Epilogue

Aboard the Expandable, lights had gone out. The electrical system short-circuited hours earlier when the submarine had sunk into the ocean. The captain had turned off the nuclear reactor, preventing a myriad of issues that would only have worsened the condition of the remaining members of the crew on the ship.

They were forty-two.

The unlucky ones who had to stay behind when the Expandable was hit. There was nothing to do but wait as the ship slipped deeper and deeper into the unexplored craters at the bottom of the ocean. Everyone had felt the pressure rising, bit by bit, the headaches started coming, some even had nosebleeds. One or two fainted, and the rest of them had settled themselves on the ground as comfortably as they could, feeling their strengths leaving them as the oceanic pressure worked against their muscles.

When the submarine hit the bottom, there was a collective sigh of relief among them. The situation had stabilized and, even if the ship was past its depth limit by a long mile, the captain and his crew knew they would die of asphyxia hours, if not days before the metallic structure of the submarine gave out and crushed them.

"Clyde!" Still, some of them refused to accept their death. "Hey Clyde where'd go? Come back here!"

The young agent ran up and down the tight corridors looking for his colleague, shaking the still atmosphere among the crew. His shouts got General Wilson out of his stupor.

"Clyde! Come on!"

Wilson saw him slip past their room and frowned. "Ah give it up, kid!" he called to the agent, a hint of annoyance in his tone. "Leave him be, some time alone won't hurt anybody."

At his side, the captain had been woken up by Wilson's rant. He pushed against the wall to sit upright on the ground and let out a sigh of discomfort. "Everybody has a right to choose the way they're going to die."

In front of them, Maxwell Lord was settled against the navigating console in the middle of the computer room. The three of them had chosen not to rejoin their own room and remained on the same spot hours after everyone became trapped in the ship. They spent time drowsing out and regaining conscience until then.

"We're Suicide Squad," Lord spoke up, a tired grin on his face. "We ought to have our deaths planned out."

"I don't know about you but I'm still expecting some miraculous rescue team!" Wilson's drawl caused them to laugh. The general himself cracked a smile. "You don't believe me."

The captain chuckled. "The lack of oxygen is getting to your brain, that's what I think. I'm sure the Commander agrees with me."

"Actually," Lord replied. "I think he's gotten lucky for too long and thinks it's gonna happen again. How many times have you cheated death lately, Slade?"

Slade Wilson huffed and relaxed his position against the wall. "Twice in as many months." he revealed. "Not bad, heh? So, I'm just asking... what's one more?"

Lord exploded in a fit of laughter, taking both men with him. Wilson was the first one to regain his breathing. "Boy do I long for a drink or cigars... cigars! I miss the old Brazilian ones I used to smoke. Don't happen to have some of 'em hidden somewhere, heh, Francis?"

The captain smirked and shook his head. "I don't have any cigars laying around, I never smoke."

"Oh, where's your funny side, now?" Wilson groaned.

"I do have alcohol, though."

"Hm? Where?" the general's spirit soared with the revelation.

Francis pointed at the dashboard on which Lord was laying against. "Commander, you're the closest." he said. "Just check the compartment on the left side behind you. Look for a bottle."

Maxwell Lord grinned and remained immobile. "I'm sorry guys, I can't move."

"Sure you can, butterfly. You've just gotten lazy as hell. Move your ass, soldier, there's a reward in the end!" Wilson growled.

Francis raised his eyebrows, hearing Wilson order the Commander around, even in a joking way, would not have flown well with Lord if it came from anyone else. The interaction showed a special bond between the two men.

Lord rose his hands in a surrendering gesture. "Okay, okay, I'll do it but you do something back for me." he negotiated.

"Oh hell no, Max." Wilson frowned. "You get that bottle! Think of it as payback for all the times Sam and I played wingmen for you back in Nam."

"Come on," Maxwell grinned. "I just want to hear how you got out of Matthews' claws."

Slade sat back against the wall, all emotion had left his face. Upon seeing Lord's growing grin and the captain's interest, he caved in. "Alright. But you get that bottle first!"

I'd gotten back home after a long day of looking over my shoulder at the White House. The hardest part of any agent is having to play along even if they think their cover's blown. Wouldn't wish that on anyone. Even after looking Luthor in eye and being debriefed about Iraq, I still wasn't sure if my skin was safe at the end of the day.

You can imagine how I felt when I walked into my house and saw someone inside standing in the dark. At that moment, I was done for. That was certain. So when I got a blow to the back of the head, I was convinced I was dead.

I woke up the next day tied to a chair in the middle of my living room. The wet bar was right in front of me, far enough to be out of reach but still close enough to be in my sight everytime I looked up. The bastards knew what they were doing.

"You do love your alcohol, don't you?" Francis laughed and took a gulp of out of the bottle, passing it to Wilson.

It's my elixir of life!

Anyway, That was the moment I saw that nut-case. Matthews. Regan Matthews. He was standing by the wet bar, staring right at me with that expression. He was proud of himself, I tell you. Never in my life had I wanted to punch anybody as much as I wanted to in that moment.

Hey Max, remember when you got into his head to try and find out where Luthor was hiding?

"Hard to forget." Lord smirked. "It was child's play to get information out of him."

You should have killed him that day. It would've spared me the sight of his face again. I'm sure I was red in the face when he started to speak, he was so clearly emboldened after capturing me, he thought he could do anything.

"Look at that! General Wilson's finally granted us with his presence!" he was gloating, and getting on my nerves by the same occasion. "How do you like our rearrangements to your place, General?"

The fuckers had turned my house upside down. Everything was scattered on the floor and broken. I was seething. "You may think you have the upper-hand, Regan but when I get out of these cuffs you better be far away from here or I'll make sure you die a slow, painful death."

Regan smirked and bent towards me, my threats flying over his head. "You won't be living long enough to free yourself from me."

Bad move, I thought. Now I knew he wanted me dead, that's not how you start an interrogation on a trained agent. I could have kept yelling at him but I was getting tired of him already. So I cut to the chase. "What do you want?"

He stood back up, grinning from ear to ear. "That's more like it!" That guy may have been stupid but he had balls. Balls, I tell you! "If you don't mind, I'll let my friend here do the talking."

I hadn't sensed a presence in my back but there had actually been someone standing behind me. Probably the guy who knocked me out the day before. I think you'll be as surprised as I was, Max because that guy? He came over at Regan's side wearing a long trenchcoat and that big hat I've always seen him wearing.

I don't remember his real name, something like Dawson, or...

"Lawson? Floyd Lawson?" Max sputtered off the alcohol he'd been drinking.

Yes, that one. I just remembered his codename: Deadshot. Turns out he'd been the mole working for Luthor all along. He was staring me down, a hand on the ever-present gun strapped to his side.

"Who else has infiltrated the government?" There was no beating around the bush with that one, he just asked me this.

Now Deadshot wasn't high-ranked enough in the organization to have had access to such information and I wasn't about to give him anything so I stalled.

"You'd be ready to betray your brothers and sisters in arms after years working with them?"

His nostrils flared and I knew I'd got to him. "You betrayed me first." he said.

I raised an eyebrow, as far as I was aware we'd never attempted to get rid of him and I couldn't even imagine why we would have. He'd never been a threat and until that day, we had no idea he'd been working with the enemy.

"Care to explain?" I prodded. Thankfully, he was being more talkative than usual.

His finger twitched on the gun at his side. "You tried to assassinate me when I was working on an assignment. You sent someone after me."

"And who would that be?"

"I never saw him before." he said. "Some tall guy looking like a robot."

"A robot?" I asked. That didn't match any agent I knew.

Deadshot was starting to get agitated. "That guy cornered me into a dark spot and he tried to shoot me down with lasers coming from his eyes."

By now I was starting to think he was making it up, after all, I've always considered him a bit of a nutjob. "And you thought it was us?"

"Who else? You people knew who I was, where I would be and when." he explained. "It was you."

There was no reasoning with him. To be honest I didn't really care, so I shrugged. "And so you decided to jump ship."

He nodded and raised his gun to my face. "At least I know what to expect with them." he told me. "Now, give us the list of all your agents in the government."

Regan used the moment to pop into the conversation, I'd almost forgotten about him. "And the army. While you're at it, you'll want to tell us the location of every hideout Checkmate has in the country."

I looked at him and smirked. "If I refuse?"

Stupid, I know. Deadshot plastered his hand over my face and I fell sideways, crashing into the furniture. That's when I realized they hadn't actually moved any piece of furniture in the living room, bare emptying their drawers and scattering their contents on the floor. There was a chance to take. Regan didn't want me dead right away, he needed information, proof that I was an external agent so he could explain to Luthor why he'd me killed.

Deadshot pulled me back up. He stood behind me and my legs hadn't been tied to the chair. I leaped up, using the chair to whip him towards the wall and then push him on the glass table a few feet behind. It was a risky move but fortunately for me, when he fell down, he missed the table but the side of his head hit the corner hard enough to knock him out.

Regan had watched the scene in shock and snapped out of it right when I was speeding towards him. He'd drawn out a pistol, too late I was already pushing him against the window. He was a little thrown then but not enough to make him lose the gun so I opted for a different strategy.

Still strapped to the chair, I saw on my right the door of the stairways leading down to the garage was open. When Regan started to grab me, I sent the both of us tumbling down the stairs. I got a lot of bruises because of it but the chair had been big enough to jam me between the walls of the narrow corridor a few times and it slowed down my fall.

I ended up sprawled over Regan on the garage's ground, knocking the wind out of him for a little while. He'd lost the gun in the commotion but I wasn't certain he didn't have another one, so I ran out of the garage towards the back door and bolted outside in the direction of that small barn I'd been using as a workshop when I wanted to do some woodwork.

I like to sculpt wood figures in my free time but lately I'd been cutting down large pieces of wood to for a roof-structure because I wanted to enlarge my house so I knew there was an electric saw on my desk.

It was still there when I got to it. The rope was halfway cut when I heard the door hissing. I upped my pace and managed to get rid of that damn chair just in time for me to hide in the room I use as storage.

Someone was walking around, they were slow and meticulous, I could imagine them looking into every inch of the barn until they found me. Then, the man started going up the stairs, probably to see if I wasn't hiding on the second floor.

I heard the guy, it sounded like boots hitting against wood. It was Deadshot. Regan probably was still out. I took the chance I was given and made a beeline for the door, as silently as I could. Of course, the door hissed again when I pushed it open. I cursed myself because I'd been thinking about oiling its hinges for months but I never did it.

The momentum was blown but I was so wound up already, I didn't stop and think, I rushed in the direction of the house, hoping to get my hands on Regan's gun and take them both out. Alas, Deadshot saw me running out in the open.

I'll always remember the sound of him cocking his gun. I stopped and turned around, seeing him standing on the second floor of the barn and aiming at me through the large opening. I thought I was done for.

So, when the shot rang out in the area, I was expecting the world to go blank. Instead, I saw him fall over the window onto the grass headfirst. Dead.

My hands went up my sides, I started touching around my chest. No wound.

Then I picked up the sound of a sniper ejecting a cartridge, except it came from the house. I turned around to see Mercer handling her rifle from the tiny window of the bathroom. She waved at me for a moment but I didn't reciprocate, she must've thought I'd gone stupid.

Anyway, she went up to meet me, my feet were still rooted in the middle of the backyard. I think I was still expecting Deadshot's bullet to hit me, I'd been so sure it was the end of the ride for me.

"Are you okay, sir?" she asked me.

The fog started to dissipate with her words. "You saved my life, agent." Nothing else I could say, just the bare truth.

She smiled and gave me a compassionate pat, I think she realized then I was still in shock. That's a good woman you'd recruited, Max, I tell you. We both relaxed and I accepted the fact that I came way too close to death than I'd wanted that day.

I was expecting it to be the end of the ride but there was still someone to take care of. We both heard a loud noise coming from the house. I looked up and saw Regan leaning against the large windows of my living room. He'd just gotten up from his forced trip to my garage.

He glanced out and our eyes met. Never in my life had I seen someone look so afraid and angry at the same time. Regan disappeared before I could say anything but Mercer picked up on the situation and realized there'd been someone else after me.

We ran after him.

I made a stop by my arm-cache in my office room. I could have gone back and picked up Deadshot's weapon but all I could think about was going forward, towards Regan. The idiot had refuged himself upstairs in the freaking toilets!

He was cornered and he knew it.

This time I had the advantage. Mercer let me walk ahead, she knew I wanted to settle this myself. By then, the adrenaline and the feeling of dodging a bullet was giving me a second wind. I started to taunt him.

"Give it up now, Regan." I hollered. "You're trapped, all three of us know it!"

I set foot on the second floor expecting a gunfight. Instead I heard a single shot, and that was it.

"What?" Francis leaned forward, confused.

Wilson took a gulp from the bottle, wiping his lips. "He shot himself." he said. "I found him pissing blood all over my tiles, his brains blown against the wall. The idiot committed suicide."

Lord exploded in laughter. "What an ending!"

"That story still cost me another one of my nine lives, heh." Wilson shrugged.

"I do wonder, though," the captain said aloud. "Who was the one who had tried to kill Deadshot?"

Wilson finished the last of the bottle and sighed. "Who knows? Maybe some things are better left unknown."

The three men froze when the Expandable emitted a guttural groan.

"What was that?" Lord asked.

The submarine moaned again, louder. The noise grew to fill their ears until they couldn't hear anything else. They stumbled and held themselves against the walls when the structure started to move. Maxwell Lord asked if the ship was breaking apart but his question was muffled by the noise.

They rose and agreed non-verbally to investigate the source of the commotion. A task soon shared by the rest of the crew who, as anxious as they were about the situation, trailed after them.

A bright light came from the reactor's room. The captain tried to look at the porthole, in vain. The inside of the room was nothing but monochromatic white. He feared something had happened with the reactor and hesitated to pull the door open until his peers pressured him.

The metallic airlock was pulled open and they were bathed in a blinding light emanating from the inside. The ship moved again, they felt it rising up. The motion made some of them fall down but the rest were too entranced to even think about holding onto something.

Their eyes had gotten used to the light and they started to make out the shape of a humanoid figure standing in the middle of the reactor's room with its arms up in the air as if it were pushing the Expandable up, towards the surface.

The being's chrome skin reflected the light, making it seem god-like. It was a featureless face that stared back at them through two small, red dots.

So many questions whirled in their minds and yet only one cold, hard fact wiped away any doubt they had. The Expandable was rising up, floating towards the surface. This being was their savior.

THE END