Chapter 1
She had expected a lot of things when she entered the old warehouse in her quest for finding – and ultimately killing – Lex Luthor, but the scene before her, Supergirl on her knees in a glass tank that had a faint glow of emerald green, had not been one of them.
Neither had the woman in the wheelchair. Her wrists, ankles and torso were tied to the chair with leather straps, her head was bent forward. Her hair fell around her face and it wasn’t quite clear if she was conscious or even breathing.
What she had expected was Lex Luthor in all his questionable glory. Standing tall and grinning like the world was his to take and anyone who stood in his path just a nuisance that had to be dealt with in a permanent matter.
She had also expected his henchmen – and dealt with them, effectively and quietly. Still, one never knew how much more of them were around, so she laid low and waited for the play to unfold.
“Supergirl! How’re you holding up?”
Lex Luthor’s voice, its cadence and timbre, had the hair on the back of her neck up in milliseconds. She hated the man. Hated. There was no other word for it.
Supergirl tried to stand up, but her muscles failed her. Thin green veins scared her face and she seemed to be in excruciating pain. If even the dim glow of the kryptonite had this effect on her she must have been in there for quite a while.
“How do you like my newest invention? Kryptonite lamps. It wasn’t easy to harness the kryptonite’s power and develop something I could just switch on and off … But I won’t bore you with the details.” Lex laughed.
“The thing is that I could just up the power of the cute green lamps and kill you”, he said. “But where would be the fun in that? … You see, you Supers have been a thorn in my side for so long, your death should be a little bit more of a celebration.”
He bit his lip, giving him some sort of thoughtful look.
“And in the end it’s not only you who’s been in my way, has it? So the death of two of my greatest enemies should be … al little more epic.”
He turned to the woman next to him and forcefully pulled her head up by her hair. A scream escaped Supergirl’s lips, but I t wasn’t from pain, not her own anyway.
Lena Luthor’s eyes were half closed, her brow glistened with sweat. Even through the gag her breath sounded ragged. There was a visible tremor in her hands even thought they had a white-knuckled hold on the armrest they were tied to.
“What …” The forming of a sentence seemed to be a task that was almost too heavy for Supergirl, but she still continued. “What have you done to her?”
“My own sister in cahoots with a Super.” Lex ignored the question and shook his head in mock disbelief. “I told her who you were, you know? After she shot me”, he shouted and hardened his grip on his sisters hair, drawing a grunt from her lips. “But somehow she is still on your side.”
He looked at Supergirl who – despite the pain – seemed frozen in place and had her eyebrows raised in shock.
“Oh, you didn’t know that, did you?” He laughed.
“That’s funny! Seems like you’re not the only one who’s good at keeping secrets.” He looked at his watch, “Well, you’ll have about 12 hours to discuss this until her organs start to fail. That is, if my calculations are correct. And they always are.”
He let go of his sister and somehow Lena managed to keep her head up, her eyes focusing on Supergirl.
“As to your question: Kryptonite lamps aren’t the only thing I’ve been working on. I developed a virus. A nasty thing, to be honest. It attaches itself to the subject’s blood cells and acts like it has some kind of time delay. The subject feels sick, but no doctor will find out what’s ailing them until it’s too late. … It’s not contagious, so it is the perfect thing to take out people without killing all of humanity. I’m rather proud of that.”
Lex stepped closer to the glass tank.
“I infected Lena with it.”
Supergirl hit her fist against the glass with enough force to make her wince. The glass didn’t even crack.
“There’s a cure. Of course there is. But unfortunately for you and her, you’re stuck in this … aquarium. With no powers. In a building that is off the grid and covered with a force field. No one will find you. You will have to watch poor Lena die. And I promise you it will be painful.”
He stepped even closer and pressed his hand to the glass.
“And how will you yourself die, you might wonder? Well, in 12 hours the air will be sucked from this tank and replaced by kryptonite gas. Either way, one of you will see the other die. Easy, but classy. And to be on the safe side: In twelve hours and 30 minutes this building will be blown to pieces and should your darling sister be unfortunate enough to find you I will press the proverbial button and blow her up with you.”
He smiled.
“What do you think of my little plan? Kind of … airtight, don’t you think?”
He knocked on the glass, clearly pleased with his joke.
She should have seen the guard sooner, but she was too occupied by Lex’s speech, the whole manic flavor of it, the fact that he sounded like a movie supervillain. So when the man approached her, she only had seconds to react. She still was on her feet in an instant, grabbed his gun before he could pull the trigger and knocked him out cleanly with just two blows and hardly any noise. What she could not prevent, however, was him falling backwards, his body crashing against the railing and then falling right over it and landing one story down, almost right in front of Lex’s feet.
Lex looked up and their eyes met. She did not flinch and she thought she saw some recognition in his eyes.
“You”, he said, loud enough for her to hear, and she knew that right now he was running calculations about how best to proceed – because she did the same.
The easiest option – and incidentally the one she came here for – was to pull her gun and just shoot him. The world would be free of Lex Luthor forever. She would finally be able to get a good night’s sleep.
But then she took a glance at the woman in the chair and she knew that it would be her death sentence. There was a snowball’s chance in hell anyone would find a cure to whatever she had been infected with in the time she had left. And she couldn’t let her die. She was not that kind of person.
If she wanted to rescue Lena she needed Lex alive and she had to persuade him to give her the cure. There were probably various possibilities to achieve this, but right now she could only come up with one.
She looked to her side, located the best way down and climbed over the railing.
Lex was furious, but he wasn’t stupid. When he saw the woman climb over the railing, he ran, even though his plan had consisted of taunting his prisoners for a while longer
She was fast, running over a crossbeam and jumping from a considerable height without pausing, but he was closer to the door. He made sure he still had the little black box in his pocket and ran outside, across the driveway and to the patch of grass where his helicopter was waiting. His one mistake was to turn his head to see if she was following. Not only was she closer than he had anticipated, but his foot got caught in something and he stumbled.
It was enough for her to catch up and he felt the full force of her crashing into him. He still took note of the tiny prick on his neck.
They both fell, but he was up faster. He pulled out the remote control and hit the button.
“Stop”, he shouted and held out the box in his hand. The display showed numbers running backwards. “I started the countdown for the bomb. There is no stopping it now. Supergirl and my sister have five minutes. You can kill me or save them. What will it be, Agent Arias?”
“You underestimate me, Lex. I think, I can do both”, Sam answered. She was hardly out of breath. “In fact I have killed you already.”
“What?”
His hand found its way to his neck without thinking.
“If you want to survive you should find me in the next … say six hours? And you better bring the cure for your sister.”
Sam turned around and ran back, leaving him speechless for the first time in his life.