Supergirl's Sacrifice, page 10
“What are you doing?” she asked him.
“Just, uh, running up the stairs to my office. The elevator’s out.”
Kara skimmed National City with her super-vision until she spotted Guardian, chasing a tall man down an alleyway. “Uh-huh. Right.”
There was a pause and then he said, “You’re watching me right now, aren’t you?”
“Little bit.”
“OK, so I’m—hang on . . .”
Guardian turned a corner, dropped to one knee, and fired off a grappling hook from his right gauntlet. The hook wrapped around the fleeing man’s ankles, tripping him up and sending him careening into a pile of trash bags with a very undignified yelp.
“Nice catch,” she told him.
He offered a thumbs-up to the sky.
She laughed. “I’m not in the sky. I’m about five hundred miles behind you.”
Guardian turned and aimed a thumbs-up right at her. She smiled. “What’s his crime?”
He strode over to the tied-up man, who foolishly tried to lurch up out of the garbage and take a swing. Guardian easily evaded the punch and delivered one of his own, knocking the man out.
“You,” he pronounced, “are looking at a looter.”
“Already? The red skies haven’t even gotten to National City yet!”
Guardian shrugged. “Word’s out on the Internet. And someone has to be the first, right?”
His tone was lighthearted and she was enjoying bantering with him, but Lena’s call and the stricken expression on her face still hovered before Kara’s mind’s eye. “James, in all seriousness . . .” And she told him about Lena’s panic room setup.
“I’m not going.” James’s voice was hard. Final.
“James, you need to at least consider—”
“All I need to do is keep moving and keep breathing. Everything else is optional.”
She allowed herself a pause, a moment to let his mounting anger die down. “James, it’s already bad. And it might get even worse. There’s nothing wrong with taking precautions.”
“If it gets worse, this city will need me more than ever,” he told her. “End of conversation.”
“James—”
Knowing she was watching, he raised a hand to his ear and held it there, hovering. He was showing her that he could rip out his DEO comms bud at any moment and end the conversation.
Kara sighed. She had lost her father and most of her family and friends when Krypton exploded. The idea of losing even more here on Earth clawed at her heart. She was invulnerable to almost everything, but not to loss.
And yet, she couldn’t discount James’s bravery. She couldn’t ask him to betray his own courage and go into hiding while the world corroded into a husk.
“Be safe, Guardian,” she said, and then looked away.
“I couldn’t help overhearing.” It was Kal, suddenly standing by her side, one hand on her shoulder. “Jimmy has always needed to walk his own path.”
“His path could get him killed,” she whispered.
Superman nodded gravely. “I know. We can’t tell them which way to walk; we can only walk with them. Our powers are a fluke of nature, an accident of birthright. They don’t make us any more inherently right than anyone else. They just make it easier for us to impose our will.”
“Which is why we have to struggle not to.” She covered his hand with her own. Kryptonian flesh was nearly indestructible under Earth’s yellow sun, and yet it felt just like human skin. “I know, Kal. That doesn’t make it any easier.”
“The good news,” he told her, “is that Jimmy’s been in a lot of scrapes before, and he’s always come through. And even better is that I think I’m close to a hundred percent now.”
She grinned at him. “I need a little more specificity there, Man of Steel.”
He waffled a hand in the air. “Say . . . ninety-six point seven percent.”
Kara wrinkled her nose. “OK, I’ll allow it. But if you’d been at ninety-six point five, I’d bench you.”
“Totally understandable.”
They shared a brief smile, then—almost by mutual, unspoken agreement—turned serious. Kal pointed to one of the monitors. “Your friends from Earth 1 have done a good job gathering people up. I’m going to go out and move the transport.”
“Where are you taking them?”
Superman pursed his lips, thinking. “There’s a spot out in the Nevada desert that I prepared a few years back for something just like this. There’s food, water, and shelter. They’ll be safe there for a while.”
Kara barked with laughter. “You set up a town-sized panic room in the desert? Just in case?”
He grinned at her. “You know, I have a friend who says we should always be prepared . . .” He mimed two pointy ears poking up from his head.
“You sure you can handle the transport?” She arched an eyebrow.
“Ninety-six point seven, remember?” And with that, he sped out the exit and back to the surface, leaving her alone with J’Onn and Brainy.
Hadn’t Brainy been about to say something to her before her phone call? She thought so. But he seemed busy now, so she joined J’Onn at one of the monitors. She still thought of him as “Hank” most of the time because—as now—he tended to remain in his human form. But she knew that his Martian heritage was as important to him as her Kryptonian ancestry was to her, so she tried to call him “J’Onn” whenever possible.
“Anything new?” she asked him.
“Nothing,” he said grimly, his eyes fixated on the monitors. “The DEO’s drones and satellites are pulling as much data as possible, but so far there’s nothing that has indicated any sort of weakness or vulnerability.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. A simple gesture. But it was contact; it was personal. When Kal had done the same to her moments ago, it had helped her relax and refocus, to set aside some of her concern for Lena and James. Now, she felt J’Onn stiffen at her touch. The opposite of what she intended.
“We’ll figure it out,” she said. “We always have.”
“Always only lasts until it becomes never,” he told her.
Cocking her head, she asked, “Is that a Martian aphorism?”
J’Onn chuckled low and deep in his throat. “I don’t think so. I think I just made it up. But I’ve lived a long life, Kara—it might be something coming from my subconscious.” Grimacing, he gently shook her hand off his shoulder. “We’ve both lost worlds already. I won’t lose another one. I can’t.”
“It’s not going to happen,” she assured him.
“But how?” J’Onn asked. “How? There’s no way to hurt him, no way to reason with him . . .”
Kara blinked in surprise. “J’Onn . . . I think that’s it!”
He regarded her with mild suspicion. “What’s it?”
“What you just said!” She clapped her hands together in joy. “Kal tried fighting him. The military tried blowing him up. But no one has just tried talking to him!”
J’Onn opened his mouth to speak. Froze. Closed it. His expression was puzzled.
“What if there’s something he wants or needs?” Kara raced on. “What if we can figure out a way to convince him to reverse whatever’s he’s done? Or at least give us a clue how to?”
“But . . .” J’Onn had found his voice. “But he’s not a real person. According to Flash and Green Arrow, he’s a weapon.”
“But a weapon that lives,” she protested. “He’s here for a reason. Even if someone fired him like a bullet, there was a target. An aim. A purpose. If we can figure that out, maybe we can figure out how to stop him.”
J’Onn stroked his chin. “I doubt he conveniently speaks English. But maybe I can get something from his mind. Or what passes for it.”
Kara chortled. “Now you’re thinking! C’mon—let’s go. I’ll be your backup.”
“No!”
The shout came from Brainiac 5, who stood in a gunslinger’s pose at the exit back to the surface. In his hands, he held what looked like a cross between a rifle and a small clothes iron. Only, the whole thing was plated in a shining gold metal, its surface utterly smooth except for a gently pulsating red light along the left side.
“Brainy,” J’Onn said, “what is—”
“Supergirl cannot go,” Brainy said. “I will not allow it.”
Kara chuckled. “Good luck with that.”
With a raised eyebrow, Brainy returned the chuckle. Only, his was mirthless and hollow. “I am wielding a nanovibrational hammer. Despite its nomenclature, trust me when I say it is a distance weapon. All I need to do is pull the trigger, and it will use a burst of tachyons to retroactively knock you off your feet before this very moment.” He paused. “It is . . . a paradox, yes, but a minor one. The universe . . . doesn’t mind. I used it in the thirty-first century to bring down Validus and Ol-Vir during the second war with the Legion of Super-Villains. Trust me when I say it can take down even you, Supergirl.”
“I believe you, Brainy,” J’Onn said, one hand held out steadily, calmingly. “Let’s talk about this.”
“Why don’t you want me to go?” Kara asked. She figured that she could outflank Brainy and get the gun out of his hands before he pulled the trigger, but there was a chance he might get hurt in the process. She wanted to avoid that.
“I cannot say,” he told her, pulling his shoulders back into an almost regal bearing. “You will just have to trust me.”
“It’s difficult to trust a man with a gun pointed at you,” J’Onn commented.
“I am certain you can work through it,” Brainy replied.
“I’m going to need more than trust me, Brainy,” Kara told him. She clenched and unclenched her fists.
Brainiac 5 blinked a few times. Sometimes she thought he blinked just to refresh some database in his head. “We have worked together for years, Kara Zor-El. Have I ever led you astray before?”
“You’ve never pointed a nanovibrational hammer at me before, Brainy. First time for everything.”
He tilted his head in acknowledgment as she sucked in a breath. “Yes, well . . .”
She saw her opening. She struck. Instantly.
Exhaling, she aimed right at Brainy’s trigger finger. Her precision-targeted super-breath froze the trigger in place. Brainy’s eyes widened and he reflexively tried to pull the trigger, but by then she’d already snatched the weapon from his hands.
“Sprock it!” he cursed as he shook his frozen finger back into some semblance of warmth and life. “Sprocking nass!”
“Language,” she tsked. J’Onn had already zipped behind Brainy and grabbed him by the arms, restraining him. “We try to keep it PG around here.”
Brainy slumped against J’Onn, his chin on his chest, defeated. “Very well, then. You have left me no choice. I must deploy my most devastating weapon.”
Kara tensed. With a millennium’s head start on tech, who knew what weaponry Brainy had in his arsenal?
“Fire away,” she said with a little more bravado than she actually felt.
Brainy straightened as much as he could, considering J’Onn still restrained him. “I shall now employ . . . the truth.”
Kara relaxed the tiniest bit.
“I am loath to reveal that which is history to me and the future to you, but now I feel I must.” Brainy drew in a deep breath. “Anti-Matter Man’s presence here is a matter of historical record in the thirty-first century. Before you ask, no: History does not record how he was defeated.”
“But if there’s a record of him being here and there’s still an inhabitable Earth in the thirty-first century,” Kara said in a rush, “then that means we must defeat him!”
Brainy shook his head. “No. It means only that at some point between now and my time, Earth recovers from the damage done by Anti-Matter Man. One thousand years is a long time. Much can transpire in that millennium. But my point, Supergirl, is this: According to history, when Anti-Matter Man comes to Earth . . . that is the day that you die.”
Kara’s hands convulsed on the weapon she’d taken from Brainiac 5. Her fingers pressed into its strange metallic surface, leaving ten evenly spaced impressions there. The red light went dark.
“You’re lying,” J’Onn growled, tightening his grip.
Brainy didn’t even flinch at the increase in Martian strength. “My fabulist skills are most impressive, when I have time to prepare. I promise you, Martian Manhunter, that I am telling the truth. Per every historical text I have ever witnessed, this is the day Supergirl dies.”
Kara dropped the broken weapon to the floor. She and J’Onn locked gazes. She didn’t need telepathy to know what he was thinking—the idea of losing her, a daughter figure who’d come to be dear to him—pushed his patience and tolerance to the limit. He would rather crush Brainy to a pulp than admit that the Legionnaire might be right.
“Let him go, J’Onn,” she said quietly.
“He’s lying!” J’Onn’s voice quavered with a note of uncharacteristic desperation. “I can’t believe that you’ll die today.”
Kara thought for a moment, then licked her lips. When she spoke, she spoke to both of them:
“When I put on this cape, I did it to save lives. To make the world a better, more just place. You can’t have justice if you’re dead. There’s no better world if Anti-Matter Man makes everything poison.”
“Someone else can take your place in the fight ahead,” J’Onn said.
“He’s right,” Brainy chimed in. If not for the circumstances, it would almost be amusing, the two of them agreeing with each other even as J’Onn held Brainy motionless in a modified headlock. “Superman has recovered to nearly ninety-seven percent power capacity. And we have the Flash as well.”
“You’re not listening to me,” she told them both. “I wear this”—she tapped the symbol on her chest—“because it stands for hope. And because it was worn by my cousin as he stood for truth and justice. I strive to live up to him and he strives to live up to me. And that way, we elevate each other and hopefully everyone else who fights for the cause of peace. We don’t pick and choose our battles. We don’t decide to sit out the hard ones because they might be too dangerous. We fight the hard battles because they’re dangerous. Because we’re the ones with the power to do it.
“You say history says I die today, Brainy. Well, history also says that in a thousand years, the world will still be here and there will still be people living on it. Maybe those two things are connected. Maybe my death is what makes this planet still livable.”
She drew herself up to her full height and set her lips in a firm line. “If so, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
As she watched, Brainy slackened in J’Onn’s arms, defeated. J’Onn stepped back, letting Brainy gradually slump to the floor.
“If you are determined,” Brainy said, “then I suppose I cannot stop you. As history would imply.”
“Kara . . .” J’Onn stepped toward her, his form flickering and transforming as he did so. By the time he reached her, he was no longer Hank Henshaw—he was the six-foot-six, green-skinned, beetle-browed Martian Manhunter. His voice vibrated on an alien frequency. “Kara, I cannot bear the thought of losing you. But as someone who loves you, I more so cannot bear the thought of asking you to be anything less than true to yourself.”
He took her hands in his own, big green ones. A single Martian tear splashed down on the tangle of their fingers.
“You are like a daughter to me. I swear that if you die today, it is only because I’ve died first.”
20
A part of Owlman couldn’t believe how lax things were on Earth 1. For example, right now he was just walking down a sidewalk near the local baseball park, the place where the speedsters from his own world’s version of Central City were being housed. He could approach within a hundred yards of the place before being turned away by a duo of soldiers in uniform.
It was laughable security for so valuable a resource. More than ten thousand human beings imbued with superspeed, and the only thing between him and them was a loose phalanx of utterly normal soldiers with utterly normal weapons.
Back home, he’d have had such a potent mass of power and potential sealed behind four-inch-thick titanium doors, and walls made of reinforced concrete. Double-redundant biometric security systems.
The people of this world were too free. Too trusting. They would benefit from a strong hand and a keen intellect to keep them in line.
Just like the people back home. In the Gotham City he’d grown up in, a wealthy enclave of privilege and power built on the backs of the poor and impoverished, like his parents. Tommy and Marta Wayne had never had two dimes to rub together at the same time, but they’d managed—against all odds—to build a good and loving family.
And then some rich folks decided that they needed the land where the Waynes lived. It was a run-down apartment complex, half-eaten by rot and decay, but the rich people just had to have a new convention center right there so that they could invite their rich friends from other cities to come see the glory that was Gotham. Tommy had led the residents’ fight against the forces aligned against them. And they’d been doing well, with several court decisions coming down in favor of the residents who just wanted to keep living where they’d always lived.
Until the cops got involved. Bought off by the wealthiest 1 percent of the city. They trumped up charges against the Waynes and shot them dead trying to “escape” during an arrest.
Bruce had watched from behind the garbage cans in the alley. And he’d sworn, then and there, that he would never—ever—rest until he’d made Gotham into a place where no one would suffer such injustice again.
It took him years of training. Of learning from the wretched scum of the underworld in hellholes like Metropolis and Opal City. But he’d gathered the skills and the knowledge to tear down the golden palaces of Gotham’s moneyed elite.
And just when he was ready to start . . . the world changed.
Metahumans. A speedster in the Midwest. A flying man. An impossibly strong woman. A man with a ring that could do anything.
He’d recognized immediately that these four, with their powers and their complete lack of self-control and morality, could cause problems for him. He would have to impose that control, but in such a way as to make them think it was voluntary, that the limits imposed on them had been self-imposed.
