned.
He said, "You're not a protestor?"
"No, sir."
"May I ask why you're here?"
Her lips quivered and her head—
Kind of—
Bobbed. In place.
The wrinkles, the fatness of her face. It all reminded him of someone. Someone he'd spent a lifetime trying to forget.
"I'm homeless, Mister Luthor."
He frowned.
"I am sorry. May I ask what happened?"
She shook her head but did it in an understated way. It barely moved, and the bags of her eyes fluttered. He breathed, and let the moment pass. He fished a hundred dollar bill from his pocket and waved one of the agents over.
"This is Special Agent Mitchum. And here is a hundred dollars. There is a shelter in Metropolis I'd like you to check out, if you don't mind, ma'am."
"Beverly."
"Beverly," Luthor said. Name her. Give her power. "Does that sound like something you can do?"
She looked up at him. Tears in her eyes.
He cut himself off from feeling the moment. He had cut himself off from so many emotions over the years. And yet.
Deep down, hidden in the prison of his mind there lingered a thought.
He put his hand on her shoulder.
"I hope you can get the help you need, Beverly."
He patted her shoulder twice. Stood away and looked back at the White House.
Mitchum started taking her towards the side buildings and the tennis court. She motioned to Mitchum to stop, and turned back to Luthor.
"God bless you, sir."
They locked eyes after she spoke and held a gaze.
He wasn't sure he had words for it.
He nodded once, and Mitchum started to walk with her again.
Pete was at his side, this time with a note. Luthor took it.
Read it.
"When did he decide this?"
"I'm told the board meeting just ended."
Luthor scowled. Crumpled the note and threw it on the grass. He looked away and clenched his jaw, his fists. Contain yourself, Lex.
"Call a meeting."
"Cabinet?"
"Yes. I want you and Mac there, as well."
Then he turned for the White House. His house. He stopped and turned over his shoulder. "Pete. Beverly there is going to get some help. See that Mitchum gets her to the Lena Luthor home in Seagate, yes?"
Pete said, "I will. There's something else."
"Yes?"
"Your Doctor Teng reports. Package is ready for delivery."
After midnight, on a distant tarmac at Joint Base Andrews, Lex Luthor stood alone. The Secret Service detail, Mitchum and the rest, stayed at the front gate.
This delicate cargo had sat dormant underneath Andrews for eight years. The great Nth-metal slab, upon which the monstrosity was bound, stood next to Luthor. An obscene monument. And now little better than weregild.
So here they were. Luthor and the monster.
He stared at the dead thing on the slab.
Doomsday.
He did not know where it came from. He suspected Krypton. It stood to an ironic reason that for all of Superman's altruistic bluster there would one day come a machine of pure destruction from the same place. A counterbalance for the good the alien purported to do. On the occasion of mutual death with the Man of Steel, Cadmus had taken the beast and put it in deep storage at their xenobiology facility in Ohio. Oh it came back to life—the surviving Cleansuits were as surprised as anyone—and rampaged on a dead world in another dimension before plummeting back to Earth dead on Ryker's Island. Cadmus took possession again, and the idea then was still to get rid of it fast.
It was Luthor who provided a depository.
An old colleague, from that dead world. Which mean no small amount of retribution was in play, as well.
Luthor's predecessor did not know Doomsday's status or where it was. And certainly not of Cadmus' plan with it. Come to think of it, only Luthor knew. And Pete, of course. He nodded like a good boy and that was that. Reality was different. Pete wanted to serve, after all. And Luthor told him just enough to make him culpable.
He remembered.
Hearing that this…thing…had killed the alien. All those years ago.
He had murdered Sasha Green in a fit of rage over it: feeling that this dull creature had robbed him of the only thing that would satisfy Luthor.
The death of Superman.
Of course the alien returned. He always did. And now here they were years after death and resurrection and what was there to show for the spent years of all their lives? What indeed.
He got close to the monster on the slab. Laid one hand on its face and frowned when he supposed it felt like rock. A Kryptonian rock. A rock of eternity.
You live.
You're like him.
Aren't you.
He breathed. The night air felt cool and comforting. It reminded him of—
The streets. Dark, dirty, unpopulated, and the city feeling close against him. You'd look up the sky, the stars between the buildings, glimmers of what could be. And you felt alive. And young. When all was possibility and freedom.
And then he felt it.
The breeze stopped.
The long night began.
Behind him the darkness flashed, sizzling with electric bliss. A second sun. Big as life. A tube of white light, white hot energy, rage perhaps from some cosmic beast, yawning from some unknown source.
And then there was new light.
He turned.
He said to the shadow, "As promised."
The shadow stood motionless in the twilight.
It waved a hand and a smaller beast, cringing and hunching there in the shadows, came forth. It took the slab and guided it towards the white light.
The shadow watched it go.
"I assume you're taking Godfrey with you?"
"His work is complete, yes."
"Good."
It stopped.
"I wonder," it said and stared at Luthor. Burning red eyes and black smoke curling away from them. For the briefest of moments it took an imposing and terrible human shape. "When you finally have your world the way you want it, what then? Will they live for you? Will they die?"
Luthor considered it. "I retire. Enjoy the praise of a grateful people."
The shadow turned into the white light. "I see your soul. I feel your every intent. They will never love you. And you will never be free from him."
The shadow dissipated. The white light faded.
Luthor stood alone in the dark.
Continued…