Chapter 36: Stay In Your Lane
The morning sun was hitting my penthouse floor at an angle that made the dust motes look like tiny, floating surveillance drones. I stared at my King helmet, currently resting on the kitchen island like a decapitated cyborg. There was a dent just above the left ocular sensor—Faora’s parting gift—that made the whole thing look like it was permanently raising an eyebrow at me.
I really needed to pull some strings with the GDA to get some Nth metal. Platinum was great for the branding—shiny, expensive, screamed “I’m totally famous”—but as a protective layer, it was basically high-end tin foil when a Kryptonian decided to use your face as a speed bag.
I took a long, slow sip of coffee. It was the third cup. My Viltrumite metabolism usually processed caffeine before it even hit my stomach, but the ritual was more about the psychological lie I told myself: that I was a normal guy having a normal morning.
Kara was standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows, her back to me. She hadn’t moved in ten minutes. She was wearing one of my oversized hoodies—a gray one that said MetaWorks: Protection You Can Count On—which looked hilariously soft compared to the sheer, vibrating tension in her shoulders.
She looked remarkably un-bruised, the benefits of being a living solar battery, but the way she was staring at the horizon told me she was still back at Headquarters, watching Faora streak away into the clouds.
“You’re going to burn a hole in the glass if you keep staring at the sky like that,” I said, setting the coffee down and picking up a micro-welder. “And I just had those cleaned. Do you know how much a window washer charges for a penthouse? It’s extortion.”
Kara didn’t turn around. Her voice was low, taut like a wire about to snap. “She escaped, Luke. A soldier of the Empire was in our grasp, and I allowed her to retreat. She will return with more knowledge of our defenses. She will report my ’betrayal’ to the General. I failed the objective.”
I adjusted my grip on the helmet, the welder hissing as I started to smooth out the dent. “First off, nobody ’allowed’ Faora to do anything. She’s a professional headache, with a bulletproof face. Second, the objective was ’don’t let the Kryptonian war-monger turn our office building into rubble.’ We achieved that. I’d call it a win.”
“It is an incomplete victory,” she countered, finally turning to face me. Her eyes were wide, intense, and circling a very familiar drain of guilt. “The Empire does not retreat. They regroup. Every moment she is free is a moment the threat grows. How can you be so... casual? Your father is finally aligned with us, your mother knows the truth, and yet you sit here fixing a decorative hat.”
I paused, the blue light of the welder reflecting off my eyes. “It’s a functional hat, Kara. And I’m being casual because if I spent every second worrying about the next alien invasion or magical curse, I’d have an aneurysm before thirty.”
Or whatever the thirty years old equivalent for my species is.
“We’ve had a hell of a week.” I sighed. “We fought a private army, dealt with my family’s ’I’m an alien conqueror’ therapy session, and survived Lex Luthor’s mid-life crisis. We deserve a break before the next disaster rolls in.”
Kara crossed her arms, the hoodie sleeves bunching up.
She looked small for a second, the warrior-daughter of Brainiac flickering behind the girl who just wanted to belong somewhere. “A break. You mean more ice cream? The dairy was pleasant, but I do not see how it prepares us for the coming conflict.”
“Actually, I was thinking of something a bit more... tactical,” I lied, a dry smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. “Something that requires precision, physical coordination, and possibly some very ugly shoes.”
She tilted her head, her literal mind already scanning for a training exercise. “A new combat simulation? Does it involve the gravity chamber?”
“Better. It’s called bowling,” I said, setting the helmet aside. It was still lopsided, but it would have to wait. “It involves a series of wooden towers—we call them pins—and a heavy, spherical projectile. The goal is total annihilation of the target in a single strike. It’s a classic human pastime.”
The word ’annihilation’ did the trick. Kara’s posture straightened instantly, her eyes flashing with a spark of genuine interest that wasn’t tinted by brooding for once.
“Total annihilation,” she repeated, testing the weight of the words. “And these ’pins’... do they represent a specific formation? An infantry square? A fortified perimeter?”
“Let’s go with ’insulting relics of a bygone era,’” I said, standing up and stretching until my spine popped. “Just don’t throw the ball through the floor. It’s a civilian establishment, and I’d like to keep my deposit on the lane. Think you can handle a low-stakes mission for once?”
Kara walked over, her expression dead serious as she placed a hand on my shoulder. The intensity was still there, but it had shifted from dread to a focused, earnest competitive streak.
“I will master this ’Bowling,’ Luke Grayson,” she promised. “If these pins stand in our way, they shall be leveled. I will not allow a single one to remain standing. Lead the way.”
I suppressed a laugh. Watching a Kryptonian warrior-princess treat a Saturday afternoon at a bowling alley like the Siege of Troy was exactly the kind of distraction I needed. “Right. Let’s get moving. But seriously—if you start heat-visioning the ball to get a better curve, the date is over.”
…
The smell of this “bowling alley” was a complex chemical cocktail of floor wax, stale bread, and the sweat of thousands of humans who had come here to celebrate minor athletic achievements. It was fascinating. Kara adjusted the collar of her borrowed jacket, her eyes tracking the rhythmic movement of the mechanical pin-setters at the end of the long wooden lanes. The flickering neon lights overhead hummed at a frequency that most humans couldn’t hear, but to her, it sounded like the distant drone of a New Kryptonian scout ship.
“The tactical layout is... simplistic,” Kara observed, her voice carrying that sharp, military cadence she still struggled to dial back. She stared down Lane 12, treating the ten white pins as if they were a line of infantry holding a breach. “We are meant to use these spheres to destabilize the formation? Why are there holes in the ammunition? Is it for aerodynamic venting?”
“They’re for your fingers, Kara. It’s for grip,” Luke said, sounding suspiciously like he was suppressing a laugh. He held up a bright blue ball that looked entirely too light to be an effective siege weapon. “And remember the most important rule: finesse. If you throw this with your full strength, we’re going to be talking to a very angry building inspector, and I’ve already had enough paperwork this month.”
Kara nodded, her expression grimly determined. She selected a ball that was a deep, swirling crimson—the color of a dying sun. It felt like nothing in her hand, a hollow shell. She stepped up to the line, her mind calculating wind resistance and the friction coefficient of the waxed wood. If the goal was total annihilation, she would provide it. She drew her arm back, her Kryptonian musculature coiling with the efficiency of a weapon designed by Brainiac himself.
The release was silent. The impact was not.
The ball didn’t roll; it flew. It cleared half the lane in a blur of red before slamming into the center pin with the force of a kinetic strike from orbit. The pins didn’t just fall; they disintegrated into white shards. The ball didn’t stop, either. It punched through the rear mechanical sweep and embedded itself halfway into the cinderblock wall behind the machinery with a dull, heavy thud.
The alley went silent. A few humans at the neighboring lanes stopped mid-sip, staring at the smoking hole where a pin-setter used to be.
“The white towers have fallen! Victory is ours, Luke!” Kara proclaimed, turning back to him with a fierce, triumphant grin. She waited for him to acknowledge her tactical brilliance, perhaps with a traditional warrior’s salute.
Instead, Luke was rubbing his temples, his face buried in one hand. “Kara. Honey. That was... certainly a strike. But in this specific culture, we generally prefer it if the equipment survives the encounter.”
“But the objective was achieved,” she pointed out, her brow furrowing in confusion. “I have neutralized the target. Is that not the purpose of the engagement?”
“The purpose is to pass the time without getting me banned from every Lucky Strike in California,” Luke replied, though his eyes were dancing with that dry humor she was slowly learning to navigate. He led her back to the ball return, lowering his voice as he demonstrated a slow, rhythmic underhand roll. “Think of it like... a gentle shove. You’re not trying to kill the pins. You’re just suggesting they should lie down.”
Kara watched him carefully. It was strange, seeing a man with the power to crack a planet’s crust focus so intently on making a plastic ball move slowly. She tried again, this time suppressing her strength until her arm felt heavy and sluggish. It was a bizarre sensation, being “soft” on purpose. The ball wobbled down the lane, clattering against the pins with a satisfying clack.
“I have suggested they lie down,” Kara said, watching the last pin wobble and fall. “They have complied with my demands.”
“Now you’re getting it,” Luke said, stepping up for his turn.
He was the son of a Viltrumite and a human, a hybrid of incredible potential, yet as he released his ball, it hooked violently to the left. It clipped the very edge of the formation, leaving the two outermost pins standing on opposite sides of the lane. A 7-10 split.
Luke froze, staring at the remaining pins as if they had personally insulted his lineage. “Are you kidding me? That was a perfect release. The oil pattern on this lane is a crime against humanity. It’s rigged, Kara. Lex Luthor probably owns this franchise just to spite me.”
Kara tilted her head, observing the “split” with a professional eye. To her, it looked like a masterful maneuver. “Why are you displeased? You have bifurcated the enemy formation, Luke. This is a classic pincer move. They are isolated and vulnerable. You have forced them to defend two fronts simultaneously.”
“It’s a split, Kara! It’s the worst possible outcome!” Luke groaned, pacing the small carpeted area. “I can literally fly to the moon in seconds, but I can’t knock down two pieces of plastic ten feet apart? The physics here are fundamentally broken.”
“Your frustration is illogical, but entertaining,” Kara said, reaching for another fries—a “delicacy” that was mostly salt and grease. She popped one into her mouth, the heat blooming across her tongue. “I find this environment... acceptable. It is loud and the lighting is suboptimal, but there is no one here demanding I report for duty. There are no maps of the Sol system to memorize. No one is asking me to be the ’Shield of the Empire.’”
She looked at Luke, her gaze softening. The intensity that usually defined her features ebbed away, replaced by a quiet, guarded vulnerability. “In the Empire, every action was a calculated step toward conquest. Here, I am simply a girl who is bad at wearing rented shoes. I like this world, Luke. It does not demand I be a weapon every second I am awake.”
Luke went quiet, his hand resting on the ball return. He looked at her with that steady, grounding presence that had anchored her since the day she’d arrived on this strange planet. He reached out, his fingers accidentally tightening around his bowling ball in a moment of distraction. There was a sickening crunch of plastic. When he pulled his hand away, four deep, perfect indentations were pressed into the solid material of the ball—his fingerprints, etched permanently into the surface.
Kara’s eyes widened. She didn’t look horrified; she looked inspired. She grabbed her own red ball and squeezed, her own fingers sinking into the plastic with a series of sharp cracks until she had created a matching set of grips.
“A brilliant idea,” she whispered, her voice full of earnest glee. “By marking the projectiles with our unique biological signatures, we have claimed them. They are now part of our personal armory. I can see the tactical appeal of these ’bowling balls’ in close-quarters combat. They are heavy, concealable, and now, they are ours.”
“That’s... not exactly why I did that,” Luke started to say, but he stopped when he saw the sheer joy on her face. “You know what? Sure. We’ve claimed the balls. They’re official MetaWorks ordinance now.”
Kara beamed at him, her heart thumping against her ribs in a way that had nothing to do with adrenaline. She remembered a program she had seen on the “television” back at the penthouse—a woman had gained favor with a male by fluttering her eyelashes in a specific, rhythmic pattern. She tried it now, blinking rapidly at Luke while holding her newly ’claimed’ weapon.
“Luke,” she said, her voice dropping into a dramatic, breathy tone she thought sounded very persuasive. “You must purchase these spheres for me. My cousin Kal-El has already gifted me a ’baseball,’ and I find the act of manual projectile delivery quite satisfying. It is far more personal than heat vision. I wish to add these to my growing arsenal.”
Luke stared at her for a long beat, his expression a mixture of confusion and genuine endearment. “Are you... trying to ’Pretty Please’ me into buying you bowling balls to throw at villains?”
“Is it working?” she asked, stopping the blinking because it was actually starting to make her eyes dry.
“Terrifyingly well,” Luke sighed. “Fine. We’ll buy the balls. Just don’t—”
His gauntlet chimed, the sharp, insistent tone of an incoming priority call cutting through the neon haze of the alley. Luke checked the display and let out a long, weary breath. “It’s Constantine. Probably wants me to sign the insurance waivers for the Hydra cleanup. Apparently, dropping a prehistoric monster on a public beach carries some ’minor legal hurdles.’”
“The sorcerer demands your presence?” Kara asked, her protective instincts flaring as she set the bowling ball down—carefully, this time. “Does he require tactical support? Or has he simply run out of his flavored leaf-water?”
“Just paperwork, Kara. The most dangerous foe of all,” Luke said, reaching out to squeeze her hand, gauntlet to palm. “The date is officially on pause. But hey, at least you got a strike and a new set of weapons out of it.”
Kara followed him toward the exit, casting one last look back at the ruined pin-setter. “Victory is ours,” she murmured to herself, a small, fierce smile tugging at her lips. “Even if the shoes are indeed very ugly.”
…
I stared at the stack of paperwork on my desk with more genuine fear than I’d felt facing Faora-Ul.
Lex Luthor hadn’t just punched a hole through the side of MetaWorks; he’d punched a hole through my sanity. Insurance Form 12-B: Property Damage Sustained via Unauthorized Alien Incursion. Insurance Form 14-G: Collateral Damage via Magical Artifact Backlash (Requires Signature of Licensed Sorcerer).
I looked over at John Constantine. He was currently reclined in a leather chair that definitely cost more than his car, heels dug into the mahogany, nursing a silk-cut cigarette he’d somehow managed to light despite the building’s high-end fire suppression system.
“You know, John,” I said, my voice dripping with the kind of fatigue only bureaucracy can induce. “As a licensed consultant and MetaWorks dispatcher, your signature is legally required on about forty percent of these. It would really speed things up if you stopped pretending to be a decorative fixture.”
“Funny thing about contracts, mate,” Constantine replied, blowing a leisurely cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “I’m a consultant for the supernatural. Lex’s little exosuit tantrum is purely a corporate matter. Not a demon or a restless spirit in sight. My hands are clean. Unlike yours, which seem to be getting quite the workout with that pen.”
He gave me a grin that was eighty percent smug and twenty percent nicotine. He was loving this. No babysitting duties, no hellbound portals—just pure, unadulterated laziness while I drowned in legalese.
Behind him, the office had transformed into a low-gravity obstacle course. Kara was currently “training” Jason and Ace. By training, I mean she was hovering six feet off the floor, chasing them around the communal lounge area with a look of intense, earnest concentration.
“I have detected a flank maneuver, Jason Todd!” Kara called out, swooping over a sofa to intercept the boy.
Jason, already showing the slippery instincts that would one day make him a nightmare for Gotham’s underworld, slid under a coffee table. Ace just giggled, her eyes glowing faintly as she used a minor telekinetic shove to send a swivel chair rolling into Kara’s path.
Kara didn’t crash; she simply caught the chair, spun it once, and set it back down without breaking stride. Watching her play with them was a trip.
She was a warrior-princess who had been raised to oversee planetary occupations, yet here she was, wearing a oversized hoodie and playing a high-stakes version of tag with a telepathic girl and a kid who was probably going to grow up to be a very angry ninja.
“Luke,” Kara said, pausing mid-air to look at me, her face flushed with the kind of life I hadn’t seen much of in her before. “The small humans are surprisingly adept at evasive patterns. Jason possesses a commendable grasp of cover and concealment.”
Call it a hunch, but I think she might like kids.
“He’s also ten, Kara. Don’t go ’full Empire’ on him,” I muttered, turning back to Form 19-C: Loss of Revenue due to Super-Powered Brawl.
My comms chimed. It wasn’t the standard ’client calling’ ping. It was the high-frequency, encrypted ’Cecil Steadman is about to ruin your afternoon’ tone.
I hit the speaker. “Cecil. Please tell me you’re calling to tell me the GDA is covering my deductible.”
“I’m calling because I have a massive energy spike at a warehouse in the industrial district,” Cecil’s voice crackled, sounding even more tired than I felt. “It’s off the charts, Luke. Multiversal resonance, maybe. I tried to get your old man to check it out, but apparently, he’s in the middle of ’communicating his feelings’ in a therapy session and won’t pick up. Then I called Mark, and Eve’s dad answered and told me to lose the number because they’re on a date.”
I thought her dad was a dick? Probably not the main takeaway, though.
I leaned back, a slow, beautiful feeling of relief washing over me. “So you’re desperate.”
“I’m asking you, which usually means the same thing,” Cecil sighed. “I know you’re busy with the MetaWorks cleanup, so I’m not expecting you to check it out yourself, but—”
“I’ll do it,” I said instantly, standing up so fast my chair hit the wall. “I’m on my way. I’ll even do it pro bono. Just send the coordinates.”
Constantine’s cigarette nearly fell out of his mouth. He sat up, the smugness vanishing instantly. “Wait, hold on. You’re leaving? Who’s going to finish the magical backlash sub-forms? If you’re not here to verify the signatures, the GDA will have my head for the ’unauthorized use of ritual components’!”
I grabbed my platinum helmet off the desk, tucking it under my arm. “Sounds like a you problem, John. You’re the consultant. Consult yourself. Or maybe Ace can help you. She’s great with a pen.”
I turned to Kara, who had landed softly near the desk. Her expression was a mix of curiosity and that guarded instinct she always wore when the ’business’ of being a hero came up.
“The date is paused again, isn’t it?” she asked, her voice blunt but not unkind.
“Duty calls,” I said, offering her an apologetic half-shrug. “Cecil found a science project gone wrong. I need to go make sure the city doesn’t get sucked into a black hole or something. It shouldn’t take long. You stay here, keep an eye on the kids and make sure Constantine doesn’t set the rug on fire.”
Kara looked at the bowling ball sitting on the corner of my desk—the one we’d ’claimed’ earlier. She reached out and patted the plastic surface, her fingers tracing the indentations she’d made.
“Very well,” she said, nodding with a solemnity that made me wonder if she was secretly relieved to avoid more paperwork too. “I shall remain here and master the ’Spin-Ball’ technique until you return. I have theorized that a rotational force applied to the sphere will increase the probability of a total strike. I will utilize the hallway as a temporary lane.”
“Try not to kill the walls,” I said, leaning in to give her a quick kiss on the cheek before heading for the balcony.
“I make no promises for the architecture,” Kara called after me.
As I stepped out into the cool air and prepared to take flight, I felt her eyes on my back. I knew her. She’d wait about five minutes, get bored, decide that I was ’vulnerable’ without a Kryptonian bodyguard, and follow me anyway.
Honestly? I was counting on it. Bowling was fun, but I had a feeling whatever Cecil had found was going to require a lot more than a pincer move.
…
The warehouse was located in a part of the industrial district that city planning had clearly forgotten about decades ago. It was a cavernous, rust-stained concrete box that smelled of ozone and bad intentions. As I descended through a skylight I’d “appropriately ventilated” with a quick shoulder-check, the air began to hum with a vibration that made my teeth ache.
In the center of the room sat a machine that looked like a particle accelerator had an illicit love child with a brain scanner. Cables as thick as my waist snaked across the floor, pulsing with a sickly green light. And in the middle of it all sat a man in a high-tech crown, looking far too intense for his own good.
“Angstrom Levy, I presume,” I said, my voice echoing through the metallic visor of my helmet. I didn’t land; I just hovered about five feet off the ground, arms crossed. “I’d ask for a permit, but I’m guessing ’Interdimensional Memory Transfusion’ isn’t covered under standard zoning laws.”
Angstrom looked up, his eyes wide and bloodshot. Beside him stood the Mauler Twins—seven-foot-tall, blue-skinned slabs of muscle and ego. One of them was adjusting a dial, while the other was currently holding a massive energy cell like it was a AA battery.
“King,” Angstrom spat, his voice trembling with a mixture of zealotry and fear. “I should have known. MetaWorks couldn’t let a discovery this grand happen without trying to put a price tag on it. You’re here to seize my tech, aren’t you? To patent the multiverse?”
“Actually, I’m here to stop you from turning your brain into a scrambled egg,” I said, tilting my head. “Look, I get the pitch. You want the knowledge of a thousand versions of yourself to solve world hunger and cure cancer, and so on. It sounds great on paper. But in my experience, the ’Greatest Man in the World’ complex usually ends with a lot of property damage and a very tragic backstory. Can we maybe just quit while you’re ahead?”
“You speak of limitations because you are small-minded!” Angstrom shouted. “With this, I can be everywhere! I can see everything!”
“Yeah, and you’ll also be the guy who accidentally blew up a warehouse because he didn’t listen to the guy in the platinum suit,” I countered. I glanced at the Maulers. “And you two? Really? You’re smarter than this. You know how volatile multiversal resonance is. The moment that brain-link hits peak capacity, the feedback loop is going to level this zip code.”
The Mauler on the left snorted. “The human has it under control, shiny. We built the stabilizers ourselves.”
“Which means they’re exactly twice as likely to fail as you think they are,” I muttered.
A streak of silver and blue blurred through the hole I’d made in the ceiling. Kara touched down beside me, her cape snapping behind her. She didn’t look amused. She looked like she was ready to dismantle the machine and everyone in the room to make sure I made it back for dinner.
“Luke, the energy readings are reaching a critical threshold,” Kara said, her eyes already glowing with the faint, pre-ignition flicker of her heat vision. “This device is an affront to physics. It smells of desperate gambits. We should destroy it immediately.”
“Wait, Kara, don’t—”
“Kill them!” Angstrom shrieked, pointing at us. “Protect the machine! If they interfere now, the link will shatter!”
The Maulers didn’t need a second invitation. They lunged. I took the one on the right, catching his fist with a palm and feeling the concrete beneath my feet crack from the sheer displacement of force. He was strong—high-tier meta strong—but I was a Viltrumite who had been holding back for half my life. I drove a palm into his chest, sending him skidding across the floor into a stack of shipping crates.
Kara didn’t bother with finesse. She caught the second Mauler by the throat and slammed him into the floor with a rhythmic thud that shook the entire building.
“Is this the best you have to offer?” Kara asked, sounding genuinely disappointed. “These ’warriors’ move like toddlers in deep mud.”
“Enough!” Angstrom screamed. He slammed a sequence on his gauntlet. “If this world’s Maulers cannot stop you, perhaps a legion will!”
Green portals tore open in the air, jagged and weeping light. More blue giants stepped through—Maulers from different universes, some wearing primitive furs, others decked out in cybernetic armor. It was a chaotic, multiversal mess.
I sighed, dodging a swing from a Mauler with a bionic arm. “Look, I have a pretty good idea how this plays out. It involves a lot of screaming and a very ugly scar. Just shut it down, Angstrom. We can talk about this over something that isn’t a doomsday device.”
“I will not be silenced by a corporate puppet!” Angstrom’s face was contorted, the machine behind him whining at a pitch that was starting to shatter the glass in the overhead lights. “I am the bridge! I am the solution!”
He reached for the main override, his hand trembling.
“Angstrom, don’t pull that lever!” I shouted, moving to intercept, but a pair of Maulers tackled me mid-air, their combined weight and momentum driving me toward the floor.
“Quite!” Angstrom cried, his voice hitting a crescendo of pure mania.
He cranked the dial to the maximum and slammed his palm onto the activation pad. For a heartbeat, there was a terrible, expectant silence—the sound of reality holding its breath. Then, the stabilizers on the machine didn’t just fail; they liquefied.
The green light didn’t just glow; it roared. It surged out of the machine in a violent, blinding wave that swallowed the Maulers, the warehouse, and the man at the center of it all.
“Luke!” I heard Kara scream, her hand reaching for mine through the emerald haze.
I lunged for her, but the world didn’t feel solid anymore. It felt like I was being pulled through a straw. There was a flash of green that seared through my visor, a sensation of falling upward, and then, the silence of a vacuum.
…
The green light didn’t just fade; it snapped out of existence, leaving behind a ringing in my ears that felt like a drill. My stomach did a slow, nauseating somersault, the kind you only get when reality decides to rewrite its own physics mid-flight.
I blinked, my vision swimming behind the reflective visor of my helmet, and realized I was no longer horizontal. I was standing. Or rather, I was hovering about an inch off a pavement that was entirely too clean.
The warehouse was gone. The smell of ozone and Mauler sweat had been replaced by a sterile, chilly breeze that carried the faint scent of industrial-grade detergent and fear.
“Luke?” Kara’s voice was sharp, a jagged blade of concern. She was standing right beside me, her hands curled into fists, blue eyes scanning the skyline with a hunter’s intensity. “The energy signature… it has vanished. As has the scientist and his blue thralls. Where are we? This is not the industrial district.”
I looked up, and my heart sank into the soles of my boots. We were in a city plaza, but it wasn’t Los Angeles. The architecture was familiar in that “Metropolis” kind of way—soaring spires and gleaming glass—but the vibe was all wrong. It was too quiet. No sirens, no distant chatter, no hum of a living city.
Just the oppressive weight of a thousand eyes watching from behind darkened windows.
And then I saw the banners.
They were everywhere.
Long, crimson drapes hanging from the sides of skyscrapers like fresh wounds. In the center of each was a black “S” shield, but it wasn’t the soft, hopeful curve of the one Clark wore. This one was sharpened, elongated, and pointed at the bottom like the tip of a broadsword. It didn’t look like a symbol of hope.
It looked like a warning.
“Kara,” I said, my voice sounding flat and hollow through the modulator. “I think we’re in the wrong neighborhood. Like, ’wrong universe’ neighborhood.”
“This city… it feels like an occupation,” Kara whispered, her cape snapping in the wind. She stepped closer to me, her shoulder brushing mine. “I recognize the insignia. It is the house of El. But it is… wrong. It is cold.”
“Yeah, that’s because this is the version of your cousin who decided that ’protecting people’ meant ’putting them in a very pretty cage,’” I muttered. I knew this trope. I’d seen it in a dozen drafts of scripts I’d read, and wrote, and rejected for being too depressing.
Except now, I was standing in the middle of it.
Oh, the irony.
The silence was broken by a mechanical whine. High above, a squadron of black-armored drones began to descend in a perfect, terrifyingly synchronized V-formation. They weren’t GDA. They weren’t LexCorp. They were sleeker, deadlier, and marked with that same sword-like “S”.
Behind the drones, a heavy, metallic thud echoed through the plaza as a group of figures touched down. At the lead was a man who looked like he’d been put back together by a sadistic engineer.
Cyborg.
His cybernetic eye glowed a harsh, unforgiving red, and the chrome on his limbs was matte black, devoid of any of the flashy neon I remembered from the Cyborg back home. He looked tired. He looked grim. He looked like a man who had forgotten what a joke was three apocalypses ago.
He raised a cannon-arm that hummed with a sickly white light, aiming it directly at my chest. The soldiers behind him, clad in tactical armor that looked like it could withstand a tank shell, leveled their rifles.
“Unidentified metas,” Cyborg’s voice boomed, devoid of any warmth. “You are in violation of High Councilor Superman’s restricted airspace. Powers down and hands behind your heads, or we are authorized to use lethal force. This is your only warning.”
Kara’s eyes began to glow, a deep, dangerous crimson. “They threaten us, Luke. They dare to aim weapons at a daughter of Krypton and a son of Viltrum. Shall I dismantle them?”
I looked at the totalitarian spires, the sword-shaped banners, and the half-robot man who was currently calculating the most efficient way to turn me into a cloud of atoms. I thought about the bowling alley. I thought about the greasy fries.
I thought about the fact that I currently had a dent in my helmet and zero desire to explain multiversal theory to a version of Victor Stone who looked like he’d eat a battery for breakfast.
I let out a long, weary sigh and reached up to steady Kara’s arm, though my eyes never left the red glow of Cyborg’s cannon.
“I really should have stayed at the bowling alley.”