“You go, girl,” said Copperhead, the fanged thief in scaly, golden garb who had slithered around the building seeking out security cameras.
“Just get us in,” said the Shade, dressed all in black with a top hat and dark glasses.
The tone of his voice indicated that he was unimpressed with Star Sapphire’s power. But then, he had blinded all those security cameras with a versatile body of darkness that only he could command.
As Luthor and the rest of his Injustice Gang looked on, Star Sapphire’s beam dug deeper into the wall, creating the beginnings of an entrance for them. But before she could get very far, one of her teammates made a sound of disgust and lumbered forward.
“Grundy tired of waiting,” he growled, his ghostly pale features contorting with frustration.
Then he drew himself up to his full nine-foot height, raised his boulderlike fists, and began pounding at the wall as if it were no more than a punching bag.
As dust and debris started to fly about, Star Sapphire backed off and shot a look at Luthor, who smiled. He liked it when the members of his gang felt compelled to compete with each other. It kept them all sharp.
And he needed them as sharp as knives if they were to carry out their mission that night. He needed them at the absolute top of their game.
After all, Luthor had a score to settle—first with Superman, and then with the entire Justice League.
Once, he had been the wealthiest, most powerful man in the magnificent city of Metropolis. But it wasn’t just good business sense that had raised him to that level. It was his penchant for bribes, threats, and other shady dealings that enabled him to crush his competitors and squeeze his suppliers.
For a long time, the public had been blissfully unaware of Luthor’s unsavory practices. And there was no reason the situation couldn’t have gone on that way forever.
Then Superman had shown up, his red cape fluttering heroically behind him as he soared among the spires of Metropolis. He captured the imagination of everyone who saw or even heard of him. And all of a sudden, the great and powerful Luthor was playing second fiddle in the city he was supposed to own.
But that wasn’t the worst part of having the big blue Boy Scout around—because Superman, with his X-ray vision and his ability to go where native earthlings could not, began to discover the seamy underbelly of Luthor’s financial empire.
And having discovered it, he had embarked on a mission to do something about it.
Little by little, the Man of Steel started to make life difficult for Luthor’s people, catching them in criminal acts and getting them thrown into prison. It seemed to Luthor that his enemy was gradually working his way to the top, and that it wouldn’t be long before Superman found a way to bag Luthor as well.
But Luthor hadn’t made himself one of the richest men on Earth by accepting defeat. Rather than face the prospect of losing the game, he changed the rules.
Fortunately, one of Luthor’s employees had given him the tool he needed to bring Superman to his knees—a tiny chunk of green, glowing mineral called kryptonite, which had once been a part of Superman’s native world.
The rock’s radiation affected Superman violently, causing him great pain and stripping him of his titanic strength. In fact, if he was exposed to it for too long, it would kill him.
And that’s what Luthor meant to do—kill him.
But he didn’t know when he would have the opportunity to spring his surprise on Superman. So he carried the chunk of kryptonite with him everywhere he went, waiting for just the right moment.
And in time, it came. Oh, how it came.
“Almost done,” Grundy rumbled.
Then, with one last assault on the wall, he cracked it open, creating an entrance into the facility big enough even for Grundy himself, if he hunkered down low enough.
The giant turned to a frowning Star Sapphire. “See? Grundy’s way much faster.”
“Whatever you say,” she said with a sneer in her British accent. Then she swooped through the opening he had made, the gem in her mask pulsing with an eerie violet light.
Luthor went in after her, with Grundy, the Shade, and Copperhead in his wake. But it wasn’t long before the snakelike one had slithered past him.
After all, no one was quicker than Copperhead.
As Shade created clouds of shadow to mask their passage through the facility, Luthor activated the filament-thin headset he was wearing. As soon as Sapphire and Copperhead found the device they were after, he wanted to know about it.
And they would find it. He had no doubt of that.
Then, with the device firmly in hand, Luthor would have his revenge on the Justice League.
He recalled the way they had deceived him as if it were yesterday. He remembered the anguish they had cost him, and the shame—most of all, the shame.
Luthor had lured Superman to his penthouse office high above Metropolis. Then he had produced the glowing green chunk of kryptonite—and watched the mighty Man of Steel fold like a fragile house of cards.
In his glee, he had boasted of bribes he had made and to whom he had offered them. Why not? He hadn’t thought Superman would last more than a few minutes longer.
But Luthor had been tricked. It wasn’t Superman he had exposed to the alien mineral—it was the shape-changing Martian Manhunter, to whom kryptonite was just another rock.
Then Batman and the Green Lantern had shown up, looking rather pleased with themselves. They had the elusive Lex Luthor dead to rights.
Or so they thought.
As always, Luthor had had a trick up his sleeve. As the Justice Leaguers closed in on him, he pulled a remote control device from his pocket and scattered his enemies with gunfire from a flying attack vehicle. Then he boarded the vehicle and took off.
Moments later, he blasted the real Superman with a couple of missiles. For a moment, it seemed that his escape was ensured. He would go free after all.
Then he was wracked by the worst pain he had ever felt in his life. Unable to pilot his vehicle, he was apprehended.
But that wasn’t the worst part of it—because that pain had turned out to be a symptom of kryptonite poisoning, the result of his having carried around the chunk of mineral for so long.
To keep himself alive and able to function, he had to wear a high-tech metal vest. It was uncomfortable, but without it, the poisoning would eat away at him from within.
Luthor had been humbled and imprisoned. The Justice League probably thought they had heard the last of him. If so, they were wrong—dead wrong.
He had been planning his revenge on them for months now, filling his days and his nights with scheme after scheme. After all, he didn’t want merely to defeat the heroes of the Justice League, or even to destroy them. He wanted to humble them the way he had been humbled.
But how could one go about humbling a Man of Steel? Or an Amazon princess? Or a man with a ring that could do anything he asked of it?
These weren’t normal people. They were superpowerful, each in a different way. It would be devilishly difficult to make any headway against them by attacking them individually. And when they stood as a group, it was virtually impossible.
They were just too strong.
But after a while, Luthor had seen a way to bring down every last member of the League—because as impressive as their physical talents might be, there was one part of them that was oh-so-vulnerable.
Their minds.
And if Luthor obtained what he was after that night, the minds of the Justice League would be his to control. With that encouraging thought to comfort him, he followed the trail of security doors left ruined in Star Sapphire’s wake.
And imagined the taste of revenge.
The first thing J’onn J’onzz saw as he swooped toward the Sirius Labs complex was the gaping hole in one of the facility’s concrete walls.
“Looks like they left a trail for us,” said Wonder Woman, who was flying beside him, her wavy dark hair streaming majestically b
ehind her.
“So it would seem,” said J’onn.
Under normal circumstances, the speed of their passage would have snatched their words away too quickly for them to be understood. However, their communication devices permitted them to converse freely.
And if they hadn’t, J’onn could always have resorted to his power of telepathy.
Swooping through the unsightly opening the Injustice Gang had made, J’onn leveled off and led the way through what appeared to be a series of laboratories. Each one was filled with an unruly array of dark shadows, and each one had had its door conveniently blasted open.
Both the blast patterns and the darkness looked familiar.
“The work of Star Sapphire,” Wonder Woman said in J’onn’s ear.
“And the Shade,” he added.
He had just flown into his fifth laboratory in a row when he realized he had made a serious mistake. Too late, J’onn saw the immense pale paw that reached out and grabbed him by the cape, nearly snapping his neck in the process.
Grundy, he told himself as he was reeled in like a reluctant sea bass.
Fortunately, Wonder Woman was right behind him. Before the giant could pound J’onn into the laboratory floor, the Amazon Princess veered to her right and swept Grundy’s tree-trunk legs out from under him.
As he went tumbling end over end, J’onn pulled his cape free. Then he turned to face his mountainous adversary.
With Wonder Woman’s help, he hoped to make short work of Grundy. Then they could continue their pursuit of Grundy’s criminal cohorts.
But that notion was dispelled when Shade’s black fog spit out another member of the Injustice Gang—the fanged bolt of lightning called Copperhead.
That left J’onn to face the snarling Grundy on his own. But as strong as the Martian was, he wasn’t as strong as Luthor’s giant henchman. He would have to make up for that deficit with his other talents.
As Grundy charged him, J’onn turned his body immaterial—making it possible for the monster to run right through him and crash into the wall behind him.
The building was still shaking with the impact when J’onn whirled and turned solid again. As Grundy struggled to regain his bearings, J’onn flew at him as fast as he could and slammed his fist into Grundy’s jaw.
The giant sprawled into the wall again and slumped to the floor, stunned. But J’onn knew that his adversary wouldn’t be sitting there for long—not with his inhuman store of vitality.
With that thought in mind, J’onn looked around for Wonder Woman, hoping to give her a hand with Copperhead. But before he could find her among the shifting shadows in the room, he heard the rasp of familiar laughter.
It sounded like someone sharpening a knife. Shade, thought J’onn—the member of Luthor’s gang who could command the darkness with his walking stick.
Unfortunately, the Martian couldn’t see where Shade was hiding. And before he knew it, an amorphous wave of shadow was rising up, threatening to engulf him.
J’onn knew from personal experience what could happen if he let the wave trap him. The Injustice Gang could strike at him a dozen different ways and he would be unable to see them coming, much less defend himself.
Again, he heard Shade’s mocking laughter, followed by his razor-edged voice. “What’s the matter? Didn’t you have shadows back on Mars?”
J’onn tried to escape the encroaching darkness, but it was expanding too fast, stretching from floor to ceiling. There was only one way out—and he took it.
Becoming immaterial again, he dropped through the floor into the room below. The array of equipment in it indicated that Sirius used it as a storage compartment.
Safe from Shade’s shadows, which couldn’t follow J’onn through solid matter, he flew from one end of the storage room to the other. Then he came up through the floor again.
As soon as his eyes emerged, he caught sight of Shade. The villain was facing away from him, still focusing on the part of the lab where J’onn had been—not where he was. Taking full advantage of the element of surprise, J’onn plowed into Shade hard enough to knock him out.
With Shade hurtling headfirst into his own web of darkness, J’onn looked about again for Wonder Woman. This time, he saw her among the shadows.
As J’onn had feared, the Amazon was fighting for her life, using her bracelets to deflect Star Sapphire’s unrelenting energy beams. But where was Copperhead?
A moment later, J’onn got his answer—as Copperhead leapt onto Wonder Woman’s back. The Amazon barely flinched, continuing to ward off Star Sapphire’s blasts.
But if Copperhead raked Wonder Woman’s flesh with his venom-filled claws, she would be paralyzed—maybe even killed. Hoping to prevent that, J’onn went rocketing across the room and slammed into Copperhead.
Quick as the villain was, he was able to avoid part of the impact. Still, it sent him twisting through the air, where he couldn’t do Wonder Woman any harm.
J’onn went after Copperhead a second time, hoping to press his advantage. Then something hammered him from behind and flung him end over end into a mass of shadow.
The Martian threw his hands up to protect himself, but it didn’t help. He hit what must have been a wall with bone-rattling force, the impact driving the wind out of him and sending him plummeting to the floor of the lab.
As J’onn lay there, fighting off the darkness at the edges of his vision and trying hard to drag air into his lungs, he glimpsed the cause of his trouble. The purple-and-black figure of Star Sapphire was coming at him through the shadows like a guided missile, clearly intent on finishing him off.
But before she could reach her target, a glittering gold line snared her and pulled her sideways. Wonder Woman’s lasso, J’onn thought, and not a moment too soon.
For the time being, he had been saved from Star Sapphire. However, he was still vulnerable to her teammates. As if to underscore the observation, a pair of immense hands grabbed J’onn from behind and raised him aloft.
He didn’t have to turn around to know that it was a recovered Grundy who had gotten hold of him, or that the giant was about to tear him limb from Martian limb. J’onn’s only chance was to become immaterial. But altering his density took intense concentration, and he had his hands full at the moment just hanging on to consciousness.
To make matters worse, J’onn saw Wonder Woman pinwheel across the room, driven by a tight purple energy beam. He felt the urge to go to his teammate’s aid, but he couldn’t even clear his head enough to help himself.
This is bad, he thought. Very bad.
Then J’onn heard a cry at the far end of the room—and to his surprise, the Shade went hurtling past him as if he had been shot from a circus cannon. Obviously, someone was still battling Luthor’s gang.
But who? He had seen Wonder Woman go flying in a different direction entirely. And what kind of security guard could have done that to the Shade?
J’onn didn’t understand what had just happened. Then he saw a familiar red-and-blue figure tear through the roiling darkness in pursuit of the shadow-caster, and understanding dawned.
It was Superman, the last son of a dying world. After coming to Earth as a baby, he had developed powers unrivaled in the history of mankind.
The cavalry has arrived, J’onn told himself, quoting one of the Flash’s favorite sayings.
A moment later, Grundy made a muffled cry and dropped J’onn to the floor. Turning, the Martian saw the bright green globe that had descended over the giant’s head, effectively cutting off his air supply.
What’s more, J’onn knew where the globe had come from, even though he couldn’t see its source. After all, who but a Green Lantern could have fashioned such an item on a moment’s notice?
But Grundy wasn’t one to be imprisoned for long. Digging under the edges of the green globe with his thick, powerful fingers, he pried it off his head. Then, with a roar of rage, he tore the energy construct in half.
The cavalry may have arrived, but it was
clear to J’onn that the battle wasn’t over—and with his equilibrium returning, he might make a difference. His chest still heaving with breath after wheezing breath, he pushed himself to his feet and looked for a chance to help.
Just then, another villain shot past him, slithering from shadow to obscuring shadow. It was Copperhead, unmistakable in his golden scales.
But he wasn’t on the attack—not if the thoughts in his head were any indication. Copperhead’s only goal, it seemed, was to get out of the place.
J’onn might not have had enough wind to call out to his teammates, but he could still communicate with them telepathically. The Gang is escaping, he told them.
But before any of his colleagues could act on his warning, Shade’s separate pools of darkness expanded and grew together. In a heartbeat, the room had been utterly blacked out.
It wasn’t the first time the League had been victimized by Shade’s power, but that didn’t make it any easier to contend with. The gloom J’onn found himself in was so thick, so impenetrable, that even Superman’s powerful X-ray vision would be useless against it.
And it wasn’t just hard for the League to see in it. It was hard to move in it, as if the darkness actually possessed weight and substance and inertia.
Somewhere in the room, Hawkgirl was furiously beating her wings, trying to push the blackness back. But wherever she was, J’onn couldn’t see her. He could only hear her efforts—and feel her frustration.
It was what all of them were feeling—J’onn included. By the time the darkness lost its effectiveness and light began to show through it, Luthor and his henchmen were long gone.
Suddenly, J’onn felt a pair of hands on him. But they weren’t nearly as big as Grundy’s, and the mind directing them wasn’t nearly as primitive.
“You all right, Bud?” asked the Flash, his voice coming from just behind J’onn’s shoulder.
J’onn nodded. “I am fine. But I wish I had kept Luthor and his gang from getting away.”
“It’s all right,” said Superman, emerging from a pocket of darkness. “Your first priority was to stop them from stealing whatever it was they came for, and in that respect you seem to have succeeded.”
Justice League Page 2
