Stalker Boy

     Standing at five-foot-five, Shiera Sanders might not be expected to be the most intimidating girl at Golden Eagle High, but her unnecessarily tough attitude made up for it.

     An eighteen-year-old boy watched her from further down the hall as she opened her locker, standing under the shadow of a broken lightbulb. Same as always, he thought, looking her up and down. Red hair, very athletic, ceaselessly beautiful, even without wearing makeup. It was no wonder she kept up her constantly-annoyed persona; she had to fend off a hundred idiotic high-school boys every day. Then again, he thought, she's always been like that.

     Shiera closed her locker to see the boy standing one foot to her right. She almost jumped.

     "Hello," he said, a slightly creepy grin on his unshaven face. "I'm Carter."

     "...And I totally don't care." Shiera spun on her heel and walked away.

     "Hold on," Carter said, following her.

     Shiera stopped to turn back and glare at him. She had to stare almost directly upward to make eye contact; Carter was six-foot-three.
     "I've seen you watching me all day, you creep. Leave me alone or I'll tear your eyes out."
     Carter suppressed a chuckle, as if he found her more amusing than threatening. Shiera hated that.
     "You don't know who I am yet," Carter said, staring entirely too deeply into Shiera's eyes, "but we have a past together. And a future. Let me show you."
     Shiera stared at him, bewildered and weirded out. "Yeah, I'm thinking you're destined for a restraining order and maybe a psych ward."
     Shiera turned around again and walked as fast as she could without technically running.
     Carter silently watched her leave, then went his own way.
     A third party, a man, watched them both from the shadow of the school.

     Carter pushed open the front doors of his home with a loud creak and went inside.
     Shiera watched him from a nearby alleyway. She'd followed him here, all the way to the middle of downtown Midway City. She was thoroughly creeped out by Carter, but she also knew that whatever obsession he had with her wasn't normal. She followed him home mostly because she wanted to know exactly how twisted he was. If he had a shrine to her or something.
     Carter's home was... an old museum. Likely closed decades ago. The dark wooden front doors were almost rotting, but they were so thick it'd probably take another few decades until they fell off. The old "Midway Museum" sign was so faded it was barely legible.
     Shiera snuck towards the front door and pushed. It wasn't locked. She resisted the urge to shudder. It was almost like Carter wanted her to come inside. Shiera looked around; no one was anywhere to be seen. Just empty wood-paneled hallways lined with dust. Shiera walked down one of the halls quietly, arriving at a large room.
     The room was full of weapons. Medieval weapons. Maces, axes, swords, daggers, spears, glaives, throwing stars... more weapons than Shiera could recognize. Most of them were in glass cases, others hung on wall racks. But some of them were laid on tables around the room, almost like they were used recently and just dropped there. Shiera was very, very concerned at this point. Carter was apparently a literal axe murderer. She started to go back for the door, but stopped when a glint of gold caught her eye across the room. On the far wall, inside a large closet-sized compartment, hung a set of armor. Shiera walked warily towards it.
     It was small, thin, and curved for a woman. The main body was made of leather and very thin chain mail; it had no sleeves, neck, or midsection. Gauntlets, armored boots, and a helmet shone bronze-gold in the pale light from the window. Shiera found herself mesmerized by the helmet. It was arrow-shaped, like the head of a hawk, perfectly crafted with curved lines and sharp angles. The metal looked ancient, yet also brand new. "Eternal," Shiera thought.
     Shiera shook off the feeling. She took an overall look at the armor. Who would wear something like this? It didn't even entirely cover its wearer. With a muffled gasp, Shiera saw what hung on the wall behind the armor: a huge pair of feathered wings. Was that why the armor was so light? With this armor, was someone supposed to... fly?

     "Now do you remember who you are?" a voice said from behind.
     Shiera spun around. "No, actually, I don't,"
     "Shiera..." Carter said. "You're my wife."

The Plant, Part 2

     Metallic echoes, somewhere between scraping and tapping, showered from the blackened fog-hidden ceiling like raindrops.

     Clark looked up into the dark, but couldn't focus enough to see anything. "Those... sound like steps. Something's walking on the ceiling."

     Lex listened hard to the rapid tapping. "Six legs. Metal, probably steel or a composite of some kind."

     Clark looked at Lex incredulously.

     Lex explained. "I caught references in the computer files to... things. Biological experiments. Not just with the meteors, but with mechanical elements. Before this place was shut down, it was being run by people from all of Luthorcorp's science divisions: bio-engineering, cybernetics, and weapons."

     Clark tugged on Lex's shoulder. "Lex, look up."

     Crawling down the wall, towards the exit door, was something outlined with glowing green. A six-legged metal creature descended from the fog, its movements eerily organic. Three feet long, it snarled, its triangular "head" turning a full 360 degrees as it looked for the perfect angle to pounce. Green luminescent liquid dripped from its jaws.

     Lex and Clark turned and ran down one of the hallways. A wall of glass shattered beside them as they passed; they ignored the shards hitting their sides and kept moving.

     Something stepped through the glass behind them.

     Clark tripped over a pipe and slammed into the floor. The pipe twisted and slithered closer; it was a metallic snake. It struck at Clark, clamping its jaws on his arm. The fangs bent as they hit his skin, but left bruised flesh. The snake struck at Clark's head and hit him like a punch in the face. Clark snatched the snake out of the air, glared down its throat, and poured heat vision into its belly. The snake exploded in a shower of sparks, metal shards, and seared flesh. Clark felt the burning sting of kryptonite in the snake's blood touching his skin.

     Clark turned to find Lex; he was gone.

     "LEX!" Clark called.

     "CLARK!" Lex answered. His voice was faint; he was somewhere on the other side of the room.

     Clark stood up and suddenly realized there was someone else in the room—another human. The silhouette of a man slowly walked forward from the smog, his steps jerked and uneven. One eye was covered with a glowing green orb, and bits of both his arms appeared to have green fluid pulsing through them like adrenaline.

     Clark knew he couldn't just punch or fly his way out of here. He could barely walk, let alone fly straight.

     He looked up, focused as best he could on one part of the ceiling, and threw as much heat at it as possible. The concrete exploded upward, leaving a one-foot hole. Clark pulled out his phone, quickly tapped at its buttons, then threw the phone through the hole of sunlight into empty sky.

     Diana's phone buzzed in her pocket. She had a text message.

     TRAPPED AT LUTHORCORP WITH LEX. HELP WOULD BE NICE.

     Lex worked his way back to the computer room and shut the door, barring it with a chair. It might not hold forever, but hopefully he could figure out a way to contact someone with the computer.

     A red flash lit up the middle of the room; Lex couldn't see what it was. He ignored it and went back to the computer. Hopefully Clark was still alright.

     The mutated man stepped closer and closer to Clark. It raised an arm, with some kind of illuminated gauntlet attached—a gauntlet with a gun barrel built into it. Clark felt the concentrated radiation from kryptonite-infused bullets in the barrel beaming towards him. He heard the click of the trigger mechanism being pulled.
     A pair of navy boots landed in front of Clark with merely a whisper. The kryptonite bullet bounced off something with a CLANG, and Clark looked up to see Diana standing over him.
     "Hey," Clark said. "Nice if you to get here so fast."
     Diana didn't feel that she had time to respond. She glanced around, saw a dark corner of the room where the green glow wasn't so bright, picked Clark up by the collar, and threw him over there. Clark landed with a thud, barely conscious from the radiation and from using so much energy with that heat vision blast.

     Diana stepped closer to the mutant man, confident that she could take him on. The man stepped forward ever so slowly, gradually moving into the beam of sunlight from the ceiling-hole.
     He wasn't so much a kryptonite mutant as some type of... cyborg. He had metal parts surgically embedded all over his body, the kryptonite acting as a kind of poisonous glue holding him together. For a split second, Diana let herself feel a bit of pride. It was a distinctly Amazonian trait to be unafraid of the bizarre and grotesque. As Diana saw the cyborg's face, however, that pride melted, and Diana quickly felt her spine chill. The cyborg was Floyd Lawton, Deadshot.
     The cyborg-Deadshot fired shot after shot at Diana, his face unnervingly still, never blinking, no hint of emotion.
     Diana felt shellshocked, letting herself be pushed backwards, only blocking the bullets out of instinct and reflex. What had they done to him? Was he still alive? Did they just use his corpse for whatever was going on here? 

     Diana took a deep breath and steeled herself against her fear. She leaned forward, deflecting one of the bullets straight into Deadshot's arm. The bullet passed through his muscle like it would have done through a piece of paper. Deadshot didn't even flinch. The mechanical components were more than enough to compensate for a small amount of muscle loss.
     Diana moved in close, taking a spinning jump-kick straight at Deadshot's head. Out of either instinct or programming, Deadshot twisted to the side, reducing the kick to a glancing blow. As Diana landed, Deadshot's metal-coated arm slammed into her face, sending her into a steel beam a few feet away. The cyborg kicked Diana's stomach with the force of a sledgehammer, making her double over and slump to the floor. As Deadshot raised his arm cannon for the execution shot, Diana grabbed the barrel and crumpled it in her hand. She began to jump up, but Deadshot's other arm hit her alongside the head and sent her back to the floor.
     The six-legged drooling metal dog-thing crept up, watching the fight with whatever passed for glee among its animalistic thoughts. Soon there would be a new dead body here, and it would have food.
     With his left hand, the cyborg held Diana down, and with his right, he raised his fist, revealing razor blades on his knuckles.
     Diana's eyes went wide. I could die here.
     Diana grabbed at the metal dog's throat, shoving its face directly onto the cyborg's arm. The glowing saliva was apparently acid; it ate straight through the arm, leaving it a melted stump.
     Diana rolled aside and stood up, snapping the dog in half with the same motion. She watched as the cyborg inspected its missing arm, then seemed puzzled as to what it should do with its newly-impaired body.
     Reaching for her belt, Diana pulled out her lasso. Stepping behind the cyborg, she kicked it in the back of its legs, sending it to its knees. She wrapped the lasso around Deadshot, pulling it tight so his arms couldn't move.

     "Floyd? Are you still in there?" she asked.
     No reply. The cyborg merely stared forward.
     "Are you still human? Can you talk? Give me a sign?"
     Nothing.
     Diana felt a sudden weight fall on her shoulders. If there was even a shred of humanity or sentience left in this body, he would have responded. The lasso would have compelled him to do so. But since he didn't respond in any way whatsoever, that meant that this truly was just a machine using Floyd Lawton's body and brain. And it now fell upon Diana to ensure that this disrespect for the dead ended here.
     Diana put her foot on the top of the cyborg's spine, held the lasso tightly, and pulled while pushing with her foot. She heard and felt the spine, along with several other mechanical components, break under her heel. The body fell over, completely dead and inactive.

     Diana ran to the dark corner.
     "Clark! Are you okay?"
     "Yeah. I'm fine." Clark looked absolutely horrible, but he was conscious and not dying at the moment.
     "We need to get you out of here," Diana said, lifting him off the floor.
     "No," Clark said. "There's a door over on that wall. Just break it open for us, and Lex and I can get out. Fly out the ceiling again; if people see you here they'll have questions."
     Diana nodded. She helped Clark walk to the door, then kicked it open and flew out the hole. All the fog and smoke neatly covered her escape.

     "LEX!" Clark called. "The door's open!"
     Lex came running. "How did you open the door?"
     "I, uh... kicked it really hard."

     Clark stood in the loft of his barn, feeling the last bits of warm sunset light heal the few cuts and bruises that still remained. Footsteps on wooden stairs signaled Lex walking up behind him.
     "Hey Lex."
     "Clark. I, uh... I don't... I don't really know what to say about today."
     "So don't. What's done is done."
     "...I don't think I can accept that. What we saw in there... I still can't believe it. And I can't believe I put you through it."
     "You had no way of knowing what was in there."
     "And that's what scares me. I didn't know at all. All this time, my father's people were turning dead bodies into weapons. I talked to the investigators today; it wasn't even just Floyd Lawton. The other things in there, the snake, the dog... those were dead animals."
     Clark almost shuddered. "Why Lawton, anyway?"
     "From what I read, because Lawton's brain was a perfect storm for marksmanship. He'd have made the perfect sniper, if the work on him had been finished. But also... I'd guess that my father wanted payment for Deadshot not completing his mission. So he took his body."
     Lex casually looked around the loft. It was filled with random memories, mostly of Clark and Jonathan. Family photos, furniture that Jonathan and Clark built together, old toys, and a jumble of other things. Lex picked up a signed baseball, no doubt from a game Clark and his dad went to together.
     "You know, the only time I ever went to a baseball game was just after my father bought the Metropolis Monarchs. He said we needed to make an appearance at a game for PR purposes. We sat in the closed box at the top of the stadium; he spent the entire game talking on his phone. I used to think that things like that were what made him a bad father."
     "Lex, you don't need to focus on all the bad your father did."
     "Why not?"
     "Instead, why don't you focus on all the good you can do?"
     Lex paused. "I... don't know what you mean. I'm doing good, by cleaning up my father's messes."
     "And what about after that? Your father put together a team that practically brought the dead to life. Think about what that could mean for medical technology."
     Lex shook his head. "It's dependent on the chemical from the meteors, and that's radioactive. Putting it in someone's bloodstream could give them cancer in just a year."
     "So find another way. If those scientists could make that work in less than a year, imagine what a new team could do with five years, or ten. Maybe they can find a way to make it work, without stepping over the line."
     "...So you're saying I should try to redeem Luthorcorp? I don't think that's possible anymore. Too much blood."
     "So start your own company instead."
     Lex gave Clark a sarcastic look. "What am I gonna call it? Lexcorp?"
     Clark shrugged.
     Lex shook his head at the silliness of that idea, then paused for a moment. "Actually... that might work."
     Clark noticed a distinctly different look in Lex's eyes. Something... hopeful. Driven, in a good way.
     "When my father built Luthorcorp, he said that his goal was to make the world better through science. To improve peoples' lives. He was lying through his teeth, but... I can actually do that. I can make the difference my father never cared enough to make."
     Lex turned to Clark. "Thank you. I think without you... helping me along, I'd either be dead in that green room or alive out here, but living without a purpose. Now I know what I need to do."
     Clark suddenly felt unsure if Lex was genuinely having a split-second life turnaround or just going mad.
     Lex turned and walked down the stairs without another word, feeling that each step led him towards a new destiny.

     And to think that just this morning, I considered ending my own life. No... now I have purpose; I have reason. I will not merely fade away, the victim of my father's shadow. I will change the world; better it, as my father never would. Economics, social ills, government... they are all flawed. Broken. I can fix them. I will change them for the better. The world will not forget the name Lex Luthor.