There was a lot of smoke, the smell of burned rubber and the acrid tang of electrical fires. I padded on the rubble to keep from making any noise. With every breath, I felt like I was drawing that smell in.
I walked over to the last OMAC, who had been a man in a delivery uniform. His charred armor crackled and peeled away like burned tissue. The micro-machines disintegrated, into harmless dust.
His eyes drifted open, cloudy, his irises shifting back to their usual state. "Did someone… did someone get hurt… because of me?" he croaked, and that simple regret twisted against my chest.
I heard a soft thud beside me as Supergirl landed, the earth kicking up a bit of dust around her feet. The quiet stayed with her as she looked at the figure lurching toward us, like a toddler still getting used to walking.
There were shattered glass and overturned cars, the wail of sirens in the distance. Well, at least the screaming had stopped.
Stepping closer to my side Supergirl trailed her cape over my arm as she spoke low enough to keep this between us. "Does it have to be like this?"
It took me a moment to speak. Wonder Woman breaking Maxwell Lord's neck on national television had to happen. They'd broadcast the act, second for second. The whole world would watch, as she transformed from protector to murderer.
"It's the only play," I finally said, cracking my knuckles. "Brother Eye's frequency is linked to his heartbeat. No heartbeat, no frequency. No frequency, no more OMACs." It was a bitter mouthful.
I couldn't very well kill him behind her back because that wouldn't have been okay with Kara. It had to be Wonder Woman showing up out of nowhere like it was simply always going to be this way.
A screen flickered to life in one of the shattered storefront windows. The soft, cerulean glow lit us up as Wonder Woman appeared on screen, muscles bulging, defiantly standing with the glowing lasso pulled taut around Maxwell's throat. Still, he smiled. He still had enough pride to smile in the face of death. Some people never learn the weight of a situation until it's too late.
Panting, he growled, his words barely audible over the crackling. "You won't do it," he said. "Heroes don't murder."
All it took was a twitch of Diana's wrist. A dull thud, as if a full stop had been slapped on the end of a long, jumbled sentence. His head lolled to one side. A look of astonished realisation - too late - at the price of the wager. Then no movement. Just stuff. The screen simply went black.
What struck me about it was how quick it was. He turned, I heard a faint snap, and he just crumpled. The way his neck was at that angle. He was just moving one minute and dead the next, just a limp body.
It had mattered in comics, but it was nothing like real life. Real life had kept going while comic pages would have remained still.
I already knew what had to be done, what was needed before it even occurred to Kara to look over and say something with a frowning expression, Brother Eye. Still out there. Still planning to go haywire, still planning to do what it was supposed to. And the moment it noticed Max was dead it would then decide it needed to kill all metahumans. That was the beauty of being omniscient. No surprises. So that's why I'm not going to give it the chance.
I was boots-off-the-floor and the air was rushing past my head as I shot upwards, the sky cracking open above me. I felt warmth on the rim of my suit as my cape trailed a comet of fire behind me.
I heard Kara below me, yelling, probably asking where I was headed, and then the light faded as I went to deep space, almost instantaneously.
The satellite stood out starkly against the stars, distinguishable even when I wasn't quite looking at it - panels knife-sharp at the edges, tiny red lights flashing like faulty nerve endings. It was silent up here, the drone of its mechanisms somehow neutralized.
From up here it was small. Just another proud thing floating around in the void.
While in the air, I spun. I hit it before it had time to react - no alarms, no warnings, no alerts to anyone that could possibly have helped him against me like Checkmate. My fists hit him, aided by the momentum of the spin, going forward. It ripped through the outer casing like wet tissue. Light flashed silently, dispersing into the void, flames licking at it briefly before it dissipated like sparks in a gust of wind.
Time seemed to stop. The wreckage hung there, glinting like fool's gold. Then it dropped. Drawn down by the inescapable force of Gravity. Somewhere, far out in the middle of the Pacific, chunks of still smoldering debris would land. Little bots, splashing into the water. It would become someone's sea story. One old sailor's "I saw a UFO!" tale to tell the nephews.
###
There was a lot of noise afterwards - chatter on TV screens melting into white noise inside my head, analysts weighing Diana's decision like they understood sacrifice, officials shifting speeches fast once the OMAC danger turned to dust.
There was a lot of doubt in people's eyes. They'd seen rescues unfold, true enough - but they'd just watched one of their saviors take a life on live television. That sight stuck. No explanation could make it fade.
Out of everyone, Bruce broke the silence first once the League gathered - naturally it would be him - hands armored, fingertips pressed together beneath his jaw as if that pressure could keep somehow keep his guilt from rising. Brother Eye had been his creation, his contingency plan gone rogue.
"You acted unilaterally," he spoke, his voice worn thin after long fights with lawmakers. The cowl's lenses hid his eyes, but I knew his gaze moved - toward Diana first, then me.
"No consultation. No warning. Just—" His words came slow, like gravel under boots. "Obliteration."
Bruce's voice cut through the quiet of the Watchtower, colder than ice. Barry's fingers tapped on the fabric, steady but uneasy. The Martian stared ahead, eyes blank as stone. A green glow pulsed at Hal's hand, quick then slow. Diana was still coming to terms after making a grave choice. Across from me, Clark wore that hard stare, as if he got tired of being kind. They were waiting for my defense. The Truth? I had none ready.
Things could've gotten worse. It wasn't only a broken machine - Brother Eye carried Bruce's misgivings into code, his distrust wrapped in logic gates. Without brakes, it'd recruit every screen, lens, even kitchen gadget, turning them against anyone wearing a symbol on their chest. But I couldn't say that, it meant that I knew too much that I let one, things no one saw coming, except perhaps J'onn, who sensed pieces of my headspace drifting by like burnt toast smell under a door. My shoulder lifted slightly. Clark's silence pressed hard near my temple.
"Satellite had to go," I said simply, rolling my shoulders until the vertebrae popped. "Protocols were already rewriting themselves to target all metas. Figured you'd prefer I didn't wait for your approval while it uplinked to every military drone on the planet."
Batman didn't react - impressive since he had no rest for three full days - his eyes never even moved. Still I saw the instant it shifted behind them. A tiny flare in his nose gave it away, just like how the blood splatter on the walls refused to line up with what people claimed.
"You knew the killswitch was tied to Lord's vitals," he stated, not asked. "Before Diana acted. Before any of us had decompiled Brother Eye's source code."
A silence settled, soon after. Not shouting, no threats - just truth placed out in front where nobody could miss it. That was how he worked, peeling back stories until only bones remained.
Hal, sitting oppositely, ring flashing with increased light and accentuating the creases of his concerned expression, spat incredulous, "What? You mean Cornsweat actually fore-saw the OMAC fail-safe?" A louder, dismissive laugh, "Superman's got precognition now?"
I sensed Clark's eyes on me, solid, in the way of a moving train - not distrust, not yet, but a slow rebalancing, the realization that a man was moving to checkmate as all the rest of us were busily playing checkers. The temperature of the Watchtower shifted, even the recycled air infused with accusation. Barry's restless leg trembled with pent electricity, his hand paused in the midst of its rhythmic motion against his thigh.
"You're not answering the question," Batman said, his tone almost a whisper. His fingers relaxed, spreading ever so slightly on the table; I recognized the gesture, had seen it a dozen times before. He was counting, ticking off all the usual markers—pulse, breathing, dilation and contraction of the pupils, even the hang of my cape.
I snorted, savoring the disinfectant tang of Watchtower air recycling and a hint of smelted wreckage from Brother Eye's last moments.
"Because you already know the answer," I replied, my eyes flickering closed for a moment longer than necessary - not tiredness, just calculation. "I didn't predict shit. I knew."
The confession was sour, like a licked battery.
"I knew just like I know that Bruce Wayne has three back up plans to defeat everyone at this table if we decided to go nuts, or that Diana's sword can slice realities if she really uses her elbow grease."
The Watchtower flickered, once, as though it itself had recoiled at my statement. Barry spat a wad of phlegm into his fist, Hal's ring pulsed like a near-dead neon light. Even J'onn lost his poker face, his red eyes spreading ever so slightly. Bruce didn't flinch, but I could see the tiny flutter in the artery in his neck. A sign that even the most hardcore warrior can't suppress; the automatic physical response of your body when your brain registers a bull's eye.
"You're right," I said, cracking my neck. "I knew Brother Eye's protocols because I've been through this before—not here, not precisely, but close enough that the differences didn't matter."
The words slid down my teeth like cheap whiskey, searing as they went. "I have a special power of perception, visions of possible futures, of the way things might have gone or the way things will go..." The lie was just as bad as the truth.
"And in every one of those places where the satelitte still stood, Brother Eye murdered countless numbers of you." I glanced over to Clark, to Diana, leaving the wordless subtext hanging in the air. "You want to nail me to the cross for taking action? Fine. But don't act like for one second that you wouldn't have done the same if you saw what I saw."
The silence was palpable. Bruce clenched his jaw, literally clenched it, and then pressed his lips together, his nostrils flaring as he pushed out a hot breath, before easing back into his chair. That was the closest thing to a "my bad" the Batman ever gave you. The light from Hal's ring faded down from an angry green, to a more cautious shine, and his hands relaxed, releasing fists he hadn't even realized he clenched.
"It's not that we blame you for what you did," Diana was the first to say, her tone laced with the guilt of her own recent transgression. "Only wishing you had let us known sooner." She was stroking the surface of the Justice League table, as if it brought her comfort.
Her hands ran along the wood grain, tiny human gestures, from a goddess. "You wouldn't have believed me," I said, not really accusing. "You would have taken weeks of deciding whether to act on information from some sort of…dimensional déjà vu." I almost smiled. "And Brother Eye would have rewritten itself six times over, then we'd be having to dodge railgun rounds from the GPS satellites."
His breath was barely audible but against the recycled atmosphere of the Watchtower, it was tantamount to a hurricane. Superman slumped a bit, arms stretched out before him to support himself and his voice was not Kal-El, but Smallville.
"You're right." It was the most blunt of two-word expressions. "We would've wasted time we didn't have."
For a moment his blue gaze went to Bruce and back again—a tacit recognition of the underlying friction.
"Next time just tell us 'the satellite is going to kill us,' okay?"
His statement sliced through the atmosphere like a dull blade through an overcooked roast - not very sharp, but it did the trick. I found myself almost smiling, and all at once the heavy springs that had been wound up inside the room released their pressure, like the hiss of escaping steam from a burst valve. Bruce breathed out through his nose, that's as close to a sigh as he gets, and aligned the files on the desk before him with crisp exactness, a gesture that was as close to 'you may leave now' as I'd ever seen him give. Diana slowly released her grip on the edge of the table, where her nails had gouged a series of crescent marks into the varnished surface.
I left the Watchtower's conference room with the feeling of leaving an interrogation room, like the gravity had just been reduced by ten pounds. As I stood there in the stark corridor with only the gentle whoosh of the air recycling systems for company, I realized just how pointlessly cautious I had been, how much pointless drama I had piled on top of facts that this lot thought nothing of. People who saved the world from certain doom before their morning cups of coffee. If I'd just TOLD straight up, they would have known and understood.
It was a bit ironic, like when you take a big bite of an apple only to discover that it has been filled with salt. Not bad, per se, but certainly not what you were expecting. They weren't comic book characters anymore, they were real life morons who bickered about who ate the last donut in the break room, who stepped on their own cape when they weren't paying attention, and who had already encountered so much wacky shit that a fifth dimensional imp wearing Superman's body wouldn't even make their top ten list. In fact, more than half of this team had already encountered alternate realities. Barry probably kept count in his head.
Clark said it perfectly, next time just say 'the satellite is going to kill us.'