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IV. Utility
Lex was approving the final roster for a return in force to Smallville when there was a minor alarm on the first floor of the building – someone wrongly in a secure area, the kind of thing that happened about twice a day to hapless delivery people.
Less routine were the flickering lights, then the screams over the intercom.
Mercy was outside his office when the security door slammed shut. If it had worked properly, steel bolts six inches thick had extended out of it, sealing him off from the rest of the building. Metal shutters rose from the top and bottom of his floor-length windows, closing in like teeth and throwing the office into dimness.
Lex just managed to find his infrared goggles before the lights went out entirely. Darkness was part of the emergency protocol -- he always hoped his assailants hadn't planned ahead, and sometimes he was right -- but it was still disturbing. He took an extra gun and two clips from his desk and positioned himself near a couch, covering the door. He should think about Teflon-coating the furniture for better protection, but then again it might aid an invader just as much.
There were crunching noises outside, then a repetitive hammering that suggested that Mercy was no longer in a position to offer resistance. He hoped she was alive, if only because she'd avenge him.
The first person through the door, after it had been destroyed, was Temperance. Lex was briefly grateful he'd withheld fire, but noted that she didn't seem to have a gun to her head. Instead, she had some sort of metal device around her neck and a jerky gait.
"Lex," she said, sounding too much like the possessed little girl in the Exorcist for his taste, not to mention the fact that Temperance had never even hinted before that she knew Lex had a first name.
"I know you're in here," she said, and the coy note was, if possible, creepier than her creaky pronunciation of his name.
"To whom am I speaking?" he asked, deciding that he lost little by responding. With any luck, the Justice League would soon investigate a major disturbance at LuthorCorp, if only out of self-protection.
"Lex," she said chidingly. "I know it's been a long time. And it's true that I've changed. But don't you remember an old friend and partner?" The elocution was already improving, as if whatever had hold of her was learning how to use her better.
"As a matter of fact," he said, rising and backing away, "I truly don't."
"You knew me as Milton Fine," she -- it -- said. "That was before Kal-El destroyed my original form. It's taken many years to reconstitute."
Brainiac. Lex was morally certain that Clark was responsible for the name, if not the full entity. He’d expected that something Kryptonian was behind the BFR, but he had let himself believe that Brainiac was gone.
"Let me guess. You've returned to give me another Zod injection." If that were the case, he’d rather have the chance to turn the gun on himself. One megalomaniac per body, that was his rule.
“I have returned for revenge. On you, who failed Zod, and failed me.” Temperance’s body took a step towards Lex, who raised his gun. “On Kal-El, who thwarted Zod’s renaissance.” Another step – Lex fired at Temperance’s shoulder, and Brainiac moved faster than a human could have, avoiding it entirely. “On this planet, which will suffer Krypton’s fate.”
“I seriously doubt hitting Earth with a meteor will cause it to explode,” Lex said, even as he backed away and fired again. “This planet is not a Pinto.” Eight more bullets, and probably none of them would be any more useful, but maybe he could buy some time.
“You know about that,” Brainiac said with some surprise. “I will have to go through your records in detail.”
Given the other things Brainiac might do, it didn’t sound so bad.
****
“What is Phosita?” Brainiac asked, for the sixth or seventh time. Lex had lost count when he’d let the broken bones get out of sync with the iterations.
All his natural responses – ‘I'm going to have Mercy beat you to death with your own arm,’ to take a random example -- seemed inappropriate when the thing at issue was occupying a relative innocent's body. “It’s a dessert topping and a floor wax,” he said instead, though his elocution might not have been up to standard.
Brainiac sneered; Lex wondered if it had looked up the reference. Then it burned another hole in his thigh. “Tell me, Lex, and live to fight another day.” The cliches sounded so strange in its borrowed voice, half-human and half-synthetic.
He closed his eyes. So much damage to his research already done – if Brainiac’s claims were truthful, it had manipulated the computerized maintenance system in the building to destroy the two dedicated labs and had corrupted or erased his experimental data. Getting out with his head intact was the only hope of preserving years of careful exploration of Kryptonite’s properties.
“Why do you care?” Lex gritted out. “You’re throwing this rock at the Earth, and in ten days I’ll be as dead as any other human.”
Brainiac tilted its head – Temperance’s head cocked like a golden retriever’s, Brainiac’s interface a silver collar around her neck. Oddly, Lex could almost see Milton Fine in the thing’s face, as if the takeover had been so complete that it was altering the physical shape of its victim. “I care because it is based on Kryptonian knowledge, and all things Kryptonian are of interest to me.”
“I’ll tell you if you tell me why you’re attacking Earth.”
“Bargaining, Lex?” Yeah, that was Fine all right. Condescension was a mistake, Lex thought – it antagonized rather than coopting. People who didn’t matter didn’t need to be told they didn’t matter; it was cruel, and might be wrong. Lex dearly hoped Brainiac was wrong.
He smiled, showing Brainiac his bloody teeth. “The truth is always valuable. I’ll trade.”
Brainiac shrugged. “It’s a fragment of Krypton. Kal-El thwarted Zod’s ambition to build a New Krypton. Now I am denying him the world he wishes to preserve.”
“Revenge,” Lex said, nodding despite the pain it caused. “I can sympathize. Phosita’s a chemical agent, designed to disrupt Kryptonian biology and rewire it to be Earth-compatible.”
Brainiac’s face registered disgust. “You are attempting to make Kal-El human?” Then it considered, and smiled, an even worse expression. “A fitting punishment! We should have worked together.”
“You guaranteed that would never happen when you hijacked my body to carry your precious Zod,” Lex pointed out.
It shrugged. “True. Under other circumstances, I would simply have assimilated you, but your Kryptonite mutations make that impossible. Something in your altered cellular composition interferes with the primitive circuitry I have been able to fabricate using Earth materials.”
There was an ache below his pecs, above his navel, with a spike of deeper pain in the center. Punctured lung, Lex thought. From the speed at which the blood was filling his mouth, he had maybe five minutes before he’d pass out. If that Kryptonian monstrosity was going to continue to lecture the entire time, unconsciousness would be a relief.
He let his eyes sag closed. Lex felt Brainiac bending down, emphasizing the power it held over Lex’s fragile existence. Their faces were inches away –
Lex spat a mouthful of meteor mutant blood directly onto the collar-interface.
“You talk too much,” he said when the body was writhing and sparking on the floor.
With Brainiac out of commission, it wasn’t impossible to get out of the improvised restraints it had used on him. Painful, yes; impossible, no.
He managed to wrest the collar off of Temperance’s body – he wasn’t sure how dangerous that was, but he knew he didn’t want it on her any longer than necessary – and throw it into his safe for later analysis. She was still breathing, though otherwise unresponsive, when the security forces arrived and he sent her off with paramedics, hoping that she wasn’t another dedicated employee sacrificed to his enemies.
He sat on what was left of his couch, sticky with his blood, and tried to organize his thoughts. The collar hadn’t gotten on her by itself. It had probably been connected to some larger entity. Perhaps another version was already awakening and preparing to come after him.
Clark had defeated Brainiac before. Lex believed he would again. But there was still that big rock coming at them, and it was probably time to do something about it. And it could be to his advantage, if he could distract the League long enough to work unimpeded on Earth --
When Clark answered his cellphone, Lex could barely restrain a sigh of relief.
“There’s a problem,” he said over Clark’s somewhat surprised “Hello?”
Batman was surely monitoring this, and while he probably already knew about the fucking, Lex hated to give him any more information.
“Brainiac just invaded LuthorCorp,” he explained. “It threatened my life, and it’s still out there. I need protection.” That was something Lex Luthor might demand from Superman, even if they despised each other.
In a heartbeat, Clark was in the office, looking around at the devastation, then staring in horror at Lex’s injuries. “What happened?”
“Well, it never liked me,” Lex said.
Clark didn’t so much as blink. When he was in full Superman mode, Clark Kent’s already limited sense of humor diminished by an order of magnitude.
“Obviously, I’m not safe here. And we have another problem.” He explained briefly about detecting the rock on its way to Earth, and Brainiac’s claim of responsibility. Then he sagged back onto the couch, which was only about half feigned.
Clark had improved in many ways with time. He didn’t argue, didn’t accuse Lex of lying or distorting the truth, just called the League and started them mobilizing.
“If Brainiac can’t destroy the Earth, it will at least try to hurt the people you love,” Lex said when he’d finished talking to his compatriots. “You need to make sure your mother, Lana, and Lois are safe before you head off.”
Something rippled under the surface of Clark’s expression. “Batman has a security detail on them,” he said.
“My security wasn’t much help,” Lex pointed out. Batman’s people were probably as good as his – at least they were unlikely to get in the way of the guards he already had on the women – but they weren’t better.
Clark picked Lex up, so gently that it almost didn’t hurt. “I’m taking you to my Fortress,” he said. “It knows Brainiac, it can keep him out.”
When Lex had thrown the control collar into the safe, he’d retrieved the dagger and the specially designed hard drive with the relevant environmental data, gambling on Clark’s willingness to offer sanctuary to anyone in need. Now they rested at the small of his back, pressing against his bruises. Lex closed his eyes and hoped that the layers of leaded insulation around the dagger would suppress its reaction to proximity to other Kryptonian artifacts. The crystals had always required direct skin-on-skin contact. Clark didn’t seem to notice that Lex was carrying something different than his usual gun.
They flew together, so fast that all Lex’s exposed skin went numb.
****
The Fortress put Lex in mind of caverns measureless to man, as if Coleridge had been visited just like Kansas. Of course he’d seen the pictures the *Planet* had run in Lane’s inane cover story, but pictures were entirely inadequate to convey the size of it, the alienness of the angles, the thousand shades of white reflecting in every crystal.
Clark touched down like a breath blown across skin, barely noticeable until Lex had to stand on his own again.
Lex ignored the pain of standing upright and looked around, trying to identify the main crystal array. Clark was watching him worriedly.
“I –” Clark began, and then the far wall caved in, spraying them with crystal fragments and stinging chunks of snow, a barrage of white that knocked Lex sprawling and made his vision grow dark.
As soon as he could move his limbs, he pushed himself up. There were at least eight, maybe ten, bodies moving through the chaos, all different – bodies under Brainiac’s control. Clark was a blur, pushing one back and then another.
“Their minds are gone!” Lex yelled. He wasn’t sure this was true – though it certainly had been for Dr. Walden, who’d been through a similar Kryptonian possession – but if he could decrease Clark’s hesitance even a little it would be a benefit to their side.
Lex had no weapon other than the dagger, and he wasn’t about to use *that* on anything connected with Brainiac, even a possessed human body. The Fortress was like a field of frozen fireworks, snow-white blades protruding in every direction, but nothing on the floor looked handy. The debris had mostly turned to powder and tiny fragments. If he had to, he’d try to break off a crystal to use as a club, but that seemed risky, especially since he needed the Eradicator on his side and it might not take kindly to being pruned first.
Clark was holding his own in any event, moving so fast that Lex only heard the grunts of Brainiac’s slaves as they toppled and fell unconscious. Clark had never been chary of a little collateral brain damage.
As soon as he reappeared, he advanced on Lex. “It’s not safe here. We’ll go to League headquarters –”
“Your friends will love that,” Lex said, which stopped Clark only briefly. Lex couldn’t show too much investment in staying, but he had to give Clark some reason to leave him here – “You’ve wasted enough time already, and if Brainiac had more bodies to send they’d already –"
A shadow fell over him, something blocking the sun through the hole Brainiac’s invasion had made. Lex turned.
This incarnation looked like a cross between a Cyberman and Swamp Thing, organics deformed around twisted metal. Its face was all gray angles, except for the greasy curl of hair that sat on its forehead like a slug, and its eyes glowed blue like a parody of Superman’s, an impression enhanced by the chestplate with the sigil of what Lex presumed was the House of Zod in yellow and red.
Also, it was about eight feet tall, and as wide as two of the Sharks’ linebackers.
“Kal-El,” it said, and Lex dropped and rolled to get out of the way.
Immediately thereafter, the air filled with the distinctive glow of heat vision as the two Kryptonians went after each other.
Distraction was good, if Lex could only find the main crystal array. He crawled to an edge of the room that opened into a corridor.
Then Clark and Brainiac both stopped fighting, cocking their heads at eerily identical angles. Clark’s face showed relief; Brainiac’s, renewed anger. Lex inferred that the rest of the League had managed to divert the BFR.
“It’s a piece of my planet,” Clark said, presumably into his hidden communicator. “So we need to watch out for Kryptonite.” He was breathing hard, which Lex now associated with sex, a distraction he didn’t need.
Brainiac had taken the opportunity to regroup, and launched itself at Clark with all the fury of a revenger denied his tragedy. They traded punches and kicks for a few rounds, until Clark pulled away. “What?” he said into thin air.
Lex fucking hated listening to one-sided conversations. Especially the unrevealing ones.
Clark looked as genuinely shocked as Lex had ever seen him. He’d switched into pure defensive mode, fending off Brainiac’s blows as if they were minor annoyances, like gnats. The look on his face reminded Lex of his first glimpse of 15-year-old Clark, suddenly aware that he was about to be hit by two tons of metal.
Then he disappeared.
If Lex hadn’t had problems of his own, the curiousity would have given him a stroke right then. As it was, Brainiac gaped at the empty air for a moment, then straightened. The half-metal, half-organic body turned towards Lex with an insectile grace.
“I think,” it said, “we have some unfinished business.”
Thanks a million, Clark, he thought. That bleeding trick was only going to work once – even if he’d had sufficient blood to work with.
****
Lex felt wetness running down his sides, soaking into the remains of his shirt. He wondered whether meteor mutant blood would have a disruptive effect on the dagger.
The dagger.
If Brainiac discovered that – if it could somehow make the Eradicator work – Lex had just signed Earth’s death warrant.
“Must be galling,” he said, feeling more blood dribble from the corners of his mouth. “To have Superman ignore you like that. You’re not even a threat, all pathetic and half-baked.”
Brainiac moved its metal mouth in what might have been a sneer. “Perhaps he hopes I’ll rid him at last of your pernicious influence and your incessant scheming.”
He couldn’t feel his hands. What Brainiac did to his shoulder, he felt.
Even after he stopped trying to scream, he couldn’t draw breath enough to taunt.
“This is just a pleasant way for me to pass the time before Kal-El returns,” Brainiac continued as Lex struggled to stay conscious. “Your loyalty to him puzzles me. Did you never think – what’s the phrase you humans have? – ‘somewhere, a village is missing its idiot.’”
Lex was in no mood to explain the difference between stupidity and dangerous naivete. Hang on, he told himself. Clark’s specialty was last-minute rescues. “Why’d – you bother? If you’re – so sure he’ll save the world again?”
Brainiac shrugged, which looked very strange coming from a giant half-robot half-monster. “It was worth a try. And it’s the last piece of Krypton left.”
Lex didn’t quite understand the relevance of the latter piece of information, but he wasn’t thinking all that well. The floor of the Fortress was really cold. He didn’t think it was ice – if it had been, some would have melted underneath him – but that just made it more like being on a morgue slab, which was not at all a simile he needed.
Brainiac disappeared. Then he heard a loud crash.
It took him a few seconds to decide that he was being rescued. That’s good, he thought. But he still couldn’t feel his hands.
The world narrowed to his ragged breaths; if they hadn’t been involuntary, he might have stopped, because he didn’t have the energy. There was a distant buzzing in his ears which he profoundly hoped was Brainiac getting the alien shit kicked out of it.
Clark was kneeling above him – how long had he been there? He looked worried, and he kept saying Lex’s name as if it meant something.
He groaned, or imagined that he did. Fuck, he might really be dying this time. The pain was receding now, as if he’d been pumped full of morphine, and given that instead he was still bleeding out on the floor that was a bad sign.
With effort, he raised a mannequin-stiff hand to cover Clark’s where Clark was putting pressure on one of the holes Brainiac had made. “I want you to know – I have loved you from the beginning. I want – tell me I’m yours.” Just this once, Lex tried to say, just do as I ask this one time.
Was Clark crying? Maybe it was only the distortion in his vision, which was starting to go white in flares and spots. “Lex, don’t – you can’t leave me. You’re mine, you can’t go.”
The world went nova, shining and beautiful. It was nothing like his previous near-death visions, all so terrifying and unsatisfactory. It was just peace, softness, surcease. And so bright, the utter absence of darkness. He would have smiled, if he’d had a body.
Lex was approving the final roster for a return in force to Smallville when there was a minor alarm on the first floor of the building – someone wrongly in a secure area, the kind of thing that happened about twice a day to hapless delivery people.
Less routine were the flickering lights, then the screams over the intercom.
Mercy was outside his office when the security door slammed shut. If it had worked properly, steel bolts six inches thick had extended out of it, sealing him off from the rest of the building. Metal shutters rose from the top and bottom of his floor-length windows, closing in like teeth and throwing the office into dimness.
Lex just managed to find his infrared goggles before the lights went out entirely. Darkness was part of the emergency protocol -- he always hoped his assailants hadn't planned ahead, and sometimes he was right -- but it was still disturbing. He took an extra gun and two clips from his desk and positioned himself near a couch, covering the door. He should think about Teflon-coating the furniture for better protection, but then again it might aid an invader just as much.
There were crunching noises outside, then a repetitive hammering that suggested that Mercy was no longer in a position to offer resistance. He hoped she was alive, if only because she'd avenge him.
The first person through the door, after it had been destroyed, was Temperance. Lex was briefly grateful he'd withheld fire, but noted that she didn't seem to have a gun to her head. Instead, she had some sort of metal device around her neck and a jerky gait.
"Lex," she said, sounding too much like the possessed little girl in the Exorcist for his taste, not to mention the fact that Temperance had never even hinted before that she knew Lex had a first name.
"I know you're in here," she said, and the coy note was, if possible, creepier than her creaky pronunciation of his name.
"To whom am I speaking?" he asked, deciding that he lost little by responding. With any luck, the Justice League would soon investigate a major disturbance at LuthorCorp, if only out of self-protection.
"Lex," she said chidingly. "I know it's been a long time. And it's true that I've changed. But don't you remember an old friend and partner?" The elocution was already improving, as if whatever had hold of her was learning how to use her better.
"As a matter of fact," he said, rising and backing away, "I truly don't."
"You knew me as Milton Fine," she -- it -- said. "That was before Kal-El destroyed my original form. It's taken many years to reconstitute."
Brainiac. Lex was morally certain that Clark was responsible for the name, if not the full entity. He’d expected that something Kryptonian was behind the BFR, but he had let himself believe that Brainiac was gone.
"Let me guess. You've returned to give me another Zod injection." If that were the case, he’d rather have the chance to turn the gun on himself. One megalomaniac per body, that was his rule.
“I have returned for revenge. On you, who failed Zod, and failed me.” Temperance’s body took a step towards Lex, who raised his gun. “On Kal-El, who thwarted Zod’s renaissance.” Another step – Lex fired at Temperance’s shoulder, and Brainiac moved faster than a human could have, avoiding it entirely. “On this planet, which will suffer Krypton’s fate.”
“I seriously doubt hitting Earth with a meteor will cause it to explode,” Lex said, even as he backed away and fired again. “This planet is not a Pinto.” Eight more bullets, and probably none of them would be any more useful, but maybe he could buy some time.
“You know about that,” Brainiac said with some surprise. “I will have to go through your records in detail.”
Given the other things Brainiac might do, it didn’t sound so bad.
****
“What is Phosita?” Brainiac asked, for the sixth or seventh time. Lex had lost count when he’d let the broken bones get out of sync with the iterations.
All his natural responses – ‘I'm going to have Mercy beat you to death with your own arm,’ to take a random example -- seemed inappropriate when the thing at issue was occupying a relative innocent's body. “It’s a dessert topping and a floor wax,” he said instead, though his elocution might not have been up to standard.
Brainiac sneered; Lex wondered if it had looked up the reference. Then it burned another hole in his thigh. “Tell me, Lex, and live to fight another day.” The cliches sounded so strange in its borrowed voice, half-human and half-synthetic.
He closed his eyes. So much damage to his research already done – if Brainiac’s claims were truthful, it had manipulated the computerized maintenance system in the building to destroy the two dedicated labs and had corrupted or erased his experimental data. Getting out with his head intact was the only hope of preserving years of careful exploration of Kryptonite’s properties.
“Why do you care?” Lex gritted out. “You’re throwing this rock at the Earth, and in ten days I’ll be as dead as any other human.”
Brainiac tilted its head – Temperance’s head cocked like a golden retriever’s, Brainiac’s interface a silver collar around her neck. Oddly, Lex could almost see Milton Fine in the thing’s face, as if the takeover had been so complete that it was altering the physical shape of its victim. “I care because it is based on Kryptonian knowledge, and all things Kryptonian are of interest to me.”
“I’ll tell you if you tell me why you’re attacking Earth.”
“Bargaining, Lex?” Yeah, that was Fine all right. Condescension was a mistake, Lex thought – it antagonized rather than coopting. People who didn’t matter didn’t need to be told they didn’t matter; it was cruel, and might be wrong. Lex dearly hoped Brainiac was wrong.
He smiled, showing Brainiac his bloody teeth. “The truth is always valuable. I’ll trade.”
Brainiac shrugged. “It’s a fragment of Krypton. Kal-El thwarted Zod’s ambition to build a New Krypton. Now I am denying him the world he wishes to preserve.”
“Revenge,” Lex said, nodding despite the pain it caused. “I can sympathize. Phosita’s a chemical agent, designed to disrupt Kryptonian biology and rewire it to be Earth-compatible.”
Brainiac’s face registered disgust. “You are attempting to make Kal-El human?” Then it considered, and smiled, an even worse expression. “A fitting punishment! We should have worked together.”
“You guaranteed that would never happen when you hijacked my body to carry your precious Zod,” Lex pointed out.
It shrugged. “True. Under other circumstances, I would simply have assimilated you, but your Kryptonite mutations make that impossible. Something in your altered cellular composition interferes with the primitive circuitry I have been able to fabricate using Earth materials.”
There was an ache below his pecs, above his navel, with a spike of deeper pain in the center. Punctured lung, Lex thought. From the speed at which the blood was filling his mouth, he had maybe five minutes before he’d pass out. If that Kryptonian monstrosity was going to continue to lecture the entire time, unconsciousness would be a relief.
He let his eyes sag closed. Lex felt Brainiac bending down, emphasizing the power it held over Lex’s fragile existence. Their faces were inches away –
Lex spat a mouthful of meteor mutant blood directly onto the collar-interface.
“You talk too much,” he said when the body was writhing and sparking on the floor.
With Brainiac out of commission, it wasn’t impossible to get out of the improvised restraints it had used on him. Painful, yes; impossible, no.
He managed to wrest the collar off of Temperance’s body – he wasn’t sure how dangerous that was, but he knew he didn’t want it on her any longer than necessary – and throw it into his safe for later analysis. She was still breathing, though otherwise unresponsive, when the security forces arrived and he sent her off with paramedics, hoping that she wasn’t another dedicated employee sacrificed to his enemies.
He sat on what was left of his couch, sticky with his blood, and tried to organize his thoughts. The collar hadn’t gotten on her by itself. It had probably been connected to some larger entity. Perhaps another version was already awakening and preparing to come after him.
Clark had defeated Brainiac before. Lex believed he would again. But there was still that big rock coming at them, and it was probably time to do something about it. And it could be to his advantage, if he could distract the League long enough to work unimpeded on Earth --
When Clark answered his cellphone, Lex could barely restrain a sigh of relief.
“There’s a problem,” he said over Clark’s somewhat surprised “Hello?”
Batman was surely monitoring this, and while he probably already knew about the fucking, Lex hated to give him any more information.
“Brainiac just invaded LuthorCorp,” he explained. “It threatened my life, and it’s still out there. I need protection.” That was something Lex Luthor might demand from Superman, even if they despised each other.
In a heartbeat, Clark was in the office, looking around at the devastation, then staring in horror at Lex’s injuries. “What happened?”
“Well, it never liked me,” Lex said.
Clark didn’t so much as blink. When he was in full Superman mode, Clark Kent’s already limited sense of humor diminished by an order of magnitude.
“Obviously, I’m not safe here. And we have another problem.” He explained briefly about detecting the rock on its way to Earth, and Brainiac’s claim of responsibility. Then he sagged back onto the couch, which was only about half feigned.
Clark had improved in many ways with time. He didn’t argue, didn’t accuse Lex of lying or distorting the truth, just called the League and started them mobilizing.
“If Brainiac can’t destroy the Earth, it will at least try to hurt the people you love,” Lex said when he’d finished talking to his compatriots. “You need to make sure your mother, Lana, and Lois are safe before you head off.”
Something rippled under the surface of Clark’s expression. “Batman has a security detail on them,” he said.
“My security wasn’t much help,” Lex pointed out. Batman’s people were probably as good as his – at least they were unlikely to get in the way of the guards he already had on the women – but they weren’t better.
Clark picked Lex up, so gently that it almost didn’t hurt. “I’m taking you to my Fortress,” he said. “It knows Brainiac, it can keep him out.”
When Lex had thrown the control collar into the safe, he’d retrieved the dagger and the specially designed hard drive with the relevant environmental data, gambling on Clark’s willingness to offer sanctuary to anyone in need. Now they rested at the small of his back, pressing against his bruises. Lex closed his eyes and hoped that the layers of leaded insulation around the dagger would suppress its reaction to proximity to other Kryptonian artifacts. The crystals had always required direct skin-on-skin contact. Clark didn’t seem to notice that Lex was carrying something different than his usual gun.
They flew together, so fast that all Lex’s exposed skin went numb.
****
The Fortress put Lex in mind of caverns measureless to man, as if Coleridge had been visited just like Kansas. Of course he’d seen the pictures the *Planet* had run in Lane’s inane cover story, but pictures were entirely inadequate to convey the size of it, the alienness of the angles, the thousand shades of white reflecting in every crystal.
Clark touched down like a breath blown across skin, barely noticeable until Lex had to stand on his own again.
Lex ignored the pain of standing upright and looked around, trying to identify the main crystal array. Clark was watching him worriedly.
“I –” Clark began, and then the far wall caved in, spraying them with crystal fragments and stinging chunks of snow, a barrage of white that knocked Lex sprawling and made his vision grow dark.
As soon as he could move his limbs, he pushed himself up. There were at least eight, maybe ten, bodies moving through the chaos, all different – bodies under Brainiac’s control. Clark was a blur, pushing one back and then another.
“Their minds are gone!” Lex yelled. He wasn’t sure this was true – though it certainly had been for Dr. Walden, who’d been through a similar Kryptonian possession – but if he could decrease Clark’s hesitance even a little it would be a benefit to their side.
Lex had no weapon other than the dagger, and he wasn’t about to use *that* on anything connected with Brainiac, even a possessed human body. The Fortress was like a field of frozen fireworks, snow-white blades protruding in every direction, but nothing on the floor looked handy. The debris had mostly turned to powder and tiny fragments. If he had to, he’d try to break off a crystal to use as a club, but that seemed risky, especially since he needed the Eradicator on his side and it might not take kindly to being pruned first.
Clark was holding his own in any event, moving so fast that Lex only heard the grunts of Brainiac’s slaves as they toppled and fell unconscious. Clark had never been chary of a little collateral brain damage.
As soon as he reappeared, he advanced on Lex. “It’s not safe here. We’ll go to League headquarters –”
“Your friends will love that,” Lex said, which stopped Clark only briefly. Lex couldn’t show too much investment in staying, but he had to give Clark some reason to leave him here – “You’ve wasted enough time already, and if Brainiac had more bodies to send they’d already –"
A shadow fell over him, something blocking the sun through the hole Brainiac’s invasion had made. Lex turned.
This incarnation looked like a cross between a Cyberman and Swamp Thing, organics deformed around twisted metal. Its face was all gray angles, except for the greasy curl of hair that sat on its forehead like a slug, and its eyes glowed blue like a parody of Superman’s, an impression enhanced by the chestplate with the sigil of what Lex presumed was the House of Zod in yellow and red.
Also, it was about eight feet tall, and as wide as two of the Sharks’ linebackers.
“Kal-El,” it said, and Lex dropped and rolled to get out of the way.
Immediately thereafter, the air filled with the distinctive glow of heat vision as the two Kryptonians went after each other.
Distraction was good, if Lex could only find the main crystal array. He crawled to an edge of the room that opened into a corridor.
Then Clark and Brainiac both stopped fighting, cocking their heads at eerily identical angles. Clark’s face showed relief; Brainiac’s, renewed anger. Lex inferred that the rest of the League had managed to divert the BFR.
“It’s a piece of my planet,” Clark said, presumably into his hidden communicator. “So we need to watch out for Kryptonite.” He was breathing hard, which Lex now associated with sex, a distraction he didn’t need.
Brainiac had taken the opportunity to regroup, and launched itself at Clark with all the fury of a revenger denied his tragedy. They traded punches and kicks for a few rounds, until Clark pulled away. “What?” he said into thin air.
Lex fucking hated listening to one-sided conversations. Especially the unrevealing ones.
Clark looked as genuinely shocked as Lex had ever seen him. He’d switched into pure defensive mode, fending off Brainiac’s blows as if they were minor annoyances, like gnats. The look on his face reminded Lex of his first glimpse of 15-year-old Clark, suddenly aware that he was about to be hit by two tons of metal.
Then he disappeared.
If Lex hadn’t had problems of his own, the curiousity would have given him a stroke right then. As it was, Brainiac gaped at the empty air for a moment, then straightened. The half-metal, half-organic body turned towards Lex with an insectile grace.
“I think,” it said, “we have some unfinished business.”
Thanks a million, Clark, he thought. That bleeding trick was only going to work once – even if he’d had sufficient blood to work with.
****
Lex felt wetness running down his sides, soaking into the remains of his shirt. He wondered whether meteor mutant blood would have a disruptive effect on the dagger.
The dagger.
If Brainiac discovered that – if it could somehow make the Eradicator work – Lex had just signed Earth’s death warrant.
“Must be galling,” he said, feeling more blood dribble from the corners of his mouth. “To have Superman ignore you like that. You’re not even a threat, all pathetic and half-baked.”
Brainiac moved its metal mouth in what might have been a sneer. “Perhaps he hopes I’ll rid him at last of your pernicious influence and your incessant scheming.”
He couldn’t feel his hands. What Brainiac did to his shoulder, he felt.
Even after he stopped trying to scream, he couldn’t draw breath enough to taunt.
“This is just a pleasant way for me to pass the time before Kal-El returns,” Brainiac continued as Lex struggled to stay conscious. “Your loyalty to him puzzles me. Did you never think – what’s the phrase you humans have? – ‘somewhere, a village is missing its idiot.’”
Lex was in no mood to explain the difference between stupidity and dangerous naivete. Hang on, he told himself. Clark’s specialty was last-minute rescues. “Why’d – you bother? If you’re – so sure he’ll save the world again?”
Brainiac shrugged, which looked very strange coming from a giant half-robot half-monster. “It was worth a try. And it’s the last piece of Krypton left.”
Lex didn’t quite understand the relevance of the latter piece of information, but he wasn’t thinking all that well. The floor of the Fortress was really cold. He didn’t think it was ice – if it had been, some would have melted underneath him – but that just made it more like being on a morgue slab, which was not at all a simile he needed.
Brainiac disappeared. Then he heard a loud crash.
It took him a few seconds to decide that he was being rescued. That’s good, he thought. But he still couldn’t feel his hands.
The world narrowed to his ragged breaths; if they hadn’t been involuntary, he might have stopped, because he didn’t have the energy. There was a distant buzzing in his ears which he profoundly hoped was Brainiac getting the alien shit kicked out of it.
Clark was kneeling above him – how long had he been there? He looked worried, and he kept saying Lex’s name as if it meant something.
He groaned, or imagined that he did. Fuck, he might really be dying this time. The pain was receding now, as if he’d been pumped full of morphine, and given that instead he was still bleeding out on the floor that was a bad sign.
With effort, he raised a mannequin-stiff hand to cover Clark’s where Clark was putting pressure on one of the holes Brainiac had made. “I want you to know – I have loved you from the beginning. I want – tell me I’m yours.” Just this once, Lex tried to say, just do as I ask this one time.
Was Clark crying? Maybe it was only the distortion in his vision, which was starting to go white in flares and spots. “Lex, don’t – you can’t leave me. You’re mine, you can’t go.”
The world went nova, shining and beautiful. It was nothing like his previous near-death visions, all so terrifying and unsatisfactory. It was just peace, softness, surcease. And so bright, the utter absence of darkness. He would have smiled, if he’d had a body.
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I am a huge sucker for dying confessions, as is Lex (obviously). Thanks for commenting!