Chapter 11: Luthor Down

'Failure isn't something I'm used to doing.' – Lex Luthor, Season 1, Episode 11: "Hug".

June 1st 2012. 01:20 PM UTC-6. The abandonned residential area, Darién Gap, Panama.

Lex Luthor watched over the craters surrounding the villa he hid in. He wiped his sweating brow with the hand that still carried the detonator as he crouched to the level of the drilled hole in the wooden planks set against the windows.

Outside, some surviving Suicide Squad agents moaned and yelled among the remains of their peers. The gunfire had already dimmed before the explosions but there were still some shots being taken at the assailants who tried to drag their injured colleagues to safety.

Lex's eyes flew from person to person until he noticed the bright colors of the Superman's costume standing back from the craters and the countless scintillating green rocks scattered in them. The alien's features were cold as he looked straight towards the villa for a moment before zooming away into the forest.

His gaze dropped and he started to slip down, only missing the ground when he put his weight on his knee. "It's good... It... is...good!" he breathed hard, a few beads of sweat slipped down his forehead to cover his face. He wiped them away before fumbling into his breast pocket.

The sound of pills moving around in a recipient filled the room. Lex frowned and cursed, putting more effort into his search for his meds as he moved back from the window, addressing the five soldiers standing in the room.

"Keep an eye on them." he ordered, almost distracted. His hand was still stuck down inside his jacket and he stumbled towards the comfy chair that had been pulled in front of an old desk. He slumped down on it just when his hand emerged, having caught the offending object.

"Oh great," Lex flipped the little box open and swallowed its content in one gulp, wiping his mouth with his sleeve for good measure when he caught the eyes of the people staring at him from the other side of the room.

"You'd better stop doing that, I'm not sure I'm liking these looks." he growled. "Especially yours, invader."

J'onn J'onzz was unfazed by the call. He watched in wonder the man before him until he felt the people by his side shifting. Their knees were starting to suffer. J'onn had tried to reason with the FARC soldiers acting as Lex's bodyguards to let him and the other seven Suicide Squad agents to at least sit on the floor. To no avail. They'd been forced to prone from the moment they got captured as they tried to infiltrate the villa.

The Suicide Squad had caught up with Superman when the latter revealed Lex had supplied kryptonite weapons to the FARC militia. He couldn't get close to the villa in which the former president was hiding at the risk of being killed himself.

Rick Flagg, knowing they were outnumbered had tried to send a team, led by J'onn J'onzz, to assault the villa while the rest of them distracted the mercenaries. The plan was basic and worked well in most situations. Unfortunately, this time it backfired terribly. When J'onn's team managed to get close to Lex, a series of explosions aborted the mission and the villa found itself surrounded by craters.

Kryptonite-filled bombs had been detonated in a desperate attempt to prevent Lex's capture. J'onn could only imagine the terrible loses on both sides of the battle. He shook his head and winced when he got too close to comfort with the flaming torch held by a soldier. Lex may have been caught by surprise with the destitution but he had done his homework.

"How long is this going to last?" J'onn asked. "It's only a matter of time, Lex. You're surrounded and Flagg would have called the army by now. It's only going to get worse the longer you fight."

Lex watched him in disdain. "I decide when it stops." he said. "And I won't lay arms down and wait for them to slip the bracelets on me."

"Why?" The genuine incomprehension on J'onn's end was clear. "Why all this madness? There's nowhere for you to run."

"You know why, invader." Lex replied quietly. He looked towards the window when a cry of pain was heard from afar. Some of the Suicide Squad members caught in the explosion had survived. He rose on uncertain feet and trailed against the barren windows, trying to look through the interstices.

"It's been your plan all along, isn't it?" he asked, his breath catching in his throat a few times.

"I don't-"

"You! You and Clark... and whoever else came to Earth with you!" Lex cut off J'onn's question. "You've always tried to hold us back, to make sure we wouldn't surpass you because you knew!" his voice started to waver and a few tears filled his gaze. "You knew we were capable of being greater than you!"

"What the fuck's he talking about?" an agent behind J'onn whispered. He was shushed by Eden, his team leader.

J'onn wished he could use his telepathic skills on Lex to try and understand his motives but the torch being waved in his face prevented him from using any of his abilities. He was reduced to asking questions and trying to judge the man's mental state.

"Humanity was promised to do great things." Lex's gaze had left J'onn and there was an expression on his face that made them wonder if he was even in the room with them anymore. He was staring off into the distance, almost in trance as he continued his speech.

"We were always supposed to figure out the mysteries of this planet, of our condition, our origins..." a small smile suddenly appeared on his face. "What I would have given to know these answers." he chuckled. "From the moment we looked up in the sky, at night, and saw the Milky Way staring back at us in all its sheer beauty... the backbone of the night... we were destined to explore it, to learn its secrets and make it ours."

"He's gone bonkers!" The same agent breathed.

"Shut up!" Eden muttered but it was too late, Lex's attention had been caught.

He sniffled back his emotion and glared at them. "You clueless guns for hire, you live in the bliss of ignorance!" he spat. "You represent the dead weight of humanity. 90% of all men and women on us doing nothing but slowing us down! It's always been the brightest minds trying to drag their fellow human beings out of their shitholes towards a greater destiny and you've always fought back to stay in your little miserable place of lies and complacence."

He drew a gun from his jacket and started agitating it dangerously. "When the first men went on the moon, it seemed we had found our footing but we hadn't. How many times had we gone back up there? Barely a handful! With all our technology, our intelligence we could have explored the solar system before the third millennium!" he shouted.

J'onn and Eden shared a worried glance and tried to crawl back from the man threatening them. Lex seemed caught in his own anger and preferred to pile on with his arguments. "Of course the common man preferred to feed himself lies and decide things were moving too fast for him. He decided to refuge himself in the comforting lies of religion! McCarthy, the greatest enemy of our species in the second half of the twentieth century! In God We Trust!"

He laughed.

"Do you think it's always been our national motto? 1956! That is when it was officially adopted, that's when the regressive movement started for the U.S.!" he snorted. "Where the hell has our separation of State and Church gone? Do you know how idiotic it was for me to take a presidential oath on the Bible of upholding a constitution that clearly states our country is secular? Isn't a testament of our own stupidity?"

"Lex..." J'onn tried to reason with him until he had the barrel of a handgun pointed at him.

"Do not try to twist my words, invader!" Lex aimed at him. "Maybe you influenced the regressive movements. It did favor you, didn't it?"

"I'm not sure what your beliefs are but I can assure you I am not part of any master plan trying to take over your societies. I-" J'onn went silent when the gun's detonator was pulled back.

"Stop. Talking." Lex whispered through gritted teeth. "All my life I've been trying to understand why so many people adhered to the ideas of religion and other anti-science movements." he kept on exposing his delirium. "Then I learned of the existence of aliens, like you! And the mutants, hybrid beings children of our kinds. That's when I realized you had polluted our civilization."

He nodded, staring at J'onn. "Yes, I know it all. Maybe you were just trying to spread regressive ideas, or maybe you were trying to replace us little by little. Who knows? The fact is, I couldn't allow it to happen. That's the reason I started 33.1. I needed to study your kind in order to destroy you and rid humanity of your plague. Then we could go back to finding our own path without your hindrance."

"You were planning on committing a genocide."

"I was trying to drag humanity to greatness!" he yelled. "To help it reach its full potential! If I had to sacrifice a few in order to benefit the majority then I would have done it with pleasure! Our species had to be kicked into action, our lazy and decadent lifestyles had left us vulnerable and letting it go on for too long would have destroyed us."

"Well that's what you were about to do anyway." Eden couldn't hold her tongue any longer.

Lex watched her, his eyes a picture of an unstable, explosive mind capable of going off at any moment. "If I couldn't have my fellow men and women to get on with the plan then no one else can." he answered, his tone was barely above a whisper. "I'd rather have us all die now than see our species' suffering draw on for any longer."

"That's why you triggered a nuclear incident." Eden concluded.

"Yes." Lex nodded. "And once the computers take control of the missiles, we will all perish and the planet will be able to start over. It's only a matter of minutes now. Any minute now. Any minute."

Eden bent towards J'onn. "That's it. He's completely lost it. He's waiting for something that ain't gonna ever happen."

J'onn preferred to remain silent, according a nod to acknowledge the agent. His attention was solely focused on the man holding them hostage who had his eyes glued to his watch as he strolled through the room, pacing back and forth waiting for the event that, in his mind, would end humanity's suffering.

Around them, the south-american guards hadn't done so much as bat an eye. They'd been quiet and ghost-like during Lex's entire monologue. Hadn't it been for the torch, J'onn would have forgotten their existence. The sum they had received must have been consequent enough for them to overlook Lex's erratic behavior.

J'onn started to pick up pieces of information after watching him relentlessly. The man seemed to be caught in a world of his own, his healthy hand kept brushing over his right hip as if he was in pain. Lex was sweating profusely and often looked over his shoulder as if he expected to find something or rather, someone standing in his back.

Emil Hamilton would probably have quite a lot to say about his behavior and while J'onn may not have had the qualifications to make an accurate diagnosis, he understood that Lex was suffering in some way. What he had thought to be high-stress reactions could actually be the symptoms of a real illness. Physical or mental, the question remained.

"Why isn't it happening?" Lex screamed. "We should all be dead by now!"

Behind J'onn, the loud-mouthed agent couldn't hold his tongue any longer. "We avoided the war. Having a hard time getting that through your thick head, heh?"

"Turner!" Eden whispered but it was too late, Lex was already precipitating himself towards them.

He grit his teeth and pushed away the first row of prone agents, the artificial strength of his nanosuit making the task look quite easy. He grabbed Turner by the collar and started to lift him up at eye-level.

"I'm starting to think you've outlived your usefulness." A vein started bulging out on the man's bald scalp, a testament of his anger. Lex's hand pressed on the agent's windpipe as he moved him around the room like he was a rag doll. "What's the bargaining chip for a loud-mouthed fool like you? Maybe there's none."

Turner started to cough, his face changing shades. He was fighting back against Lex's superior strength without much luck until, after a minute, he went still and started emitting horrible gasps. Eden, the agent's superior stood up against the order of her captors. "Hey stop!" she called.

One of the guard took a step towards her and started shouting in Spanish. She sent him stumbling towards the wall and went to jump in the direction of the desk where Lex had let the gun fall in his rage.

"Eden! No!"

J'onn's words were vain. The moment her hand wrapped around the weapon a deafening burst of noise echoed in the room. She slumped down, unmoving.

"Eden!"

In the commotion, Lex had let Turner go and turned back towards the woman who had tried to kill him. Despite Turner's violent and uncontrollable coughs, everyone was silent as they watched Eden take her last breaths, her back full of bullets, a large puddle of blood already pouring beneath her.

Lex's eyes left her dead form for the still-smoking assault rifle from the second guard in the room who had taken action when his comrade had been pushed away. Lex inhaled the scent of death and powder for a moment, then pried his handgun from Eden's hand. He took a few, slow strides towards J'onn, raising the weapon towards the alien's face.

"The nuclear war isn't going to happen, is it?" he asked. His voice carried that dangerous, quiet note that foretold of a terrible thing happening.

J'onn swallowed his fear back, all of his senses aware of the weapon aimed at him as he stared in Lex's eyes. The silence that followed had for sole consequence to increase the tension between them. Turner's coughs had stopped and it seemed no one dared to make a move, as even Lex's mercenaries watched them, uncertain.

Taking one strong breath that filled his chest up, J'onn broke the silence. "No." he said, his voice firm. "You failed."

People held their breaths when Lex's jaw tightened and his finger touched the trigger, then released it. Heads turned and steps were made towards the barren windows. A cry, a loud cry from the forest had perturbed the execution of J'onn J'onzz. The martian could savor a few moments of respite and witness as Lex watched the villa's surrounding through the hole.

He scanned the forest when the cry echoed again, louder this time, and a silhouette took shape in between the trees. His eyes went wide and he was frozen by a sudden fright. The beast! It is the beast! Lex's mind whirled with this information until he closed his eyes and shook his head until it hurt. No, no it can't be. The beast is dead. It IS dead. He tried to convince himself. Still, his old wound started to itch. Unconsciously, Lex scratched at his hip as he dared to take another look.

This time the shape wasn't surrounded by the blur of the distance and the shadows of the forest. Lex looked down, taking a calming breath. It's not the beast. He thought to himself but the fact was that he didn't know whether he should feel better or not.

Out there, a group of countless men approached the villa, slowly crawling through the grass and the leaves. They were led by the one man who had stood in his way since the beginning. "Oliver!" he spat out the name, his eye set on the archer moving towards the villa. The vigilante was accompanied by a troop of people that didn't belong to the Suicide Squad.

"La Hermandad!" someone shouted among the FARC ranks, provoking a commotion around the villa.

Lex let out a grunt and turned towards the guards. "Have them all shot down! What are you waiting for?"

The FARC mercenaries looked paralyzed for a moment until one of them said a word in Spanish and headed towards the backdoor at a quick pace. Hadn't the second man stayed behind, Lex would have thought he was fleeing.

"Y aquí, señor?" the guard in question asked.

Lex glanced at J'onn and the two other hostages at his side. He blew out a breath and turned towards a door leading to another room. "Kill them all."

The mercenary pulled at his rifle's chamber. An agent at J'onn's side used the moment to barrel into the man and send him sprawling on the ground. The two of them fought for the weapon just as Lex sent a glance back.

J'onn swore he saw a hint of surprise, maybe even a bit of fear in his eyes before he disappeared behind the door and locked it. "Lex!" he called.

A thump on the wall surprised J'onn. He looked up towards the arrow embedded against the wood just as it started spewing a green pressured gas. Everyone coughed and started to feel asleep. J'onn lowered himself down, his head feeling heavy when, through the slits of his eyelids, he noticed the torch on the ground and its fire starting to spread around.

"Oliver... Oliver..." he whispered.

Lex grunted and piled the last piece of furniture against the door. He stood back to admire his work and lifted a shaking hand to smear away his increasing sweat. The room was a small part of the villa that could have been a bedroom or a home office. As it was, it only had one little window which had also been sealed by wooden planks.

He heard footsteps under the floor and realized Oliver's men knew about the underground network under the villas of the area. His moments as a free man were counted. It seemed like an unending stream of footsteps went on under him and the increasing, rhythmic cadence pressured on him until he couldn't take it.

He drew out his gun and fired downward. "Die! Die! Everyone should die!"

Hands pierced through the floor, trying to grab his feet. Lex yelled in horror and carried on firing at the threatening body parts. It was only after a minute that he noticed the hands weren't human. They were dark and scattered with bright white bones just like...

"The beast!" Lex whimpered, shooting again at another hand. "Die! Leave me alone!"

Fingers dug into his shoulder, piercing his flesh. Lex shouted and whirled around. The hands had vanished, only to be replaced by the shape of Lionel Luthor emerging from the shadows.

"Dad?" Lex shouted, his voice shaking. "What is this?"

Step after step, Lionel Luthor approached his son, an uncharacteristic growl leaving his throat. The old Luthor had traded his human eyes for red, menacing pupils. His mouth was filled with numerous thin, sharp teeth that gave his smile the image of a gate to hell as his skin was spattered with bones growing out of his body.

Terrified, Lex stepped backward, beads of sweat falling into his eyes and blurring his vision. He let out another wail when his back hit something. When he turned, he fell face to face with Tess Mercer's apocalyptic double.

She shared the same monstrous characteristic of Lionel and seemed as intent as her father to get her claws into her step-brother's flesh before digging her hellish teeth into him until he succumbed under unthinkable pain.

Caught between the two creatures, Lex had nowhere to go. His back to the wall and seeing both Tess and Lionel spit their hiss that so reminded him of the beast, he remembered the weapon in his hand. Seized by a sudden relief, he brought the gun against his temple and cursed the monsters.

"You'll never get me!"

And he pulled the trigger.

J'onn came to when someone shook him with insistence. His blurred vision focused on a man with blond hair and a green tunic crouched to his level. He groaned, propping himself up from the ground.

"Oliver, what happened?"

The archer had a small, relieved smile on his face. "It's over, J'onn. We got him."

Suddenly, J'onn remembered the green gas and the fire spreading about. He looked at the corner of the room, seeing the torch surrounded by a puddle of black suit and water. A few feet away, Suicide Squad agents were crouching by Eden's side, the woman's body yet to be taken away.

"You alright?"

He nodded. "I'm doing fine, Oliver. Fine is the right word."

On the other side of the room, Rick Flagg came out of another part of the villa, preceding the squad's medic who, with another agent's help, was carrying Lex Luthor's motionless form out on a stretcher. The group passed by them on their way.

"What happened to him?" J'onn asked.

Rick stopped by their side and turned to watch Lex on the stretcher. "We found him like this, seating, his back against the wall." he explained and nodded at his men, allowing them to carry him out. "At first I thought he'd offed himself because he wasn't moving and his gun was still in his hand."

"What did he do?"

Rick shrugged. "No clue. He hasn't fired a single shot. My men checked his magazine, it was full. The chamber too. Full."

"Seems like he's caught in this sort of coma." Oliver chimed in. "I've got no idea what caused him to end up like that but at least it makes our lives easier."

"He kept babbling about incoherent things. Trying to explain why he did what he did.." J'onn said. "He was caught in his own brand of delirium lately."

Oliver shook his head. "Oh trust me, he always was like that."

"Well..." Rick started. "Mission's over, I'm going to make sure we won't overshoot our stay. Lots of bodies to recover..."

"We've got to mourn our dead." J'onn agreed. "He did a lot of damage."

"That he did." Rick nodded. "If it were up to me, he'd be hanging down a rope for the next three weeks but alas..."

"We know, Flagg, we know." Oliver replied. "At least he'll be judged and in the state he's in now, he won't be able to hurt anyone else."

"You're right, Queen." Rick said, his voice louder. "Come on now, Superman's going to be impatient and we've got one bad motherfucker to get back home for his trial."

J'onn and Oliver followed the squad's leader out of the villa. When they stepped outside, Oliver paused and inhaled deeply, turning to J'onn. "You know what? Even after this terrible day I'm feeling pretty good, you know why?"

"No." J'onn replied, the pictures of the multiple agents killed instantly in the explosions, Turner being strangled to the brink of death and Eden being shot down were still on his mind.

Still, Oliver carried this aura of relief and with him, a sense of renewal. He bent towards him and whispered.

"Because today's the day we finally took down Lex Luthor."