Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I want to tell you a story that takes place somewhere in the near future. A near-future that does not have a set time or date, as the present that it is attached to floats around. ‘Now’ is always ‘now’, and that is the time and era that the story is being told in. Autumn has just started, only barely enough that you can get away with wearing coats and jackets when you go out and ditch them by the early afternoon. 

It’s a sunny morning, and while I’m not asking to tempt fate, it has so far gone relatively without a hitch. 

Even in this near future, Metropolis is still famous around the world for it being the home of Superman. A man with the powers of a god and the heart of a saint; he’s the everyman stranger who you would feel safe around with or without his uniform, a shining example of the city and the good of selfless humanity and hope personified by an alien who can just happen to shoot lasers out of his eyes.

You can get the gist of the rest of the whole spheal. I don’t take you for an idiot; only a (hopefully) captive audience. This is not a story about that particular Superman. He is not in it, and likely will never be.

But fear not, for there is another man who has recently taken over his mantle. It is public knowledge that he is the son of the previous Superman, half-human and not known about by the rest of the world until he was ready to take the throne. 

He doesn’t wear a cape, but his tunic is loose around his body and wrapped tight around his forearms acting a little like a wingsuit to help him steer in flight, hands wrapped like a fighter to protect them as he goes up against opponents his father or any of his old cohorts wouldn’t have ever dreamed of. He dawns a hood, often worn over his head, the fabric helping to keep a curly mop of hair out of the way. He is a no-nonsense, in-and-out-of-the-danger, always-on-to-the-next sort of man. Always moving, always fighting, always protecting. 

Perhaps this Superman is simply just a different person than the last, perhaps the weight of destiny and powers can affect how you see the world. There is no room to become attached, you are here for a purpose and a job. The last Superman worked through those feelings with a smile, the light of a single person’s smile and hope seemingly being all the inspiration he needed. 

He is not the only son of Superman. There is another Kryptonian, known for some time as Superboy, a clone made of his DNA destined to, one day,  replace him . While the story that the public knows might not be the entire truth, it is still evident that the two have, at the minimum, a shared comradery because of the Superman mantle. 

At the point in time that this story is set, Superboy is off-planet. 

This is not a story about this Superman. 

He is featured in it, sure, but this is not his story. 

The real story begins within the Lexcorp head office building. It’s 9:38 in the morning on a Tuesday, and there is currently an active hostage situation on one of the office floors. There is a thin plume of smoke leaving the building through a smashed window and law enforcement surrounding every single one of the entrances. None of the officers have yet been able to send up any negotiators to quell the situation, and the demands given so far have been rather difficult to match. 

The actual hero of this particular story is a man who had come in for an interview this same morning, and had apparently gotten himself displaced in the commotion of the whole ‘there is an active shooter in the building you really ought to leave ’ situation. This man has just (deliberately) walked into the hot room, thumbs hooked on his belt loops and as calm and collected as if he had come in to fill out some paperwork. His name is Jon (there is no h at the end when it is short like that, but he wouldn’t fault you for adding it in) and he’s fairly tall, lean like somebody who runs a lot and with dirty blond hair that had been cut the day before. 

He should, and I mean this as sincerely as I possibly can, ab-so-fucking-lutely not be standing in that doorway.

“You’re with the coppers - aren’t ya? Sent in to try and fuck with me. You’re going to fucking die that’s what you’re going to do,” The gun in the man’s hand was new - but not cleaned correctly, pointed right at his head with the confidence of somebody learning to drive for the first time. 

Jon’s composure was iron-tight. If his heart was racing, it wasn’t noticeable from the outside. “I’m not with the police,” he explained, voice soft and calm, “I was a few moments late off becoming a hostage, I'd feel horrible getting out when nobody else could.” 

The man lowers the gun, if only a little. It’s hard to tell if he’s coming down or just perplexed.

“Can I sit down?” Jon asked with his hands still up. He didn’t wait for an answer and lowered them to dust off a filing cabinet that had been knocked over so that he could take a seat. His hands went to his lap. Inside of the building, the situation is an eerie quiet; on the police radio, it’s mad panic. 

“Do you want to talk?” Jon asks. He speaks as if he’s been well trained to do this. 

The man doesn’t reply. 

Jon seems to take this as a good sign to keep going. “I getcha, yaknow, you don’t have to do or say anything else. But I might keep talking if you don’t.” His accent is a little hard to pin down; it sounds broad, but with flakes of the Midwest echoing in some of his vowels when you wouldn’t expect it. There is another beat of silence, and then he speaks again. “Hey, was there someone in particular you needed to reach? Is it just one person you really, really want to hurt?” 

“… Luthor." The answerer was mumbled so quietly and with such disdain that it was hard to catch. 

“Oh! I feel ya, I feel ya on that one,” Jon’s voice is light, almost as if he’s trying his best not to smile in full understanding. There were a lot of people who felt exactly the same about that man. “Okay, one more question and I’ll get out of your hair and go and sit down with the rest of these folks: Is getting your message to him worth your life?” 

The man paused. He studied the carpet for a moment before giving a soft nod. 

“Then it’s worth mine, just as much.”

The pair talked for 24 minutes, almost to the dot. 

It had boiled down to legal issues, decades of litigation and lawsuits that had been deemed not even worth the paper the paperwork was printed on. Every cent and spark of life had been wrung out of him like a paper towel before falling apart. With all the money in the world and hands in every legal pocket out there, it all hadn’t even been a mosquito bite’s worth of annoyance to Luthor. It would be a fair guess that Luthor didn’t even know who this man was, even after the situation was resolved. 

He eventually surrenders his gun on the honest assurance from Jon that this all will be made better. The instigator is still an emotional mess: tears of frightened anger turned grief beginning to dry as the Metropolis SWAT officers take him away. 

Jon has made himself scarce by this point, slipping away to the lower levels of the tower through an elevator during the brief interval in which the police were storming the fire escapes upwards, and inconspicuously heads towards the lush parklands outside of the building. He checks his phone; it’s an older model by a couple of years and heavily cracked underneath a glass screen protector. It’s in a Superman-branded case that looks like it’s had better days. 

Missed calls from his contact at the job interview and then an official-sounding text from them was sent a few minutes later telling him to remain away from the building (oops). No other messages or e-mails in this time. 

“Hello, there — It’s Jonathan Kent just returning a missed call. I was meant to have a meeting with you at nine — yes I’ll hold,” he listens to the rustled silence on the other end for a moment as he looks back up at the Lexcorp tower. The building has stopped smoking — a good sign. The voice on the other line talks for a while, and then Jon replies again, “No — no I understand — Yes. It’s fine. That’s really awful to hear… Yeah. I’m just glad you’re all okay. M’hm. Well, I won’t keep you, I’ll talk to you another time. Take care.” 

No job interview, it figures. Any hope of getting it rescheduled would have to depend on how seriously they take threats like that in the office, and the odds were good that he'd get lost in the paperwork shuffle within the hour. With an understanding sigh, Jon leans on a tree and texts somebody in his contacts under the name ‘Baby Bro - 🦸’. 

>Still on for lunch? 😋🍔

Deep underground, but not so far removed in space that we are no longer in Metropolis, a new underground railway network is being built. These tracks, once completed, are to be used for a bullet train network that goes directly through the mountain range, and even under the national parks to help revolutionize travel in and out of the city. 

The huge drill with the power of a tank, is carefully controlled by humans and computers alike far away in the control room. It’s been instructed to keep to the softer rock, a layer of settlement in the mountain straight enough that it would be perfect for a bullet train to pass through. Early scans have told them that they’re about to reach a large, enclosed, cave system, and everybody approaches it with bated breath. 

The drill head finally breaks into the cavern and stops in place, stale air escaping with a hiss as dirt and rubble fall forward. A small swarm of drones smush through the open gaps armed with cameras and scanners to examine in order to better understand the structural integrity of the cave systems. If one was imaginative, they could have sworn that there is an old laboratory or fallout bunker inside. 

Far weirder things have been found in Metropolis soil. 

This crew is by far the first people down here. Old benches and storage rooms that had been bolted to the earth, tiled floors still clean and air conditioning systems that have rusted solid after years of being untouched. Everything that could be moved or destroyed has been cleared out, everything else not deemed worthy enough to even express the effort. 

Little did anybody there that morning know, that the movement of the Earth and the introduction of life and light down in this bunker had awoken something that will soon become highly important to this story. A crack in the glass containment, fresh air seeping through, and the right computers talking to each other had awoken to attention a swam of what could be described as a fine black swam - tiny flying nanobots moving around like tv static or smoke. 

The tiny dots reconnect with each other like long-forgotten cohorts and slip out to freedom before anybody even knows that they should have been watching out for them. Nobody is there to tell them that they’re no longer needed, and they move with the intention and power of a swam of hungry locusts on a rampage. 

Chapter Text

While I did tell you at the beginning that there were only two heirs of Superman, that isn’t the entire truth. One interesting thing to note is that the Superman of today and the man we have been following just happen to be twin brothers. Fraternal and as unalike as two brothers could possibly be, but brothers nonetheless. 

Jon is older, in case you were wondering, if only by a couple of minutes. You could, if you ever were in the same room as the two of them at the same time, figure this out in an instant. Jon just has that vibe that older twins constantly emit when they find themselves in a position in which they can tell people that they’re the older one. Still, given everything, Jon was allowed to take and flaunt that tiny victory: it would appear that fate had played her favourites early on. Jon Kent, the firstborn biological son of Superman, did not have any powers. 

He was as half-alien as his brother, oh yes — you could see there was some Kyrtonian blood in him according to his medical file, but barely anything worthwhile had come out of it. He was nothing more than a regular man, clearly neurodivergent in some way, but only human in the end. 

Having the same ancestry and the same upbringing as each other, it would have been easy — expected, almost — for the universe to write an ‘evil twin’ and a ‘good twin’ dynamic between the two of them. It would’ve been a missed opportunity not to screw over one of them. 

But, y'know what? Jonathan Kent simply didn’t believe in that sort of thing. He had already had his moments of angst and anger towards the world — anybody would — but for the moment his focus in life is just getting everything back on track. A step towards that would have been getting a stable job, if he can actually land one without buildings blowing up before he can get there. 

Jon’s current place is in an old apartment building turned short-term hostel, the type you settle in for a month or so at most when you’re new to the city without a place to go to, or when you’re just about to be or finish being homeless. Floral wallpaper and an old dead gas-electric line that had been painted over that nobody has ever bothered to remove; the place feels like a slice of Gotham incarnate. The neighbours are loud at night and asleep during the day, but at least there’s no nagging feeling in his gut that makes him ache to lock every door and window once he gets home, so that’s a welcome addition. 

Jon leaves his laptop bag in the doorway and collapses on his futon bed, making it rock a little and emit a concerning squeak. Jordan had replied to his text at some point during the monorail trip home. 

>cant. will msg if I can make drinks tonight
>work stuff
>sorry

This was the third time in a row he flaked on him like this. It was always hero stuff in the way, Jon could understand that much. Jordan took after their father a lot in that way. The reality of it is that saving people’s lives is always more important than brunch or a movie or whatever that could always be rescheduled, but it still hurt, even after years. It had been exactly the same as the two were growing up. 

Jon closed his phone and dropped it on his chest. He let out a sigh to himself and forced his mind to realign. No lunch, no job, and likely no interview at all after that whole debacle in the tower making him leave with more important things to worry about. It left him with a lot of free time and not a lot of cash to spend in the meantime. Metropolis was almost the most densely populated city in the country, and there were only so many jobs accepting felons with his sort of weirdly high qualifications. 

And then his phone began to ring, snapping Jon out of the strange line of thought he’d gotten stuck in. 

Oh wow, it was the contact number he had for the job interview, apparently one of the few freak times in history that a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” had resulted in the other party actually calling you. 

“N'yello. Jon Kent speaking.”

“Morning, this is Lucille Martian. We were meant to have a meeting earlier today?” 

“Oh yes, hello.” he answered, sitting up in place. 

She spoke like a medical receptionist who had just watched somebody being dragged kicking and screaming into the foyer by their arms, but still had to keep a blank face to sign somebody in. “I just wanted to clarify something with you real quick, would that be okay?” 

“Mh-hm,” Jon said with a nod. In hindsight, every alarm bell in his head should have been ringing right now. None were. 

“I’m just reviewing some of the security footage from the… incident earlier, and I don’t wish to accuse you of anything, but was it you who intervened?” 

There it is! The alarm bell. Better late than never, I suppose. 

Jon paused for a moment, it took a remarkable amount of strength not to hang up right there and then smash his sim card under his boot to get out of this conversation. “…Would I… be in trouble if it was?” 

“….Um… possibly ? If the police ask, I suppose. But you wouldn’t be in trouble on my end, no.” She was clearly not expecting that of all things to be asked. 

“That was me, yes.” 

You could hear a sigh from the other end of the line. “Right. Okay. That’s somehow not the most insane thing that somebody has told me today,” papers flicked not too far away from the microphone, “If it works for you we can reschedule that interview for a later time today.”

Jon looked back at Jordan’s texts still open under the pop-up tab of the call. “Actually, my lunch hour just cleared up.” 

There was far less chaos before the Lexcorp head office now than what that morning had seen. Far fewer police officers around, at least. The QR code he had been given that morning as a temporary elevator pass still worked. A fast elevator, woodgrain hallways. Jon couldn’t quite tell if the plants that were being used as decoration next to a donated piece of abstract art were real or fake as he searched for the right office. There was no television in the empty waiting room, all the magazines being business-related and only mildly dusty. Jon barely had enough time to fix his tie before the woman who had spoken to him on the phone appeared in the doorway beside him. 

“Mr Kent?” She asked, offering her hand in a shake that Jon reciprocated a little too fast. Her hands were fairly callous as if she had experience handling weapons. Admittedly, that’s a strange thing to notice about a woman you’ve just met, but Jon knew a lot of strange people with hands that were exactly the same. She wore her curly hair in a mild perm that made her look like she had walked out of the 1940s, and was dressed up for her job and had tidied herself up after the whole ‘ somebody had a bomb and also hostages on the floor you work at’ thing earlier that morning. Jon wasn’t even a bit surprised that Lexcorp made people still work after that. 

“Lucille Martian, if you would like to follow me to my office we can begin” she re-introduced as the two began to walk down the maze of carpeted halls. Her office had a window overlooking the bay. It was a nice view, but since it was facing west, the setting sun would make it impossible to work. 

“Just so we’re on the same page, what position are you applying for?”

Ah, right into the high-value tests. Jon stumbled for a moment to find his words, “Human resources coordinator — Lexcorp employee management division.” 

There was an entire floor in the building for the people who made sure that the different divisions of Lexcorp were running smoothly. These were the people who turn up to your work at random to make sure everything is going up to standards when they very clearly had no idea how the environment operated and then made you sit through a sexual harassment or an internet safety training. The vultures of the office world, but important to ensure that a division or a project doesn’t collapse from the inside. 

“HR for the office HR people,” Lucille replied. 

“Hopefully,” he replied with a smile as he put his hand on the back of his chair, hoping that was the right answer. “Can I hang my jacket here?”

“Certainly.” 

It was a nice jacket, most likely leather (pleather? Perhaps? It was just as possible.) Not thick enough to be a motorcycle jacket and nice enough to wear to an interview. It was too warm of a day to wear it but you wouldn’t have to take it off in an office setting. Jon’s dress shirt was rolled up to his elbows, you could see the start of a tattoo on his arm, but the sleeve was covering the rest of it. They began without much fuss. 

“It says here that you’re rather experienced with meta-human crisis management.”

“I do what I can,” Jon replied, trying to keep his smile as soft as possible. 

“As in, you’ve faced supervillains directly.”

“As a de-escalation agent, yes. I don’t get to punch anybody.” That was a blatant lie, but he was trying to get a job here, not a date. 

“Mr Kent I have to ask, It seems like this position is a bit of a downgrade for what you have done in the past.”

Jon had been slowly sinking into his chair, he lifted himself back up before he replied. How the hell do you answer that without belittling the place you’re trying to work for? “I’ve recently moved to the city, I’m hoping to be able to settle down in Metropolis with a more stable position.”

Lucille gave a small nod and wrote something down. “It appears that you declined an Agency position not too long ago that, on paper, you seem perfect for.”

A tiny cringe on Jon’s part. Man, this woman had done her fair amount of OSINT work and knew how to use it on candidates. And to amend the record: He didn’t decline the offer, the Agency had declined to hire him . “…I had other work commitments at the time.”

There was a gap in the timeline right about where the ‘other work commitments’ should have been written. “And that was?”

“Truthfully? Work for the Justice League.” 

She lowered the papers to look him square in the eyes. She didn’t seem to quite believe him. 

“It was a good chunk of r’n’d work and on-and-off radio monitoring around my study. I’ve already breached the non-disclosure agreement telling you that much.” 

“You’ve worked for the Justice League?” She repeated, waiting for the punchline. “How did you come into that?” 

Jon simply couldn’t offer much of an explanation. “Family connections and being in the right place at the right time, I suppose.” 

“….And you’re not still employed through them because?” 

He shrugged. “I wanted a change of scenery and I’ve got family here in the city, yaknow?” 

“I can understand that, yes,” she replied, writing something else down in pen and putting out another set of stapled-together paper. “You must understand the importance of what we do here, although I’m starting to suspect that you may be already well-versed in operations of this level.” 

Jon nodded. 

“You’ve got good qualifications, but the lack of direct experience in this position and the massive gaps in your history is a little concerning,” she looked up at him, “not to mention the police record.” 

Jon gave her a closed-mouthed smile. He knew that he didn’t supply any information on that, “I don’t believe that there are ‘bad guys’ or villains as such, people are always changing and improving, I’ve seen that first hand. Even Mr. Luthor has been known to make super weapons and death rays and such, and he’s still a free man.”

“Allegedly.” Said as if she was the one who had to deal with the paperwork of all of that. 

“Allegedly,” Jon repeated with a shrug. 

Mr Kent was avoiding the question, both of them could notice that much. 

They continued. 

Suddenly, something on her desk buzzed a sort of buzz that indicated that it was important enough for her to check as soon as it came through. Lucille’s face scrunched up as she read it. “I’m so sorry Mr Kent, but it appears that something important has just come up.” She sounded apologetic, honest and actually not in the usual ‘ trying-to-end-this-interview-early ’ sort of way. 

Jon stood up and offered a parting handshake, which she took, and then he slipped his jacket back on with a quick roll of his shoulders. “Hopefully I haven’t kept you from something too important.” 

“Oh no, it doesn’t concern you at all.” 

“Should I,” he hesitated for a split of a second, unsure if he should keep talking or if he should bail to save face, “talk to the receptionist to reschedule?”

“Uh,” Lucille looked over some of her paperwork. “You should be fine, our meeting today was more just to understand your general character than anything else, all your details are already on file.” 

Jon offered a friendly parting smile and hoped that what she said had meant something good, mentally crossing off the job as a dead end. 

He had almost managed to get halfway across the crosswalk before his phone erupted with messages begging him to return to the Lexcorp building.

Chapter Text

A brilliant engineer and renowned inventor in fields including robots, energy conversion, and cloning (just to name a few), Lex Luthor was an interesting man. You didn’t have to like him – most people didn’t – but you had to at least admire the man for his gumption. He had made Lexcorp from almost nothing, being hostile with his takeovers and being willing to work with anybody as long as it meant an improved bottom line. 

He was also an old bald jerkface who put far too much time, effort and money into trying to kill Superman. You could try and write cartoon villains as silly as possible and still get a visit from his legal teams. Can you imagine if like - Bruce Wayne or Elon Musk also made ‘can only kill your dad’ death rays in his free time? Or kept trying to make clones of him? That would be weird as all hell. It was weird as hell. 

And yet, there Jon was, called into the main office of the main man himself. 

The office felt like it took up a good 3rd of the floor, clean carpet and a lot of expensive art and artefacts from around the globe filling up spaces that a potted plant could better fill. There was a suit of armour by the doorway - who has a suit of armour in their office? Lex Luthor, I suppose. Or Bruce Wayne, actually, now that Jon thinks about it. Mr Wayne has an entire dinosaur skeleton in his man-cave so maybe a suit of armour isn’t that weird. 

Luthor was sitting at his desk, looking like he hadn’t slept in the last three days. No tie and white dress shirt rolled up at the sleeves, you could see the stubborn rennets of oil stains on his hands as he heild them in place to stop himself from hitting something. Luthor hadn’t aged as much as you would have expected him to in all of this time – although that may have had more to do with the fact that he’d looked middle-aged since the moment he graduated high school.

Lucille Martian was standing beside him, holding some paperwork and a tablet piled up in her arm. She looked like she didn’t want to be there, eyes quietly begging not to be called upon to present whatever unknown bit of information Mr Luthor had called this meeting about. 

“I didn’t know you handled HR,” Jon said with a broad smile as he saulted into the office: he was going to milk this opportunity for as long as possible. Being able to waste even a little bit of the all-mighty Lex Luthor’s time was always a good idea. Was it highly unprofessional? Sure. Was it worth it? Absolutely. You don’t need to worry about job security under the guy if your interview is stopped at the door anyways. 

“Cut the crap, Kent.” No fluff, no padding. Like a really shitty car seat. “What do you think you’re doing?” 

“ My dude , you’re going to have to give me more specifics on what you mean by that.” 

Luthor looked like he was about to have a stroke on being called ‘my dude.’ he pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a soft, soundless sigh. “Did you not think I would recognize you if you tried to work for me? What is your end goal here? Just try and fly under the radar?” 

“Uh, I have rent to pay, sir,” was Jon’s reply. 

Shockingly, Luthor was unconvinced. “You cannot work here.” 

“Why not?” 

“I’m saying no. I’m not having this conversation.” 

“Why? Are you xenophobic?” 

“No-“ 

“Antisemitic?” 

“No I-“

“Don’t tell me it’s somehow the bisexuality that you have a problem wi-“

“Shut up!” Luthor’s hands were smacked on his desk at this point, finger inching towards a bright red security button. “Just — shut up.” 

Lucille looked like she was about to melt. Did she have to call someone? Say something? Today was already so goddamn weird. 

Luthor began his rant. All of his rants where more or less the exact same, so there wouldn’t be much point in writing it out. After about a solid minute of chewing the air it became immediately clear to Luthor that Jon had stopped listening. “What – what are you looking at?”

Jon’s attention was far off in space, eyes on the window just above Luthor’s sightline. “There is a small… swarm of something outside your window,” Jon replied, voice and mannerisms slightly stiff with distraction. 

The other two turned around at the same time. 

Luthor’s went hush. “…..Why yes, that appears to be the case.'' Was it some sort of cloud? No, more like a swarm of something hovering right at the window. Whatever made up the swarm was too small to make out any details, but it looked like an alarmingly high amount of bees. 

The next bit happened in a fraction of an instant. 

A small beam of light scanned the room, identifying both Luthor and Lucille in an outline of red and Jon in green. This green was the trigger – the permission needed to launch a full frontal assault. 

The heavy glass behind Luthor’s desk shattered from the outside, throwing tiny shards of glass shrapnel in all directions like a balloon being burst in slow motion. Without hesitation, Luthor dove in front of his desk as an impromptu shield, taking Lucille by her collar down with him before she was even able to fully comprehend what was happening.

In the exact same blip of time, Jon dove back to try and get out of the way of the glass. A fraction too far away in space and time to join the others behind the desk, Jon had no protection as the entire swam came for his blood. 

The swarm was warm from friction. It stung like bubbling oil as every tiny robot nicked and dug right into him through his clothing. 

He couldn’t think. He couldn’t move. Every bit of mental processing power he had on him was taken over by animal fear as he tried to brush them away. 

With less than a moment to calculate what to do, Luthor reached for, struggled to pick up though the blind commotion, and threw something about the size of a stress ball in Jon’s direction. 

The tiny EMP surged as it hit him – hundreds of tiny lights flashing like a hive in distress before the nanobots receded just enough for Luthor to stand, grab Jon with his spare arm and throw all three of them into a safe room that had been camouflaged as a painting before the silent alarms had been triggered. 

All three were dead quiet in the elevator as they tried to process what had just happened. There was the whirr of the elevator going down, soft lights doing nothing but accentuating the fearful looks in Lucille and Jon’s eyes. 

Jon was barely conscious and on the floor, hands on his legs as he tried to catch his breath. The poor man looked like somebody had just pushed him off a building and was caught by a flag. Lucille was leaning on an internal railing, hand going through her hair as she tried to keep herself tethered to reality. 

Luthor looked only mildly annoyed as he stood in the middle of the room, checking his watch, rolling down his sleeves, and then giving a small glance over at the two other passengers to make sure they were both still breathing. 

Both looked like they were fighting back tears, not wanting to be the one to crack first. 

Jon was the one to finally break the thick tension with a breathy, half-whispered “ fuck .”

Luthor looked down at him over the bridge of his nose. “ This was why.” 

You could see the fire in Jon’s eyes and body ignite at that comment, perhaps even the hint of an ultra-red glow willing to burn a hole in the man’s head if given the ability too. He could take jabs at him, sure, but not to his family’s honnor as blatantly as that. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He shot up. Jon was taller than him standing at his full height. You could see him struggle to say his next response, every insult trying to get out at once, resulting in a half-choked splunter. “What in the hell just happened!?”

Luthor didn’t like this accusation, but he kept a professional still. “Why are you asking me?”

Jon had to take a few breaths before he could formate actual human words. “ Really ?” he asked, about ready to pull his hair. 

“Do not peg this on me,” Luthor retorted in the same hushed tone, poking his finger into Jon’s chest as he said it. 

“Literally who else could it be, Lex? WHO?!? There was a giant fucking swarm of robots that just tried to kill me outside of your office and you think you can even try and denounce this?” 

Luthor paused for a moment, pressing a ‘down’ button and kept his eyes on the door. “That’s a question for my lawyer.” 

“Yeah. I thought you'd say something like that,” Jon muttered, checking out the damage on his jacket. It wasn’t even damaged in a cool punk sort of way, it was more like it had been dealt the full barrage of a hungry moth attack and then dragged along a gravel road. This was a nice jacket! Expensive, too. 

Luthor leaned over and picked at one of the nanobots from Jon’s shoulder. It was about the size of a mechanical keycap and surprisingly basic. She studied it for a moment, feeling the weight of the dead robot in his fingers. “How odd.”

Jon tried to relax his posture. “’Odd?’” he repeated. 

Luthor gave him a look out of the side of his eye and then kept talking. “These were decommissioned years ago, they should have been destroyed.” 

Jon looked like he was ready to strangle Luthor – a very, very hard expression to get out of the man. “…. Great . So why did the robot death bees that you recognize and clearly have a prior history with attack me ?”

Luthor studied the robot in his hand for a moment more before handing it to Lucille who then tried to keep it as far away from herself as possible without being rude by putting it down. “They appear to be old CRS-E32 biohazard nodes, designed to – hang on,” Luthor looked back at Lucille, “Do you know Superboy?” 

“Um. Not personally,” was her reply. 

That didn’t seem to change Luthor’s explanation. “These nanobots were designed exclusively to clean up any Kyrtonian bio-residue or waste from that cloning project. They were all destroyed when the project fell through and never got picked back up for any public application or renewed fabrication – there should be no way they could still be around.” 

“Well. They are,” stated Jon. 

The elevator doors opened with a soft ping to a room without any windows, clearly some sort of bunker. None of them left the elevator. 

“Hang on – I don’t – I don’t get it,” Lucille said, “Why would it be attacking you, Jon? What have you got to do with Superboy?” 

Jon and Luthor exchanged looks for a moment before Luthor turned away from the conversation. “You can explain all of that.” 

“ Jerk .” Was Jon’s reply. Something big suddenly dawned on Jon, his eyes growing large and his body tensing up as it straightened out. “Holy shit - Jordan’s out there,” he exclaimed in a soft panic, going straight to his phone in his pants pocket. Not a single lick of reception. “Fuck.” 

“You’re five stories underground in a lead-lined bunker, you’re not going to be able to make a phone call,” Luthor said without much gusto. 

Jon moved the phone down to his neck, “Well, then what do you suggest?” 

“I’m sure he can handle it. Always seems to handle everything else.” That last bit was said with more than a twinge of indignation. 

“I’m sorry is anybody going to explain to me who this ‘Jordan’ is?” 

“ Superman ,” Both Jon and Luthor chimed in unison. 

Lucille paused for a moment. “That’s his name?”

“Why? Were you expecting something else?” Luthor asked. 

“…. In all honesty it’s never occurred to me until now that he even had a regular person name.” Another pause. “Or that you both know that, for some reason.” 

“I have connections,” Jon said as he began to pace around the room, phone on one ear and free hand plugging the other. 

No answer, no reception, no answer – it didn’t take all that much to stress the man out.  Jon put the phone to his chest to calm himself and spun around, “Were you ever going to tell anybody that you made Superman-killing robots?”

“A lot of the robots that I make are designed to kill Superman. It would be redundant.”

Jon couldn’t rebut that so he just shot Luthor a glare. He was quickly running out of things he could say. 

Luthor crossed his arms and let out a sigh. “I’ll have a look and see if these things are a copy of old Lexcorp designs. If it’s one for one, then they shouldn’t have the ability to self-replicate, or have any programming outside of looking for that one particular DNA pattern.”

“How do you kill them?” 

“The main terminal was liquidated along with the nanobots, but it should be easy enough to fry with a decent enough EMP, or enough force. The CRS-E32 wasn’t designed to do anything more than clean up zygotes.” 

“Well somebody has made it so they can clean up a hell of a lot more.” 

“No, that’s about on-par with the abilities of the original design.” Luthor was far too calm about this - he was speaking in the same tone he might when talking about having to move his car. 

Lucille looked over the nanobot in her hand and then back up at the other men. Jon had started pacing around the room, studying bits and bobs around to try and calm himself down. Luthor just kept to himself a quiet corner. He had a serious look to him, but not his regular serious. This felt just that little bit more genuine. 

 It was almost… surreal how casually these two were talking to each other, how much more context of the situation and history they both had. There was clear animosity between them, yes, but it was more annoyance than hostility. If she was already part of this whole ordeal by being here, she might as well make herself useful.

“Superboy is a clone, right?” She asked, “That’s the main takeaway here?” 

Both men gave their attention to her, neither correcting or inputting. 

Okay, good. This is progress. She put the dead nanobot in her breast shirt pocket. “Mr Luthor, do you know where is the… lab responsible for him is?”

“Not legally, no.” 

“Would you be able to send somebody there to check the site out if it’s completely off the record?” 

“Easily. But there is nothing there – truly. I’m still dealing with the legal hell of it all, you’ve seen the paperwork.” 

She began to walk around a little bit, not enough movement to be pacing but just enough to keep her mind on track. “Somebody should go and check the site, just in case.” 

Jon hung up his phone, slotting it back into his pocket. “Let me.” 

“Mr Kent it tried to kill you a minute ago.” 

“And? I’ve had worse,” he began to fiddle with the back of a spinny chair by a dead computer console. “No way in hell am I just going to cower here underground.”

Luthor sighed and put his hands up in defeat. “Alright. Go and get yourself killed, it’s not in my jurisdiction. Miss Martian, if you’re going to tag along with him please don’t get yourself killed. I’ve got enough paperwork for today already without having to deal with needing to replace you.”

“Understood, Mr Luthor.” 

Luthor took out his chequebook from the inside of his blazer and wrote an address on the back of a blank page, handing it to Lucille.