EPISODE 69
The day the Daxamites were to enter transmission range dawned with fog. It had come in from the coast, billowing up through city streets, and kept trapped beneath a thick layer of clouds that blanketed the sky in a slate-gray overcast. Rain had come intermittently, never fully committing to a proper downpour and opting instead for infrequent drizzles, leaving behind shallow puddles and air so humid one could feel the precipitation on their skin.
Addy stared at the sky through a window, separated from the elements beyond it. The glass of the window was murky from where the humidity had clung to it, leaving behind misty smears that only served to further obfuscate the skies above.
What she could make out instead was herself, reflected against the glass.
She had forgone wearing a mask today, leaving her face bare, and left her hair down, curls springy and resting against her shoulders. Her costume shone even through the muted colours of her reflection, and had been modified to reflect the occasion to come. The base colour of her costume was instead a gradient, stretching between orange and yellow, with yellow concentrating near her torso while the orange grew more prominent near her arms until at the tips of her fingers it became an intense, papaya-orange. Overlaying it all was her normal pattern of circuits, crisscrossing the surface of her costume, and coloured red and blue, weaving together in places and remaining separate in others. At her chest, however, the circuits combined in truth, fusing together into a bright purple that outlined the capital 'A' that had become her symbol.
Her costume was in some ways a nod to the milestones she had met lately on her core, not that others knew of that deeper meaning. Nonetheless, she considered it to be a fitting tribute, and if nothing else, sufficiently intimidating to her foes, and what better to wear than something like that, when meeting your enemy - if not in person - for the first time?
Behind her bubbled conversation, voices low and murmured. It was hard to keep her hearing adjusted at times—she had an unfortunate habit of skewing her range of hearing unconsciously, either reducing it down to normal levels of hearing or amplifying it to the upper maximum and never settling on something between those two points. She was working to rectify that, but progress was slow and frustrating.
Reaching up, Addy adjusted the collar of her costume, took in a breath, and turned toward the source of the noise.
Addy stood to the side, separate from the rest of the crowds, in a large, vaulted room. The walls were all dark wood, and the floors shiny stone, while the ceiling above was glass set into a curved metal frame. On any other day, it would have provided ample light, but with overcast, murky skies, the lights fitted on the walls and on the metal frame had to be turned on to make the space less gloomy.
Across the room was a sprawl of people—Earth's defenders, alongside other officials, government agents, and representatives.
The Green Lanterns - John Stewart and Xaw - stood a small ways ahead of her, both of them talking in low tones with an official from Sri Lanka. Kara and Clark, by comparison, stood off to her side, together, and talking between each other in low tones, Kara with her arms folded across her chest and Clark with a sheepish, uncertain expression on his face. Ezeko Thal, by comparison, stood further away, and was accompanied by a squadron of Rannians at his back, each of them with spines as straight as trees and adorned in their standard military regalia.
At the furthest end of the room, next to the back wall, stood J'onn and Phelenthe, neither of them talking, but merely quietly observing. Next to them, mounted on the wall, was a series of large monitors, and all but one of them was blank, showing nothing but a black screen. The one that wasn't inactive showed Dadredes Achenn, sitting in a chair that was just the slightest bit too ostentatious to be a normal chair, yet not at the point where it could be called a throne, and flanked behind her by two rows of what appeared to be Titanian honour guards, each of them clad in power armour - except for their helmets, which they had tucked under one arm - and brandishing long poles, tipped with a glaive made out of scintillating blue energy.
The rest of the room was occupied by a mix of people: strategists Addy had come to recognize over the last few weeks, the newly-christened agents of the Earth Pact Alliance, D.E.O. operatives, and representatives for all but a few of the world's governments, their leaders having been too busy - and too far away - to make the visit. Some stood, others sat, though conversation was common throughout, and as far as Addy had been made aware, those governments without a representative present were not doing so out of protest - or because they were denied a seat - but simply because they knew what was to come, and their answer had already been given.
Today, they would see the face of their enemy, and today, they would choose defiance. It was unanimous.
"Hey, Administrator?" Kara called out, drawing Addy's attention. She glanced to the side, finding that Kara had broken off from Clark in the short time since she looked away, and was now just a few paces away. "I think Ezeko's looking for you."
Blinking, Addy glanced from Kara and towards where she last saw Ezeko, and true to Kara's words, found him making his way over, though absent any of his retinue. He had a cane today, clutched tightly in his prosthetic hand, and was using it to keep the weight off of his remaining flesh-and-blood leg at the moment.
"Kryptonian, I would really appreciate it if you didn't eavesdrop on me," Ezeko told Kara, once he got close enough to both not need to shout and presumably leave no room for misunderstanding his displeasure. Still, there wasn't any real anger behind it, just a slight rebuke, and his gaze, soon enough, settled back on Addy, calculating and calm. "But, as she said, I'd like to talk with you, Administrator. I've received some updates you might find useful."
Stepping away from the window she had been looking out of, Addy nodded once in Ezeko's direction as she approached. "By all means," she told him calmly. "We still have some time until the fleet is projected to be within transmission range."
There was an open channel waiting for the Daxamite fleet, keyed to indicate it was to be used principally by their leader. It was apparently standard practice in the universe, and the Daxamites would know what they were looking at upon seeing it. If they didn't bother to connect to it even after the projected time frame, everyone would leave and go on with their day, but the Daxamites had a precedent of making themselves known upon entering that range, so it was unlikely.
More than that, though, Addy believed it was best to get an idea of who your enemy was by looking them in the face, without any of the bias reporting tended to convey. Did she expect to easily read the Daxamites' leader? No. But some things could be intuited from the way first contact panned out, and she intended to get as much information as she could out of it.
Ezeko, wordlessly, turned back around as she approached and started walking his way back towards the crowd of Rannians, who had all turned to watch. His cane played out a steady tempo on the floor, tapping in rhythm, as the two of them walked closer to the crowd. Once she was closer, it became easier to make out the faces of the Rannians, and she found both Kallyoe and Drimian among them, as well as a few faces she had seen in and around the D.E.O. base over the last few days.
Eventually, he came to a stop in front of a single Rannian in particular, eyes trained on her. The woman in question was tall, with especially pronounced ears, the fin-like structure stretched out far enough that the length was comparable to that of a mystical Elf. Her hair was bone-white and perfectly straight, while her skin was the colour of fired clay—a kind of brownish-red which was dotted profusely with darker, freckle-like spots, especially across her forehead.
"Caivra, mind relaying what you told me to Administrator here?" Ezeko asked, jabbing a thumb in Addy's direction.
Wordlessly, Addy stepped up and joined Ezeko at his side, watching as Caivra jerked to attention, glanced between the two of them, and nodded once.
"We've been keeping an eye on the Daxamite fleet in transit through a couple of ships we didn't bring down to the planet," Caivra explained quickly, reaching up to fiddle with the opaque purple visor that wrapped around her eyes. "Manned by skeleton crews, of course, with cloaking always up. We've mostly been using them to keep track of ship numbers, and over the last sixteen hours, the Daxamite fleet shed one of its carriers and two of its landing vessels—we think due to lack of available repairs. We projected as much over a week ago, and none of those vessels were expected to even make it to the solar system, but this is earlier than we expected."
Addy blinked. "Did they lose the content of those ships, too? Such as people or smaller vessels?" she asked, curious to see where this was going.
Caivra shook her head. "Not much. All of the vessels were almost completely evacuated, though we think it was a rushed evacuation on all three of the vessels because they left behind several slaves. All of them were dead for a while by the time we got onto the ships, due to lack of breathable air. More critically, however, they didn't seem to have the time to wipe two of the three ship's logs, and they didn't wipe any of the ship's networks, which hosts the backup storage for personal computers on the vessels."
That was, however, far more promising. "I'm assuming I would not be called over here if there was nothing of note," Addy told her.
Caivra nodded eagerly. "Yes—the carrier was crewed by one of the larger, Daxamite-only engineering crews, not the slaves, meaning they had access to resource tallies and many of them kept copies for reference, I believe. Most of them are a bit out of date—a few weeks at the oldest—but they are still valuable resources."
"Drimian," Ezeko said, glancing in the direction of the man in question. "Your tablet, please."
Wordlessly, Drimian nodded, reached down to his belt and pulled free a thick, triangular and rather durable-looking tablet from the holster it had been residing in. He handed it over to Ezeko.
Ezeko, in turn, moved to hand it to Addy, before pausing. "Shit. You can't read Rannix, can you?" he said, frowning down at the tablet and beginning to quickly tap on the surface. After a few moments of silence, he glanced back up again. "Can you manage standard?"
"Galactic standard is fine," Addy told him. She had taken that language from enough aliens at this point to even understand slang terminology, which standard had a lot of, being a language that often adopted loan words from other alien languages and used linguistic shifting to convert them into sounds that most species could at least make a passing attempt to pronounce. "But no, I cannot read Rannix, though I intend to rectify that sometime in the future, when I have the time."
Drimian awkwardly frowned from his place in the crowd. "Sorry about the lack of translatory compatibility with Earth languages—we've been trying to get it to work, but your languages are distinct enough that it's still taking us time to write up a proper learning algorithm to intuit context."
"Standard is pretty shit about syntax, but this should be legible," Ezeko said, nodding once at Drimian for his commentary before extending the tablet towards Addy.
She took it. The tablet was large, just on the side of being a little too large for one hand to hold comfortably, but also almost too small for two. Instead, she opted to cradle the tablet in her arm, its rounded edges fitting in with ease against the contours of her body, and stared down at the contents on the screen.
It was a rather long list of supplies, one she had to immediately start scrolling through. Tallied and counted supplies, at that, with notation on ones with critical absences in their inventory, and notably, a
lot of their resources - at least half - seemed to be within that critical range. "How old is this list?" she asked, glancing up from it briefly.
Caivra paused, leaned up on her toes - seeing as she was about a head shorter than Addy - and peeked at the resources. "Oh, that's the one with the low count on hadronic fuselages. So that should be about... eight earth days ago?"
Addy nodded, turning her attention back to the screen as she kept scrolling. She kept a mental note on the resources as she went, though somewhat to her embarrassment she could only make guesses at what some of it was. Undoubtedly, if these resources were labelled by their composition or purpose, Addy would probably understand them a bit better, but unfortunately, these were going by common names—names which, to be clear, were made up of words in Addy's vocabulary, but had never been used together by the aliens she had stolen that vocabulary
from, or at least not enough to know exactly what they meant by any given item.
Still, even if she did not understand the precise specifics of it, the lack of resources overall was rather promising. "Any other information you salvaged from the vessels?" she asked, not looking up from the tablet.
Caivra paused. "A bunch of population tallies, a lot of personal communication logs—very few with anything worth investigating—and... actually, there was one thing of note, but it was rather unusual?"
Before she could finish, Ezeko leaned forward, near Addy's shoulder, and gestured to two items on the list, labelled respectively as 'alloyed plasteel' and 'matrix plasteel'. "At those levels, they might have to scrap some beaten-up vessels and salvage them to keep up a surplus. Otherwise, they might not be able to make field repairs, or maintain existing vessels, because they can't make plasteel with what they have. It does require being in a zero-gravity environment to produce, but last I checked, they don't have a forge tanker in their fleet, and they can't just mine plasteel from nearby asteroids."
Addy glanced up from her tablet, nodded once at Ezeko, then turned her attention towards Caivra. "Which was?" she queried.
"It was—well, a database near the back of the ship. It was one of the disconnected ones, not the main, used for storage on a wing of the carrier. Someone tried to destroy it with some kind of laser or beam weapon, melted a bit of it, but not enough to fully destroy it," Caivra explained, jerking to attention. "We couldn't salvage much of what was in that database—most of the data was gone and the stuff that wasn't was corrupted, but what we could extract were slave ledgers, specifically indicating where slaves were being moved."
Addy blinked. "And they didn't attempt the same sabotage on the main database? Or the storage device for the networks you've mentioned?"
Caivra shook her head. "No, but that might be because both of those are found really deep into a ship—you do
not want a central server to be the casualty of enemy fire, after all, and there were at least three different blast doors they had to cut through to get to the one on the carrier, and two for the transport ships. People also don't think about destroying the network storage, because it only makes back-ups to personal data. Still, it is pretty suspicious that this was the only one, you're right."
"It could have been a potential slave revolt," Addy said, talking mostly to herself, though allowing the others to hear where her thoughts were going. "It's in Daxam's interest to prevent both their own population - especially slaves - as well as their enemies from knowing about slave revolts. In the latter case, slave revolts are easily exploitable by conscious enemies, and in the former, populations will face confidence issues - especially as outnumbered native Daxamites are to the slaves they have - if they discover their leaders and armies are incapable of preventing a slave revolt, even if sufficiently put down. Perhaps the slaves you found left behind were ringleaders?"
"I'm not sure about that," Caivra said, after a moment. "There was no sign of torture, just... mistreatment from living the life of a slave in a war fleet. Death by suffocation isn't fun, but it's almost a painless execution compared to what we know Daxam does to those who revolt against them."
"It could be that their attempts to enslave the Keetus backfired," Ezeko pointed out, glancing between the two of them. "We didn't get any identification for the slaves in particular, but it wouldn't surprise me if that was the case."
"Which would just leave the slaves that were left behind as casualties of mismanagement and neglect," Caivra said, nodding along.
That was another possibility, yes. From what she had learned about the Keetus - however vanishingly rare that knowledge was - all it took was a single leader to control vast areas, given they had the time and resources to keep producing drones. The oldest among the Keetus leaders lived as the one thing that
wasn't a drone or a native, non-sapient species on an entire planet, and their youngest were more than capable of commandeering an entire ship, at least given they knew how to actually manage and pilot it.
"Have any other ships pulled away or fallen to the wayside?" she asked, just for clarification.
Caivra shook her head again. "No. These were the only three vessels to be lost over the last four earth days."
Addy finished scrolling through the remainder of the resources on the tablet, and wordlessly handed it back to Ezeko, who in turn handed it off to Drimian. "Then the revolt - if there was one - likely failed, or this is something else. All things—"
There was a wordless
tone, a noise that was somewhere between an alarm and a beep an early computer might make to tell you what was wrong with it. It was shrill enough to carry through the entire room, and Addy found herself glancing in the direction of it, finding that one of the screens mounted on the wall, previously blank, now had a large '30' in the center of the screen.
A second passed, and it ticked down to 29. Another, and it went to 28. A countdown.
"Daxam has connected to our open transmission line, as confirmed through communication and control—we have twenty-five seconds to prepare," J'onn called out, people around the room jerking to attention, eyes catching sight of the ever-lowering number. "You all know the drill. Find a place and brace for first contact."
"Well, it's time I suppose," Kara's voice called out, Addy glancing behind her to find both Kara and Clark next to her, neither of them looking at her, but instead at the screen with steely, hard expressions.
The Rannians themselves were in movement too, pulling away from Kara, Addy and Clark, and instead arranging themselves in a long horizontal line behind Ezeko, backs straightening and shoulders pushing out. The military background of each of them stood out at that moment, soldiers trained for both war and being presentable when it came time to fire on one's enemies.
"Ma'am, will you be handling the diplomacy this time?" Phelenthe, further up the room, asked the screen with Dadredes on it.
Fifteen seconds now.
Dadredes nodded at him, reclining a bit more in her seat. "I will be taking this, Phelenthe. Your duty is complete for now. Be at ease."
"
Bless the mother of minds," Phelenthe muttered, so low that Addy could barely pick up on it.
J'onn stepped away from the space beside the screen, his form rippling. His human persona faded, rippling with red energy before shifting entirely. He swelled in height, growing from what was an already fairly tall black man into that of a Green Martian, who comfortably towered over everything in the room at nearly nine feet tall. His clothing transposed with his flesh, shedding the formal military uniform and replacing it with a skin-tight bodysuit, detailed with a red 'X' that crossed the center of his chest.
Around the room, eyes shifted towards him, many of them curious, and many more baffled. J'onn didn't spread his true form around that often, and even if everyone knew he was ostensibly non-human, Addy got the impression many of them thought he was like Kara, or Dadredes: human enough in appearance to pass.
The opposite, of course, was the truth.
Ezeko spared J'onn a look, one eyebrow raised. "You look better like that," he told him.
J'onn glanced his way, then shrugged once. "You are not the one I wear my other form for."
Eight seconds now.
Silence descended on the room. Addy could even hear some people holding their breath.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
The countdown slipped to zero, and the screen flickered once—from that black background with the countdown to one of pure white, then at last to an image, a stream of video from another place, and of another person.
Addy had seen images of the leader of the Daxamites before. John Stewart had supplied it when he had revealed the inbound army, all of that time ago, alongside her son, and the images she had witnessed did match the person she saw on the screen now, but not perfectly. Time, and likely attrition, had taken their toll, that much was clear.
The woman now projected on the screen was hawkish, with sharp features and just a little too thin, her cheeks slightly convex rather than concave. She was indistinguishable from a human in almost all respects, with yellow-toned skin, wavy dark-brown hair that reached all the way down to her back, and her eyes so dark brown they came across as nearly black. Her figure was neither too slight nor necessarily bulky, reflecting some amount of attention spent to her fitness, though how much of that was merely a product of Daxamite physiology under yellow sun conditions - which, as far as Addy's map of their path was concerned, was a fixture in the majority of the solar systems they went to - or her own effort was unclear.
Cresting the woman's forehead was a circlet, a crown, which wove itself around her head like a band, separating into two once it reached her forehead. Set into the circlet was a fingernail-sized blue gem, bright and almost glowing. The rest of her was clad in a long black robe, a slip of cloth that clung to her, with metal pauldrons on either shoulder draped with hanging silvery chains. Each of her hands was adorned with metal gauntlets, made up of thin metal scales that seemed less to serve a purpose in combat, and more to make both of her hands resemble claws.
Where Dadredes' seat could be argued not to be a throne, the object this woman sat on was in every way a throne. Made of a kind of sleek black metal, gleaming against the light around her, and being the only identifiable object or difference in the space being broadcast to them, for behind her was a vast open space that was devoid of all but a few flags that hung, what looked to be dozens of meters away, above the one door leading into what could only be the flagship's throne room.
For a moment, there was only silence. The Empress Dowager of the Daxam Empire observed them all, eyes skating back and forth. Eventually, her eyes landed on the Green Lanterns, and narrowed, and when they came to rest on the Kryptonians, her gaze froze altogether and both of her eyes narrowed further, almost into slits.
Then, she looked away, and at last, she spoke. "I am Rhea, Empress Dowager of the Empire of Daxam. I have come to give your planet terms, and to find an agreement. The terms I offer you are simple: in return for your planet's unconditional surrender to our might, as well as turning over all Kryptonians living on your planet, we will spare it the ruin of war, and conquer it peacefully, while additionally absorbing your population into our new empire. Not a single life must be lost, in this hour of tragedy, let it be known." Her voice was sharp, yet simultaneously flat; the firm voice of a commander, of someone
used to commanding people. After a moment of pause, her eyes shifted away again, this time to the side. "We extend this privilege to Titan much the same; to join us and surrender to a greater power. We have proven, time and time again, that our march is inevitable, that there is no barrier we cannot break through. Accept that, and surrender, as those before you have, and spare us the blight that is bloodshed."
"And join you as second-class citizens, without equal rights?" Dadredes responded, her voice rather less flat. The Chancellor of Titan was composed, yet anger still slipped through the mask.
Rhea's expression didn't flicker, remaining as cold as it had been when she first appeared. "You attempt to paint the truth of how things are with the brush of ignorance, Titanian. We are not made equal, no species is—that is the axiom of the universe. Empires rise and fall on the quality of their inhabitants, and that has not changed. You speak as though there is
dishonour in subservience to a higher calling, as though we Daxamites are not subservient to Rao, and in turn, that you should not be subservient to
us. We come as conquerors, one way or another, and your treatment within that paradigm will be
as the conquered; vassals to those who have proven their power, and thus, their right to rule."
Addy's eyes flicked to the side, catching Kara staring venomously at Rhea. It looked like she wanted to say something, and if Addy had to make a guess, it was probably about her comment toward Rao. It didn't come up often, but Kara
was deeply faithful to Rao in a way Clark wasn't, as his own perception of religion was solely that of Christianity.
To her credit, though, she didn't snap, didn't yell. She let the scene play out, even if Addy could hear her skin creaking like a bridge about to collapse under its own weight as she clenched her hands.
"Even had you offered my people equal say in your empire, we would refuse,
Daxamite," Dadredes said, not sparing Rhea the right of her name or her title. Addy saw Rhea's brow crease slightly at the snub, but it was gone in an instant. "For your empire is
caustic, built on the corpses of slaves, and it disgusts not just myself, but my people. I speak not just with the voice of myself in this instance, as otherwise, I would be with those you see before you. I speak with the voice of my entire people, of all of Titan, and we are unanimous in our opinion: we will not be reduced to servants and slaves, ruled over by a petty tyrant who thinks there is some inherent quality one can divine, that can be measured. Nor, in that respect, will we, the people of Titan, allow you to do the same to Earth. That is our judgement."
By the end of her speech, Dadredes' eyes were glowing a bright blue, the light fraying out and stretching towards her temples; a reflection of the psychic connection she was maintaining. The semi-translucent quality of her skin let the light out as well, leaving her looking flushed, but not with heat, but power.
"You have no say in the matter, to remind you," Rhea told Dadredes, her voice cooling further. "I am merely offering you a bloodless way to the eventual outcome of being under my rule. You are free to resist it, as all ignorant mobs do, but it is inevitable."
With that, Rhea turned back to them, to the crowd of humans, to Addy, to Kara, Clark, Ezeko, and the rest. Her eyes lingered on J'onn for a moment, one eyebrow raising fractionally in an open display of surprise, before her face returned to perfect neutrality.
"Nonetheless. People of Earth, bring forth your leader to give me your reply. I hold faith that some of you understand the circumstances you are faced with, that no number of Titanian tools, Green Lantern politicking, nor crude, primitive weaponry may hold us back. I have conquered worlds with greater power than this solar system collectively, and I hope, among those people, is your leader. I offer you the privilege of a peaceful surrender, of the law of Daxam, and the benefit that, in doing so, you will see this planet made better by our occupation and advances without first seeing us reduce it to rubble."
That was the point where Ezeko snorted.
It was an undignified, somewhat hoarse and worryingly snotty sound, which was shortly followed by actual laughter from the man, who leaned against his cane for support.
Rhea froze on the screen, and her eyes snapped down to Ezeko without her head bothering to follow the movement. The expression on her face was, at first, confused, before comprehension dawned, and thereafter it was replaced by the first inkling of anger Addy had seen out of the woman. "Ah, the
Rannians," she spoke the word like a slur, like it was a condemnation of all that they were. "You'll have to forgive me, I won't be extending the same privilege to either your people or your planet, once we return to it—not after the attack you made against us."
"What compels you to think we'd accept it, you overblown cow? Actually, you wouldn't even know what that is, would you?" Ezeko responded jeeringly, laughter still thick in his voice. "Just to let you know, I called you a fat terrestrial mammal principally known for shitting and farting in open fields. And, really, putting aside the hilarity of this farce—what I'm laughing about has nothing to do with that, it's the fact that we really bit you in the ass, didn't we?"
Visibly, Rhea's composure was all but completely eclipsed by her anger. "
Excuse me?" she spat, jaw tightening. "You'll watch your tongue."
If nothing else, Ezeko was clearly very good at riling up people who thought too much of themselves.
"No, I don't think I will. We shot down your recon vessels, a lot of them, and that must've done more damage than we expected, because if it had done as much as we thought it did, you
definitely would have known that Earth isn't ruled by a single person," Ezeko told her, ever-so-casually. "Way to show your hand,
empress."
That, apparently, gave Rhea pause. She frowned, brows furrowing as the anger slowly ebbed from her expression, until it was all replaced with that same neutral mask. "So be it," she said at last, frustration still clear in her voice. "Bring forward your leaders, those who represent you, so that they may give their response—"
"Clearly, we refuse your terms," a representative said, not even letting her finish. Addy glanced behind her to find it was the one from South Africa, who was sparing Rhea a thoroughly unimpressed look. Apparently, the fear of their potential conqueror had worn off after Ezeko had finished comparing her to a bovine.
Other voices jumped at the chance too. It was a jumble of shouting, people calling out, each of them wearing flags - whether as pins or, in the case of Greece, literally over one shoulder as a cloak for reasons that were beyond her - to indicate their allegiance. Each of them shut her down, and some were a touch more creative with it than others.
But, just as they had done with the White Martians, and in a way Addy would no doubt happen again - as humans, she had come to learn, could be driven to great things by spite - one by one, the nations looked upon their potential doom, and told her
no.
The entire time, Rhea sat impassively, her composure regained for but a single crack: her hand, previously still as a statute on the arm of her throne, now tapped a single finger against it once or twice a second, slowly speeding up as more and more people rejected her.
Impatience was good, people did stupid things when impatient, in Addy's experience.
Eventually, though, there were no more voices to call out, and the room fell into silence.
Rhea let out a breath, long and slow. "I did expect as much. I hoped, yes, but I know better than to expect wisdom out of barbarians and the brainwashed. I imagine those Green Lanterns, Titanians, Rannians and Kryptonians have filled your heads with confidence, yes? Well, it won't matter in the end, but I will be certain to take that from you soon enough." She straightened her posture, stopped reclining, and looked them all on, her voice dropping into a tone that could only be called
frigid. "You will bow, they always do. I am saddened by your choice, and see it as a mistake, but it is one of the last few you will be privileged with making, as we will ensure we steer your planet in much better - and more rational - directions."
Rhea's eyes shifted again, away from the humans, and to Kara, to Addy, to Clark.
"And you," she continued, "I will bring to justice for the death of
my planet, for the death of millions of lives, snuffed out in an instant. I will enact justice that is demanded out of me, for the follies of Krypton."
Clark just stared back at her, tilting his head slightly. "There isn't any justice in what you're doing, Rhea. We were both children, and you make a mockery out of any sense of judgement by deciding we bear the weight of Krypton's sins."
Rhea smiled at him, and it was condescending. "But if not you, then who? You wear the colours and symbols of Krypton, despite claiming you have no responsibility for the things it has done. You wear a banner of war, in the eyes of the Daxamites, and you cannot have it both ways,
child. You are either guilty, or you are not Kryptonian, and we both know what you are."
"That is a fallacy," Addy pointed out, speaking up for the first time since this began. She hadn't gotten enough information out of Rhea yet, besides the fact that she was surprisingly easy to get a rise out of if one was particularly crude. "And I think it's beneath all of us to pretend otherwise."
Rhea's gaze turned to her, scrutinizing. "And who, exactly, are you? Have the Kryptonians spawned more of themselves?"
"No. I am nobody but myself. I claim no titles or relationships to greater Krypton, besides that I know and care for people from it. That said, I am Earth's guardian, and I am here to give you a request: turn away, Dowager Empress of Daxam, and find someplace else to settle and rebuild. Do not come to Earth, do not bring a war to this planet, and find your peace elsewhere," Addy told her bluntly. It was mostly the truth, she just omitted that she had a not-insignificant amount of Kara's genetics floating around in her genome.
Rhea stared at her for a long, protracted moment. "If you are simply one person, on what grounds do you have the right to ask me that? To command Daxam in such a way? You are not my equal, let alone the equal of my people. What compels you to think that will work, demanding that of us? What power do you have, as supposedly
one person, to turn us away?"
And that was the truth she was looking for. Rhea, and likely by extension the totality of the Daxamite Empire, as of this moment, likely had no idea that she existed, or was an imminent threat to them. She couldn't be sure if it would last, or if Rhea was simply pretending not to recognize her, but she felt like there wasn't enough of an incentive to pretend to be ignorant on matters like these. No, if Rhea had known who she was, she would have said as much, and likely grandstanded in some other way, pontificating about her own importance.
She had hoped that was the case. Unaware victims were, in her experience, much easier to deal with. Even the White Martians had hesitated, balking once they recognized the threat she posed. They had made plans to try to work around her existence, to fight her in ways she couldn't easily respond to.
The Daxamites had none of that. All she saw in Addy was a single person, a single mind, and there was truth in that, to some extent.
She was just one person. But, then, she was hardly just what she appeared to be.
"I made that request understanding it was unlikely that you would agree to it, for I wished to give you the opportunity to understand what was at stake, and to make your own decision to enter into conflict with me. I am, as you said, one person, but know this: for every injury you create, I will inflict it back on your own. Every moment of violence will be repaid, for this planet is one I intend to safeguard against things such as you," Addy told her, speaking in monotone, letting nothing slip.
Rhea breathed out a vast sigh, and her expression curdled into disappointment as she turned away from Addy, dismissing her. Good, let her make that mistake. "I see now it was folly to even try to arrive at diplomacy. You have brought along a warmongering thug, criminal Kryptonians, and a madwoman, all of whom think they can match us, when the truth is much different."
"You believe that, yes," Addy told her blandly.
Rhea ignored her. "Some planets know better. Some
people know better, and make the planet's decision for them, but the same cannot be said here." She took in a breath, straightened her posture again, and stared them all down, eyes cold and gimlet. "So be it. Here lay my formal declaration: the Great Empire of Daxam, sovereign of the stars, will take Earth and conquer it, land, sea and sky, for the crime of withholding Kryptonian criminals and our enemies from judgement, as well as for Earth's decision to seek war over peace—to refuse our gracious banner—and mindlessly resist, despite knowing what they will court by doing so. It will be war, and you will know the might of Daxam."
The connection cut, the screen winking out into blackness once more.
Ezeko coughed. "Well. We've got a week to prove her wrong. Let's get back to it."
"And you have all settled in sufficiently?" Addy inquired from where she was seated, perching at the end of a somewhat lumpy loveseat.
Across from her, arranged across various different pieces of furniture in Serling's living room, was the lab team: Serling, Emil and June, each of them arranged loosely and looking as relaxed as one could be.
"Yeah, we've moved into the rooms we'll be staying in during the attack," Emil confirmed, smiling in her direction. "It might take some time to get used to, though."
"Won't be
that long," Serling chided him, glancing over to stare at him. "You've had to stay in an enclosed space with me before, what's so different
now?"
Seeing the conversation about to diverge, Addy took the reins again. "And you have established your defences too, correct?" she interjected. "Such as the lead-lined room I recommended, for a worst-case scenario, as well as additional rations and—"
"Yes, Addy," Serling butted in. "I promise, we got all of our bases covered."
Addy didn't feel herself relax at the proclamation, as she had hoped it would at the affirmation. Instead, where she would normally take the chance to loosen stiff shoulders, she simply sat there, as stiff as she had been since the morning, and resisted the urge to squirm. They were going to be safe, they had done everything they could
to be safe—but, evidently, that did not stop her mind from worrying.
The silence stretched on for a moment, a little awkwardly by Addy's estimate.
"We've really missed you at L-Corp, Addy," June said, cutting through it after another moment. "A lot. It's just not the same without you there."
Perking up a little, Addy glanced at June, and found herself the recipient of a gentle smile. "Well," she said, finding her composure again. "I intend to return posthaste, once this is all over and done with."
"If it helps, I think they'll accept you back with open arms and no conditions, too. Your interview from a few days ago has really circulated through the company," June told her, the smile remaining, but fading in intensity. "Apparently, a lot of the higher-ups and board members are feeling a lot of pressure from employees who, until that interview, didn't have an opinion about you, but now they really do, and want you reinstated."
"That was probably helped by
someone - and whoever could it be, it certainly couldn't be someone whose name starts with an L and ends with an A - printing out a huge number of copies of the interview and leaving them sitting around in staff lounges," Serling added, grinning gleefully. "There's some real riotous energy in the building nowadays. I think the guys upstairs are starting to feel the heat."
Addy felt herself relax a bit more at that, inexplicably. She nodded once. "Well, that will certainly help."
"Speaking of help—I wish we could do more to help you," Emil said, staring at his own hands from where he was seated on the couch. "This is... bigger than just L-Corp. This is war, and I feel like I should be at least trying to do something."
"Emil, you will help far more by remaining safe until the battle is over, at which point your medical expertise will be critical to helping those injured during the conflict," Addy told him bluntly, staring directly at his forehead in lieu of making eye-contact. "It will not simply end with the Daxamites leaving. Even if we do repel them, even if they do leave, there will be much we have to pick up in the aftermath, and with that will come two things: a considerable need for medical personnel, and a considerable need for those who know their way around alien technology, to save those who have been trapped in wreckages. You fill both of those niches."
Before Emil could respond though, came another voice.
"But what if we lose?" June asked, her voice nervous, rattled, tense.
Addy breathed in, then out. "In the event of Earth truly losing ground and being overwhelmed by Daxam to the point where they can begin to occupy the planet, I ask that you wait for me. I will contact you in one fashion or another, and ensure you remain safe until I can find some means to either get you off-planet or connected with whatever remnants are left of the various disparate governments and resistance to Daxam's occupation."
Serling stared at her for a long moment. "Okay, I know this is going to be bleak, and I'm not questioning your ability, Addy, but... what if you die?" she asked, though her tone sounded like she hardly wanted to say any of it. "I don't think you will, I think you're smart enough to avoid that, but it's still possible, right? What if you die? What if you never contact us?"
Addy paused, thinking. "Me dying in the way you describe is functionally impossible," she said carefully.
Serling continued to stare at her. "...Are you sure about that?"
Addy found herself fidgeting. She took in another deep breath, then let it out, and let the words, in turn, come to her. "I haven't told you what I am, not much of that, in any event. I do not think it's pertinent information for most people, and I haven't felt like doing so otherwise. I don't intend to go into detail with you today, but perhaps after the invasion, when I feel I can take a few hours to explain and allow you to ask questions, I might do so.
"But, to be straightforward, there was a kernel of truth - skewed truth, meant to mislead, but truth - in what Riot told the entire building when he abducted June: this body, it is me, and something I deeply cherish, but it is not all that I am. I am more than it, and in a sense, it is but a fraction of what I am, an avatar, something I host my consciousness on, but is not where my consciousness first came into existence. This is not the body I was born with, and I am not even sure the form of genesis I underwent could be called birth in the first place. I did not take this body from anyone, the person who once dwelled within it was destroyed through forces not of my own, and I cared deeply for her, I gave her powers, and then she was gone, and her body was left, brain dead in every way that mattered.
"I hope you do not judge me for this, but I am ultimately what was left over after a tragedy of violence. I am not the same thing I was at the beginning, back when I first connected with the person—with Taylor, who once inhabited this body. But through circumstances, our minds were forced together, melded, in ways that were not pleasant, but were needed. That was, at least, until Taylor's consciousness was torn from this body, and I was left with mere memory and neurological impulses. I am the combination of that—of what was left over, of her memories and my original consciousness, making me. But, all of that said, if this body dies, I do not. Unless I have severely underestimated the capacity of the Daxamites to tunnel through reality, they cannot touch me in any way that will actually serve to stop me."
There was a stretch of silence that followed her proclamation, her coworkers, her friends, watching her carefully.
Then, Serling nearly jumped to her feet. "I don't judge you for that,
fuck that," she said, folding her arms over her chest. "Life's messy as shit, and that sounds just as messy. That's dark, and I... dunno, I feel bad that I pushed you about that now, but still, I don't judge you."
"I don't mind having to tell you as much as I might someone else," Addy told them all, but especially Serling. "It is just hard, at times, for me to remember and talk about."
"I can only imagine," June replied softly, glancing her way before nodding once. "I will hold you to that explanation, one of these days."
"It sounds like you went through something difficult, and I believe you that you're not lying to me," Emil reaffirmed, glancing at her from where he was seated. "You're just Addy, how you got there only changes the details."
Addy felt herself relax a bit more, her body loosening. "Thank you for respecting that. Before I go, however, I have one last thing for you."
Reaching into the pocket of her khakis, Addy retrieved a single device: a small, disk-shaped object, familiar to her own eyes. It had been her saviour when she had been given it by Cisco, and though this wasn't the same device as that one, it was built in its image. It was a breaching device, tuned to jump to her core universe, to alert her that it was used. It didn't have the power to jump twice, as the one she made had, only once, and would only teleport itself to avoid radioactive contamination in its surrounding area. Each of these devices came with a signature it broadcast, which her core could very easily pick up on, and each of those signatures was distinct enough to know where the device had come from, and who had sent it.
Addy extended the device forward, towards June, as she was the closest. June took it, staring at the disk-shaped object and the single button in its center.
"This is a device I ask you to use in the event of an emergency, a life or death situation ideally. This is single-use, and it will teleport this object to me—not this body, but to that other part of me I mentioned. I will be able to identify where it came from and who sent it," she explained, shifting back in her seat and folding both of her hands together in her lap. "If you're attacked, if you're in insurmountable danger, or just danger you are uncertain you can handle, use it. I can promise I will find you, once you do, but note one thing: there is a chance I may not be able to come to you, and cannot find someone nearby to maneuver to your defence. In that case, in the same place the device was activated and teleported away, a spatial anomaly will begin to take shape—clearly indicated by visible 'cracks' in the air, which release mist that looks as though it is composed of television static. That is me giving you a warning, and you
must heed it: turn and run in the opposite direction, as fast as you can, ideally up to a city block away, as, within a minute, those cracks will open into a rift, and while what comes out of that rift will not hurt you, the ambient energy it lets out will be extremely lethal to you and anyone nearby."
Her three coworkers—her friends, her associates, the people she cared about, looked at her, except for June, who was still staring at the device with a partially blank look.
After a moment, June glanced up, and opened her mouth.
"...This feels like too much," M'gann told her, holding the breaching device firmly in one hand.
Addy stood in Al's bar, staring at M'gann, but able to take in the rest of the room. The floorplan of the bar had been heavily rearranged, with chairs and tables shoved up against the walls to leave the middle of the space open and without any barriers to move around in. In front of her was M'gann, Carol and Koriand'r, the latter two hanging back near the stairs, and a little further away, behind the bar, was Al himself, quietly cleaning a glass with a dishrag.
"It is less than what I want to provide you," Addy told her bluntly, both of her hands laced behind her back. "But since you've assured me you've done everything in your own power to ensure your own safety, and because I trust you, I can only provide you with this. Please take it. I've already explained what it does, and what might come of it, and I... do not want you to go undefended, in any circumstance."
She had a few more of the breaching devices to hand out before the day was over, now that she had handed them off to her immediately available friends. One more would be going to J'onn, while the other would be given to Eliza, just in case the worst was to occur and the bunker Eliza was going to be in was breached. She had initially hoped to put everyone she cared about in the Fortress of Solitude, however, the Fortress of Solitude lacked appreciable heating and was regularly at arctic temperatures, not to mention the fact that it was possibly one of the first targets the Daxamites would attempt to shell into oblivion if they got the chance.
M'gann stared at the device for another long moment before letting out a long, weary sigh. She glanced up at Addy, then nodded once, slipping the breaching device into her pocket. "Fine. For something so small, you make it sound really intimidating."
Addy relaxed fractionally. "Thank you," she said, before shifting gears. "Onto other things: how is the organization of the alien population going?"
"Good," Carol said, sitting on a table that she'd pulled away from the cluster near the walls and left by the stairs. "We've managed to get aliens distributed to various bunkers in big enough groups to protect each other, but not so big that there are alien-only or human-only bunkers, meaning they can't be neglected in favour of human ones. It also makes them even less conspicuous, which helps when slave armies might have telepaths or sensors who can pick up on non-humans, and would make alien-only bunkers massive targets. Even the communities who really don't like working with us have come out and agreed to our plan and helped arrange things, which is a nice bonus."
"Off-planet movement also went well, though it's done now," M'gann added. "I helped get as many as I could off-planet before the array went up, since I know basic piloting and ship maintenance. Itnar was in the last group to leave, by the way—he told me to tell you that he will miss you, he hopes you will be safe, and that he really appreciated that you were his friend. We've been routing everyone - Itnar included - through some out-of-the-way transit lines to get them into more occupied space, and we're aiming for a Green Lantern-established refugee world that's got at least two larger interstellar nations between it and this part of space. Hopefully, even if the Daxamites
do win, the people there will have lived there long enough to be ready for it."
Addy felt her chest restrict at the reminder that Itnar was gone. The two of them hadn't spoken all too much before he left, but she was sad to see him go, truly. "He did not need to thank me for being his friend," Addy said, and she was not surprised she thought of him as a friend, but she hadn't been thinking much about it, because it hurt to do so. Itnar was gone, and his chance of returning to Earth and seeing her again was virtually zero. That had been the cost of the voyage: it was one way, and would remain that way even if Daxam lost. Addy intended to make sure they did, in part so he did not have to worry, all that distance away. "I hope he does well, wherever he finds himself."
"I'm sure he will," Al said, speaking up for the first time since she arrived. Addy glanced in his direction, finding him now quietly scrubbing down a plate. "He adapted well to Earth, and he will adapt well to anywhere else."
Addy didn't talk much with Al, and vice-versa, she knew that. Nonetheless, his small comment of reinforcement and positivity helped, and she appreciated it all the more for how rare it was for him to speak up. In return, she nodded politely in his direction.
Turning her attention back to M'gann, she moved on. "What will the rest of you be doing for the invasion? I understand you have fall-back points and secure locations," she said, glancing from M'gann to Carol, then to Koriand'r and back again.
Koriand'r and Carol shared a quick glance.
"Kori and I will be linking up with Earth Pact forces, as well as Titanian ones, if they have to make landfall. We'll hopefully be staying on this continent, or at least I don't want to have to get on a ship or get carried across the ocean by Koriand'r to help."
"The Rannians have reached out to me," M'gann said next, a touch of wry humour in her voice, which was a surprise. "I'm not sure exactly how they discovered I was helping people get off-planet before the array went up, but they offered me a job to help them with repairs and with what technical knowledge I have. I'm... not much of a fighter, or an engineer, I didn't go to school for either—I'm a historian—but when I came here from Mars, I had to take care of my own vessel, because I lived out of it for most of the several hundred years I've been here. I know enough to help out, so I agreed."
"And I will be helping out with refugee coordination. I won't take part in the fighting—I long-ago learned I am not suited for it—but my job for a very long time has been coordinating and helping others, so that won't change," Al said, tossing the dishrag onto the counter as he slotted the plate into the rack with the rest. "I'll be in touch, Addy."
Addy nodded at him.
"Speaking of coordination, we've got some company," Carol said, slipping off of the table and glancing in the direction of the door.
Addy jolted, surprised. Turning around, she reached for her core, initializing it. She had left it on idle because she had no reason to have it on anything else; the only time she really kept an active scan going was during combat, or when she had suspicions, and she had neither of those today. Still, it took a fraction of a second to activate, so she sent out a quick scan into her immediate environment, to see what Carol was getting at.
Immediately, she found it. Psychic presences, many of them, all by the front door of the bar, all of them rippling with recognition as her scan washed over them. Dozens of them, each psychic presence varying in power, but quite a number of them.
Addy felt herself tense.
"Calm down," Carol told her, voice dry. "This is probably a friendly visit."
Addy turned to look at her, resisting a frown. "Were you aware that this would occur?"
"Not really? But I knew it had a pretty good chance of happening," Carol said, not taking her eyes off of the front door. "There's been a lot of talk over the last few days. You've been making waves, Addy. The news has been tracking you closely, and so have other people."
The door to the bar opened soundlessly, and Addy turned once again, watching as, one by one, aliens stepped through.
They came in all shapes and sizes; some so close to humans as to be indistinguishable, others with only one or two features that might set them apart, and some who had nothing humanoid about them. Some were insectoid, others had fur, a surprising number were scaled and while the majority stood upright, not all of them did, with several walking on four legs, or having a quasi-centaur-like body, with a four-legged second body attached to a more conventional humanoid one, with two arms and a head.
They all entered the bar, filling up the space afforded by the seats and tables being pushed out of the way, but still keeping their distance from her just yet, until none were left outside.
The crowd stood before her, watching her, feeling her presence. There were at least fifty of them, though it was hard to tell through either their psychic presences or physical appearances, or even a combination of the two. Some psychic presences were two presences, but conjoined, such as the pair of bird-like aliens off to one side, while others appeared to have multiple psychic presences dwelling in one body, and others had one psychic presence dwelling across multiple. Fifty, however, seemed to be a good average to start with.
From the group, a four-legged alien stepped forward, bestial in appearance, separating themselves from the rest of the pack. They strode forward only a few paces before, in a cat-like gesture, lowering themselves down to sit on their haunches, a rat-like tail coming to curl around their side. The alien resembled a mash-up of a dog, a bear, and a ferret: with a long body that resembled that of a ferret, shorter canid-like legs that ended in opossum-like hands, a muzzle that was neither dog nor bear, but somewhere between those two, and crowned by the distinct, bear-like rounded ears. Their nose was black, and fur a dark red, while their eyes were amber and, rather than slit-pupil, bore the lengthwise pupils found on amphibians, with a slight hourglass shape to them. A pair of fangs jutted from the top of their mouth, too large to be contained within their muzzle.
The alien remained silent for a long moment, before opening their muzzle. The sound that came was not from movement, but rather it simply emanated out from within, like a speaker.
"We wish. To join. You. In defending. This planet." The alien spoke with a ponderous cadence, pauses and stops frequent, and with a voice that was deep and rough like gravel. "A consensus. Was reached."
Addy stared at them blankly. She had expected any number of things: violence, threats, and if not something hostile, then just a meeting, but this was... different. Still, she had questions. "Why now? The call to arms has been out for nearly a month. What delayed you?"
"It. Was not. You. Who asked." The alien replied simply. "It was. Them. The Government. The abductors. Who asked."
But that wasn't a good enough answer, frankly. "I haven't done anything for you to gain your loyalty like this," she pointed out.
"Your existence allows me to exist," an alien spoke up from the crowd, and Addy glanced over to find it was an alien she could actually recognize. It was the rodent-like alien from the bar visit after she had managed the White Martian attack on M'gann, and after searching her memories for his name, she came back with one: Lorek. He was joined by one of his companions, Kaavla, who resembled a four-armed, humanoid bat with hooves, but not S'ika, the alien that had resembled a combination of a slug and jellyfish and needed to be moved around with a wheelchair. "Without you, I'd be subsumed into a hive mind. I'd lose myself, and it would mean I would have to start all over again figuring out who I was when I escaped it."
"Your presence is calming to me," another voice spoke up, this time from a humanoid alien covered head-to-toe in puce-coloured scales. "This world is so... quiet, in comparison to my homeworld. You alleviate the sickness of silence."
"You keep getting stronger—it's really not hard to feel it, and you can protect us!" Another voice shouted, though they were so deep into the crowd that Addy had no chance of actually identifying which of them said it.
Addy stared at them all, still not convinced. "I do that passively, without intent. That should not be enough for this. I am not an actor actively improving your lives. What, then, makes you come to me?"
"Safety," Lorek replied again, his voice firmer. "You're right, you exist passively—you don't intend to make hive minds like mine difficult to take shape, but... even beyond that, you don't impress yourself on us. You don't make us bow to your will. There are no psychic hierarchies, nobody is being muffled, because you, at the top, make the decision to let us be free, and everyone below you accepts that as the rules. The only thing you do is ensure your authority isn't taken from you."
"Kinship," the bestial alien replied, their voice staggered. "I read. Your. Interview. I came to. Understand. Your existence. And. See in it. Myself." The alien paused, longer this time, before continuing. "I too. Love this world. I too. Feel its beauty. And I. Too. Have made this. Planet. My home."
"Lorek isn't the only one from a hive mind," another voice spoke up, this one from a long-limbed, gangly alien, hunched over to take his height from nearly eight feet to closer to six. His arms were long enough to reach the floor, and tipped with claw-like protrusions instead of nails. "I don't have the same issue, but I read your interview, and I think you'd understand what I can do, and how I can do it, better than any human general would."
"Duty," Kaavla spoke, firming her shoulders, standing tall. "I have lived here for a long time. It's hard, at times, but I do not remember my people's home planet—it is
gone, taken by the very same people who come here to ruin this planet. I will not have that happen again, even if I can't remember my planet, I can remember its loss, and I can see the absences in my family, I can see their grief."
"Hope," a voice called out, again lost in the crowd, making it impossible to make out which among them said it. "You are the best chance that we—that this
planet has. I can't put much trust in others, but you? You're not Superman, you're not Supergirl, you're not the D.E.O., you're Administrator. You're weird like us, but you're so much more powerful. There's a chance that, if we still have a planet, and you're around after this is all done and over with? We can keep finding a better place for ourselves in society, and this'll still be a place I can live in."
"As the. Stereotype. Goes." The alien at the front of the group said, his eyes gazing at her, seeing into her in some unclear way. "Psychics flock. Together. We have come. To you. As. One. Lead us. So that we. May. Protect."
Addy stared at them all, at what they were offering, and their justifications for offering it. She scanned across their presences, and found they accepted her, relaxed into the pressure of her own, opened themselves up for her, if she so desired it. They would let her take control, if it meant they could help protect this world, and she understood that for some among them - for those who belonged to a hive mind at one point - that meant far, far more than most people understood.
She felt them all, each of them like small stones in the path of her waves: small, but capable of diverting however much.
Breathing in, then out, Addy felt her resolve take shape. "I have a few other visits to complete today, and people to see, but I accept you," she said, staring across them, looking at them. "I will lead you, and your contributions will be noted. I will need to make some arrangements first, however."
Turning away from the crowd, she glanced towards Al, M'gann, Carol and Koriand'r, who were watching the scene with varying expressions that Addy was, as of this point, a little too busy to decipher.
"Clearly, I must take this. Can you ensure they are tended for as I make a few calls?"
Addy felt it when the elevator began to slow, and she heard it, too: the creaking of metal, shifting parts, various mechanisms preparing to lock into place. It was a contrast to the last five minutes of descent she had experienced in the elevator, silent and unnaturally smooth, to the point where it was nearly impossible to tell that she had actually been moving.
The elevator was a steel box, with a single bright yellow light contained within a mesh frame and only two buttons: one for up, and one for down. There were, after all, only two floors to the structure, even if those two floors stretched nearly half a mile apart. The vents on the roof of the elevator let air in, and made a constant whirring noise from the fan behind them, with the air it drew in pumped in through various openings on the elevator shaft, drawn down from the surface far, far above.
Next to her was J'onn, his posture tense and tight, as he too recognized the signs of the elevator coming to a halt.
The elevator was the only way down into the base, excluding more destructive methods, and Addy had not, in truth, even known about this base until recently, until she had brought up a prospect that required her to go to the base in the first place, for they needed all the help that they could get.
This location, off-the-grid, so secret that the number of people who knew where and what it was could be listed on a sheet of paper and not fill most of it, was the most secure prison on the planet. It was not a prison for a large number of prisoners, but instead for a scant few, crafted recently through the application of alien technology salvaged from Fort Rozz, and buried half a mile beneath the American Rockies. Every step that could be taken to make the prison more secure and more secret had
been taken, for the people it contained were too dangerous for anything else.
It was called the Last Light Prison, and it was meant to house only one thing: Kryptonians.
The elevator ground to a halt entirely, metal groaning as the doors in front of her shifted, hissed with vented air, and began to open. From the narrow crack in the opening, red light spilled in, washing over Addy, and even though she had been prepared for its emergence, the feeling of red sunlight stealing away her strength was no more pleasant than it had been the first time.
The doors opened wider, revealing first the source of the red sunlight: sun lamps, fitted into the ceiling at exact distances, and always on, casting the space ahead of her in perpetual crimson gloom. The space itself was uninviting, a metal corridor that stretched on for meters, all of it made from dark, iridescent steel, with a few doors situated along the length of the hallway.
They were not here for that.
Instead, they were here for the thing at the very end: a bulkhead, vast and tremendously thick, guarded by five guards, each located in guard posts armed with advanced weapons. Each of those guards—every guard—in the facility was hand-chosen by J'onn, and vetted through direct psychic contact. The guards lived here on site, and whenever they left - whether temporarily or to be reassigned - their memories would be taken from them, replaced with some other job related to aliens and with a paper trail to match it.
Those same guards had open permission to kill everyone in here, if need be, but they were also beholden to a suitably immense amount of oversight on their actions in the prison. Not, as far as she understood it, for purely altruistic reasons, but rather for the fact that nobody wanted cloned Kryptonians or humans modified to take on Kryptonian genetics, or for someone to fail to accomplish either and only manage to further upset the few Kryptonians ostensibly on their side or even accidentally release the prisoners.
Addy stepped out of the elevator, J'onn moving with her.
"I am still uncertain about this," J'onn told her, not taking his eyes off of the faraway bulkhead.
The elevator doors slid shut behind them with a pronounced
clunk.
"It may be necessary, and it is a right they should be given," Addy replied, stepping ahead and beginning to make her way down the long metal hallway, listening as J'onn's footsteps moved to follow. "These individuals may have been immense threats to the world, but they are also valuable assets, and people with as much of a reason to fight against the Daxamites as we do."
Together, they walked, but J'onn never gave a reply.
Addy understood that to be simply how J'onn was. He might not have been certain about this choice, but he had already signed off on this. Uncertainty, Addy could understand, but there was no taking this back, not anymore.
Similar vents were placed along the length of the hallway as there had been in the elevator, each of them droning with a moving fan behind metal slats. That was the only source of air for the facility, and J'onn had already explained to her that all of them could be sealed off at once, killing everyone inside over a period of around thirty minutes, especially depowered Kryptonians, in the event of a prison break.
She wasn't a fan of that too much, truth be told, or at least not while she was down here, which was why her own psychic presence was keeping a close eye on the guards, even the ones who were out of sight. Oh, admittedly, she had absolute faith in J'onn's choices, but having someone with a potential way to kill her - or in this case, just her body - had never sat right anyway.
Neither of them were permitted to die. Not now.
This was the ultimate compromise between the D.E.O. and Clark, as well as Kara. A prison for Kryptonians who went above and beyond abusing their power, but tried to conquer the world or do something similarly grotesque to the global populace. If Jax-Ur was captured, it would be here that he would be imprisoned. It was a prison without experimentation, with certain amenities afforded to its inhabitants, such as the ability to freely converse, better living conditions than your average prison - let alone a government black-site prison facility - and other things, while also being located far enough below the earth to be far away from civilization, and needing only a single button to kill everyone inside of it.
As they arrived at the bulkhead, two of the guards stationed wordlessly saluted them both, before turning back around to a terminal near to them. Both leaned down, pressing their eyes into one location, their hand into another, and waited. There was a sharp
beep that came from both terminals, and the two guards pulled away to quickly type in two completely different passcodes.
A second later, there was a vast hiss, air venting from the bulkhead as it began to open, a bright green light flickering on over the entrance.
"They're ready for you," a single guard said, off to the right, and gestured towards the door.
Addy stepped through the open bulkhead, J'onn following, and found herself in an open, crescent-shaped space. The crescent was curved towards her, and the space itself was made up of two floors, connected by mesh walkways and stairs that led to them. Set into the walls of both floors were cells, each of them covered by a solid, red, hard light 'door' that prevented them from escaping, and their rooms lit uniformly by red sunlamps, though even beyond it was illuminated entirely by those same red sun lamps.
There were about forty-five cells across two floors, and out of them, eleven - all of them on the bottom floor - were occupied. Sitting inside of each was a Kryptonian, one who had taken part in Non's attempt to conquer the world. They all had a bed, a bench, and several other utilities and facilities to keep themselves amused, not to mention what looked to be a partitioned-off bathroom, though Addy did note the dismal lack of colour aside from the persistent red light that kept getting everywhere.
The space itself wasn't just the cells, though. The ceiling over her head went far, far above where the second floor ended, up nearly two hundred feet, and all across that space were open cubbies with people sitting in the space behind them, weapons visible. Watchers, prepared for anything.
Non himself—the man who orchestrated the use of Myriad on Earth—was in the centermost cell, and he was watching her with a quiet, placid expression, leaning back on his bench with a book in his lap.
Addy took in the rest of the Kryptonians arranged in the space. She noted, with mild surprise, that Karsta's eyes looked to have healed since Addy last used the woman's own lasers to char them, which was at least a positive. Including Karsta, however, each and every one of the Kryptonians here were veterans, soldiers with no home anymore, and each of them having committed a crime that would see them executed, if some people got their way.
Each of them was a threat. Each of them had, at this point in time, no life beyond this prison, no life on Earth, because they had proven they could not coexist on it peacefully.
But now, she supposed, that might change.
"You have all already been informed of what is about to befall this planet, and you have also been told the reason why I have come here today. Daxam arrives within the week to slaughter this planet, and they come for not just the humans, but also for
you. Each of you participated in crimes against humanity, against this planet; you sought to conquer it through force and through mind control, and you failed. Unforgivable sins though they might be, you have been given an opportunity to stand in defiance against Daxam, and as a reward, gain certain privileges, and potential that you may, at some time in the future, be rehabilitated, so long as you fight your own ancient enemy in defence of us all," Addy told them straightforwardly, not bothering to even try to beat around the bush.
Non just stared at her, his eyes gimlet and as cold as Rhea's had been. "What, precisely, will stop us from simply leaving once you remove us from this
tomb? Do you intend to strap Kryptonite bombs to our throats, as your 'Cadmus' might? Do you intend to further this humiliation?"
The other Kryptonians smiled jeeringly, with condescension, acting as though they had seen through some kind of act.
Addy expected as much, and observed them all levelly. This was a group of veterans, their bonds close, and had not yet felt the weight of time begin to truly chip away at their beliefs. Or, at least, most of them hadn't. "It will be me who stops you, if you try to slip your leash. There will be no Kryptonite bombs, no red sun generators, and no way to reduce your strength that might be misused. You will be free of all shackles beside me."
To get the point across, Addy reached out and stabbed deep into their minds, into their consciousness. After all that time studying Kara's own defences - partially in preparation for Daxam - it was almost as easy as breathing, with barely an energy cost as she pushed aside the natural barrier that their defences provided them and sunk deep down into their brain, into their nerves. She pressed against it, let them all feel the weight of her presence, let them know she had taken barely a second to do it, too.
One by one, the smiles slipped from their faces.
"I am your tether, Kryptonians. There is no limit to my leash, and you will never escape me, nor will you ever defeat me. I know your minds, and I will be within them at all times, regardless of distance. I will command you, not with my mind, but with my voice, if you agree, and know that my retribution will be swift if you attempt to misuse that sliver of freedom I give you. I would prefer you did not attempt to bypass me and flee, not because it would be difficult, but because it would simply complicate things, and to a point, I do not enjoy hurting people." She let her words hang, before staring right at Non. "But I can certainly do it."
There was a long stretch of silence, so Addy opted to continue.
"I am not demanding this service out of you, and I will not force you to aid this planet. I am giving you a choice," she explained, withdrawing her presence and watching as the Kryptonians relaxed fractionally, possibly unaware that the only reason her presence had been known to them in the first place was because she had pressed down, letting them feel her psychic weight. When it came to things like giving or extracting memories, Addy knew she was unsubtle, but a core function of her species was being undetectable in their connections. "If we succeed without you, there is a chance you will gain more accommodations and be considered appropriate for rehabilitation in the future regardless. Some of you have even come around to recognizing the faults you have, and the damage you've done to this planet in your attempt to 'help' it. Your theoretical and eventual freedom does not hinge on this upcoming battle, but it will be a long-sought freedom without this opportunity, and it will not exist whatsoever if Daxam succeeds.
"I will not pander to you, I will not tell you lies, or try to be persuasive on these matters. I will tell you the truth. There is a chance that Daxam wins, and while we intend to keep this facility as hidden as we can, if that comes to pass, it will run out of food, it will run out of water, and it will be found, eventually. You will either die of dehydration or starvation first, or Daxam will take you and do things to you that I believe I don't need to tell you about, as you are all well aware of Daxam's potential for cruelty," she said, watching their expressions. Her commentary got a few slow intakes, a few people who visibly confirmed her words: they knew, they all did, what Daxam would do to them if they had the chance. "This is your chance to ensure that never occurs, but it is your decision. You may face your people's demons, the ones who have slaughtered any remaining Kryptonians not on Krypton during its destruction, or decide to remain here. It is your choice, and I do not judge you one way or another on it."
She was met with more silence, or at least, at first.
But, after seconds had passed, one person rose. It was a woman, one Addy did not know the name of, with a gimlet expression and her head shaved down to mere stubble. She walked up to the door of her cage, and stood there, legs planted.
"Duty calls," she declared in heavily-accented English. "I answer."
It didn't take long for another to rise, to join her at the front of their own cells. Then another, and another.
By the end of it, even Non rose, though he did it with a scowl.
