[Emissary] Chapter 18 - Deathtrap (1) (Patreon)

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Chapter 18 - Deathtrap (1)

Dr Hamilton was sipping on a big mug of coffee as he waited for the loading bar of his hacking program to fill. 

‘Why would Superman come to me to decrypt the files on this hard drive? Why didn’t he go to Batman instead?’

It made no sense that Superman would need his help with this because, according to his sources, Batman and his sidekicks, Batgirl and Robin, among many other things, were also genius programmers and hackers. 

‘Are they having a conflict? Is there some sort of internal strife in the Justice League?’

Although he had told Superman that he would need several good days to finish cracking the files, his curiosity got the best of him, and he put on hold everything else that he had been working on for the sake of seeing the contents of the hard drive. 

Now there he was, only on the night of the second day, mere minutes away from bypassing the hard drive’s security and accessing the files. 

Soon, the moment he had been waiting for arrived. 

“Let’s see what you’re hiding in here... Hmm, what’s this?”

There were two main folders: Heroes and Villains. 

Clicking on the Villains folder, five new folders appeared: “Africa”, “Asia”, “Australia and Oceania”, “Europe”, “North America”, “Latin America”. Each continent-folder contained country-folders, and each country-folder contained numerous city-folders. City-folders contained folders with the names of various criminals who operated there. 

Finally, all the folders dedicated to villains contained numerous files about them. Pictures and videos of them, data on the crimes that they had committed, and all sorts of contingency measures and plans designed to subdue them. 

It was a 1000-TB hard drive with an immense database. An encyclopaedia of heroes and villains. 

Out of curiosity, he typed “Superman” in the search bar and pressed Enter. 

Clicking on the folder that showed up, his eyes grew wide when he saw a file named “Contingency Measures” in it. His surprise only grew when he accessed the file and started reading its contents. 

Origin: Alien, Krypton. 

Type: metahuman. 

Abilities: flight, super speed, heat vision [...]

Dr Hamilton skimmed through that section because he was deeply familiar with Superman’s abilities.

Weaknesses: 

• Kryptonite

• Red Radiation

• Vulnerable to psychic attacks

• Vulnerable to magic

• Some degree of vulnerability to plasma

• Vulnerable to sonic attacks

• Minor vulnerability to electricity 

• Atomic radiation

“Plasma bypasses his invulnerability? Sonic attacks too?” the doctor muttered in surprise. 

He used to think that he was the most familiar person with Kryptonians’ physiology in the entire world but that was clearly not the case anymore. Whoever owned that hard drive with data on Superman clearly knew things that the doctor himself didn't, despite having researched Superman’s DNA and tested his physiology for years. 

Character traits: 

• compassion, strong sense of justice, idealism, fairness, optimism, strong will 

• stubbornness, naivete, complacency, overconfidence, impulsiveness 

Dr Hamilton’s focus increased twofold when his eyes fell on “Contingency Plan 1”. Below it there were four more plans, all of them quite detailed and well-thought-out. 

Once he was done reading the files in Superman’s folder, he looked up the names of other members of the Justice League too. 

It seemed like Superman wasn’t an outlier. Whoever the owner of that hard drive was, they had created contingency measures to subdue not only villains but heroes too.

All the members of the Justice League and even unaffiliated heroes and vigilantes had contingency measures in their folders. 

⁂ One week later ⁂

“I want to know the truth! I won’t let you brush me away again with a simple ‘he’s on a secret mission’ excuse!”

Superman let out a sigh. 

“Listen, Robin-”

“It’s Nightwing now!”

“Right, Nightwing. You know what kind of man he is. He didn’t tell me where he went and I didn’t insist on it either. He’s Batman. He can take care of himself.”

“It’s been nearly three weeks already! He’s never been gone for that long! He’d never leave Gotham unprotected for such a long period of time.” Nightwing, a young man in his early 20s said, raising his voice in frustration. 

“When I get some news about Batman, you’ll be the first to find out.” 

“You can’t fool me, Superman!” Nightwing said with an edge in his tone. “I know you know something! You all know something! Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter are nowhere to be seen, Emissary disappeared as well, and Green Lantern and Hawkgirl weren’t in the public eye for over a week too. Something must’ve certainly happened!”

“I’m sorry, gotta go. Someone triggered the alarm of my Super Watch,” the Man of Steel purposely avoided answering him and flew away. 

“Goddamnit!” Nightwing cussed when Superman flew away. 

He was absolutely sure that something had happened. He had tried getting an answer from Superman on two separate occasions, but he was met with no success both times. Since that was the case, he was going to use some less honest methods of acquiring information. 

‘Sneaking undetected into the Watchtower and hacking their security camera records won’t be easy.’

Still, it was not beyond his capability. If they didn’t want to share the truth with him, he was going to dig it out by himself. 

⁂ Later that night ⁂

Superman didn’t lie when he told Nightwing that someone had turned on the alarm of his Super Watch. In fact, Doctor Hamilton had done it for the sake of calling him to hand him over the cracked hard drive. 

“Nothing is going well lately,” he said in chagrin. 

First, Batman died. Then, Wonder Woman resigned from the Justice League and returned to Themyscira. 

Martian Manhunter left the Justice League too. He chose to tag along with Lex Luthor when he went back to his other dimension. 

Then he got into a fight with Power Girl. Thinking of his not-cousin Kara, his mind replayed the incident that took place a week ago. 

“Will you stop acting as if you were my father? You helped me out when I got to Earth, and I’m grateful for that. But you have no say in who I choose to date!” Power Girl shouted.

“It’s not about me being your father!” he shouted back at her. “How could you be with someone like him? How can you live together with a murderer?!”

“Then how can you live with yourself after how many you killed when Darkseid controlled you?” she bit back, incensed. 

“IT’S NOT THE SAME!” he screamed, furious at the fact that he was being compared to Emissary. “I wasn’t myself! Darkseid made me do it! I didn’t have any control over what I did!”

“Neither did Harry! He didn’t choose who got to die and who got to live! The spell just targeted those who wished him harm!”

“Ha! Yeah, that’s what he says! Before dying, Batman told us he had proof that Emissary couldn’t be trusted. And, would you look at that? Batman was killed by Emissary less than two hours later. What a coincidence!”

“Coincidence or not, I know one thing: Harry would never kill an innocent!” Kara said. 

“So now you’re saying that Batman deserved to die?”

“I’m saying that you have no proof! I’m saying it was an accident!” she said and turned away from him. “Come, Harry, let’s go. I’ve had enough.”

“Don’t turn your back on me, Kara! We’re not done talking!”

“No, we’re done. And I won’t talk to you again until you come back to your senses!”

And with that, Emissary took Power Girl and teleported away. More than a week later, Superman could still remember the entire scene perfectly, down to the tiniest details. 

“And now, this hard drive is useless too.”

He had hoped that Batman’s hard drive would contain the information that Batman claimed to have uncovered about Emissary—the thing that would expose the magician’s real, ugly face. It would have been the proof he needed to make Power Girl understand that Emissary could not be trusted, the proof he needed to make everyone else in the Justice League realise that Emissary was nothing but a wolf who was wearing sheepskin. 

However, the hard drive that Dr Hamilton returned to him after cracking its security didn’t contain any information about Emissary. There wasn’t any information on any heroes or allies. It was only an encyclopaedia of Villains and ways to combat them. 

Superman closed his computer and let out another sigh when the sounds of sirens ringing in the distance reached his ears. Once again, he was needed by his city. 

⁂ A few days later ⁂

Thousands of people were gathered in front of a modern-looking building in the central district of Central City. 

A podium was erected at the top of the entrance stairs, and a large banner that said ‘Flash Appreciation Day’ hung on the building behind it. 

“For his charitable work with the city’s underprivileged, his bravery during the shapeshifting aliens’ invasion, and, most of all, for his great help reducing crime in Central City, I proclaim this Flash Appreciation Day!” a middle-aged woman with shoulder-length hair and wearing a blue business suit said in the microphone. 

She gave Flash a very large golden key and shook hands with him. It was the city key. At her actions, the large group of people all started cheering and shouting Flash’s name. 

“Thanks, Mayor,” Flash said, stepping up on the podium to give a speech.  

“Thanks, folks. Wow!” he said, spreading his arms as if he were overwhelmed by their good intentions. “You’ve all been so great to me over the years… It really gets to me, you know? Hope I always make you guys proud.”

“Um… that’s all,” he finished. 

Despite his awkwardness, the people started cheering for him loudly nonetheless. It took the better part of an hour for Flash to answer the journalists’ questions and say his goodbyes to the rest of the regular people who wanted to shake hands and talk to him. 

As the mayor left and the crowd started dispersing, Flash noticed two particular people waving at him.

“Ralph?! Sue?! You really came for me!” Flash said, visibly happy at seeing his old friends. 

“Are you kidding? It’s your big day, mate! I wouldn’t miss it for anything in the world!” 

“I’m so glad the rest of the world finally sees and appreciates what a good guy you are too!” Sue said before opening her arms and beckoning him. “Come here!”

Sue and Ralph took turns giving Flash a hug and patting him on the back. 

⁂ Half an hour later ⁂

“I’ve got to say, I was expecting to see a lot more capes at your ceremony. Where is everyone else?” Ralph asked. 

The three of them were now at Flash’s home, having a chat in his living room. 

Ralph, also known as Elongated Man, was one of the members of the Justice League of Europe, and he usually operated in France. If he could make time to fly over the ocean for the sake of attending his friend’s ceremony, it didn’t make sense to him that the rest of Flash’s friends and teammates couldn’t be there for him. 

“I… kinda didn’t tell anyone else about it,” Flash said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I haven't talked to them lately..."

“Oh. I’m sorry, Wally. Did something happen? You don’t look okay,” Sue said worriedly. 

Now that Flash was not wearing his suit, one could notice that the always cheerful young man wasn’t in the best of moods. 

“Honestly… Things haven’t been going well for me lately,” Wally admitted. He buried his face in his hands. 

“Talk to us, mate. We can’t help you if you’re not telling us what’s wrong. No matter what, you know that you can always count on us,” Elongated Man said. 

Flash let out a sigh, and, with his palms still covering his face, he confessed:

“I… killed someone.”

Ralph and Sue looked at each other with a mixture of worry, confusion, and disbelief on their faces. That didn’t sound like the Wally West they knew. 

“It happened in a flash… I didn’t even know what was going on as I watched him die in my own arms.”

“Who died? What happened? What is going on?” Ralph asked. “Start from the beginning.”

Flash hadn’t talked about it with anyone, bottling up his feelings of shock and guilt at what he had unknowingly done. He needed to talk to someone, but that wasn’t exactly the kind of thing he could talk about with his mother or a regular therapist. 

At Ralph and Sue’s encouragement, Flash started venting out all the feelings and emotions that he had bottled up over the past few weeks. 

He told them about the existence of parallel universes. The scientist in Elongated Man was dying to learn more about that, but he kept his mouth shut and just listened to Flash talking about the good Lex Luthor of the other dimension, the Crime Syndicate, and finally, their battle on the moon. 

“Two villains from the Crime Syndicate tried to pass through the circle of fire and were killed on the spot. But Emissary said that his fire spell wouldn’t hurt anyone who didn’t wish him harm.”

“Wonder Woman was the first to pass through the fire. One by one, the rest of my teammates passed through as well, and they were all unharmed. So I stopped worrying about it. I picked up Batman, who was gravely injured in my arms and ran to safety too. But when I stepped through the circle of fire-”

“-Don’t tell me!”

“-yeah. Batman started burning. I watched him turn into ash right in my very hands.”

Sue covered her mouth with her hand as she listened to this story. 

“But why would such a thing happen?!” she asked in disbelief. 

“It’s Batman. He never fully trusted any of us. He probably never liked anyone enough to call them friends. I know he certainly didn’t seem to like Emissary. He never stopped saying how he couldn’t be trusted,” Wally explained. 

“You mean his paranoia got him killed? …Damn,” Elongated Man cussed. 

“It wasn’t your fault, Wally,” Sue was quick to console him. “You had no way of knowing things would turn out like that. You said it yourself; you and everyone else passed through the fire just fine…”

Wally looked down, unable to meet her eyes. 

“On a rational level, I know it’s not my fault. I know it’s not Emissary’s fault either. I know it was just an unfortunate accident… …But I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t take his dying screams out of my head. I can’t forget how he burned to death, in seconds.”

Showing how familiar he was with Wally’s place, Ralph went to the fridge in the kitchen and brought two beers with him. 

“Here, man. Have a beer. It’ll all be better after you take a chug,” Ralph said, opening the bottle for him. 

“Ralph! Don’t push him into becoming an alcoholic!” Sue scolded him. 

Wally found himself smiling at the two of them.

“I couldn’t get drunk even if I wanted. My metabolism is too fast for that. Leaving that aside, how rude of you, man. Why didn’t you bring a beer for the lady too?”

“Sue isn’t allowed to drink now,” Ralph answered. 

“Huh? Are you ill?” Wally asked Sue. 

“No… actually, I’m pregnant.”

Flash alternated between looking at Sue and Ralph, wide-eyed from surprise. 

“Oh, wow! Wow! Congratulations, man!” he said with enthusiasm, seemingly forgetting all about his depression and guilt for a moment. 

“Haha, thanks!” 

“Is it a boy? Or a girl? What are you going to name him or her? How long-”

“Hold your horses!” Ralph stopped his barrage of questions. “It’s too early to know that; we’ve only just found out.”

“Still, maaaan, you’re having a baby! Feels like yesterday that we were playing ping pong and going to arcade games together! Not only that you’re married, but you’re even about to have a baby!”

“I know, right? I can’t believe it either!”

Sue giggled softly at the two men. Wally was a forensics scientist and a superhero, one of the founding members of the Justice League, and Ralph, her husband, was a genius chemist, a detective, and one of the founding members of the Justice League of Europe. The two of them were rather accomplished and important people in today’s society, but, deep down, they were still a pair of goofy boys at heart.

“The day I met Sue was the best day of my life!” Ralph said and kissed his wife on the cheek. 

“Ahh, I’m so envious of you two.”

“You should try to start looking for someone too. You’re not getting any younger,” Ralph said smugly. 

“Har har!”

The three friends spent the next hour having a great time chatting and catching up with each other. 

At some point, Sue got a notification and unlocked her smartphone to check it out. 

“Ralph, Wally, you might want to check this out,” she said, showing them the screen of her phone.

It was a news website, and the title of the article was: 

Mirror Master hijacked the new maglev train from Keystone City. 

⁂

While Mirror Master hijacked the train from Keystone City, Superman was in the middle of a press conference as Clark Kent, taking notes and asking questions, doing his job as a reporter. 

An unexpected call from Lois Lane made him excuse himself and leave the conference room in order to answer it. 

“Hello?”

Without as much as a greeting, Lois said:

“It’s me. You know Henry Ackerdson?”

“He used to be White House beat, got downsized? He was a good reporter. A real shame.”

“It’s about to be a bigger shame,” Lois said. “He’s going to jump off the top of the Daily Planet.”

“I’m on my way.”

Terminating the call, he ducked into a bathroom stall, took off his glasses, and changed into his Superman costume. 

By the time Superman arrived at the scene, Daily Planet was cordoned off by the police, and over a hundred curious bystanders had gathered around the building to watch the incident. 

“Mister Ackerdson?” Superman asked as a form of greeting once he flew to the rooftop and saw the past-his-prime overweight man standing on the edge. “May I call you Henry?”

“Call me whatever you want. It doesn’t matter. Nothing does,” the man said despondently. 

“I’m going to have to disagree with you, sir. Everything matters. Everybody matters,” Superman said, inching closer to him. 

“Don’t come any closer! I’ll do it!” Ackerdson shouted as she took out a revolver and pointed it at his own temple. 

“Okay. I’m staying right here,” Superman said quickly to calm him down.

⁂

As Superman was trying to calm down the suicidal old man, Flash was running atop the water as he crossed the Missouri River in order to get to Keystone City. 

Living up to his moniker as the “Fastest Man Alive”, it took Flash less than half a minute to catch up with the maglev train and jump on its last carriage. 

The doors of the carriage were shut, but he vibrated his body at a very high intensity and passed through them like a ghost. 

The first thing he saw was that three officers were lying on the floor tied and gagged. It took him less than two seconds for him to untie their ropes and gags. 

“Flash!”

“Mirror Master is here!”

“I’m glad you came!”

“So I’ve heard. Why would Mirror Master target this train?” Flash asked. 

“We’re shipping old cash to the federal reserve,” one of the officers said. 

“Old cash?” 

“It’s being taken out of circulation. It’ll be destroyed and replaced with new bills,” another one of the officers explained. 

“Unless Mirror Master steals it first, which ain’t gonna happen on my watch,” the third officer said bravely, taking out his handgun. 

Flash couldn’t help a smile as she said:

“Buddy, I just untied you, remember? You’re lucky he let you live. Stay here and I’ll take a crack at him.”

And with that, he blurred out of the carriage. 

It was only a few seconds later that Flash encountered the villain in question. 

‘Or a hologram of him. You never know with this guy.’

“Took you long enough to get here,” Mirror Master said. 

He looked just as Flash remembered him with his yellow suit with dark green accents, green cap, and green goggles, but he couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was wrong. 

‘How did Mirror Master find out they were transporting old cash? And why are there only three guards escorting this train? There must be dozens of millions here,’ Flash thought as he looked at the dozens of pallets filled with stacked money. 

He was shaken off his thoughts when Mirror Master suddenly grabbed his pair of high-tech pistols and started blasting laser rays at him. 

“I thought this was a robbery, but it looks more like you’re doing the feds’ work for them,” Flash teased him as he easily dodged the laser blasts, which in turn destroyed whole chunks out of the stacks of cash. 

A few seconds later, Flash’s punch went through Mirror Master’s gut, revealing the fact that it was, unsurprisingly, a hologram, not the real person. 

“Which one of us is real?” a chorus of voices was heard as ten other holograms suddenly appeared in the carriage after the first one was destroyed. 

But Flash destroyed them all in the blink of an eye before proceeding to the next carriage. Eventually, he reached the final (first) carriage. 

Wally squinted his eyes at Mirror Master, who seemed to have been waiting for him with his hands behind his back all along. 

“Courage. Step closer. I’m not going to kill you yet,” Mirror Master said confidently. 

“What’s in the box?” Flash asked suspiciously, noticing the cloth-covered box behind the yellow-costumed villain. 

“Dead grandma.” 

Flash frowned. “What kind of sick jokes-”

“Relax,” Mirror Master cut him off. “I got a little ahead of myself. You can hardly blame me for trying to keep up with the likes of you.” 

He pulled off the cloth covering the box, revealing the fact that it was transparent.

It could be seen even through the mask that covered half his face that Flash’s expression stiffened when he saw an old woman lying trapped inside. 

“She’s still alive,” Mirror Master said while pressing a particular button on the box. 

At the beeping sound that started ringing once he pressed that button, Flash looked like he was about to lunge at him. 

“Don’t move!” Mirror Master said threateningly. “You really wanna hear all this first.”

With the old lady’s life at stake, Flash didn’t dare to make any rash moves and waited for the villain to start talking. 

“I call this my hostage box. At the end of the countdown, which is already in progress, the box will activate and instantly kill the old woman unless you use your superspeed to get her out.”

“It’s a trap,” Flash said. Even a kid could see through the villain’s intentions. “That could very well be just another one of your holograms too, instead of a real person.”

“Most probably,” Mirror Master said, shrugging his shoulders. “But you can’t take that chance, can you? What if it’s a real grandma? Are you willing to bet her life on it? So what is it going to be? Are you going to pass on this challenge? Are you fast enough, Flash?”

As Mirror Master stepped to the side of the box, Flash sped up to it and quickly inserted his hand into the box through the round opening on its top in order to open the vault-like lock that was located on the inside.

But as he started rotating the lock at great speed in order to open the box, a metallic vice came through the body of the old lady, revealing the fact that it was a hologram, and snapped a metallic bracelet around Flash’s wrist. 

Flash screamed in agonising pain as he wrenched his hand out of the box and instinctively pulled on it to remove it. 

“Careful. It was bolted through your wrist,” Mirror Master said. 

“What?!”

“It’s a bomb with a three-mile blast radius. If you try to remove the bracelet or vibrate to phase through it, it will explode. If you do nothing in 60 seconds, it will explode too. Now, before you heroically leave the train to protect the passengers, there’s one last thing: once you start running, if you decelerate-”

“It explodes,” Flash completed his words for him. 

“You’ve got 12 seconds left to decide what to do,” Mirror Master said and smirked. “I don’t much care which way you go because I’m not really here.”

⁂

While Flash started running across the country for his life, back in Metropolis City, Superman was still in the process of trying to talk the old man out of committing suicide. 

“You don’t understand,” said Ackerdson. “I’ve been a newspaperman for 40 years. I started as a copyboy when I was 16. Always thought I’d be doing it until the day I died.”

He let out a snort of sardonic laughter. 

“I guess I got that part right…”

“There are other jobs. It’s not all over,” Superman reasoned with him. 

“Newspapers are dying. I spent my life fighting for the little guy, fighting for truth and justice,” the old man said. “It isn’t relevant anymore.”

“That’s what some people say. But I’ve fought for the same things, even when they don’t seem fashionable,” Superman said. “It’s a never-ending battle, but we can’t quit because the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. We have to fight on.” 

“I’m not the man you think I am,” the old man said gloomily. “I’m too weak to fight anymore. 

“You’re stronger than you know, Mr Ackerdson,” Superman encouraged him. 

The old man let out a sigh, seemingly convinced by his words, and put the gun down from his temple. 

Superman landed on the rooftop, in front of him and slowly went for the gun in his hand, intent on taking it away. 

However, at the last moment, Mr Ackerdson stepped out of his reach and aimed his gun at him.

Superman looked at him in surprise, not having expected the old reporter to do that. But he wasn’t worried in the least.

Before he could ask him to calm down, the old man pressed the trigger. 

 *bang*

For an instant, it was as if Superman didn’t register what happened. But then, a feeling of pain like he rarely ever got to feel exploded from his chest. 

Bringing his hand to his chest, Superman appeared to be stunned at the sight of the red blood staining his palm. 

His disbelief turned into outright shock as the overweight old man’s appearance changed, morphing into a cyborg that he was very familiar with. 

It was none other than Metallo. 

“Kryptonite bullet. And Kryptonite heart,” Metallo said as his breastplate opened to reveal the large chunk of kryptonite inside his chest, making Superman instinctively back away. 

Dizzy with pain and running mostly on autopilot, the Man of Steel didn’t notice when he reached the very edge of the rooftop and took one last step. 

The people below let out cries of shock as they watched the Kryptonian fall off the building on his back, cracking the street with his body. 

“Superman!” Lois shouted and crawled under the cordon before rushing at him. 

The Man of Steel didn’t answer. He was unconscious, his breathing was weak, and a trail of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. 

⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂

AN: sorry, no Harry in this chapter. But it's necessary to give the other characters some screen time too. Some of you have probably recognised which Justice League movie is going to be used next.

Hope you enjoyed it. Until next time!