To put it mildly, we moved quickly through the maze-like corridors filled with rooms of lab equipment, machinery, and a chamber designed to empower the grid of the facility using the G-Sprite's electrical abilities. To have thought it through that carefully to ensure they had a separate source of power than the larger D.C. power grid was impressive and ultimately guaranteed Cadmus would remain hidden.
Not after today.
Kid Flash raced ahead just before we could escape from sublevel one and slammed nearly face first into bay doors that sealed us inside.
"We are cut off from the street!" the speedster cried in frustration.
Superboy cracked his knuckles after a moment and settled with a high-powered fist into the metallic sealing doors. It did not budge. He gripped at the seam, tried to pull, and Aqualad moved to assist him, but… nothing.
"That won't work. These men think of everything," Troia nearly spat.
She was right.
These were designed to ensure no jailbreaks happened, to keep the G-Trolls and their massive bulks from escaping into the streets of the nation's capital. It was impressive security measure, one that would be entirely unnecessary as long as their telepathic controls never failed.
I pitied Superboy.
"Can you bore through that with your heat vision?" Kid Flash tried.
I pitied him more when no heat left his eyes. He shot a look toward me in more than slight frustration, and I shook my head. "If the shielding can hold back your strength, Superboy, then what I got packing behind the eyes isn't going to cut it."
Hmm. Adrius could have.
I… hated everything about that feeling.
Robin was already on it to solve it with his hacking ability but clearly was not getting through it quickly enough for us to have a way out. I glanced toward the ceiling, the floor, the walls.
"Can we go around the door?" I pointed to the four of us with some manner of enhanced strength.
Aqualad blinked, and Kid Flash considered it for a half-second and fervently shook his head. "That'd take longer than Robin would to crack, and we risk bringing the surface building on top of us."
We had precious moments to consider other solutions, even to try breaking radio silence to bring a message, but we were interrupted when a hideous noise whistled and hissed through the hallway. We saw the shadow of the monstrous thing before the source broke around the corner.
A creature of gray skin, human flesh, and spiked horns slithered around the corner like a snake, its lower half spiked and serpentine. Its upper half resembled a human torso, but much longer, with bits of skin too-stretched over its chest and shoulders visible in thin, cloying sheets. The arms were long, jagged, and bony claws replaced its fingers while a white protrusion at the elbow struck out nearly as long as a machete. The head shape was angular and pointed, its teeth far too human for its overall shape.
"Did they make a G-Xenomorph?" Kid Flash shouted.
"This way!" Robin directed, kicking open a nearly hidden security door and forcing us to redirect deeper into the facility.
I… fuck, these Cadmus people.
"I don't remember that one from the files!" Robin shouted as we ran from it, the writhing, lanky creature far too fast for how large it was.
"What's the plan, Cassian?" Troia pleaded.
I blinked.
We rounded the corner as I tried to think of a plan, ready to search for another exit. They had to have a hidden access door, in case their emergency systems failed. Redundancies were the name of the game. If we couldn't find that, then we buy Robin time to crack the security measures and get out.
The writhing serpentine genomorph monster swiped at us with its tail, and Aqualad narrowly avoided it with a quick tumble. It crawled through the chamber after us, and even as we continued to flee, it showed its impressive strength every time it moved aggressively, gouging holes in the floors, the walls, breaking furniture.
"I don't like running," I muttered, breaths heavy. "Hit this thing, hard."
Troia moved immediately to intercept it, flying backward with a slightly nervous expression.
Robin, however, twisted on me. "What? You just said we need to get out-"
"And we do." I grabbed for anything, settling for a concrete armor. Distantly, the sound of skittering genomorph feet settled into the hallway. "Robin, you need time."
Troia slammed her shoulder into the monster in a flying somersault. It nearly barreled out of the way, long red mane of hair visible as it whipped his head back in response.
"We can give it."
The youngest of us all hesitated for a small moment and then furiously continued typing, crouching into as hidden a position as he could. Aqualad nodded at my expression and conjured a circular shield of hard-water and a watery blade, dripping with magic ready to defend Robin.
Superboy did not acknowledge what I said verbally or with a gesture. Instead, he leaped in a fit of rage, roaring at the top of his lungs, and joined the tangling Amazonian with the mute creature. Kid Flash, noticing the sound of more genomorphs coming, pulled his goggles down, tightened his boots, and then raced away from the monster to engage with the oncoming genomorphs.
And I?
I took off into the air and delivered a concrete haymaker into the serpentine torso. It recoiled and then swiped with its claws, its bony elbow blade, and became a true whirlwind of danger. I threw arms up to defend myself, while Troia tried to deliver kicks to its head, its upper arms, its tail. In an opening, Superboy bludgeoned at the incredibly durable hide of the monster, then tried to flip around and upend the tail.
This thing?
It was damn strong.
Ignoring us, the creature swiped Superboy away and then leaped up and past Troia. I tried to grab it, to hold it aloft in the air, but I couldn't make purchase. Aqualad blocked its initial swipes with his shield, then twisted the shield into a series of spikes tipped in ice and tried to prove if this creature had any resistance to magic.
Hell, that was just as bad.
"Ugh, guys?!"
Kid Flash suddenly came to a stop in the doorway leading out. His eyes widened at what we were dealing with, but he was just as worried about something else.
"We got another one of these freaks leading a pack out here!"
Said freak made itself known with an entrance like the Kool-aid Man, ripping a hole through the wall and roaring as loudly and impressively as Superboy had. It was a muscular behemoth of a creature, body ultimately human in shape but bigger in every dimension. It had… ripped through its clothes as easily as it had its skin, which was left behind in a bloody mess. Its hide a graying blue, it was almost as alien as its friend.
"Why's it wearing a lab coat?" Robin asked, gripping from weapons on his utility belt with one hand while the other maintained his attempt at hacking.
…
The scientist?
It bounded mindlessly into the room, and Superboy abandoned all pretense of caring about his current opponent to try to beat the shit out of the doctor-turned-monster. Just as tanky and nigh impossible to injure as his friend, I unleashed a blast of light from my eyes with the hope it would give the clone a chance to do some damage.
It struck and burned at the outer layer of human skin from the one normal researcher, but did not seem to harm the new muscular flesh beneath. Exposed striations of corded flesh merely soaked the damage like it was nothing, but the surprise of the energy blast did give an opening Superboy exploited.
Troia grappled one of the other's limbs to the ground, its ginger hair shifting and wavering as it tried to wrestle her away. A concrete-covered fist slammed repeatedly into its exposed head, and a clipping of a batarang to an exposed bit of softer tissue spurted blood and stopped its counterattack.
Kid Flash peppered it with his fists in return, but they did nothing but sting like mosquitoes. G-Elves prepped to join the fray as they watched the duo of monsters wreck us.
"Kid, find something sharp and stab it."
His eyes widened beneath the goggles. "But I-"
"It can take it. Or go get the damn Elves!"
He glanced between the writhing, pinned monster and the Elves that Robin started fleeing. Then, he raced for them to keep away the lesser opponents.
I charged a neuroshock blast and released it into the monster's elongated neck, hoping the flesh would be softer and lead to more damage. Troia studied the gaping wound – likely a flesh wound on a creature like this – and then ultimately nodded, resolute.
An agreement passed between us.
Unspoken.
If this thing died here, then-
A gripping fist into the damaged spot, she heaved with all her strength, but its lithe body finally broke free and snapped its left arm upward to divert the blow that might have done it.
That might have killed it.
Troia pulled at the flesh of its arm and yanked away a whole segment from wrist to elbow. And…
Oh.
Oh fuck.
A golden sheen on its left arm, its body once warped around it and now exposed.
"….Guardian."
It- he shrieked.
"I got it! Come with me!" Robin shouted suddenly, breaking our stalled fight.
The Boy Wonder zipped with his grappling hook to cover as much space as he could in the room to escape, wrist computer still shimmering with a holographic screen. Aqualad and Superboy struggled to hold off the doctor who'd pulled a Hyde on himself, while I could see the tell-tale signs of Kid Flash's whipping speed trails as he held off the onslaught.
We were one G-Gnome mind control event away from ceasing any ability to fight back. We were one lucky strike from either Guardian or the asshole Hyde monsters from one of us losing our lives.
I… wasn't sure I saw a way out of this, that didn't lead us to Robin's escape route that may let these idiots out into the city.
But it was the best chance we had.
"I'm g-gonna weaken him," I suggested to Troia quickly. "Go!"
I did not wait for her reply or to see her response at all.
I let the concrete armor around my fist break away and then zipped forward as fast as I could allow in tight corners. A neuroshock blast diverted the Guardian monster's tail away to intercept– the last one I had the juice for – and then I grabbed for its shoulder.
And pulled.
The creature that once was Guardian, a known hero in the community, became slower, weaker, more fragile.
The Osmosian Gift's need to take in what was around it, to incorporate it into its usee, was at my command. I did not take the material of its fleshy genomorph-like muscle, nor the energy of its movement brimming within it. Instead, I tried to take its DNA, its basic building blocks to make them my own. To incorporate them into myself, temporarily.
Temporarily because I refused to kill Guardian.
I…
I felt stronger.
More agile.
Sense of smell and hearing sharper.
And…
Distressingly?
The bones of my arm strengthened and broke the skin of my elbow in a jolt of pain, until I, too, could stab with a sharpened bone blade. I had about a half-second to experiment on what swinging it might be like before Guardian shoved me forward, though it was noticably a weaker effort.
In the distance, the flashing light of the other fight caught my attention. Aqualad delivered a shocking grapple of electricity from his magical tattoos into the back of the once researcher, now monster. Superboy recovered from a prone state on the ground with a rage and then pummeled the monster in the abdomen. The muscled freak collapsed to the ground in rage, and he continued his Kryptonian onslaught.
"Let's go!"
I pushed with renewed strength – ever so slightly boosted from the borrowed DNA – and cleared some distance. A kick to the debilitated creature hurled it to the side, and a jab with the elbow blade left it with a leaking wound on its left shoulder.
The maneuver was not as effective as it could be, one that would likely be improved if I added armor to it. For as long as I still had the elongated bone blade, I was more focused on escaping than taking advantage. More importantly than the extra appendages and the enhanced senses, I'd slowed it down.
Kid Flash and Troia had joined Robin and called for us to hurry. I followed after them slowly, eyes never leaving the clone and the Atlantean. They'd knocked the muscled monster to his knees, and I shouted again for them to follow.
Aqualad had to physically pull the clone away, as he was far too thrilled to continue knocking the monster around.
But he relented and followed.
We booked it down the hall, Troia and I carving a path for the others to catch up. Genomorphs fell left and right, and after what I'd seen after the wound on what-was-once Guardian's neck, I pulled my punches more than I had before. These… these may as well be people. Monstrous people in a hive of mind controlled minions. Were they responsible? Was Guardian?
Kid Flash seemed the last to realize the discrepancy in my limbs as he helped Robin climb up and over a pile of debris we'd created during the fighting. "Uh, Cassian, do we need an ambulance for those bone things?"
"They'll go away in a few minutes," I explained, nearly out of breath and riddled with bruises. The excess ability I'd taken came with renewed vigor, but with each passing minute, the mutations to my own DNA would fade. "Temporary."
The mutation part that manifested physically confused me, compared to what happened with the Aerophibian or the others I'd encountered on Osmos V and temporarily borrowed. I hadn't grown a tail when I took on the dinosaur godzilla reject, nor wings when I gained permanently the ability to fly among others.
But this time? My bones changed shape, mutated. I could feel tightness in some of my muscles, as bits of bone threatened to poke up and form spikes like the genomorphs. What… was the difference?
"It's here!"
The Hyde monster and Guardian joined with a horde of genomorphs at the end of the corridor opposite us, while we raced to the exit Robin was about to open. The slithering snake monster was significantly slower than he had been before, not able to lead the pack like the others.
We… We might not get the time.
The four of us with enhanced strength and durability angled ourselves to block for the others. Seconds, only seconds-
"Now!"
The door pulled open at Robin's command, and to say we all tumbled into the exterior of Cadmus in a heap was an understatement. The midnight air was prominent, sounds of streets and bright city lights a much more welcome experience than the dark innards of the secret facility.
Aqualad was the last outside, a conjured shield in front of him flowing with magic to divert attention from the doorway. Robin forced the security doors to close in nearly the last possible second.
Squelch.
Shit.
Absolute horror as a G-Elf met its end between two heavy double doors, strong enough to hold a Kryptonian at bay. Blood, sinew, and bone spilled from a torso split in half, oozing like tube of yogurt.
Troia barely held her stomach.
Robin had nearly no reaction, while Kid Flash forced himself to look away.
"The League," Aqualad suggested as he tried to force us to recover, to keep our heads together. We'd gone through an experience together, one that was very much not over if those two hulking monsters continued to pursue us.
Kid Flash hurriedly radioed the Flash, while Robin carried a neatly coded message to Batman electronically. Aqualad held off himself, instead approaching an almost hesitant Superboy.
"This may not be over, friend, but I am glad to see you have chosen the side that would make Superman proud."
He seemed to study each of us, eyes lingering on Troia and then me. There was ire behind those eyes, a spark from the moonlight reflected above. The teenager was volatile, confused, and may react hostily at any moment.
And then he said something that merely made me pity him more than I already did.
"Why… how can he be proud? I can't fly."
The words fell on each of us, casting a pall over the scene. We stood in the exterior of the ruined lab, behind a fence that separated it from the street, and we could be ambushed at any moment. We couldn't sit here and worry about Superboy's words until later, when the danger was over.
"I can't fly either," Robin shared. "Despite the old bird theme. You know how many folks in Gotham think I can though?"
I held my hands up in surrender. "I cheat. But it doesn't matter right now. We need a perimeter, watching for if they try to either flee the scene or attack the streets. The League on the way?"
Superboy didn't let the moment go, but Kid Flash interrupted. "Flash says they'll be here in less than two minutes. Wotan was a big joke, apparently- the sun didn't even go out for a half-second."
I blinked at the weirdness of comic book stories, feeling the slow receding of the bone blades as my borrowed mutations faded.
"Still, we should-"
A flash of green light from the horizon high above the city was the only warning. Within a few short moments, the full roster of the Justice League descended from the heavens. Fliers like Superman and Wonder Woman moved of their own accord, while two Green Lanterns carried the street bound heroes. Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, the Flash, Batman, the Hawks? I wasn't sure where to even look at these folks, and the full details of sixteen legendary figures from the comics and other media were nearly too much to truly take in.
One thing was for certain – a roster like this would absolutely kick ass against the Reach. Canary could counter their Scarab sonic weapons, Red Tornado could ground their ships, the Flash could disturb their armor, and Captain Atom could unleash nuclear hell. It was one thing to read about the members on the news since arriving on Earth, or looking through Gabriel's files. But it was another thing entirely to see them physically in front of me.
They were not happy, and the teenagers were not clear about what they should do. Troia anguished under the piercing gaze of her elder sister. Aquaman, Kid Flash, and Robin faced down the challenging looks of their mentors. And John Stewart sized me up for several seconds, and it was clear to me that we would likely have a long conversation shortly.
Superboy tried not to hold too much hope in his eyes as he displayed the white solar suit, emblazoned with the red symbol of Superman. The true Kryptonian's expression was not the expression of joy, of easy-going acceptance, of fatherhood I expected a paragon to give.
"Where is the threat?" Superman asked instead, looking away from the clone and focusing instead on the group as a whole. "What happened here?"
"Below our feet is a massive underground laboratory," I answered uneasily. "Genetics research. As I, uh, am sure you can tell."
The clone did not turn to face me, instead trying to catch with pleading eyes that of his genetic father, who was ultimately avoiding it altogether.
"Superman, this is heavy," the boyish Captain Marvel stated, as thick-chested as the Kryptonian but mentally a child.
Batman stepped into the foreground, current chairman of the Justice League. His glare was as uneasy as I would expect it to be. Nothing had changed since I last spoke with him after the attack in Central City. "Full report. Now."
We could oblige.68