GCN's Evening Report with Mike Engel, November 1, 2001:
"I'm very concerned that we haven't seen Superman in some time. I mean, time was, Glenn, it was—you could see that red streak going up Fifth Avenue or out towards the suburbs, wherever someone needed help. I think I haven't seen it for weeks, maybe months. I don't know where he is, or where his Justice League friends are, but things are happening that could use his attention, I mean, just this morning the station received a bomb threat. Now that's been widely reported by now and I'm not going to go into specifics, but it's symptomatic of something larger and more dangerous happening. And it's happening because we have a leadership vacuum in this city. President Luthor is doing his job in DC, but Metropolis needs Superman. I want to go to Vicki Vale now, down in the plaza. Vicki, you've been getting reactions, tell us, what's going on out there?"
In Washington DC, at the White House, the long night continues.
Lex Luthor is alone in the Oval Office. Seated at the Resolute Desk, but the chair is turned around so he can look out the window.
He thinks of Suicide Slum.
And of Lois.
And Superman.
He takes his cellular phone from his pocket. He's engineered it long before now in such a way that one call reaches many specific recipients. He dials that one number, and one phrase cries out.
"It's time."
Then he disconnects. Slides it back in his jacket pocket.
He picks a Lucky Strike and a lighter from the other pocket and lights it.
Through the smoke, through the haze of things to come, he waits.
In Starling, at the Starling High School, home of the Falcons—go figure—Jesse Wright walks the halls alone. He has a free track after lunch, and he uses it to grab his gym bag from the Tahoe. He's fifteen and a half and he's just started driving—he's young, scrappy and hungry, and as he walks through the full parking lot and then the empty halls, there's a strut to him. A knowingness. Because he knows what they don't. He gets his gym bag and takes the side entrance back into the school. The single heavy grey door there by the weight room. He heaves it open, pulls it back shut and walks into the weight room. Kyle is in there and he just walks up to him, kisses him, and tells him to come over later. Kyle says yeah of course and Jesse says good and kisses him again. Other things happen and twenty minutes later Jesse leaves Kyle, dazed and confused on the mats, and heads back to class. The gym bag sits by the door. Kyle gets dressed and leaves, and doesn't notice it ticking away.
In Kahndaq, at the Provisional Guard Air Base north of Shiruta, a wing of MiG-29s launch. They're bound for Bialya. The pilots, known only to Ra's al Ghul and Black Adam standing there at his side, are suicide bombers from the League of Assassins. True believers. Once they drop their destructive payloads on the capital they will turn course and kamikaze the burning remnants of the country. The League of Assassins, you see—and Black Adam, and the remnants of his cortege in Shiruta—and Lex Luthor sitting in Washington, DC—and even Orm Marius, the master of oceans, watching from his exile in long-fabled Xebel—they're about to set the world on fire. And those true believers, flying to their deaths? They'll just have to imagine the fire.
In Keystone at Iron Heights, Evan McCulloch is supplied his mirror gun by a bought security guard. He uses it to phase into Albert Desmond's cell next door and rip the poor man's tongue out the hard way. McCulloch was a killer after all, in another life, and he longs to revisit that older self as often as he can. The drugs help. Wonderland helps. He strings Desmond up by his bedsheets. He breaks the force shields on every cell in the block: Rory, Snart, even the new ones like Doctor Amar and the monstrosity called Girder. At the guard post before the front gates, over the twisted corpse of Warden Wolfe, the Rogues flee the prison. Before them, Keystone, Central, and all the gains in between. But McCulloch? He tells Snart, "I gotta future. I'm going back in." And he does. The Rogues descend on the twin cities without him.
In Gotham, Bob Gray was hunched over a desk in the manager's office in the decaying Sionis Steel Mill. He wore ratty fading jeans, mud caked shitkickers and a flannel shirt that hung too loose on his tall, hunched bones. He was texting on his mobile, in those days one of the small Motorolas you could only play Snake on. Maybe one day they'd make a way he could send photos of victims to…victims, or something. As it was, he was sitting there at the cracked desk giggling over the chain of phone calls from—if he remembered right, the Gothcorp CEO? It was all running together. Then the phone beeps that annoying digital beep. He stares at it for a second and the smile fades. He pushes the thing, the button. He says, "Yello, anybody home? Ha ha!" And the very serious man on the other side says it's time and old Bob Gray there, he only says, "oh okay, but you know I do so hate feeling caged in this relationship, Lexie, I'm a free spirit! I'm a man! I need to feel loved, I—". Click. Bob looks at the phone again and sneers and says, "oh okay." He dials on it again. Ring. Ring. Ring. He makes a face and looks up. Through the dirty, cracked windows. And in the distance the bombs start going off. In another minute he hears sirens. And he starts laughing. The laugh carries through the Mill, and becomes something terrifying and familiar.
In Colorado, at Cheyenne Mountain and nestled deep within the control room there, Amanda Waller and Wade Eiling do things much more simply: they merely press twin buttons at the same time. Like nuclear weapon controls, there are built-in contingencies so that no one person has access to fire. So there have to be two. Unlike nuclear controls of the day, which are only designed to set off a predetermined and incomplete number of warheads, the switches that Waller and Eiling throw are linked to every supermax prison in the continental United States. Stryker's Island in Metropolis. The Robert Schreck Memorial Penitentiary. Blackgate Penitentiary in South Gotham. Belle Reve. And…Arkham. And so Eiling and Waller flip the switches. And all across the country, prisons open. Riots follow in moments.
In Shiruta, Black Adam and his surviving cadre—Albert Rothstein, the Atom Smasher, and Northwind the Feitheran—go in front of state television. Adam speaks with a stone expression, arms folded over his chest. "The world outside is doomed. Your leaders have failed you. Only in Kahndaq can those fleeing oppression be guaranteed a safe and secure future. I say to all meta-humans and non-powered individuals alike who have been lied to by their governments, hunted by their governments, forced into servitude, made to feel less than what they are, welcome. To those seeking asylum, to those escaping the oppression of their masters, superhuman or not, we say welcome. You have twelve hours to enter Kahndaq before we close our borders to the burning world."
In Metropolis, a machine in the form of a man named John Corben spray paints a crude Superman logo on the doors of the Daily Planet building. He plucks a piece of his own Kryptonite heart out and lodges it in the center of the logo, in a shallow recess in the limestone. Underneath the logo he sprays paints: ALIEN NAZI SUPERMAN GO HOME. He goes to the WGBS building, to NewsTime, to the Ledger and the Post, and tags then with similar notes. He blows up Paul Gustavson's car and burns a Superman shield into his front lawn. Across Metropolis, the Newsboys, generational descendants of Luthor's boyhood gang, tag city blocks with similar graffiti. They bust up shop windows. Throw burning bottles in open storefronts and before Turpin and his SCU goons can descend they disappear. But the riots. The looting. The fire rises.
Up in space, in an alien vessel shaped like a skull although colored in dark metalloids and iridescent greens, the vast and indifferent artificial intelligence at the center, calling itself Brainiac since before time began, is working. It manipulates its way into earthbound computer systems, consumer websites and internet forums, and pushes a host of duplicate messages. All have the same general idea: they are pro-Luthor, anti-Superman, anti-superhuman, and call for violent revolt against "Supers" trying to take control of the government. The artificial intelligence pushes the data to the internet all at once.
Up the street, an old hunched man lurches into the Sullivan Street Apartments. Up near the top of the building, nineteenth floor, and the thirty-eighth suite on the floor. It's Clark Kent and Lois Lane's apartment. And there at the end of the hall, the Toyman, Winslow Schott, so old and so decrepit now, he lurches out of the elevator with a Sally Speaker doll, one of the old pull-string ones, under one arm. He moves slow. His hair is gone, a lifetime of stress and bad habits have kissed it goodbye. His legs ache and sting with every movement—diabetes is about to take one foot or both. His eyesight is going, his glasses little better than thick Coke bottles. His heart isn't great. Medicaid says he needs a quintuple bypass. He breathes heavily and leans on the wall with his one free hand. Finally, an eternity later, he gets to the door. He looks at the Sally Speaker and frowns. He kneels, his joints burning, his heart pounding, and looks at Sally. Keeps looking at her. Poor Sally, the Toyman thinks. You were supposed to bring happiness. He thinks of poor dead Cat Grant and her poor dead son, little Adam. Lord, he thinks, I never meant to hurt him. He pulls the string and waits. In his last minutes he lets himself smile. And Sally speaks: "Hello Winslow! How are you today! Hello Winslow! How are you today! Hello Winslow, how are you today! Hello Winslow! How—". The explosion takes out the entire floor.
In Midway City, a group of high-schoolers around their lunch table reads a post on a pro-Luthor website calling for violence against superhumans. One of them goes out to his truck and grabs his gun. As he's walking back inside he loads it with some shells from his pocket. He wants to make a statement. As he walks back into the cafeteria he runs through the shotgun's technical specifications before he opens fire.
On the moon, the Martian Manhunter, J'onn J'onzz, is on monitor duty at the Justice League Watchtower. In many ways it is his preferred function on this League. Watching. Waiting. Dispatching their resources towards optimized assistance. Because—
This world is worth it.
All worlds are worth defending.
He told Despero, the mad tyrant, as much once. All worlds have value. The moment you start deciding who is and who is not of value, you lose.
Yes, you lose. Any argument you wish to make. Any moral center. Any morality at all—
When you measure lives.
He told Luthor as much once, too.
"I am from the fourth planet in this solar system. You are not my President. And you are utterly without significance to me."
He frowns. He looks ahead. The earth is vast and quiet from beyond the massive exterior wall that also serves as a force shield view screen. A window on the world. The Monitor Womb is behind him, in a vast sealed tube that stretches the vertical length of the tower. But he is here at what could be best described as a control station. Monitors and computing systems feed live data from major crisis points around the globe, the moon, the nearer stellar neighborhood as well as further afield places like Rann and Thanagar, not to mention the feeds from New Genesis and Apokolips which have been unusually quiet lately.
Like they're waiting for something.
He breathes.
The earth is so peaceful and so troubled. So beset by problems. Population controls, greed, and the baseline venality of mankind. He thinks of Mars but it has been so long since those dark days. So long since…
Since the end.
He looks at the Earth and wonders.
Are you next, my friends? Are we doomed to repeat our mistakes. What of eternal recursion and the cyclical nature of man's actions. He feels like he doesn't have the answers. And he feels this way so assiduously that he wonders if he ever had the answers. to begin with.
He came to this planet almost as a grand experiment. A grand accident. After the end on Mars, and the final break with Malefic. He came to Earth by happenstance and found himself remaining. Seeking solace. It was not meant to be permanent. But there was…a need here.
And so he stays. He helps where he can. He joined this Justice League to continue his mission of helping.
But Luthor.
A human, surely the greatest of his kind. And the greatest danger to his people. Ironic, given his position that Superman was the more dangerous of the two.
Luthor has cast a pall on all of them. And so what J'onn told him weeks ago was true, if a hopeful deflection. He was utterly without any significance. But Luthor vexes. The Justice League serves mankind, rights that which is wrong, and, more clinically, J'onn thinks, assists in the orderly progression of the world's population. Crime and despair are not normal things, and cannot survive but for the interventions of evil men who wish to perpetuate oppression. Hence, the grand experiment. The grand accident.
He felt his mind connected to this place. Through the wasteland of Mars, the destruction which his brother brought, this planet, this pale blue dot called out. It called out in one word, and the Last Martian answered the only way he could.
Help.
And he did.
He tried. There were mistakes.
Chief among them, he knew, was masquerading as Mackelvaney. As an aide to Luthor. For educational purposes. Not to collect information on running him from office—for all his suppositions at a previous League meeting, he did not believe in upsetting a human government merely because of disagreement. However…if Luthor were to violate his oath which the ancient rites of human civilization had put on him and which he swore to uphold…if he willingly broke with the public good and turned instead to his old ways…then that, J'onn thought…
That would be unforgivable.
And so he concocted Mackelvaney out of an adventure he'd had years before in Metropolis. In short order, Mackelvaney found his way into Luthor's retinue.
Luthor must have known. Surely.
J'onn saw his mind. In the moment before he reverted to his true form there in the Situation Room. Luthor's mind.
Oh the way it burned.
The kind of fire that, once it starts, is very hard to put out. The tender boughs of innocence burn first. And the wind rises and then. All goodness is in jeopardy.
And now. This planet, his adopted home, is in jeopardy.
Watching this world he has come to love, watching it explode—
He thinks of the end on Mars. But why.
He's just a man. This Luthor.
But he has to remind himself of his own words.
Men—
Have committed the worst atrocities. And we know it.
They must be fought.
This was the logic of the Martian Manhunter.
He breathes. Again. He looks down at the computer.
The screens light up.
And the world.
The world explodes—
In Keystone there is a prison break. Riots have taken over the suburbs. An angry mob is moving across the bridge to Central. Torches and pitchforks, weapons and screams and fear. Primal fear.
Rioting in Metropolis. His scanners are chattering over each other. It started in Suicide Slum, and is moving down Fifth Avenue to the LexTower. Someone has vandalized the Daily Planet building. Similar tags being discovered all over town. An explosion at a midtown high-rise. Stryker's has been opened.
A series of explosions in Gotham's industrial sector. Blackgate and Arkham have been opened—and he thinks instantly of the evening of the No Man's Land. The evening that city ate itself. The evening they all stood there and watched Bruce, tears in his eyes, tell them to stay away. J'onn frowns. It's very nearly all he can muster right now.
In Starling City, a High School has just exploded. Looting downtown. J'onn taps up the Black Canary on comms.
"Dinah, this is—"
"I know," she says and it's a tinny, garbled mess. "I'm handling what I can. Don't contact me again."
Click.
He stands there.
Watching.
There are twelve displays. Each showing something different. And something the same. Cities on fire. People marching.
Loneliness.
Alienation.
Fear.
Despair.
Oh no—
He taps up Superman on comms—
"Superman, this is the Martian Manhunter. I fear something terrible has happened."
And far north, in the shrinking Artic nothingness there lay only a Fortress of Solitude. Within, in turn, were two dedicated public servants. One human. One alien. But getting there, getting there.
He had great powers as the Man of Steel. Greater still as Clark Kent.
She had great powers as Lois Lane.
Together, they fought mad tyrants, corrupt officials, lifted up the powerless, fought evil—
They saved the world.
And now, here in this place, this Fortress of Solitude, they're going to do it again. They're fearless, these two. They've been through so much. Seen so much. And for a while it seemed like they should keep quiet. Plenty of awful things happening in the world. Why add to it. Why give credence to subversive thoughts or ideas, why give them oxygen if they're so destructive.
She has spent a lot of years thinking about that. She supposed it was why she got into journalism. To answer a question.
Is there—
Is there such a thing as evil in the world.
She wasn't sure she had an answer.
She started reporting to find out if it was true. Good and evil are just words, and words have meaning. Power. Words can change the world. And yet.
Good isn't practical. It requires a noble spirit. Something she did not exactly grow up with. And then evil, if you wanted to call it that—such a theatrical term. By any analysis evil should win. Good requires loyalty, love. Caring. So why does good prevail? What keeps the balance in this appalling place. Is there logic, is it something liminal, or is there some force controlling it all. Maybe not even controlling—something more anodyne. Not controlling. Directing. Coldly. Clinically.
Is it possible someone actually cares?
She spent years wondering that.
And then she met him.
She remembers. Oh she put on such a tough face. But in her heart. You know. Sometimes you discover something, you learn something new, and it feels right. In your heart of hearts.
Clark Kent.
Eventually she came to know him as Superman.
And he proceeded to confirm some suspicions she had about the human race. About herself. About judging books by their covers. All the bromides. She challenged him. More than Luthor ever had, certainly. And in a more constructive way.
Here was someone who wasn't interested in winning. Or beating somebody. Someone…much like Lois herself.
She wanted to do what was right. Dad always got that part right. She grew up wanting to be right. Not just right but terribly right. Unreasonably right, and unreasonably good. Be better than you have to be, he used to say. Per aspera ad astra, though he only said that part once after a trip to Canaveral. But it stuck with her. A rough road leads to the stars. Yes it's hard work to find the truth, and yes it's going to hurt a lot of the time, and yes people will hate you, but the reward, Lo—the reward is self-respect.
She agreed. And she believed it. Not even just believed, but took the message and held it close in her heart as the years passed.
There's good and there's evil. She thought. And there's truth and there are lies. And I want to find them out. I want to report on the space between.
And by god she did. She has. She still does.
And so one day, back at home, in comes Clark. He comes home and he has this haunted look. She looks up from her PowerBook and she frowns. She hasn't seen this look before. She's seen something like it before, especially in the last two years. With Luthor. But now, here, he looked different. Worse. Haunted.
She knows he went to see Oliver.
She can tell how it went from here. Still—
"How was it."
He just looks at her. And he moves away. Goes into the kitchen. Coffee time.
She's behind him, but she hovers back, leaning on the doorjamb between the living room and the kitchen.
"Clark."
"It's fine."
"Use the french press."
"Uh. Nah."
She's at his side then. He's watching the kettle heat up. A tin cup on the glass top off to one side, a small mound of grounds there in the bottom. She looks at it and at him.
"Smallville," she says and it comes so patiently, so caring. "Still making coffee down on the farm?"
"I like ground coffee," he says. "Pa used to make it this way. Five big spoonfuls."
"I've had your dad's coffee. I think it made me see through time."
That got a laugh. She took the opening to slide one arm around his side and feel his warmth and get close. She rested her head on his shoulder. They seemed to breathe in unison. How long ago was Perry's little honorarium for the staff. How long ago were they all happy and celebrating in the bullpen? Before the dark times. Before Lex.
She purses her lips and thinks about it. He turns in place and their embrace morphs into a hug. And it's then that she feels his heartbeat. So warm. So calming. All these years and it still surprises her. Still amazes her.
She's reported the news all her life. And she loves it. She does.
She loves him too.
"Lois."
"Clark."
"Do we still have that filing cabinet."
She can tell by his voice that it's not a question. Everyone says that—'it wasn't a question' but this time it really wasn't. It was the illusion of a question. A certainty she'd come to see in him—something he didn't quite show very often. Because when you're strong and secure you generally don't need to tell people. He didn't need to broadcast some constructed sense of self, some identity politic, easily collapsible like a house of cards.
So no. He wasn't asking. He was making sure.
The filing cabinet.
The one in the den. Padlocked and secured with technologies from Clark's friends on the League. The filing cabinet that had every piece both of them had ever written, published and unpublished, about Mister Lex Luthor. All his dealings. Every exhaustive piece of investigative reporting Lois Lane had worked on since that final break with him there on the top floor of the Planet building. So long ago. Every piece Clark had ever written, even the plot sketches for Under a Yellow Sun that linked Luthor's then-abuse of city services to line his own pockets. And more disturbing things besides that she didn't like to think about unless she had to open the folders and read them. Things she had compartmentalized. About the way he treated women. About the way he treated his parents, and the old gangsters in the Slum. Things she locked up in a certain part of her brain. Things Luthor knew they both had. Things he made sure to sic the lawyers on. So they'd never see the light of day. So Lois Lane could do nothing against him.
The filing cabinet had it all.
She looked up at him.
"Yes," she said. "I think we do." She couldn't help it: a smile came across her face.
He nodded. "I want to go North. I want to publish it all."
She waited.
"Are you," she said. "Are you sure?"
He nodded again. "It's time to do what Superman can't. What Clark Kent can. You don't have to come with me."
She made a face. Cool and cruel in that playful Lois way. "Oh come on, Smallville, if I'm not around to save you, who will."
That's how it started.
And now, all these weeks later, they were here in this place.
This Fortress of Solitude.
And they were so close.
They knew everything. They had everything—
She had to admit she felt pretty good about it.
And Luthor thought his lawyers could scare them into silence. When the last year had only emboldened them. Lois especially had confessed to Perry and later Clark himself that she spent a lot of time, too much perhaps, feeling sorry. "I don't want to feel that way ever again," she said. "I tried doing nothing. So now I want to do something."
So they did. Together.
Lois Lane. Clark Kent.
A scad of Pulitzers between them. A couple of National Book Awards. Daytime Emmys for their investigative segments with WGBS. Together, their journalistic powers were awesome. Together they exposed criminals and conspiracies, and fought for the powerless in this dark place. They were heroes. And she had to confess, sitting here in this Fortress, putting this all together. Finally. It felt good. A tautology of hope.
She looked up from her PowerBook. Clark was there at her side. Smiling. She leaned over and kissed him. And said, "I think we're ready."
The PowerBook lit up. She tapped into her email and the text in it was a simple hyperlink that read 'Click Here'. So she did. Then a quicktime viewer opened.
It was—
Waller.
Lois glanced around the screen. Wherever Waller was, she was doing her usual nondescript thing. Part of Lois admired it: she didn't get where she was, Waller, by playing nice or doing the easy thing.
"So," Lois said. "The final piece of the puzzle?"
"You found the information on your own," Waller said. "This is just an update."
"I'm very grateful."
"Gratitude has nothing to do with it. I'm concerned with the future of humanity. I hope you and your husband are too."
"Why else would we be doing this?"
She sneered. As much as she could. "Add two more to your kill list."
"Alright?" Lois opened Word and got ready.
Waller said, "The Queen Bee. And the Green Arrow."
Lois stopped.
She even felt Clark, across the way and bent over his own laptop, pause and look up. Then he was at her side.
He said, "What?"
"You heard me," Waller said. "Oliver Queen. He and his sidekick were sniffing too close. I'm sorry for your loss, but he knew what he was getting into. Now, by the time Luthor discovers this video log in the tracked outbound calls, it'll be too late."
"Too late?" Clark asked.
"Going somewhere?" Lois cocked an eye.
"Packing up," Waller said. "Switzerland. Checkmate, rebuilding, and the Global Peace Agency. You both know there's a place for you if you want it. Alan Scott has agreed to it, as has Agent Chase. The offer stands and I hope you take it. You have unique insight."
"I appreciate that very much," Lois said. "But our place is here."
"Suit yourself," she said. "This will be my last communication. I wish you both good luck. And check your outside sensors. You have guests."
The screen went black. Disconnected. Lois made a face at Clark. "How the hell does she know this shit?"
He looked up. Through the hologram-statue of Jor-El and Lara, at the distant front gates. He squinted. He didn't need to. But he liked to. It was such an artifact of a muscle memory but he enjoyed it. In a dark age, it really was the little things. He smiled a little. In the clarity of x-ray vision he saw them coming.
The smile went away. He was going to have to explain Oliver to them.
Far out in the tundra, on a blasted white promontory an invisible jet landed.
And two people debarked.
Just two.
Two was enough.
Because things were actually happening. Finally happening.
Their world was on fire and there's only one thing to do when that happens. When all sense leaves your life and you have to make sense of things—when you have to make order out of chaos. When you have to do what you're not sure you can. Perhaps, even, what you're not sure you ever could do.
Fight. Be the hero. Set the example.
For them.
He felt old. Alone. But he wasn't. He had the biggest family on the planet and he was related to none of them. But time and circumstance have a funny way of bringing people together. Death and chance after all had stolen his parents. And he had spent so much of his life trying to make up for that. Trying to do everything in his power to control things.
For what was Batman, if not an effort to master the chaos of this appalling place.
An attempt to control death itself.
And her.
The princess.
The warrior.
The ambassador.
The heart.
Diana was all these things and more. Ancient and unknowable, yet known to visit Boston and later Gateway City's numerous artisan shops and restaurants and dine with the guests—invite them into her life by that most ancient and wonderful of rites called conversationalism, as if she had known them and they had known her all their days. She was magnetic like that. Everyone loved her. And she loved everyone.
Everyone.
Even Doctor Minerva—
Even Edgar Cizko—
Even Isabel Maru—
For all their faults.
She wanted them to be better than what they were.
And yet. She was not disappointed, she had to admit, when they roundly defeated her expectations. For all she imagined that you cannot love a thing and expect it to stay in its loved state forever, she also understood. People change. Things change. One cannot set foot in the same river twice—
Mnemosyne would not prefer such a thing.
What seemed more important—and most fabulous to her—was to maintain her love for this world, and the people in it, even the ones that wanted to kill her—in spite of change. That boundless entropy that threatened all things. Love in the face of fear. Love in the face of death.
Hope in the face of difficulty.
Sitting there with the Sibyl. In a strange cave, in a strange place that was not her home—because her home was gone—
Hope was all she had.
And so here they were.
The Batman and Wonder Woman.
They walked in silence over the snow. Bruce at least seemed inured to it. She stole glances at him every few moments and his face, what she could see of it, belied nothing.
She was enjoying it.
There was no snow on Themyscira, after all.
She remembers.
Years ago. During the war.
She chuckled at the memory.
Years ago.
On that train platform. There was a man with an ice cream cart. Her first experience with the delicacy.
She loved it. She remembers it so well.
It was wonderful.
Mother.
This world is worth saving.
I know this in my heart. So why do I keep telling myself?
They walked on in silence.
Eventually they came to the vast front gates to the fortress. And, more oddly, the simple blue welcome mat on the ice shelf before them. They moved in unison. Looked up at the gates. Down at the welcome mat.
Batman said, "He changes the security weekly."
She looked at him. "Sounds familiar."
"Very funny."
"The key," Diana said. She crouched and flipped up an edge of the welcome mat. Under it was a simple brass house key. She cocked her head and touched it—
The gates shuddered and opened.
A voice spoke: "Security code nine-thirteen. Welcome. Please follow the path towards the main gallery."
So they did.
He had changed things since they were last here.
The entrance was narrow. Unassuming in that Clark way. Lots of houses out there, why make a big one. His inner farm boy at work. But it opened into the main gallery: a wide circular crossing of a monument to Krypton. A cathedral in its own way. At the center and on an elevated precipice were hologrammatic statues of his parents, Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van. She kept her gaze on the statues as they entered. She wishes she could have known them. Jor-El and Lara. What stories they had.
She looked ahead. Batman had gotten ahead of her and was already at the computer terminal at the base of the holograms.
Clark and Lois were there too.
Clark, in full Superman regalia, looked up.
"My friends," he said with that cocksure smile. "Welcome."
Wonder Woman looked at the folding table there by the statues and the two laptops on it, littered among file folders, binders and notepads. "This is your filing cabinet?"
"Of course," Superman said. "I should have said. Lois and I made the decision recently to collate it all."
Batman did not move. He merely said, "For what?"
"For publication," Lois said.
A quiet moment followed.
Lois said, "We all know what Lex is. What he's done and what he'll continue to do. I've sat on my work for years. Work that confirms his illegal activities. Work that will put him away."
"With a congress," Batman said and his voice had an airy, revelatory tone. It was sinking in. "Willing to investigate. My god."
Lois nodded. "Time for change."
Diana looked away. "It's dangerous."
"It's necessary," Batman said.
"Yes," Superman said. Then he was at Lois' side, hand in hand. "The risk has always been worth it. I'm at a point in my life where major threats are decreasing. Metropolis is for the most part safe. The league puts out fires where it can. But I can tell you with no reservations that Luthor is the single largest threat I have ever faced. Now more than ever—with the resources he commands and his alliances all in a row. I can't fight him as Superman, but as Clark Kent I can unleash something even he can't stop."
Diana said, "What's that?"
Lois gestured to the desk around her. "A free press."
"…And this is all ready to go?" Batman asked.
Lois nodded. "We're fine tuning the last parts. Then, yes."
Batman pulled his cowl back, revealing the aging, sad face of Bruce Wayne.
Superman was silent. "There's something else you should all know. On a darker note."
Bruce looked at him and said, "What?"
"Oliver is dead."
Diana arched her head back and sighed. Started pacing.
"You're sure?"
"I am," Superman said. "My source in the White House just told us. I'm so sorry."
Diana looked at him. Superman looked at her—they seemed to lock eyes. She said—
"Clark, did Oliver send Roy to the plaza on election night?"
"Yes," Superman said.
"Oh gods..."
Batman was quiet. Looking at the floor.
Lois was watching him. She frowned, except a frown on Lois Lane was this really focused scowl. An inheritance of her father. She said, "Bruce?"
"I knew about it, too."
Superman breathed.
Diana looked at him.
"I sent Tim and the boys to watch things. I knew about the shooter, as well—Jenny Hubbard. Tim and I monitor interstate firearms sales. A series of cash transactions flagged from an Outdoor World in Kansas City. We followed the trail and began tracking her movements. A background check showed history with Luthor, an encounter in eighty-eight or eighty-nine, the records are spotty. We inferred she was going to make an attempt on his life but we couldn't get to her in time."
"And Cat Grant had to die too?" Clark said and scowled.
"I'm sorry," Bruce said.
Diana said, "What happened to Hubbard?"
Bruce said, "I can't find any eyewitness accounts but we think Luthor had the Secret Service kill her in the plaza the next day."
Lois leaned back in her seat and sighed.
Superman did not move. He stared at Bruce—and to his credit, Bruce stared right back. "You mentioned the boys. Was Conner part of this?"
"He volunteered with Tim."
"You should have consulted me! You should have said something before you committed to a plan that cost us lives!"
"You were going to publish your work anyway," Bruce said. "What difference does it—"
"No," Superman said and then he was in Bruce's face. He spoke quietly and forcefully and Bruce felt the power of Clark, the terrifying might of his anger, in his bones. "There's always a difference."
Superman turned away.
In the tense silence that followed, it all became so clear.
They had become part of Luthor's machine. Played by his rules. And now were complicit in monitoring him.
He was going to lose his mind over this. He was going to burn it all down over this.
Lois was drumming her fingers on her PowerBook.
Diana said, "We should be ashamed."
Lois said, "Haven't had the chance to run Oliver's case. But Jimmy and I have narrowed down Roy's killer to one of Lex's people. Mercy, probably, or Jenner. We've got the forensics from SCU ready to publish with the rest. But then…you, Bruce. You say you knew Roy was there. You say you knew Oliver sent him?"
"Tim called me," Bruce said. He had pulled his cowl back, his face revealed. Old and exhausted. He ran his hands through his hair. "He said he saw Roy. I told him to leave him be."
Diana said, "You what?"
"I couldn't risk them…joining up in the Plaza. Luthor was in the Tower. He would have known something was wrong."
"My god," Superman said. "And we were up here, Diana. How did we miss this."
"Alright," Diana said. "I need you to hear this. We need to let the truth have its day. That's the only way to put a check on this odious man—and if need be, remove him from office."
They all looked among each other.
"I'm not willing to go there," Superman said. "Publishing our material…the plan is to let it play out in the court of public opinion."
"He won't go quietly," Bruce said. "And you know it. He'll lie through his teeth and sweep this all away. Or kick off some war of distraction. My sources in the White House say he's unbalanced."
"Hey," Lois said. "Ours too."
Diana thought it over and said nothing.
Superman looked at Bruce. "I take it you're ready then? To remove him, like you said."
"I don't know," Bruce said. "But something has to be done."
Lois looked at her laptop. The screen lit up. "Oh," she said. "Clark."
"What is it," he said. He was by her side and soon Bruce and Diana were too. Looking at the GCN webpage.
"Something has happened in Bialya."
In silence they read the story.
Clark looked up and said, "Kelex, give me the news. Surround sound and video."
The main gallery darkened and a score of screens tessellated into existence. News channels from around the world.
Bialya burning.
Kahndaq closing its borders.
School shootings in Midway City.
Prison riots in Gotham.
And more.
The world on fire.
Bruce was talking into his gauntlet: "Tim?"
"I saw," came the voice from the other side of the world. "Dick and Helena are here. Major Crimes is at Blackgate, but we're going to Arkham."
"I'll be there as soon as I can."
"No," Tim said. "You do your thing and we can do ours."
Then, a voice echoing in the Fortress:
"Superman. This is the Martian Manhunter. I fear something terrible has happened."
Superman looked up. "J'onn?"
Then he was there. At Superman's side.
Together for a long moment they watched the news. Because—
Because sometimes that's all you can do.
Bear witness.
Time uncounted came and went.
On the televisions, they watched footage of Bialya's capital city burn. Not just burn, but explode, and each explosion shook the city and the camera filming it, some brave fool from CNN on the ground. Explosions. Fire. Death.
In Bialya.
In Starling. Even in Metropolis as Engel cut in to say riots had broken out in Centennial Park—
As the footage cut to a crowd pulling down Superman's statue there. The one they built after his death and resurrection.
And no words to do it all justice.
Superman collapsed.
Lois was at his side.
Diana turned away from the screens.
Bruce looked at J'onn and said, "What?"
The Manhunter from Mars sighed and the affair took his whole body. Broad green shoulders rose and fell as he came to terms with his choices.
"I was undercover in the White House. They discovered it. I believe this is in retribution. He means to destroy everything to stay in power."
"I know," Batman said. "It doesn't matter anymore."
"Yes it does."
Superman stood.
He said, "It matters. All of this matters. And we do too."
Together they looked at the screens, at the world on fire.
"J'onn," Superman said and turned to face him. "Head back to the Watchtower. Call everyone. Dispatch our best teams to these hotspots. Help as much as we can."
J'onn said nothing. He nodded once, and flew away.
"The rest of you," Superman said. "I've spent too long feeling bad about this. Questioning myself, even to Lex. That ends now. This all ends now. He's my responsibility, and I'll deal with the consequences of my actions. I can't ask you to put your lives and your loved ones on the line for me."
Then he looked at Lois. Took her hands in his and shared a kiss and when it was done, he said, "I love you, Lois Lane. Until the end of time."
Then he looked at Batman and Wonder Woman. He said, "None of you have to go."
Batman and Wonder Woman looked at each other. Back at him.
Wonder Woman said, "Yes we do."
And this, as the years go by and the age of superheroes ends, will come to define Superman. Not his years of struggle against second-rate bank robbers, scientific monstrosities, or alien warlords, not even his famous twelve labors, his championing of the poor, his fighting of the corrupt, although those are all part of this moment—
This moment is something more.
This is the moment—
Wonder Woman.
Batman.
Lois Lane.
And Superman.
For one year their country has been in the hands of a super-villain.
The last super-villain.
Now, together.
They decide to take it back.
And in Metropolis, barricaded in Studio C in the Galaxy Communications Building, Godfrey's old stomping grounds, Mike Engel hunches over the desk:
"Good evening, I'm Mike Engel. Tonight we've been receiving spotty reports of civil unrest in this city, up the coast in Gotham, and indeed across the country. We have been unable to confirm or corroborate most of these stories. However, tonight, WGBS is able to confirm that the President of the United States will make a statement with the Vice President. We do not know the subject matter, and frankly given the images on our screens we cannot bear to speculate. Here now, from the White House, the President of the United States."
And in the East Room, in the White House, the People's House, the forty-third president of the United States, Alexander Joseph Luthor of Delaware, the richest, most powerful man in the world, walks up to the podium. Pete Ross, the estimable Vice President and two-term Senator from Kansas, is at his side.
Luthor stares into the camera as he walks and his eyes have the focused glare of a Great White Shark.
"Good evening. Tonight, we've been inundated with images of violence across our great land. I'm here to say, it ends now. This carnage stops now. I've asked the governors of California, Washington, Michigan, Delaware and New Jersey to consider deploying their National Guards to assist in the orderly cessation of hostilities and the arrest, where applicable, of the worst perpetrators of tonight's senseless acts. I'm pleased to say each of those governors has consented and deployed their National Guards to such an end. I've also recommended to the military district of Washington the fortification of the White House, the Capitol, and the Supreme Court should more dangerous rogue elements choose to make themselves known.
"But, I'd also like to speak from the heart if I could. It was no less than Theodore Roosevelt who told us all to get action, to get in the arena—not only for ourselves, but to lift up those who cannot lift themselves. It is the noblest act to which any of us can aspire, the role of helper: helping others, be they friends, family, or even strangers. Tonight, I am asking all of you to be helpers as we watch this violence on our screens. Reach out and let someone know you are there for them. Lift them up, as much as I now am asking you to lift us up. To continue the great work Pete and I began nearly two years ago when we saved the No Man's Land from the worse angels of its nature.
"My mother came here from Newfoundland, alone and poor. She was the surviving member of her family. She was saved by the kindness of others. And the lessons she passed on to me, stuck with me. No one gets through life alone. My parents raised me to believe that, and I still do. They raised me right. Unfortunately, they died when I was young. I wish they were here right now. I wish I could give my mother a hug and tell her it's all going to be alright. But I can't. After their deaths, I went to work.
"I went to work building LexCorp, building a company from a broom closet on the top floor of a great metropolitan newspaper. We manufactured consumer technologicals for a growing population that desperately craved them. We revolutionised air travel. We created philanthropic foundations in Metropolis and worked with the Special Crimes Unit to reduce crime rates and recidivism in Suicide Slum.
"I've been your CEO, and your constant listener, your scholarship provider, your friend, and your biggest champion. When your sons and daughters needed a leg up, I invited them to the LexTower to tour the science labs. I went door to door providing scholarships for underserved people who may have never had the chance at an education.
"I've stood alongside earth's greatest heroes, had the honor of saving this planet and working with some of the best women and men I've ever known. But my job titles have only told you what I've done. They don't tell you why.
"I do this because it's right.
"I wish my parents could have been with us longer. I wish they could have seen the better world we are building. The arc of the universe is long, as Doctor King once said, but it bends towards justice, and that is our direction as well.
"And if you are watching this American carnage on your screens and you're as sick of it as I am?
"Join us!
"It's a simple but powerful idea. A better world.
"To be better, we have to reach. Through pain, and tribulation, and fire. And we will. Reach for a big-hearted, inclusive country. The one we know we can be. A country, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all.
"As I look at us, I see this has always been our destiny. We will always strive, and seek, and find—and one day become what President Reagan called called a City on a Hill.
"And if you agree, whether you're a Democrat, or a Republican, or an Independent like me, I hope you will join us!
"If you believe diversity is our strength, join us!
"If you believe in a balanced judiciary, join us!
"If you believe our wages can and should be better, join us!
"If you believe in a responsible economic policy, join us!
"If you believe climate change is real, join us!
"If you believe in the rights of LGBT Americans, in the rights of people of color, join us!
"If you believe in our shared human ability to make our world better, join us!
"If you believe the injustice of our day and age cannot stand, join us!
"If you believe the future of mankind is a future to believe in, join us!
"Yes, the world is watching. Yes we are being judged. So let's do this. While we still can.
"Join us.
"Join me."
Continued…