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Chapter Text

The clothes pressed into Lex’s hands are a bright, garish orange. “Get dressed.” ♪

Lex waits for the guard to leave the room. He doesn’t. Lex had thought the guards watching him through the one-sided mirror would be deemed sufficient supervision for him, given he isn’t a metahuman. Apparently not. With an exaggerated sigh that he hopes adequately conveys his frustration with the situation, Lex sets his new clothes down on the floor, given the lack of furniture in the room, and strips. Loafers, slacks, button-down, undershirt, briefs. Stripped to nothing, he put on his new clothes, avoiding looking in the mirror for more time than it takes to make sure his collar is straight. Orange isn’t his color.

“Let’s get moving,” the guard barks, once Lex has exchanged his suit for his prison uniform.

Belle Reve’s general population halls are white, with blue trimmings. He goes through several security checkpoints before being led into a round room filled with tables, prisoners eating at them from trays. It seems that he’s interrupted a meal. All of the prisoners here look normal, at least. As the more obvious metahumans imprisoned in Belle Reve are contained in another wing of the prison, he might never run into them.

“Keep walking.” The guard prods him in the back with the barrel of his gun, hard, and Lex almost trips as he starts walking faster. Someone laughs, and Lex’s cheeks burn. He straightens his posture and squares his shoulders. “You’ll get a chance to meet your neighbors later. Get to know ‘em.”

His neighbors. Lex’s lip curls. He’s not here to socialize. He’ll have to ask his lawyers to convince the warden to move him to a more private cell, one on another floor. Lex doesn’t like the way the other inmates glare and grin at him as he walks past, their gazes lingering on him. Given the televisions mounted to the walls, he’s guessing the people there know who he is, and what he’s there for.

He’s led up a flight of stairs onto the balcony above, where General Flag stands outside of an open cell, arms crossed over his chest. W12 is spray painted in white on the inside of the door. The General smiles at him as he approaches, smug. “You ready, Luthor?”

No. But Lex can’t tell him that, though he’s certain the General already knows it. There’s a thin line that Lex has to walk between guiltless and remorseful, intimidating and unassuming, stoic and affable. His lawyers need him to be on his best behavior for their appeals for a reduced sentence to be successful, and that means putting up with whatever demeaning, callous treatment he receives from his captors.

Lex might have been defeated for now, but there’s no game he plays better than the long game.

Lex doesn’t answer the General’s question. Just smiles. Walking past the General and into his new cell, he glances between the flat mattress, the shelving built into the wall, the sterile white lighting. Taking it all in. His cell is a little bigger than a closet. Lex sets his bag of toiletries and approved personal effects down on his bed. The blanket is thin enough to be more of a top sheet. He lifts it, and finds he can see through the actual sheets to a dark, blotchy stain on the mattress underneath. Lex’s smile tightens.

“Your curfew’s at twenty o’clock,” the General explains, leaning against the door frame, “so you better eat, take a piss, and shower before then, ‘cause you’re not leaving that cell until six tomorrow.”

Lex doesn’t plan on spending much time outside of it. He’s heard enough about Belle Reve to know he should avoid its long-term residents. Cannibals, arsonists, mass murderers. Metahumans. Other undesirables. If a criminal is sent to Belle Reve, it’s because the government wasn’t allowed to give them the death penalty. Lex has been sent here to quietly get rid of him.

“Doesn’t leave us much time for the rest of the tour,” Lex points out. It’s almost six o’clock. That gives him just over two hours.

“I never promised a tour. West Block is small. You’re not gonna’ get lost.”

“No,” Lex agrees, turning to meet the General’s gaze, “but you should be courteous to your guests.”

General Flag snorts. “When you’re out, you’re welcome to come back for one. You won’t want to.”

“I’ll have to see how good the food is, first.” It’ll be terrible, Lex predicts.

It pulls another, harder laugh out of the man. “You know, Luthor,” the General drawls, his cheeks dimpling, “if I didn’t know what you did to the world’s favorite boy scout, I’d like you. Too bad you’re a piece of shit.” The smile falls from Lex’s face, and General Flag pats his shoulder in mock comfort, leaning in close enough that Lex can smell his cologne, and lowering his voice. “Oh, cheer up. You’ll be outta’ here before you know it.”

“Don’t lie to him. Those eighteen months are gonna’ feel like eighteen years,” the guard corrects.

“Ah, I wouldn’t go that far, Harrison. After all,” the General’s smile widens, “he could get out early on good behavior.”

The guard laughs, as if it’s an inside joke. “Right.”

Lex pushes the General’s hand off his shoulder, and he backs off. “Good luck, Luthor,” the General says with a salute, backing out of his cell with slow, languid strides. “Try to make good use of your time here.”

Taking the guard by the elbow, the two of them leave, Lex’s door still open.

***

There’s so little to do, Lex is certain he’ll die of boredom before he’s released.

There was little time after his arrival for much exploration. He wanted to shower to eat a real meal, after his twenty six hour road trip from Delaware to Louisiana, and taking care of himself took up most of his two hours. As he’d predicted, the food was shit. But bland, gritty porridge and overcooked chicken breast were filling, even if it was hard to choke down. It kept him full until breakfast.

He ate before most of the other prisoners were up, and used that time to explore the areas of the prison that were accessible to him. Being the commons and the yard. The latter is little more than a concrete box with workout equipment, while the former has tables with chessboards on them, which he files away for later. The prison has a library, but it’s reserved for prisoners who had ‘earned’ the privilege to access it, whatever that means. He considered working out, then decided against it.

Once he had paced the perimeter of both rooms, he’d resorted to reading the many warning signs nailed to the walls for entertainment.

NOTICE

FOR OUR COLLECTIVE SAFETY
DUE TO THE SUPERHUMAN NATURE OF OUR PRISONERS
USE OF THE FOLLOWING POWERS IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED:

TELEPORTATION, DIMENSIONAL TRAVEL,
METAMORPHOSIS, TELEPATHY, HYPNOSIS, MIND
CONTROL, ASTRAL PROJECTION, PHASING, INVISIBILITY,
HYDROKINESIS, PYROKINESIS, PSYCHOKINESIS,
ELECTROKINESIS, ECTOKINESIS, CHRONOKINESIS,
TELEKINESIS, THERMOKINESIS, CRYOKINESIS,
CHLOROKINESIS, AEROKINESIS, PHOTOKINESIS,
MECHANOKINESIS, ELECTROMAGNETISM, ELEMENTAL
TRANSMUTATION, REALITY ALTERATION, SIZE
ALTERATION, TRANSFORMATION, SUMMONING,
NECROMANCY, POSSESSION, EXORCISM, VAMPIRISM,
ANIMAL CONTROL, REMOVABLE LIMBS, PREHENSILE
HAIR, SUPER LEAPING, POWER ABSORPTION, MATTER
ABSORPTION, WEATHER MANIPULATION

FAILURE TO ADHERE TO THIS RULE WILL RESULT IN
IMMEDIATE TRANSFER TO SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

“Prehensile hair,” Lex mutters.

“A cunt been in here with that.”

Lex turns to look at whoever spoke, stepping closer to the wall. The man is dark haired, bearded. A little on the scruffier side of handsome. Scottish accent. He’s quite a bit shorter than Lex, and his build isn’t impressive. His orange prison garb is too loose for his light frame, and the ends of his pant legs drag against the floor. Lex could probably take him in a fight, he decides, and he relaxes.

The thick collar around his neck is conspicuous. He’s a metahuman, Lex guesses.

“Yer’ Luthor, aye? Evan McCulloch,” the man introduces, holding out a hand. After a moment of evaluation, Lex takes it. His grip is firmer than Lex was expecting. “Didnae ken ye’ got hair.”

Lex rubs a hand over the stubble growing over his head. He hasn’t had the chance to shave since they left Metropolis. He might not get a chance for some time yet. He’ll have to check to see if the commissary has razors he can use. “I’ve mastered the art of a close shave.” Copious shaving cream and a sharpened blade.

McCulloch grins at him, his smile bright and toothy. “Shaving isnae’ banned. Growin’ it out, now?”

No, but prehensile hair is. Amongst the other powers. Rules and regulations are written in blood. Lex ignores his question in favor of asking one of his own. “What got ‘prehensile hair’ put on the list?”

“Think he tried stranglin’ Flag wi’ it.”

Lex would have liked to see that. “I can imagine how the General reacted.”

“Nae. It was his son.” McCulloch scuffs his foot on the tile, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Anyway. Got his head,” he makes a gesture with his hand, clenching his fist then opening it near his head, “because he was a real daft cunt, and forgot he was on Task Force X. Donnae’ ken how it keeps on happening.”

The name sounds familiar. “Task Force X.”

“Task Force X. The Suicide Squad,” McCulloch repeats. He taps the back of his neck. “ARGUS puts a bomb in yer’ head and sends ye’ out to do their dirty work. Blow ye’ up if ye’ cannae’ handle it.”

Lex’s nose wrinkles. There was some drama, he thinks, about two years back, regarding ARGUS’s pet metahumans. It’s what got Director Waller fired, and Director Crawley installed as her replacement. Many of the laws that regulate it are the same he used to legally justify the existence of PlanetWatch, though that was his legal team’s area of expertise, not his own. He’s always found the concept distasteful.

“I thought Task Force X was dismantled.” That was what was reported, at least.

McCulloch snorts. “Dismantled, nae. I been on it.”

Lex clenches his teeth. A team of metahuman criminals, stopping the country’s biggest threats. It was a poorly thought out plan from the start. Of course the metahumans conscripted to it would try to kill their handlers. Prison isn’t a place known for housing the brightest criminals, Lex excepted. If there was an issue with repeated defections, it should have been shut down long before there was a serious incident.

“You have a power too, then.” Though not all of the participants Lex can recall had them. But his collar is conspicuous.

McCulloch nudges him with his elbow, and Lex takes a step out of his range. “Maybe if ye’ come wi’ us, ye’ can see it.”

“Not likely.” Like he’d want to join a team with suicide in the name. “Just tell me.”

“That’d tint it,” McCulloch protests. Lex rolls his eyes. “Nae, it’ll be a surprise.”

Lex is starting to tire of their conversation. As nonthreatening as McCulloch comes across with that collar on him, Lex doesn’t indulge those who play games with him. McCulloch might have provided answers to him, but his personality is grating and speaking with him is exhausting. He’s indignant at McCulloch’s assumption that he’ll have the chance to talk with him again—

“Ye’ like chess?” McCulloch gestures towards the tables. “I could do wi’ a match.”

Lex chews on his bottom lip. As little as he wants to socialize, chess is an appealing offer.

And it’s one he isn’t going to accept. He’s not going to spend time with career criminals and metahumans.

“No,” Lex tells him, bumping into him as he pushes past him towards the stairs. He’ll go back to his cell.

“We can make it tomorrow then!”

Lex walks faster.

***

Four days into his imprisonment, and Lex is starting to run out of patience.

His mattress is somehow both flat and lumpy. It’s hard to sleep while other prisoners are screaming and shouting, and when alarms start going off in the late hours of the night. This morning, while everyone was leaving their cells, several medical examiners came in to carry out a prisoner on a stretcher, a white blanket draped over them. A rat ran across his feet during breakfast, its clawed paws catching on the holes in his orange rubber shoes. There was a pube in his overcooked scrambled eggs.

He’s gone through the two books he was allowed to take in with him. Most of his time has been spent sleeping in his room, when he isn’t thumbing through the pages. He can’t imagine spending another five hundred and forty three days locked up, not when he has plans to put into motion.

Lex calls his attorney while he’s supposed to be at lunch. “Get me out of here,” he hisses into the receiver, hunched over the phone he grasps in both hands. He’s starting to regret not formulating an escape plan, rather than doing things the legal way. “I know you’re capable of it, Harper.”

“Mr. Luthor, there’s only so much I can do. I’m doing my best.”

“If you were doing your best work, I wouldn’t have ended up here in the first place.” No, he was supposed to be sent to Stryker’s Island Penitentiary, in Metropolis. Where he would have been close to his assets, and had men stationed on the inside to make his life in prison more comfortable. Several million dollars in bribes were squandered on the warden there. He could have continued pursuing his goal of annihilating Superman from a private cell overlooking Delaware Bay. “I hired you because of your reputation as a defense attorney, and you haven’t lived up to it. You’ve got two weeks to figure something out, or I’m going to be seeking other legal council. Or— I could have you terminated.”

Harper ignores the threat. “I understand your… emotions, regarding your situation.” Everyone’s been so delicate in talking about what Lex did. He wants them to say it aloud. His actions aren’t something he’s ashamed of. It’s the world that’s trying to make him ashamed. “But your case has been hard to work with. I say this with no disrespect, Mr. Luthor, but considering the severity of your crimes, your plea bargain was—”

“I never should have taken it.”

“You were looking at several consecutive life sentences. Eighteen months is nothing in comparison.”

“I should have been released!” Lex shouts, slamming a fist into the wall.

“Luthor,” a guard near him says, a warning.

“In a just world, I would be considered a hero,” Lex continues, unable to stop his rant now that he’s started. All he’s done is protect the Earth from its invaders. He values human life, human invention, human spirit. The fools in the government worship an alien with unknown goals and assets, and he’s somehow a villain for not putting his blind trust in it. The people have come to rely on an alien’s benevolence to take care of their worst threats, rather than Lex. He could defend the planet just as well as Superman can. He offered PlanetWatch to the world, and his gift was rejected. He’s done with being treated like a criminal when he’s humanity’s savior. “I wouldn’t be in fucking—”

The phone is ripped out of his hand. “That’s enough, Luthor.”

Lex spits in the guard’s face, and the guard shoves Lex to the ground.

Chapter Text

Belle Reve’s name means ‘a beautiful dream’ in French.

As he slips in and out of consciousness, Lex’s mind wanders. Spit flying from his father’s lips. Angela’s slim, lean thighs. His sister’s smile, though something about it is off. Passing through the windows of LutherCorp Tower, falling thousands of feet, then waking right when he’s about to hit the ground. His dreams have always been vivid. Proof of a powerful imagination and high intelligence. It’s unpleasant, drifting from one scene to the next, waking up with sweat in his pits and on his back. He pisses himself at one point, curled up on the floor of the dark, cramped cell he’s been tossed in.

His body aches, bad. Worse than when Superman’s ugly dog tossed him around. Nothing’s broken except his pride, a messier break than his snapped radius had been. He’ll have bruises all across his sides, his back, his face. He’s just lucky he didn’t lose a tooth from the boot that connected with his mouth, right before he passed out for the first time. When he runs his tongue across them, none are missing.

Lex doesn’t know how long the three guards beat him for. Doesn’t know how long he’s been in solitary either. With no lights in the room, Lex has to rely on senses other than sight to understand his cell. It’s silent, besides the sound of his labored breathing. It’s hot, with no air conditioning to tame the humid heat of Louisiana in the summer, and his brain throbs with the pounding beat of his heart. He smells copper and urine. Tastes his own bad breath, mouth dry like it’s been stuffed with cotton swabs.

Harper will be upset with him for making her job harder. It’s too bad for her that all of Lex’s remaining fucks have been beaten out of him. He might have threatened her with termination, and she knows him well enough to understand what that means, but she’s not going to drop his case. And she’s going to win him his appeal. She’s counted amongst the best attorneys in the world. There’s a reason he spends so much to retain her services. He’s not going to find someone better to take his case, and she knows it.

He’ll just have to muster the patience to wait. Good legal theory takes time to build.

When he’s finally able to push himself into a sitting position, Lex does it with a groan. His earlier assessment of nothing being broken must have been wrong, given the searing pain in his left side. He slumps against the wall, and runs a hand across his scalp, over the dark, itchy stubble he despises.

The silence is broken by the sound of a rat squeaking as it races down the hall outside.

“You should tell the warden to take care of the rat problem,” Lex shouts into the darkness, without knowing if anyone can hear him. He doesn’t know whether anyone is outside. “I can recommend an exterminator.”

It’s a few seconds before he gets a response. “Belle Reve doesn’t have a rat problem,” a husky voice replies. The guards can hear him, then. Lex shuffles across the concrete floor to get closer to the door, towards the thin strip of light that’s coming in from underneath it. The voice sounds close. “If we did, we wouldn’t have to feed you lot. We’d just have you catch your own meals.”

Through gritted teeth and the ache in his ribs, Lex laughs, and the guard joins in, after a moment.

Lex keeps laughing until the guard stops, then laughs for a couple seconds after. He focuses his ears, and hears the jangling of keys, and the sound of boots scuffing the ground. Lex smirks to himself.

“You cooled off enough to come out of there, Luthor?”

It worked, then. “I’ll be on my best behavior.”

Keys slot into the door, and it swings open. The light in the hall is blinding, compared to the darkness of his cell. It makes his brain throb. He’s almost certain he’s concussed, now. “C’mon, on your feet.”

The guard is rough as he grabs Lex under his arm and hauls him upright. Lex doesn’t complain about the poor treatment. He lets the guard drag him up several flights of stairs and to his cell, collapsing on his bed once he’s reached it. As hard as it is, the mattress is still more comfortable than the floor. He’ll have to take a shower and change into a different uniform, once he’s caught his breath.

Pressing a hand against his side, Lex palpates his ribs. There’s a noticeable bump. He can fully expand his lungs, which is a good sign that his broken ribs didn’t puncture them. But it hurts to suck in air. He’ll have to talk with Harper about suing.

Lex manages to stand again, somehow. He limps down the metal stairs, clutching the guard rail as he walks, spare uniform under his arm. So early in the morning, the only other prisoner that’s awake is a man on cleaning duties, spraying a table with disinfectant and wiping it down with a grimy rag. He doesn’t pay attention to Lex as he shuffles to the bathroom, and to the showers.

The hot water Lex blasts himself with feels good on his skin, and relaxes the tension in his muscles. He’s surprised by how strong the water pressure is. He forgot his shampoo upstairs, and has to wash his scalp with just the shower’s hard water, which does the job of rinsing off the blood and oils, albeit poorly. He makes an attempt at shaving his head with a plastic disposable razor, but it’s such an ineffective tool, he gives up with a small strip shaved off above his ear. It seems he’ll have to deal with having it, for now.

Though his side and face still hurt, Lex feels more put together once he steps outside the shower, skin clean besides the dark, mottled bruises he’s painted with. Yesterday’s troubles went down the drain with all the grime. He pulls on his white undershirt, his orange shirt and pants, his thin cotton socks. He exchanges the slippers he wore into the shower for a clean, dry pair, and heads for the exit—

Just to almost run into Director Crawley herself. “Mr. Luthor.”

Her thick-rimmed glasses are perched at the end of her nose, and her curls have been pulled away from her face, held back with a bright blue clip. Her blazer and pencil skirt are the same shade of blue, and her white blouse has a high collar, which almost goes up to her chin. She’s all business, with the exception of the bright pink scarf tied around her neck. Lex can’t understand the color choice.

“Can you spare a moment to talk with us, in private?”

Director Crawley has two guards accompanying her, both with guns. Lex glances between them, then turns his gaze to her. “I would appreciate it, Director, if you wouldn’t phrase your demands as requests.”

She presses her lips together, and nods. “Follow me, then.”

He does, trying to hide his limp as he walks. He’s led to a small room just past the first security checkpoint, which seems to be a break room for the prison’s staff. There are chairs clustered around a table, a microwave, a fridge covered in magnets. Lex takes a seat without waiting for permission.

Director Crawley sits across from him, steepling her fingers. “I understand there was an incident.”

Lex sits up straighter. “If that’s what you want to call it.”

“Emotions were running hot for everyone involved. I understand that adjusting to prison is hard,” the Director says, speaking in a careful, measured tone. She’s much more diplomatic than Director Waller had been, in Lex’s experience working with the government. “You shouldn’t have… spat. But the guards involved in the incident overreacted. I’ve ensured they will be punished appropriately.”

“My lawyer will decide that,” Lex reminds her.

“Well, I wish you luck with that,” the Director says, tone wry. “Because for better or worse, you can’t sue the federal government, nor Belle Reve’s administration, for what happens within the walls of this prison.” She gives him a tight-lipped smile. “You can thank President Burke for that.”

President Burke. Lex has had him in his pocket for years. He tried bribing him for a pardon, but the man had refused, even after all the help Lex had offered his campaign. He wishes the man hadn’t reached his term limit, so he could help his opposition crush him in the next election. He’ll have to come up with some other revenge. “I’ll make sure to discuss it with him the next time we have dinner,” Lex assures.

Director Crawley leans forward. “Mr. Luthor, your plea bargain was dependent on your ‘sincere remorse’ for your actions. Given what was reported to me of the… incident, you don’t seem very remorseful.”

“I regret what I did to achieve my goals,” Lex dutifully repeats, honest. He went too far, keeping the rift open for so long, when he could have just kidnapped another of Superman’s loved ones. It would have had the same effect of drawing the alien to him, without all the destruction. “And I regret the damage done to Metropolis. I have paid to have the city rebuilt, given money to victims and their families—”

“Yet you’ve done everything in your power to avoid the government holding you to account,” the Director points out.

Lex rubs his brow with his thumb. All she’s doing is worsening his headache. “I’ve taken accountability myself. There’s no need for the government to step in and force it onto me.”

“Mr. Luthor, I know that you would open another rift in a heartbeat if that’s what it took to kill Superman.”

She’s right, though Lex can’t admit it. “You don’t know me.”

“I think over the last few months, I’ve come to know too much.”

He’s exhausted with this conversation. “You, and everyone else in the world.”

“You’re right. A lot of people are upset with you at the moment.” That’s an understatement. He’s been the media’s punching bag since May. Now that he’s in prison, his publicist has predicted the amount of attention on him will lessen, but the world knows what he did without understanding his reasoning. He’s been socially crucified. “You destroyed a city, killed sixteen civilians, and kept hundreds more captive in a pocket dimension. On top of that, you tried to murder an American hero.”

“An alien threat,” Lex corrects. One day, he’ll make everyone else see what he sees. Superman can’t keep up appearances forever. He’ll make a mistake, and drop his guard, and Lex will show the whole world what he really is. An existential threat to the future of humanity. One day, he’ll receive an apology, rather than blame. “Now, as much as I appreciate the lecture, I would like to get some rest in my cell.”

Director Crawley sighs through her nose, shaking her head. Lex smiles, though it makes the scabbed over cut on his lip sting. “My men will take you to be examined by our onsite physician, first. Thank you for your time, Mr. Luthor.”

Lex stands, with some effort. “This conversation has been a waste of it.”

Not that there’s anything else for him to be doing with his time.

He’s taken to the medical office, and diagnosed with a minor concussion and two broken ribs, as he’d expected. Nothing critical. He’s prescribed rest and ibuprofen, and given a week where he’s not supposed to do physically demanding chores. Given tomorrow was supposed to be his turn cleaning the bathrooms, Lex supposes he has one thing he can thank the guards for. He takes his bottle of pills and leaves.

No one leads him back to West Block; he’s allowed to walk there on his own, though the security cameras on every corner turn to follow him. Lex keeps his head down as he passes through the checkpoint into the commons, avoiding looking at the prisoners sitting around. Someone whistles and calls his name, and Lex clenches his teeth and ignores it. He just wants to lay down in his cell and—

“Ye’ awright, Luthor?” It’s McCulloch again. He intercepts Lex on his way to the stairs, standing between him and the first step, a hand gripping the railing tightly. Given his wide legged stance, feet planted firmly on the ground, he has to be intentionally blocking Lex’s path. “Heard bletherin’ about a rammy wi’ the guards. Ye’ got somethin’…”

McCulloch gestures to his bruised cheek. Lex turns to the side, and slips past him, back rubbing up against the wall to avoid having to touch the other man. Though McCulloch protests, he doesn’t give chase.

Lex is able to make his way up the stairs and into his room without any more delays, slamming the metal door shut behind him. The lights in his room won’t turn off until nighttime, and given the light is recessed, there’s no removing the bulb. But it’s simple work to measure out something in his belongings that could wedge into the socket. He uses a toothbrush to pin one of his thick shirts into the hole, covering it. It’s a fire hazard, and casts the room in a dim orange color, but it blocks the light well enough to ease the throbbing ache in Lex’s head. He shakes two pills from his bottle, and swallows them dry.

His head hurts too much to read, and he’s not leaving his cell again until morning. With nothing else to do, Lex sleeps. ♪

Chapter Text

Some of the milk that’s poured over Lex’s head trickles into his ears.

He doesn’t have Superman’s super hearing, and didn’t notice the man coming up behind him until it was too late. By then, it had already been poured, dripping onto his shoulders and down his back. Unpleasant doesn’t begin to describe the sensation. It makes him want to peel his skin off. Lex seethes. His other uniforms are still in the wash, and he’s not going to be able to change for another hour.

There’s laughter behind him. Lex takes a deep breath to temper his anger, and turns on his heel. He’s careful in picking his battles, and a quick assessment of the situation tells him it’s not worth the fight. The man holding the carton is only an inch shorter than him, and as broad in the shoulders. He’s not alone, either. There’s a man standing on each side of him, who would step in if Lex threw a punch.

Not that he would regardless, even if he hadn’t lost his last three-on-one brawl with the guards. Lex is making a real attempt at keeping his head down, though staying out of the spotlight has never been in his nature.

He’s never been one to take abuse, either.

“Can’t believe this guy almost got Superman.”

“Guess he must have gotten all the fight taken out of him with the cavity check.”

“If we had flour and sugar, we could bake a cake with you, egghead!”

“You gonna’ just take it?” The man who poured the milk asks, taking a step forward. Standing chest to chest, their faces close enough that Lex can smell the man’s sour breath, Lex stays still. When Lex doesn’t respond, the milk pourer huffs. “I knew that Lex Luthor was nothing more than a lame, rich piece of shit. Another Maxwell Lord. That’s what the world is gonna’ remember you for.”

Lex’s jaw clenches. He still doesn’t let himself react emotionally. He can’t intimidate these brutes with force.

“I’ll remember this,” Lex tells him, voice even.

This time, it’s the milk pourer that’s silent. His allies stop laughing, too.

“Excuse me.” Lex pushes past them, clenching his lunch tray.

Overnight, someone dismantles a smoke alarm for its batteries and wires to create an electric trap on the milk pourer’s cell door, which triggers when the man opens it, and shocks him bad enough to be carried out on a stretcher. The guards don’t care enough to investigate it. But the milk pourer must have realized that it was Lex. He keeps his head down the next time Lex sees him in the commons, and refuses to make eye contact, even when Lex breaks open his own milk carton and pours it over the man’s dinner.

“Eat it,” Lex tells him.

It’s satisfying, watching him eat his soggy deli sandwich. Lex isn’t bothered again, by him, or anyone else.

***

Lex gives in and accepts McCulloch’s invitation to play chess the sixth time he asks.

Knight to F3. “You know what I’m in here for.” Lex’s wooden piece makes a dull clack against the metal board. Its white paint is chipped, and it’s missing a chunk out of its mane. Even though most of the tables have chess boards on them, there’s a single set of pieces on loan. Lex and McCulloch seem to be the only ones in West Block who use it, so it’s always available. “I still don’t know what you did.”

“Murder for hire,” McCulloch answers, “forty six counts.” Pawn to G6.

Lex’s brows knit together. “Forty six,” he repeats, disbelieving. Pawn to E4.

“Am nae lyin’!” Bishop to G7. Bishop’s Fianchetto. It’s not a bad opener. McCulloch is smarter than Lex estimated during their first encounter, but clearly hasn’t played much. If he asked him to explain his strategy, Lex doubts he’d have the words to describe it. In contrast, Lex was the winner of several national youth championships when he was in high school and university, though he didn’t pursue it further. “I was a hitman.”

Pawn to D4. Lex starts his transition into the modern defense. “How long is your sentence?”

Pawn to D6. McCulloch is being cautious, this time. Lex had him in check in eight moves, their last game. It seems he’s learned his lesson, though he’s giving Lex time to set up his strategy while he builds his own defense. “Long enough that I’d be leavin’ in a bag, if nae for Crawley’s program.”

Knight to C3. Lex’s brows pull together. “What program?”

Knight to F6. “Task Force X, ye’ dafty. That’s been the one good thing about it. Ye’ get yer’ sentence reduced.”

The game ends with Lex pinning McCulloch’s king in a corner with his queen and his rook, as McCulloch curses. As Lex starts resetting his pieces back to their proper squares on the board, Lex considers what he said. He wishes he’d paid more attention when the drama between Peacemaker and ex-Director Waller was happening. The government’s pet criminals had never interested him before, but now…

There’s the beginning of a plan, there. Lex just can’t see the whole thing.

***

Harper visits him for the first time a little over two weeks into his sentence.

With her, she’s brought a box of donuts from Dough’s Holes, and two books to replace the ones he’s read multiple times. One of them is the novel he requested, Dostoevsky. The other is on meditation for anger management. Lex accepts it with an unenthusiastic thanks, both of them well aware that he’s going to throw it in the bin later. Or donate it to Dr. Foster’s office. There are other inmates that could use it.

“I’m in talks with Kubu to make a six part docuseries about your time as CEO of LuthorCorp, and your case.” She hands him a short stack of papers, a title printed in bold, large letters. Lex: The Untold Story. Lex gags a little around his old fashioned at the corny title. “It would be on their platform, since they’re the ones paying for it. I’ve been contacting all of the people you imprisoned in your pocket dimension, and three of them have agreed to speak positively about you. Between them and your staff, we’ve got—”

“Letting a streaming platform control the narrative won’t result in good publicity,” Lex cuts her off. His publicist has encouraged him to keep his head down until he’s out. A docuseries on Kubu is the opposite of laying low. “We get nothing from this. I’m not selling away my life story rights until I’m out.”

He thrusts the papers towards her, and Harper takes them back without protest.

“All I’m interested in is the progress you’ve made on my appeal.”

“It’s been difficult to find a judge willing to hear it,” Harper admits. “Not even for the amount of money you’re willing to pay them. I won’t file it until we have a judge who’s guaranteed to rule in your favor—”

“I wouldn’t want you to,” Lex assures. Not while there are so many eyes on him. He can’t bribe judges, he can’t bribe the President, and he can’t even bribe the Governor of Delaware for pardons for his state crimes. Now that he’s been ruled a criminal, no one wants his money. He wants Harper to do whatever she can do, illegal or not, but that doesn’t mean she should be careless with her work. “This place is a shithole, but I can wait. Just ensure it’s kept quiet. I don’t need bribery charges on top of everything else, and for some priggish judge to throw the book at me to prove to the public they aren’t corrupt.”

Harper sighs. “It’s a good thing you have your attorney-client privilege, Mr. Luthor.”

***

At about two o’clock in the morning, the alarms go off.

Lex tosses in bed, keeping his eyes squeezed shut. In his month of residence in Belle Reve, Lex has gotten accustomed to the frequent alarms. As annoying as it is to be woken at odd hours, or to have his door locked at inopportune times, it’s never West Block where the escape attempts and security breaches happen. He can ignore the alarm until it shuts off, so he can go back to sleep.

Most of them don’t last longer than a minute, though this one has gone on for longer than average. Lex grimaces, pushing himself into a sitting position in his bunk. It must be a riot somewhere else in the prison, for the alarms to have gone off this long. The last time this happened, it was because a brawl had broken out, and a prisoner had stolen a gun off one of the guards that came to stop it.

He listens, but hears nothing over the sound of the alarm. Shifting in bed, he makes to lay back down.

Except right as his head hits the pillow, he hears gunfire. Faint, but unmistakable.

It sounds close. Far closer than Lex is comfortable with. Holding his breath, he listens again. There’s the screech of metal being ripped apart, and screaming. Moments ago, it was quiet. Whatever’s coming is getting closer to West Block, and fast. Somewhere in the distance, there’s an explosion, and Lex swings his legs over the side of his bed. He’s alert now. His heart pounds in his chest as he listens to metal bash against metal, heavy footsteps, a man begging for his life several doors down before his voice is cut off abruptly. He tries to assess the situation, to make a plan, but without knowing all the variables, he can’t. There’s nowhere to run in his cramped cell, and nowhere to hide.

And so when the door to it is ripped off its hinges, all Lex can do is freeze in place.

On the other side is a shark. A massive shark with arms in bright orange pants. It peers into Lex’s cell with black, glassy eyes, and when it takes a step inside, Lex flattens himself against the back wall, in a futile attempt to get away from it. The door to his cell is so small, he won’t be able to slip past it. Not until it’s in the room. He’ll have one chance to duck underneath it and run, to get as far away as possible.

Lex tenses as the beast takes another step, preparing to bolt for it—

Only for gunfire to erupt again, bullets bouncing off the shark’s thick skin.

“Argh,” the shark grumbles, holding up an arm to block them, “no, stop!”

Lex swallows. It can speak. The beast turns on its heel, and charges. There’s screaming and the sound of tearing flesh, but despite the urge to hide, Lex doesn’t. Once the screams move further away, he gets down on his hands and knees, and crawls out of the cell, keeping his head low. He puts his hand in a puddle of blood by accident, but ignores the disgust that washes over him in favor of moving closer to the railing of the balcony outside his room. Taking short, shallow breaths, he clutches it, looking down.

West Block is carnage.

There’s blood splattered across the floor, men in military attire and orange jumpsuits alike dead on the ground. A man wearing a sleek, black helmet crouches behind a pole as he snipes each of the soldiers pouring in from the doorway. Their bodies pile onto each other. A man who’s been shot tries to crawl away on his hands and knees, but the shark picks him up as he thrashes and screams, and bites his head clean off. Blood spurts from the severed arteries in his neck. Lex can’t tear his eyes away.

It isn’t long before the flow of men into the room stops. Either the helmeted man and the shark killed them all, or however many soldiers remain have decided to retreat and regroup. The man in the black helmet takes the opportunity to reload his weapon. There’s a spiderwebbing crack across his glass visor. Otherwise, he seems unharmed. And none of the bullets penetrated the shark’s thick skin.

“What a fucking mess,” the helmeted man mutters, his voice muffled. Lex has to strain his ears to hear what he’s saying. “Ratcatcher said she knew where she was.” Ratcatcher. There’s more of them, then. “We’re running out of time to look for her.”

“Me know,” the shark rumbles, raising a hand.

“You know where who is?” The helmeted man asks, pointed. The shark’s silence is an answer itself.

The helmeted man paces the length of the commons, surveilling the damage. There’s at least a dozen doors that have been ripped off their hinges, and the bodies of prisoners are mixed with the bodies of the guards and soldiers. A few feet from Lex is a pair of legs, the body severed at the hips. It could have been Lex, if the guards hadn’t interrupted. The thought doesn’t frighten him as much as it should have.

“I’m calling this off. Patriot can keep looking if he wants, but—”

A hole is punctured through the roof as something crashes through it.

Superman stands in the middle of West Block’s commons, cape billowing from the gust of air his landing produced. As he looks around the room, Lex can see his face scrunch up, in disgust, most likely. He landed in a puddle of blood.

Lex’s hands tighten around the bars of the railing. He must have nothing better to do if he’s in Louisiana.

The man in the black helmet raises his gun. “Stand down,” he calls out, voice modulated and flat.

Superman isn’t threatened. Of course he isn’t. It’s a gun. Superman can catch buildings and punch through walls, and no metal can pierce his skin. Lex knows because he’s tried. To him, deflecting bullets is nothing. He takes a step forward, hands held up in a placating gesture. “Hey, we can still talk about—”

There’s a quiet pop as the gun goes off. A shell casing clatters against the linoleum floor.

At the same time, Superman stumbles, holding his hand to his stomach. He raises it again to examine it, long enough for Lex to catch a glimpse of the red on his fingers and the hole in his suit, before he crumples to the floor in a gasping, whimpering pile of blue and red fabric. It takes a moment for Lex to realize what happened. Superman’s been shot. The bullet managed to penetrate his skin.

“Yes!” Lex whispers through gritted teeth, pumping a fist. “Yes!”

The helmeted man reaches up to touch a finger to his ear. “Capes are starting to arrive. We have to leave.”

“No leave,” the shark grumbles, tossing aside the arm it had been munching on.

“We’re busting you out! This is a prison, not a fucking buffet!”

Neither of them acknowledge Superman, lying prone. The man in the black helmet took down the near invincible ‘hero’ with a single bullet. It must have been kryptonite, Lex realizes, because there’s nothing else that could have penetrated Superman’s skin. Nothing else would have him looking so pale and clammy, clutching at his stomach what must be agonizing pain, for someone who never gets hurt.

In the distance, there’s more gunshots. Space distorts as another man pops into existence next to the intruders. Like the man who shot Superman, he’s dressed in black gear. His mask and goggles are purple, and he has a head of brown curls. He startles when he notices Superman on the ground. “Wait, you shot him?” He has a thick accent. French, Lex thinks. He sounds like an old girlfriend of his. “I thought that Patriot said—”

Patriot. There’s that name again.

“He’s the one guy we wouldn’t have had a chance against, so I planned ahead. It’s his fault for showing up,” the helmeted man huffs, seeming put out by his companion’s distress. He touches his ear again, turning away from his companions. “We have to go. Where the fuck are you? Have you got her, or no? She wasn’t in the cells we checked, but I’ve got King Shark with me.” He waits a moment, listening to whoever’s on the other end of his line, then sighs, tipping his head back to look at the ceiling. More gunshots erupt, sounding closer this time. It won’t be much longer until the action reaches them once more. “For fuck’s sake. You can’t be serious.”

The teleporter reaches up to touch his own earpiece. “I can come retrieve you. Give me your coordinates.”

Seconds later, he disappears again, space distorting then bouncing back to its normal shape. Either he gets his powers from technology (which Lex could replicate, given enough time), or he’s a metahuman. It seems reasonable to assume that his teleportation is how the group entered the prison, given how well protected it is. There’s no way a group of armed men managed to sneak in unnoticed.

He reappears with a woman in a leather gasmask, who holds several rats in her arms. When she sees the shark, she gasps. “Nanaue!”

“Friend,” the shark shouts, putting a huge, malformed hand on the woman’s head.

Three more are brought by the teleporter. A thing made of molten rock, its face nothing more than a gaping mouth with holes where its eyes should be, and a woman in a wooden mask, this one wearing a green cloak and hood. The third time the teleporter leaves, he returns with his mask removed, and a red welt blooming on his bearded cheek. One of the men he’s grabbed holds an assault rifle in one hand, and wears a mask painted with the stars and stripes. Red, white, and blue. Patriot, Lex assumes. The other man with them wears an orange prison suit, the same as Lex’s.

The man who shot Superman groans. “Who the fuck is this?”

“He’s with us now,” the man with the star spangled mask drawls. “Tried to help me find our girl. I think we were close, but we ran into some trouble along the way. We were pinned down before Warp got to us.”

“What a fuckin’ waste. Are we ready to go then?”

“We should make sure he’s alright, first,” the woman with the rats says, gesturing towards Superman. Lex scoffs. “He’s a hero.”

“We don’t have the time,” the helmeted man snaps. “Besides, he’ll live. I made sure of it.”

Patriot turns to look down at Superman on the ground. For a long moment, he stares at him, assessing.

Then, he turns back to the man in the black helmet, and nods. “We’re done here.”

His allies don’t argue with him; he seems to be their leader. A terrorist, garbed in the American flag.

It’s surreal, how the group joins hands. Even the shark, though the rat woman has to convince it to do it, and the creature made of molten rocks, whose hands turn dark and solid to be able to grasp the others’ without burning them. The eight of them stand in a circle, and disappear, right as more soldiers burst into the room and open fire on the ground where they had been standing seconds before.

“Secure the area!” A soldier barks, gesturing around the room.

One of the soldiers rushes to Superman’s side and starts to compress the alien’s wound, as another takes his hand, leaning down to say something quiet to him. Pale and sweating, suffering from blood loss and the effects of kryptonite poisoning, Lex has no doubts about it now, Superman smiles at the man like a dimwit. He’s bleeding out, and he’s smiling. He smiled when Ultraman had its hand around his face, too.

Idiot, Lex thinks. He should be crying and pleading for his life, worthless as it is.

Lex wonders whether he’ll be able to get his hands on the kryptonite bullet that’s inside him, so he can shoot him again. He would make it fatal, next time. He’d make sure the two of them are alone, that there’s no one there to hold him as he— well. He’s getting too caught up now in revenge plans he doesn’t even want to carry out. No, it’s better that Superman doesn’t die now, because Lex has much grander plans for when he gets out. He can’t be too hasty with taking care of Superman. He has to make him suffer, first.

It’s not long before the soldiers find him. Lex has the barrel of a gun pointed at his face, and he’s led to another, more secure section of the prison. He trips over bodies, slips in the slick puddles of blood on the tile floor, as he keeps his hands above his head, unable to use them to balance.

“He’s a witness,” he overhears one guard tell another. “We’ll have to tell the Director.”

Lex tucks his chin into his chest, and grins. ♪

Chapter Text

“Let’s start at the beginning, Luthor.”

Lex leans forward, bridging his fingers. “What would you define as the ‘beginning’?”

“Whatever you think is relevant to our investigation.”

General Flag doesn’t have the bearing of an incompetent detective, nor would the government have put someone inexperienced in charge of such a significant case. Lex wouldn’t have expected that a military man would be put in charge of an investigation like this, but as he’s associated with ARGUS, perhaps the organization is trying to keep it all internal for now. Besides, the General knows Lex well.

It’s strategic, Lex thinks, that the General left the question up to Lex’s interpretation. If Lex doesn’t know what information he’s after, Lex might disclose more information than what’s needed. But he doesn’t need to play games. Lex is more than willing to cooperate. There’s information he’s after, too.

“I heard a rumor that there isn’t security footage of the incident.”

Flag presses his lips together. “I am unable to confirm whether or not there is.”

“Check the wiring on the cameras for bite marks,” Lex instructs. Given the group had a member in possession of rats, it feels like a reasonable assumption to make that the rats of Belle Reve might have played a role in their attack. He’s had to call an exterminator to deal with a rat problem in LuthorCorp Tower before. Those vermin chew through everything. “Rats were used to disable them.”

To his credit, Flag doesn’t question his reasoning. He writes down Lex’s response in his notepad.

“The shark that escaped was a prisoner here,” Lex observes. He was wearing the standard issue pants, at least, in a size that had to be custom. Flag nods in confirmation. “There was a woman with a gas mask, carrying an armful of rodents. It called her a friend. There was an incident several years ago that involved criminals with a similar description, though I’m not familiar with the details.”

“We are familiar with three of our suspects,” the General admits, “yes.”

Then the three of them were present on Corto Maltese. It had been big news at the time, before the next major incident happened, and the media’s attention shifted. Lex hadn’t thought much of it. But after the prison was secured again, and Lex had time to think, he’d remembered the shark. It had stood out to him at the time, and turned an otherwise unnotable international incident into something memorable four years later. If he had access to the internet, he would have done more research on it before his interrogation.

From the folder that has been resting conspicuously on the table, he pulls out six photos. Three are mugshots of a shark, a woman with greasy black hair, and a dark skinned man with short, greying curls and a bored expression. The other three photos are of the same individuals, but in costume. Lex recognizes the black helmet. “Nanaue Sha’ark,” the General says, pointing to the first photo, “Cleo Cazo, Ratcatcher,” he points to the second, “and Robert DuBois, Bloodsport. All three are former inmates.”

“I suppose they came back for the tour.”

“You could say that.”

“The shark was the one who tore my cell door off its hinges.” And might have eaten him, if the guards hadn’t distracted it. “It seemed to be DuBois who released it. He seemed frustrated that it didn’t want to come with him.” Which would make sense, if their primary motivation for breaking into Belle Reve was to get their own people out. “They were responsible for most of the casualties.” Including Superman.

Flag’s pencil moves again. “And what about the others?”

“Other than the teleporter, none of them were notable.”

Flag’s brows pull together. “The teleporter—?”

“It was DuBois who shot Superman. Was it a kryptonite bullet?” Lex asks. He already knows the answer.

“No comment.”

“Surely you can tell me how he’s recovering.”

Flag gives a single, sharp laugh. “You don’t really expect me to believe that you’re concerned.”

“I’m being sincere, General. I’m invested in Superman’s health and wellbeing.” Lex’s tone is guileless.

“Superman will be fine,” Flag assures, shaking his head in disbelief. “My condolences.”

“I thought all the known kryptonite on Earth had been collected. DuBois had to have a source—”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions about this case, Luthor.”

“Deductions,” Lex corrects. And accurate ones, at that.

“I’m the one asking the questions,” Flag reminds him. Except he hadn’t been asking questions. “Besides King Shark, Ratcatcher, and Bloodsport,” he continues, redirecting the conversation, “how many individuals were in the group?”

“Eight, including them.”

“Describe the remaining five, to the best of your ability. You mentioned one was capable of teleportation.”

Lex goes into detail. His photographic memory ensures that he remembers the entirety of the interaction that he witnessed. He describes the woman in a green cloak, the creature made of molten rock, the teleporter, the escaped prisoner. Patriot, with his gun and his star spangled mask, and his vaguely southern drawl. When Flag provides him with a sheet of paper and a pencil, Lex makes a rough sketch of them.

“Patriot,” Flag mutters, “and you’re certain he’s their leader?”

“The others deferred to him and his decisions.” Including DuBois. “I would be surprised if he wasn’t.”

Flag taps his pen on the table, staring at Lex’s sketch. “Was there anything that indicated a motive?”

“Besides breaking out their selachian companion, no. Oh,” Lex recalls, “and another prisoner.”

“We’re aware of the identities of both prisoners involved in the breakout.” Flag retrieves another set of photos from his folder. The man in the photo has ear length blonde hair and scruff on his chin, bags beneath his eyes. In costume, his goggles, gold with dark lenses, make him look younger. His gold bodysuit fits better than his baggy prison jumpsuit did. “Was this one of the men involved?”

“Yes.” Flag shuffles the mugshots back into the folder. “Who is he?”

Flag doesn’t answer. Lex clenches his teeth. “Let’s go over what happened from the beginning again.” He flips the page of his notebook. “Not the rats. From the moment King Shark ripped open your cell door.”

It goes on like that for two hours. After the first hour passes, Flag’s questions start repeating themselves, and Lex starts to get bored with the interrogation. He describes the shark, Patriot, the moment Superman was shot. Flag makes him confirm three separate times that yes, one of the group members was capable of teleportation. Just because it’s on the list of banned powers doesn’t mean people can’t teleport in and out.

“And the bearded man was the teleporter.” Lex’s sketch stares up at the both of them.

“Play back your recording if you need to hear me say it again.”

“I need your answer for the record,” Flag insists.

“I keep taking you through what happened again and again,” Lex sighs, punctuating each word with a swish of his hand. He leans back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling. “I’ve given you everything you want.”

“I appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Luthor.” Oh, so it’s Mr. Luthor, now. “But—”

“Call me Lex,” he interrupts.

“Luthor,” Flag repeats.

Lex narrows his eyes at him. There’s a point to this; there has to be a point, or the General is far less shrewd than Lex gave him credit for. This is an interrogation. Flag wants information from him. He’s playing games with him. There’s a game here, one that Lex isn’t familiar with, a tactic that the General is employing when he asks Lex to repeatedly name the teleporter. Like he doesn’t have a— ah.

He’s waiting for his story to change.

As if Lex doesn’t have a photographic memory, and could recall everything he’s said in the last two hours, if Flag asked him to. He could keep his story straight even if he was lying. Flag must think there’s some deception involved if he’s asked him so many times to repeat the same story, waiting for him to slip up, and say something he can press him on. Lex grins. “What do you want from me, General Flag?”

“I want you to tell me who the teleporter was.”

“That’s not all you want.”

“There’s something you’ve deduced, ” Flag says, upfront at last, “but that you don’t want to tell me.”

“I can assure you, I’ve told you everything I know.”

He sees the spark in Flag’s eyes. A flicker of realization. “Yes. So what don’t you understand, Luthor?”

***

It was a matter of time before the General would visit his cell again. Lex was counting on it.

As Lex expected, the General knocks on his door in the early hours of the next morning. He carries with him a folder stuffed with paperwork for him to sign, and as Lex looks it over, he feels the General’s gaze on him. Lex is in no place to make demands, but if he’s going to be a part of this, he’s not going to be sidelined. The exposure is half his motivation. “I don’t want to be in logistics. I want to be on the team.”

“Last time I checked, you’re a businessman. Not exactly our target demographic for recruits.”

“Task Force X has accepted non-metahumans in the past.” Bloodsport is the most notable of them.

“With formal combat training and experience in special operations. You have neither.”

Lex sets the paperwork aside. “I have enough brain to make up for a lack of brawn.” Not that he’s lacking brawn, either.

Flag chews on his lip, considering him. Lex can tell the moment he makes his decision. He snatches up the folder of paperwork, straightening the pages. “If you wanna’ risk your life, I’m not going to stop you.”

A few hours later, Lex receives a ream of fresh graph paper, a bundle of pencils, and new waivers to sign. ♪

Chapter Text

General Flag hand delivers his watch in a cushioned black case.

“Your engineering department was excited to hear what you think.”

He removes it from its case, and clips it around his wrist. The latch clicks shut, and he turns his wrist to examine it. LuthorCorp’s logo is written in gold on the watch’s face, the crystal a dark green. “It’s sleek,” Lex compliments, “and comfortable.”

“You’ll get a chance to test it in the yard before we leave.”

He takes the watch with him as he departs Lex’s cell, but leaves him with a manual. Between emergency repair instructions and guides on how to activate the weapons he asked to be built into it, are handwritten notes from his employees. Well wishes, compliments on his design, updates on both their work at LuthorCorp in Lex’s absence, and their personal lives. He reads all of them, and once he’s done reading the manual, he flips back to the first page to read the notes in the margins again.

(Lex sheds more than a few tears reading them, though he would never admit to it.)

***

“You ready yet, Luthor?”

Lex spits toothpaste into the sink. “I need another twenty minutes.”

Flag indulges him. Lex takes a cold, brisk shower, and takes care to organize his belongings and make his bed before the door to his cell is locked for the final time. As long as the government doesn’t go back on their agreement, he won’t be returning to Belle Reve as a prisoner. When Lex next returns, it will be to retrieve his things, and he wants to be able to pack them in a duffle bag as efficiently as possible.

Leading Lex through the first security checkpoint, Flag takes him through the medium security section of West Block. Lex can’t help the way he flinches when a man covered in fur, no, a humanoid mustelid of some sort slams against a window as he passes it, licking it. It leaves a long streak of saliva, and greasy handprints on the glass. Despite his disgust, Lex slows to examine it. It’s like nothing he’s seen before.

Flag clears his throat. “We won’t be working with Weasel on this mission.”

No, but Lex will be working with other metahuman freaks.

In the administrative floor of the prison, their first stop is an operating room where a woman in teal scrubs sticks a needle into the back of his neck. Then, Flag brings him to a long, empty hall, where he introduces him to Frost, a woman with white hair and clunky metal cuffs, and Fulton, with a pair of wings sprouting from her back, feathers white and brownish red. While they haven’t been restrained, the low ceilings are enough to render them useless, and she keeps them folded to her back, not outstretched.

The third woman on their team to arrive looks more normal. She’s pallid, her platinum blonde hair tied into twintails. Her orange clothes have been written on; the fabric is covered in drawings of clowns and animals, and text written in scrawling, uneven handwriting. Something about her is familiar, though Lex can’t quite place it. When she spots the General, she grins, throwing herself at him. None of the guards move to stop her, and when she throws her cuffed wrists around his neck, he reaches up to pat her back.

“Oh, General,” twintails squeals, swaying back and forth on the tips of her toes, though she’s not that much shorter than him, “nobody told me you’d be comin’ with us! Gosh, I’d have dressed up if I had known. I slept in late,” she whispers, like it’s a secret, “so I didn’t have time to put on my makeup.”

“You’ll get a chance before we leave,” Flag assures, lifting her arms back over his head.

“What are we doin’ now? Is it a big monster, are we gonna’ be rescuing someone, oh, is there gonna’ be a beach? It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the beach, I need to get some sunshine,” she rolls up her sleeves to look at her arms, her skin as pale as her face, “though I don’t wanna’ get sand up my—”

“There won’t be a beach,” Flag cuts off her rambling, then pauses, and thinks about it. “Well, there might be. We don’t know all of our itinerary yet. But if there is one, we won’t have the time for tanning. Sorry.”

Twintails gives him an exaggerated pout. “I thought this mission was supposed to be a vacation.”

Flag pulls a face. “Who told you that?”

“Luthor!” Lex’s skin prickles at the call of his name. “Didnae’ think ye’ would be joinin’ us.”

“McCulloch.” Lex had expected that if the Scotsman survived the violence in West Block, he would be joining their mission. But as much as he has come to tolerate the man’s company, that doesn’t mean he enjoys it. He accepts it for the mental stimulation of their chess games, and nothing more. Being on the team seems less appealing by the second. “Here I hoped you would be dead. Suppose I’m not that lucky.”

McCulloch pretends to wipe a tear from his eye. “Yer’ so cruel to yer’ only friend.”

“We’re not—”

“Now that all of you are here,” Director Crawley interrupts, ducking out of the door they’re gathered around, “I’ll be briefing you all on what we do know.” Handing out packets of paper, Lex flips through the pages, skimming them. There are pictures, maps, long paragraphs of text. “We have an idea of where we’re sending you first, at least, thanks to Mr. Luthor’s help, and Loomis absconding with Patriot.”

In a conference room, she explains their first stop will be an abandoned ranch in Texas.

“This is the last location the tracker of Loomis logged,” Director Crawley explains, clicking onto the next slide in her presentation. The image on the projector changes from a map, to a satellite image of the compound. It doesn’t look like much. It has a collapsing roof, a few rusting cars, a dilapidated barn, and what looks like an overgrown riding trail. “It’s not likely that Patriot and his team are still present, given Loomis’s tracker hasn’t moved since arriving there, and at least one of Patriot’s team members is capable of teleportation. But it’s the last known location of Patriot’s team, so it’s a good place to start.”

The woman with the white hair raises her hand. Director Crawley gestures towards her. “Frost.”

“I vote Dr. Evil off the team,” she declares.

Director Crawley sighs. “Frost, this isn’t a democracy.”

It takes Lex a moment to realize she’s referring to him. “I’m not even bald, at the moment.” Though he wishes he was. He feels more exposed with hair than without it. But avoiding a barber’s rash from cheap dollar store razors and a lack of shaving cream is more important to him than maintaining his preferred hairstyle. Flag conveniently ‘forgot’ his request for a straight-edge razor. “Come up with a better insult.”

“Charlie Brown.”

“Again, I’m not bald.”

“Charlie Brown’s got hair,” twintails protests, leaning over the chair behind Lex.

“Quinn, get out of Mr. Luthor’s face, please.”

Lex does a double take. It makes sense now why she seemed familiar. Without the makeup, he couldn’t recognize her, but given Gotham is within a twenty minute drive of Metropolis across the Metro-Narrows Bridge, news from Gotham makes it into Metropolis’s papers and local news reports enough for Lex to recognize her. It’s been some time since she’s been associated with the Joker, but she’s still recognizable.

Twintails, Quinn, rolls her eyes, but sits back in her chair. Lex considers the name. Quinn. Quinn— Quinzel.

Sure enough, when he flips to her page in the packet, it’s her face that stares up at him, painted in clown makeup, hair dyed at the tips. He glances over his shoulder. It’s faded now, but the faint red and black is still noticeable, now that he’s looking for it. Even without makeup, he recognizes her hooded eyes, her bow lips, her nose. She looks young for a thirty five year old. He can’t believe she was ever a psychiatrist.

“General,” Lex says cooly, “you’re somehow even more naive than I thought.”

From the shadows, Flag shrugs. Dressing him in a suit and tie feels akin to animal cruelty. Like he’s going to rip it off and howl at the moon. He looked much more comfortable in his military fatigues, and even more comfortable in a simple shirt and cargo pants. Rough men like him don’t belong in normal society, Lex thinks, much less a conference room. Flag had hated every meeting Lex dragged him to. He’s the sort of man who should be receiving orders, not giving them. Yet he’s still here, leading their team.

It’s a shame he has a brain. He would have been better off being simple brawn for Lex to order around.

“It’s not naivety. It’s a calculated risk.”

“Then your calculations are off.”

Flag rises from his seat. “So long as you were honest with me, they aren’t.”

Lex stands, too. “Whether or not I was honest has nothing to do with the information I provided.”

“Lying by omission is still lying.”

“The girls are fighting,” Frost mutters under her breath, examining the nails she’s painting white.

It almost tips him over the edge. He barely keeps it together.

“You asked me for my judgement, General,” Lex seethes through gritted teeth, pressing his thumb to the center of his brow, “and I gave it to you. She,” he points behind himself, “is Bloodsport’s former ally.”

“That’s not true! I’ve never met him! Or the rest of ‘em,” Quinn shouts, kicking the back of his seat.

Lex ignores her. “And it was your belief that the second prisoner they were after was her, rather than Prankster. I agreed with you, given the evidence you presented to support your claims. If you’re right, and she was their target, then—”

“They weren’t trying to jailbreak me. Nuh-uh. I’d be outta’ here if they wanted me out…”

“Quinn, you know we don’t believe that,” Flag sighs, stepping forward. “Luthor—”

“She’s a liability.”

“Luthor. If they come for her, then it means we’ve found them. Besides, she’s got a bomb in her brainstem, like you,” the reminder makes Lex’s neck itch, “so if she defects, we’ll blow her brains out. No big deal.”

“I wish Pammy was here to blow my brains out,” Quinn complains. Frost laughs, delighted.

Lex grinds his teeth. He knows Flag has made up his mind. “I hope you’re right, General.”

Director Crawley clears her throat. “Continuing with our presentation. Are there any more questions?” Both Lex and Flag return to their seats. Another hand goes up, a few rows in front of Lex. “Yes, Fulton.”

“What’s with the connection to the lumber mill incident?” Fulton asks, holding up an open page of their information packet.

“The description of our suspects that Mr. Luthor supplied included three individuals that bore a close resemblance to the suspects in the arson attack.” No casualties, but sixteen million dollars in damage. Plans for the lumber mill were scrapped, and the lands were converted into a state park after the incident. The description of the suspects’ costumes were similar to the costumes that Patriot’s team wore. “ARGUS is only aware of one man made of molten rock. And he’s been implicated in two other arson attacks.”

“Is he why ye’ put Frost on this team?” McCulloch asks. “Donnae’ think ice beats fire in rock, paper, scissors.”

Frost rolls her eyes. “You’re all here to distract him for me while I take the rest out.”

McCulloch sticks his hand up. “McCulloch.”

“Ah’m the team leader, right?”

“General Flag is this team’s leader.”

McCulloch scoffs. “I been on more missions than a’body! Including him.”

“That’s not the reason I put the General in charge of—”

Lex raises his own hand, wiggling his fingers. Without waiting for the Director to call on him, he asks a question of his own. “Will we be leaving soon, or are we giving them more of a head start than they already had?”

“If there are no more questions, you can go.” Quinn raises her hand again, but the Director ignores it. Using her clicker, she turns off the presentation, and shuts her laptop. An aide rushes to slip it into a cloth case. “This is where we part ways, but I expect to see you all—” those of them who remain, she means, “for your mission debrief, once Patriot has been captured. Your plane is waiting for you at the airfield.”

General Flag leads them there. Their ride is painted an ugly, dull shade of greyish brown, though it looks sturdy enough.

Lex’s suit has been pressed, and hung in a plastic garment bag for him. It makes him feel more normal, stripping out of his orange prison clothes, and changing into it. Socks, slacks, button down, loafers. It’s one of his older suits, one that he doesn’t mind getting damaged, which Heather pulled from his closet for him. The tightness around his biceps is a reminder of the muscle he put on in the last three years.

McCulloch’s collar is unlocked, and he massages his neck as it’s taken off, grimacing. “Wish the damn thing were nae so heavy,” he mutters. “Havnae’ made trouble in the six years I been here. Could at least take it off so I can sleep.”

The removal of Frost’s cuffs cause a noticeable drop in temperature. Moisture in the air freezes against her skin, making her hands shimmer, until she brushes the ice crystals off. The effect catches Lex’s attention.

Flag had refused to provide Lex with profiles of his teammates, leading up to the mission; something about safety procedures and preventing prearranged escape plans. He hadn’t been comforted when Lex reminded him that even without time to prepare, if he wanted to escape, he would. Nor did he give in and let Lex in on his preparation for the mission, and his teammates. All that to say that he still doesn’t know what their powers are, though in Frost’s case, he can make an assumption. Hers seem to be evidence of nominative determinism, assuming that Crystal Frost is the name she was born with.

There are a number of possible mechanisms for ice-related powers. Lex starts going through each of them in his head. He’s built freeze rays before, but her power seems to be innate, not the result of technology. If he knew whether it was contact based or not, he would be able to narrow it down. He doubts it’s magical in nature. Few metahumans have powers that can’t somehow be explained by science, in some capacity—

“Are you nervous?” Lex is pulled from his thoughts at the question.

Fulton has her arms folded tight across her chest. While the rest of their team are still changing into their uniforms, Quinn rubbing colored chalk into her hair and painting her face, McCulloch pulling on a garish orange and green suit, and Frost struggling to lace her own corset, Fulton’s outfit is simple. An orange tank top over a wine red shirt, holes cut in the back for her wings. The holes that have been torn in the sleeves for her thumbs make him cringe, as does the smudge of eyeshadow over both of her eyes.

Lex clips his watch around his wrist. “No.”

Fulton’s smile is thin. “I guess you wouldn’t be.”

Lex keeps his mouth shut, and doesn’t tell her there are things that make him nervous. Aggressive dogs get his pulse racing. The idea of making his first public debut since he went to prison makes him want to retreat to his cell, crawl under his blanket, and hide. Nervousness is a natural response to uncertain situations, a human response, and there are situations where he feels it like any other person. Just not now.

“You’ve got five minutes to get your asses in here,” the General calls from inside the plane.

On the inside, the plane is cramped and poorly lit. Lex sits as close to the back as he can, moving several seats over when Quinn tries to sit next to him. He’s relieved that their flight, Louisiana to Texas, is just under an hour. Landing in an empty field about a hundred meters from the dilapidated ranch, Lex’s first impression of Patriot’s base, walking down the plane’s ramp, is the smell. Cow shit, baking in the sun.

“I thought this place was supposed to be abandoned.”

“The neighbors use this property as grazing lands,” Flag explains. “They weren’t aware of anyone living here.”

Lex wrinkles his nose. “Donnae’ how they coulda’ handled the stench,” McCulloch mutters.

It’s an arduous journey through overgown, dried out grass and prickly weeds to get to the ranch, dodging cow patties while they walk. Flag, as team leader, is at the front, and steps in cow shit twice. As Lex swats mosquitos away from his face, the legs of his woolen suit snagging on thistles and sticks, he can’t help but imagine how much easier it would be, working comms and logistics from Belle Reve’s office buildings.

If he didn’t need to be on the frontlines for his plan to work, he’d turn back now, and wait in the plane.

He’s sweating by the time they close in on the property. With a thermal imaging device, Flag verifies that the place isn’t occupied, before leading them inside. No traps are set near the doors, nor is there any sign people have been there since Loomis’s tracker pinged for the last time, as the Director said. Dust covers various flat surfaces, and spiders have made their homes in the doorframes and cabinets.

“Spread out, and search the building,” Flag orders, “and don’t touch anything. Document whatever you find.”

“You didn’t recruit us to be detectives,” Frost mutters.

Lex doesn’t linger after Flag’s order. He might not be a detective either, but Flag brought him onto the team for his brain, and he’s not about to disappoint. There are two floors, along with a basement, according to the plans ARGUS acquired for the house. His teammates start meandering around the first floor, so Lex goes upstairs, the wooden steps creaking under his feet, threatening to give.

There are four doors upstairs; all but one is ajar. That’s the room he picks first. A bathroom, with a rusty showerhead and water stains on the wooden floor. Bloodstains too, dried. It’s smeared across the ceramic tub, darkened from oxidation and decay. From the edge of the sink, a piece of metal draws his attention. On closer examination, the round piece of metal is a device. Loomis’s tracker, if he had to guess.

Lex sets it back where he found it, and moves on. There are three bedrooms. In one of them, the roof has caved in, like it had in the satellite pictures. He can’t enter more than a few feet into the room, wooden beams and debris blocking him. From how sunbleached the rug is, the sun beating down on it, the collapse happened a while ago. In another, there’s no furniture except a dresser, and three mattresses on the floor. There’s a sock he finds, hidden under one of them, but otherwise, no personal effects. It’s the same in the second bedroom, with scorch marks on the walls the only evidence Patriot’s team left behind.

Given the sensitivity of their mission, Lex understands why a full forensic team wasn’t brought with them. But he wishes he’d at least brought with him a fingerprint kit, or blacklights. When he finds a single curly hair between the floorboards, he has to leave it, and just note the location in his head for later, when the real investigators comb through the building for the finer evidence.

It’s the fourth room that holds something useful to Lex.

An upright piano. A chaise lounge. Bookshelves with no books on them. A trash can.

A trash can, with seven empty paper coffee cups, and several receipts.

Lex digs one out with his bare hands. It has the last four digits of a credit card number, the customer’s order, a timestamp. The name of the shop, too. Bean Me Up doesn’t have an address, but it’s a name that can be looked up. Considering the number of cups, it’s a habit, not a one-time visit. And given most businesses have security cameras, there’s a chance one of Patriot’s subordinates was caught on camera.

It’s an amateur mistake, not taking out the trash, but if they were in a rush to leave, Lex can understand why it was left behind. And it’s a solid lead for tracking down Patriot. Flag thinks so too, when Lex brings the trash to him. More cups are found in the kitchen trashcan, hidden in a cabinet, and one is found in the tall grasses near the back porch. Eighteen cups in total. “Can’t believe there’s someone out there with a worse caffeine addiction than I have,” Flag mutters, putting their latest find in a plastic evidence bag.

“Is littering a killable offense?” Quinn asks, swinging her bat into the ranch’s exterior enough that it punches a hole.

“No, Quinn, it is not.”

Lex’s lips twitch into a smile. If all goes well, he just has to wait a little while longer, and he’ll be released from this freakshow.

Chapter Text

“We didn’t have to get here this early,” the General mutters, once he realizes where Lex has dragged him.

“The earliest timestamp on the receipts was…”

Seven-sixteen, he’s going to say. Except when he pulls on the door handle, it jerks, but doesn’t open. He tries again, but the door doesn’t budge. Peering in through the window, there are baristas behind the counter, but chairs are still on the tables and someone is mopping the tile floor. One of the baristas notices him and waves, but doesn’t come to open the door for him. Lex takes a slow, deep breath, in and out.

Flag taps a sign with his knuckle. “Bean Me Up doesn’t open til’ eight on Sundays. Closes at four.”

“That’s not what the website said,” Lex mutters.

He waits with the General on a bench at a nearby bus stop until it opens. With forty minutes left until it opens, it’s not worth the walk to return to the hotel, nor does Lex want to take public transport to get there. Lex repeatedly checks the time on his watch as Flag scrolls on his phone, slumped against the back of the bus shelter. In their suits, with Flag’s leather briefcase, the two of them look more like businessmen than special government agents. Fake businessmen. Which goes full circle back to looking like law enforcement. If their target is smart enough to case the shop before he enters it, he would notice them.

“Hopefully I’m not recognized,” Lex mutters. Not yet. Not until after their mission succeeds. Flag snorts. “What?”

“You won’t be. Not with all that hair,” the General assures.

It clicks, then. “Is that why you wouldn’t let me shave?”

He doesn’t get an answer. The door to the cafe swings open, a barista propping it open with a wooden wedge, and Flag stands quickly to avoid the question. Lex straightens his tie, and smoothes out the wrinkles in his pants.

At the counter, Lex orders a lavender latte, while Flag takes his own coffee black. It’s the sort of pointless rejection of life’s simple pleasures that Lex had expected from a military man like him. Flag pays for their drinks with his little black government card, because Lex isn’t allowed access to his own money, and the two of them take a seat on the far side of the cafe, tucked into a corner. Flag pulls out his laptop. Just two businessmen, doing their work in a cafe, rather than the office. Not government agents waiting for a target.

“You’re looking too much at the door.”

“We’re waiting for our colleague to arrive,” Lex mutters into his latte. “Besides, I don’t think someone brainless enough to leave that much evidence behind will be observant enough to notice us.”

It shouldn’t be long, now. Lex is certain it’s the teleporter, because none of the others could reasonably travel over four thousand miles round trip every morning. And he does come most mornings. Twelve of the last eighteen days, according to the receipts. There’s a chance their failed attack on the prison has caused them to lay low, but if the teleporter doesn’t show, it’s not the end of the world. Swabs taken from the lids of his drinks are being analyzed in a lab as they wait, along with the hair, and several other pieces of biological evidence the forensic team found last night. Identifying their suspects through DNA will give them leads to follow if their field trip doesn’t yield results. It’ll just take more time.

“I don’t think this guy can be brainless if your STAR Labs theory holds out.”

“You would be surprised how many scientists lack basic common sense.” The amount of money LuthorCorp paid each year for insurance covering lab accidents is proof of that. “And terrorism requires a different set of skills from academia.”

A pair of young women walk into the shop, bumping shoulders. Flag’s gaze flits between them, assessing, then refocuses on Lex. “I wouldn’t have expected a CEO to be capable of tearing a hole in the universe. Yet look at you.”

“Yeah,” Lex snorts, leaning back in his chair, “look at me.” It turned out so well for him.

“I’d like to see what you’d be capable of if you weren’t—”

The bell on the door rings, and Lex looks at it out of the corner of his eye.

“That’s him,” he whispers. Flag falls silent.

The bruise on his cheek is half-healed, a red stripe across his cheek. His beard is thicker than when Lex last saw him, the bags under his eyes dark, but it’s the same man. Tall, lean, and when he greets the barista, it’s with a thick French accent. He tries asking about her morning, and she ignores the question, asking if he’s having his usual instead. He nods, rubbing his palms on his white labcoat.

While he’s waiting for his drink, the teleporter tries, two more times, to initiate a conversation with the barista, who ignores him. He bounces on his heels, looking nervously around the shop. He looks at Flag and Lex at one point, and meets Lex’s gaze. The quick way he looks away could be recognition, or awkwardness. Lex stops scrutinizing him, looking instead at the antique photographs and newspaper clippings hanging on the walls. Flag was right. He stares too much.

“Extra ice,” the barista says, handing him a clear plastic cup, filled with a light brown liquid, “just how you like it!”

“Thank you,” the teleporter says, a tremor in his voice. He shoves a wad of bills in the tip jar on the counter. He doesn’t linger, once he has his drink. The teleporter leaves, hunched over the cup.

Flag closes his laptop, and stands. “C’mon.”

Lex follows him out of the shop, the two of them exit the shop just in time to see him round a corner into an alley. Flag quickens his pace, and Lex speeds up to match it, the heels of his loafers clacking against the sidewalk. Flag keeps a hand inside his coat. Rounding the corner, he pulls out his gun, pointing it ahead of him. But there’s no point. The alley is empty, and it’s a dead end. The teleporter is gone.

“Fuck,” the General curses, combing a hand through his hair.

Lex claps him on the back, rubbing his shoulder soothingly. Flag shrugs him off.

“It wasn’t important that we caught him,” Lex reminds him. No, they got what they came here for. Confirmation.

Back at their hotel, Flag sets his laptop on his desk, opening an application with a search bar. He types in Bean Me Up’s address, and a map of the surrounding area appears, with small, colored dots scattered across it. He zooms in on the shop, then clicks on the dot that’s on top of it. The video feed, from a high corner of the shop looking down at the entrance, has a time stamp matching the time on Lex’s watch. 

With a button press, the video feed rewinds. Shadows move across the shop’s interior as the sun moves west to east, and people walk backwards into the shop and out the door, until the time stamp matches the time when the teleporter walked into the coffee shop. The camera has a good angle to watch as the man fluffs up his curls outside and straightens his lapels, then walks in. From there, the scene plays out as Lex remembers it. He talks to the barista, gets his order, and leaves. Lex and the General follow after him.

“This is impressive surveillance tech,” Lex admits, leaning forward. Once his sentence is commuted, he needs to get access to it. He could do incredible things with real time surveillance footage from across the country. Least of which is tracking Superman as he moves through Metropolis. If he lets his hero persona slip even once, Lex would be able to capture it. “How long has the government had this?”

“No comment,” the General mutters. He chapters back again, to the moment the man left the shop, and clicks on his face.

The program starts mapping his features, tracing the line of his thick brow, the slope of his nose, the shape of his cheekbones. It pulls up a list of profiles, eliminating each one as its analysis gets more detailed, until one remains.

Flag clicks on the profile. “Emil Lasalle. He’s twenty eight, and a former STAR Labs employee. Was fired after only a year of working there. Guess your hunch was right.” Of course it was. There was no doubt in Lex’s mind that their suspect could be anything else. “French citizen, interned with STAR Labs in Paris during his undergrad, got his PhD in engineering from UCLA… oh, his work visa has lapsed. He supposedly returned to France eight months ago, and hasn’t been documented entering the US since.”

“He’s a metahuman who can teleport,” Lex reminds him.

“We don’t know that he’s a metahuman yet.”

“He was fired for a lab accident,” Lex points out. “‘Lab accident’ has ‘metahuman’ written all over it.”

Flag stifles a laugh. He doesn’t argue against Lex’s assertion; the General just clicks on another colored dot, bringing up another camera’s feed. The next video appears to be taken from the labs across the street, the camera points towards the shop and the alley next to it. With the same space distortion Lex saw in the prison, Lasalle steps into existence in the alley near a dumpster, turns the corner, and enters the shop. He leaves in the same manner as he arrived, teleporting away in the alley in plain view.

With a low whistle, Flag rewinds the video to watch it a second time. “This is sloppy work.”

“It’s the work of a metahuman recruited for his powers, not talents.”

On the computer screen, Lasalle teleports away again. This time, Flag lets the footage continue. People walk down the street, unaware that they were being observed. “He should have just bought a keurig.”

Lex resists the urge to correct him. Flag isn’t serious. He discussed it with him the night before, during their flight; how the teleporter must have some reason to keep returning to Bean Me Up.

In Lasalle’s situation, Lex would have chosen to visit a different shop every time, rather than go to the same one repeatedly. Or he would have abstained until the attention on him had faded. It’s easy to blame Lasalle’s poor decisions on stupidity, but Lex doubts Lasalle was completely unaware of the risks involved in returning to his regular coffee shop right after participating in a high profile crime. It’s either incompetence, both on his part and Patriot’s, or something pushed him to come despite the known risks.

Lex doesn’t know him well enough to figure out his reasoning. Luckily for them, he realizes, there’s someone who does.

Standing, Lex paces the length of Flag’s hotel room. “We know he worked at STAR Labs. We can—”

The room is cast into darkness, and Lex cuts himself off mid-sentence.

Lex might have mistaken the shadow passing over them for a cloud. Except, it’s darker than a cloud. For a moment, the sun is entirely blocked in their hotel room. Lex moves closer to the window to look up for the source, narrowing his eyes. An unexpected solar eclipse, another sun-eating extradimensional organism siphoning off the sun’s plasma, some foolish tech billionaire attempting to block the sun to lower the planet’s temperature. But he can still see the sunlight hitting the buildings along the skyline, and reflecting off the water of Puget Sound. Then, the shadow passes, as quickly as it came. The sun returns.

Lex peers up at the clear skies. His face is close enough to the glass that his breath fogs it up.

The hotel room door slams open. “General—!”

There’s no time for Lex to react. There’s the sound of shattering glass, and the floor collapses under his feet, sending him backwards through the broken window. As he stares up at the hotel, a large gash carved in its side, Lex sees two huge, spotted wings, silhouetted against the blue above him. His view is quickly replaced by the street below as he tumbles through the air, head over heels.

Lex is falling, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it.