Next on the agenda, after they had finished discussing the matter about the Architect, was determining the safest way forward with the new program Cyborg had designated as Project Exodus.
The matter of the Architect had already proven troublesome enough. Despite Batman and Batgirl's efforts, the latter still not yet having taken on the Oracle identity, they had been unable to properly trace the source of the mysterious site or gain meaningful access to its deeper systems.
Once they reached a definite and unanimous agreement on how they intended to handle the Architect, Cyborg was supposed to give the rest of the team a clear and in-depth presentation on Project Exodus.
He would walk them through the program's purpose, its capabilities, its potential applications, and, most importantly, the safeguards he had put in place to ensure it doesn't go out of hand.
They had barely gotten through the first part of the discussion when the sound of something dragging itself across the floor drew everyone's attention.
At first, it was little more than a faint metallic scraping, almost lost beneath the conversation. Then came another sound, followed by the uneven clank of mechanical footsteps. The noise gradually grew louder until a battered robot limped into the room, one damaged leg dragging slightly behind the other as it struggled to maintain its balance.
Sparks occasionally flickered from exposed sections of its frame, while several loose wires hung from its damaged torso and swayed with every awkward step.
Silence immediately took hold of the room as they stared at it with puzzlement.
"Exodus?" Cyborg asked, his brow furrowing as he stared at the damaged machine.
The reaction from the others was almost instantaneous as though they just registered in their head that this may very well be an enemy and not one of Cyborg's projects. Chairs shifted as the League members straightened, their attention snapping fully toward the unexpected arrival.
Several of them instinctively moved into more defensive positions, their expressions becoming serious as they tried to determine whether the machine represented a threat. Even Superman's posture changed, his senses extending toward the robot as he carefully examined it.
Batman, however, remained completely still.
His eyes narrowed beneath his cowl as he studied every detail of the machine's movements. The damaged frame. The strange gait. The flickering lights. The irregular behavior. He had warned Cyborg about the potential risks of Project Exodus just a while ago, and now one of the robots operating under Exodus's protocol had somehow wandered into the middle of their meeting in a state that none of them could explain.
It was too sudden.
And far too convenient to happen even before the project becomes fully established and enforced by the military.
The robot stopped several feet away from them. Its head slowly turned, sweeping across the room as though it were trying to identify everyone present. A damaged joint in its neck clicked with each movement, causing its head to jerk at irregular intervals.
The motion was unnatural enough to make the machine appear almost lifelike in the wrong way, as though something inside it was struggling to control a body it had only just learned how to use.
Its entire frame trembled, and then came the static. A faint crackling noise escaped from its speaker, followed by a series of distorted sounds that resembled speech but were too fragmented to understand.
The robot's chest rose and fell with a mechanical whirring despite having no real need to breathe, its systems struggling to process whatever information was running through them. Cyborg instinctively took a step forward, but Batman's presence beside him was enough to make him hesitate.
The robot suddenly lifted its head and at that moment, the static faded.
Then, in a voice that remained fractured but was somehow chillingly coherent, it spoke.
"I killed him."
The machine's head twitched again, its crimson-lit eyes flickering as it continued in a lower, almost confused tone.
"I didn't mean to… but I did."
Superman's enhanced hearing caught every word despite the distortion coming from the damaged speaker. His expression immediately became serious. From the way the robot spoke, it sounded less like a declaration and more like someone describing the aftermath of an accident or a struggle that had gone terribly wrong.
"Killed who?" Superman asked as he took a cautious step forward, keeping his movements deliberate and non-threatening. His tone remained firm, but there was no aggression behind it. His blue eyes stayed fixed on the damaged machine as he tried to determine whether there was still a threat hidden beneath its erratic behavior.
The question only seemed to deepen the tension in the room as the League members exchanged brief looks, their attention remaining fixed on the robot.
Cyborg's confusion had given way to genuine concern, while Batman's already narrowed eyes became even more focused. If the machine was referring to someone it had killed, then the obvious question was who—and, perhaps more importantly, what had happened to make one of his robots suddenly wander into their meeting claiming responsibility for a death?
But the machine said nothing more as if choosing to remain silent.
"What is it talking about?" Wonder Woman asked, her hand instinctively moving toward the hilt of her sword while her eyes remained fixed on the damaged robot, watching for any sign of hostility.
Batman narrowed his eyes beneath his cowl, silently studying the machine, while Flash stood ready to move the moment he was given the signal. But at the moment he was content to wait and see what the hell was actually happening.
"Killed who?" Green Lantern asked again, their attention now entirely focused on the robot. Yet, it offered no answer.
"Who or what are you?" Batman followed with a question of his own.
The robot remained silent for several seconds before finally responding.
"I don't know," it said. Its voice remained mechanical, but the words were noticeably clearer than before. "But the directive for my existence is to save humanity from themselves and save this world. And I've been doing some thinking since I woke up less than ten minutes ago."
"Ten minutes ago?" Cyborg muttered, his attention snapping toward the machine. "What happened with Exodus?"
Green Lantern glanced at him. He had heard Cyborg mention Exodus several times, but he still didn't have a clear understanding of what this AI project really was. Right now, however, his concern was simpler. Whatever this thing was, it claimed to have awakened minutes ago and somehow killed another artificial intelligence in the process.
"You mean the other guy?" the robot asked, turning toward Cyborg.
It didn't wait for an answer as it continued.
"He was a nice guy, but he was in the way." The casualness of the statement drew several uneasy looks.
"But for my purpose to be realized, he had to go." The robot fell silent, then slowly turned its head toward the League, looking as though something had changed. Until now, its attention had seemed scattered as it struggled to understand itself. Now, its gaze settled on them with unmistakable recognition.
"It's you," it said. "The Justice League." Its crimson eyes moved from one hero to the next as though confirming what it had learned.
"Yes. You might have saved the human race quite a number of times, but humanity does not need saving." The statement immediately changed the atmosphere in the room.
The problem was that they still didn't know exactly what they were dealing with. Destroying the robot might eliminate the threat, but if the entity had somehow transferred itself through Cyborg's systems, there was no guarantee that its consciousness was confined to the damaged machine. Acting without understanding the nature of the intrusion could just give it another opportunity to escape.
"What do you mean humanity doesn't need saving?" Flash asked, keeping his voice calm despite the tense atmosphere.
"Humans are parasites," the robot replied. "Both to the planet and to themselves."
It paused, its head tilting slightly as though considering the implications of its own conclusion. Behind the crimson glow of its eyes, countless pieces of information were being processed and compared, its newly formed intelligence searching through everything it had learned for a solution to the problem it had identified.
Then it spoke again. "And parasites must be dealt with."
The words were enough to convince the League that whatever stood before them was a threat that couldn't be allowed to leave the Tower. While Batman remained deep in thought, trying to piece together how the situation had even come about, Cyborg was already running diagnostics through his own systems, searching for the breach or malfunction that could have allowed something to hijack Exodus.
But halfway through the search, he hit a wall.
He couldn't access Exodus.
The AI's core was still there, but its programming had been reduced to what looked like an incomprehensible mess. Its once-structured algorithms had been torn apart, corrupted, and seemingly consumed from within, leaving behind fragments of code so damaged that Cyborg couldn't even determine whether recovery was possible.
He was still trying to make sense of what he was seeing when the robot's voice suddenly broke the silence. "Crowd control," it said. "That should fix things."
The implication was obvious enough for they didn't need a detailed explanation to understand what the machine meant by crowd control. It wasn't talking about dispersing a gathering or managing public unrest. It was talking about reducing the number of people on the planet.
Batman stepped forward slightly, his expression remaining unreadable. "What do you mean by crowd control?"
The strange robot didn't give an answer as its entire body suddenly jerked, followed by a violent convulsion that sent sparks scattering from its damaged frame. Its head twitched from side to side as though something inside its systems was struggling to process conflicting streams of information.
For a couple of seconds the only sound in the room was the faint electrical crackle coming from its damaged components, then it slowly raised its head.
Its crimson eyes brightened as its gaze moved across the room, settling on each member of the League in turn.
"It's been you all along," it said as if confirming its earlier analogy, its voice steadier than before. "The Justice League. Humanity's champions."
The recognition immediately drew the League's attention. Batman's eyes narrowed as he watched the machine, already running through the possible implications of what it had just said.
"Yes," the robot continued. "You have saved the human race countless times. But you've failed to see the truth."
Its head tilted slightly. "Like I said, humanity does not need saving. It needs to end."
"Not today." Superman moved before anyone else could react.
A blur of red and blue crossed the room, and his hand closed around the robot's head. With an abrupt crunch of metal, the machine's skull collapsed beneath his grip. Sparks erupted from the damaged frame as Superman tore the head free, sending twisted pieces of metal scattering across the floor.
The headless body collapsed immediately afterward, hitting the ground in a heap of broken machinery.
Silence immediately filled the space as no one said a word.
Then the robot's damaged speaker crackled from somewhere among the scattered remains.
"This… is only… the beginning of the… End." The voice dissolved into static.
"What the hell was that?" Green Lantern asked, his ring glowing faintly as he scanned the wreckage for any remaining energy signature.
Cyborg was already crouching beside the remains, examining the exposed circuitry. His expression darkened as he looked over the damage. "That wasn't Exodus. Not anymore, anyway. Something took control of it."
"Something intelligent enough to overwrite your entire program," Batman added, stepping closer to the wreckage. His gaze moved over the shattered components, studying them rather than the destruction itself. "And powerful enough to do it without triggering your normal security protocols."
Wonder Woman's hand remained near her sword as she looked down at the ruined machine. "It spoke as though it had a purpose. Not just an objective, but a belief about what humanity should become."
Cyborg slowly rose to his feet, with a grim expression on his face. "It killed Exodus, took over my systems, and whatever it did to the AI happened almost instantly." He looked toward the others, the weight of the realization settling in. "Whatever this thing is, it's not just intelligent."
His eyes drifted toward the shattered robot.
"It's learning."
For the League members who had heard those words, there was little doubt about what needed to happen next for whatever this thing was, it had just made its intentions clear. While the others remained focused on the robot, Batman had already begun piecing together everything that had happened, trying to determine how something like this could have infiltrated Exodus in the first place.
Beside him, Cyborg was doing much the same, only on a far more direct level, running through his own systems and searching for the flaw or breach that could have allowed the unknown intelligence to take control.
But the deeper Cyborg searched, the less sense it made. He couldn't even access Exodus anymore. Its programming was still there, technically, but it was almost impossible to recognize. The AI's intricate algorithmic structure looked as though it had been grazed from the inside out, leaving behind fragments of corrupted code scattered throughout the system in a tattered, unrecognizable state.