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Disclaimer Me Do: I own nothing you recognize. And most of what you don't recognize, I still don't own.
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On the positive side of things, it ended up taking a few hours between catching Leslie and catching Kid Flash.
Apparently, if your superpower is running? You tend to be really good at it.
Rather than dealing with the teenagers one by one as they were acquired, whoever in charge needed all of them, all at the same time. In the mean time they'd been stuck standing in weird pods.
Cloning pods.
Quaint.
Aqualad was busy trying to convince the Superman hybrid clone to let them go, but it wasn't going very far.
"We can show you, introduce you to Superman." Aqualad finally tried.
"No, they can't." Some scientist said as he finally walked in. He looked pretty important, flanked by another scientist and Guardian.
"Hey Robin." Leslie said as the scientist continued talking. "I'm gonna need you to do me a solid."
"Little tied up here. Take a rain check?" The doctor was talking at Guardian now, pointing at the clone.
"Nah, listen, it'll be real easy. Once you're out of here, I need you to get a Green Lantern."
"Young man, I do not believe you understand your position. There will be no 'Getting out of here'." He was directly in front of Leslie's pod.
"Well darn" Leslie Snapped his fingers. "And here I thought it'd be real easy. But I guess being an aspiring member of the seven thirty-first you must'a thought of everything."
"Uh, Doctor Desmond?"
"What did you just say, boy?!"
"No ethics, no morals, real happy to experiment on children? Dead ringer to me." Leslie shrugged in his pod as the doctor turned redder and redder. "Or maybe you'd prefer to be compared to Wirths? You're a little too low on the totem pole for that, though."
"Doctor Desmond!"
"What is it!" The man finally roared at his assistant. His lab coat twisting as he violently turned towards her.
"S-sir, Guardian, the weapon, the other children! Everyone's gone!" And indeed everyone was! Except for her, Desmond, his genomorph and Leslie.
He turned back around, eyes wild and landing on Alchemists grinning face.
"What have you done!" The man screeched. "Where did you-"
His tirade was cut comfortably short as he and his genomorph both disappeared, their clothes falling empty on the floor. His assistant, trembling and terrified turned around and bolted.
Right into Leslie.
"Sorry Sweetheart. It's my show now."
-----
Lantern Gardner liked to think he was a fairly agreeable individual.
Willful, certainly. But not quite so belligerently stubborn as most of the other Green Lanterns.
When the call had come from Robin about a hidden facility under Cadmus performing illegal human experiments and that another member of his team, Alchemist, had specifically requested a Green Lantern, he'd only wondered briefly why they were contacting him instead of either of the two who were actual members of the Justice League.
Stewart was more of a hard-liner, inflexible. Great when dealing with villains but a bit less so when handling kids.
Oh, the man absolutely could. He was great with children when he wanted to be.
That just didn't happen to be very often.
Lantern Jordan didn't have any such issues. The man was genuinely pleasant to be around, a fantastic Lantern and considered as the 'Soft' approach between the two.
Gardner had to wonder if the reason he'd been called was due to availability, or specifically because he -wasn't- part of the Justice League.
He had initially been somewhat skeptical of Robin's claims about illegal experiments. A lot of science could look pretty sketchy while still being ethical.
In response, Robin had claimed the weirdly dressed boy who was staring at the moon nearby was a result of those same experiments.
And his ring had confirmed it.
Kryptonian, Human, traces of Martian and large amounts of testosterone blockers. The D.N.A. was a match to Superman.
He was suddenly in a much greater hurry to get down into the hidden labs. The Guardians of Oa might not be too concerned with the Humans of Earth, but Kryptonians? Especially artificial ones?
They were going to want answers. Especially about what could potentially be a galaxy-wide threat of a canned Kryptonian army.
The elevator wasn't responding, but with a lantern ring that was a trivial inconvenience at worst.
Apparently someone had blocked the elevator door down on the seventh floor with a chair. Incredibly simple, but it kept the sensors active and forced the door to stay open and the elevator itself inoperable.
He was floating through the halls, toads literally everywhere.
Were they an escaped experiment?
"-Telling you there's nothing here!" Finally, he heard voices instead of the constant chirping.
"And I'm telling you there is! There was a door up on floor thirty-three. There's a door down on thirty-five. Where's door thirty-four?" A kid, presumably Alchemist was standing on the unmarked landing, pointing at the wall next to him.
Next to him stood a... Thing. It was tall, blue-ish and had a pair of horns. It looked like it was dressed in white hospital scrubs.
"There is no door thirty-four!"
"Exactly! There is no door! But there should be!"
"Gentlemen?" Lantern Gardner started as he landed. The two didn't seem to be violent, and being on the ground instead of in the air helped to put people a little more at ease.
"Green Lantern! Perfect! I'm going to need, like an hour of your time... And I need to know if you can hold a rabid Superman clone." The kid turned to face him as he spoke, clearly not a fan of wasting time. "Actually maybe an hour and ten minutes? Gimme a second."
The kid put both hands on the wall he'd been pointing at and...
Guy Gardner was honestly quite surprised to watch it wobble and pulse outward, rebar curling in on itself.
Revealing a room.
"What? How? I know every room in the facility!" The blue-ish goblin looking man was gobsmacked.
"It's my superpower, Dubbilex. Pattern recognition." Guy filed these two things away. First was the name of the blue man. The second being that the kid had the one secondary superpower necessary for any successful hero; Sarcasm.
"Either of you know what's in there?" Dubbilex shook his head no, and Alchemist didn't respond at all. "I'll take point. Stick to me, this isn't a horror movie."
He walked into the pitch black room first, his soft green glow illuminating things nearby. Close to the door Alchemist had made wasn't much, one desk with a few binders on it.
In the distance, Guy could see a white light on the floor but it was obscured enough he couldn't make out details.
"Any idea where the lights are?" The Lantern asked to the two behind him. A quick glance back and he saw Alchemist was turning his head back and forth. The taller man, Dubbilex, was walking as though distracted.
"No. I've never been on this floor. I do not know the layout."
"This is my first time in Cadmus. I've spent most of my time here dealing with a bunch of Toad-ies. No id- holy shit!" They'd gotten close enough to a pod to illuminate the interior.
A partially formed Genomorph floated within. It was basically a right arm, head and part of a torso. It looked vaguely like Dubbilex, having horns and tiny eyes, though it also noticeably had breast tissue.
The corpse-like pallor was made all the worse as it was lit up in green.
Gardner scanned it, the pod and even the chart that Dubbilex was grabbing with his ring.
"A failed genomorph. Model sixty-three of project 'Proliferate'. D.N.A. alterations failed to hold without excessive modifications which lead to disfigurement and even beyond that, it did not respond adequately to in-gestation hormone treatment. Project suspended..." Dubbilex read.
Gardner listened with half an ear as he reviewed the data from his Ring. The Genomorph was originally a Superman clone, though extreme efforts had been made to make it female. Unfortunately the D.N.A. had started breaking down, and they were trying to use Martian D.N.A. to patch it.
Somewhat successfully.
"Any idea what the original purpose of the project was?" He asked once Dubbilex had finished reading.
"I do not know. As I said, until just moments ago I was unaware of the project at all." They got moving again, passing by tubes filled with murky, rancid liquid.
"I can make a few guesses." Alchemist said from the back. "You said it was 'Proliferate' right? One meaning of that is to have kids. Think they were trying to make something to... I mean, I'm guessing 'breed' with Superman?"
That... Was an unpleasant thought. Gardner had met people who treated other humans as though they were stock to try and create a 'Better' child.
Usually the wealthy.
"So what did you need a Green Lantern for, kid?" There was a lot to unpack here, and it was just one part of the facility neither of the other two had even known existed.
"Information extraction, asset denial and sabotage. In that order." They passed by several tubes that had tiny, tiny specks of -something- floating inside.
A scan with his ring (93% charge remaining) told him what it was. Genomorph, stalled at seven weeks of artificial growth. Genetic expression of XY. Almost pure Kryptonian.
"Normally that'd be a pretty tall order, but I -am- the best of the best here." He tried to affect a cocky attitude. He preferred to fight, deal with the action, get his adrenaline pumping!
This kind of stuff, these kinds of places, even knowing about them could be harmful to a Green Lantern. Some would get stronger, become even more Willful. Others, seeing nobody to help and nothing they could do, would struggle against depression.
That, more than fear, could cripple a Lantern in the long run.
"Then I'm glad you're the one who showed up. We're going to have a lot to do and not a lot of time to-"
They'd finally found the lone light source in the room.
Next to another express elevator stood a single cloning tube, still active. Bubbles floated up from the bottom quickly, almost pretty with the light beneath them.
And inside was a girl. Tall and blonde, wearing a white suit just like the hybrid Guy had seen outside.
Alive.
Alchemist inhaled slowly through his nose, the sound loud in the silent room.
"Shit."
AN/ Expanded the exploration scene, gave more time to GL and Dubbilex. Huge thanks to CLell and ZC for their input!
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