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Lena stands outside the cage.
It isn’t really a cage- or doesn’t look like one, built all out of glass and metal, bright white with blue screens all around monitoring the subject’s condition. A bed lies in the center of the cage, and a light shines down on the subject from directly above the bed.
Yes, she knows this situation well. She’d spent too many nights doing the same when she realized Sam and Reign were one, working tirelessly to heal Sam (though her efforts were discovered before she’d planned- but she adapted, as she always did) and last year when she’d done testing to give human beings superpowers (poor Adam… she’d mourned him every night for months, after that first test, as much as she’d mourned her own failure), she’d used it once more to house those subjects.
She supposes this is the natural progression of things, the next step in making humans superior. Only this time, her focus isn’t solely on humans. It is on anyone, everyone, with the capacity to do harm in any form or fashion, and the subject before her was the perfect example.
For Eve Tessmacher had done so much harm to her, in such a short amount of time that Lena felt as though she would get whiplash from it. It had been almost two years since they’d met, after Lena bought Catco and installed herself there, meeting the employees in the process and discovering that Eve had a degree from Yale, and in that time she’d become trusted. A friend to Lena, when there were still so many who shunned her, only for Lena to find out earlier in this very year that she’d been sent on order of Lex. She’d guided Lena, assisted her in everything required, but in the end she was nothing but Lex’s proxy. Only a liar, like so many of her other friends.
But as Hope had been inside her brain, rewiring it for Project Non Nocere, she’d lost her tendency to lie. Any capacity for such a decision was removed, and since then Lena had learned so much about who Eve worked for, what her real past was. She no longer had the compulsion to aim a gun at Lena’s face, and gone was her infatuation with Lex as well. It was quite enlightening, to say the least, and well worth the protests she’d had to put up with from the woman who now lay on the bed, quiet and still, monitors around her beeping silently.
It was almost just like the old days, their working together the past few weeks, like when Lena didn’t know she couldn’t trust her. When she thought Eve was just another Catco employee who happened to have a surprising amount of skill, and was hired for a position below her paygrade. She thought she’d given Eve the opportunity to properly use the intelligence she had.
How naïve Lena was. No longer, however, as she prepared to end this phase of her experiment, and move on to the next.
“Eve.” Lena says, deactivating the forcefield that separated them, as the other woman wakes up. “How do you feel?”
“I am well-rested, Ms. Luthor.” She answers, walking out of the cell. Her hands are folded in front of her, very neatly, as she stands at attention. “And I am ready for whatever task you assign me to do.”
“How is your host?”
“Satisfactory.” Hope says. “Your tests on her have been a one hundred percent success. She is as honest and loyal as you intended for her to be. And she is, indeed, ready for me to release her.”
“Then it’s time that she be released.” Lena answers, and with that, Eve seems to vomit up metal- countless nanites leaving her body at the same time, pouring out of her with the same consistency as blood.
She falls to the ground, unconscious (predictable- especially given the shock that her body has just experienced) and Lena has her moved to another bed, another room where she can be monitored- to make certain that they will still be able to work together, once she’s awake once more.
(Lena has no doubts that she’s healthy enough. Eve is, after all, evolved- and though Hope has left her system, the effects on her will remain. And if Hope’s work on her happened to remove the memories of working for Lex, being loyal to a fault for him… then Lena can pretend such was a coincidence, and go on pretending as though she’s the only Luthor that Eve has ever met.)
Hope quickly reforms, returns to her pedestal, and once Eve is moved, she calls for her team to bring her the new subject. Someone with a friendlier face, one that she associated with better memories. Someone who still lied to Lena, under the guise of being her friend- even having the gall to pretend he understood how she felt. He told her he’d felt betrayal as well, and that she could trust him. And yet he’d still never shown her his true face, or name- she’d had to find out from external sources, just as she’d learned Kara’s secret identity. He’d closed his own doors to her, and sided firmly with the woman Lena felt the most betrayed by. Yes, he had given her good advice back then, and she’d done her best to help him when he felt so much distress- but how much was that worth now? How much more could she help him, if he and Hope were able to work together?
And his own nature, being techno-organic himself, belonging to a family that (according to her research) had caused even more suffering than her own… well, at an understatement Lena ached to study him. She wanted nothing more than to see what made him who he was, what she could use. How perfect she could make him, once his flaws were sanded away and his negative emotions, with the darker parts of his history, were packed away in the boxes she advised him to use so long ago. How well they would work together, in the end, given his twelfth-level intellect- how much good they would be able to do, figuring out how to fix the universe, without any emotions to hold them back.
Yes, with time, he may prove to be even a better test subject for Project Non Nocere than Eve Tessmacher. But she’s getting ahead of herself.
“Ms. Luthor, Querl Dox is here.” Says her secretary.
“Very good. Bring him in.”
~
When he arrives, Lena greets him warmly.
“Brainy!” she says, opening her arms to him, and he eyes them with uncertainty.
“I’m sorry. Are you trying to “bro-hug” me, Ms. Luthor?”
Now it’s Lena’s turn to stare, but she soon recovers, nodding.
“I do intend to give you a hug.” She says, smiling at him. “And you know you can call me Lena. We’ve worked together long enough, we’re friends.”
“Very well.” He answers, smiling in kind, and not at all suspicious.
Just like Kara Danvers. Just like Supergirl.
“Lena it is.”
He opens his arms to her, in turn, and goes in for the hug- which is nice, for a moment. Lena wraps her arms around him, and it’s like having a friend again, getting to be touched when nobody else is willing to do so. Even like when Hope, with Eve’s body, hugged her- although much less awkward this time.
It makes her almost let go of the needle she’s holding.
But she still stabs it into his neck, and it makes him go limp in Lena’s arms, falling unconscious immediately and causing Lena to call in her guards again, putting him into the cage.
So Lena monitors him as he sleeps, watching and waiting. He’s going to be upset with her, no doubt, and very angry, until she’s able to help him… but that won’t be a problem after this. At least, she hopes it won’t.
~
“Lena?”
When he wakes up, Lena is ready for him. She can see, clearly, that from how uneasy he is, and how he’s looking around him, he wants to tap into the prison in which he’s held, opening it from the inside. But she’s not about to let him do that just yet.
No, that would be too easy. And now that Lena had him, there was no way she would release him anytime soon.
Soon, then, he won’t want to be released. He won’t even remember being imprisoned, or what that imprisonment felt like.
“You’re monitoring me.” He says, not even looking around- he simply seems to absorb the information, like he’s downloading it. “You pretended to embrace me, but only forced me unconscious and ran scans of my brain while I was asleep.”
“Correct you are- though, given your intellect, that’s to be expected.” Lena answers. “You’re fascinating, Querl Dox. And to think it took this long for me to decide to study you…”
“Let me warn you, I will not easily succumb to interrogation.” Querl tells her. “If I am here because you wish to get revenge on Supergirl… You will be disappointed.”
“You’re the one who mentioned Supergirl.” Lena says, coolly. “But that is not my purpose for you.”
“Explain your purpose, then.” Querl answers, shifting on the bed. He stands up, and Lena can imagine he’s trying to escape, as she sees the almost glazed-over look in his eyes like he’s calculating a way out… if she hadn’t installed power-dampeners in the cell, that would weaken his technopathic abilities.
And he figures that out just as she thinks so, sitting back on the bed with his eyes now clearly focused on her.
“I already have.” She says. “I want to know more about you- how exactly you’re both technology and organic. Both capable of such cold logic, as you demonstrated before Supergirl went to fight Lex on Shelley Island, and overwhelming emotion, which you showed me after Supergirl was taken down by Kryptonite poisoning.”
“If you want to know that, I can tell you.” Querl answers. “I could literally write a book on my composition, how I’m built, what has gone into my creation and how my history has shaped me in the years since I was born. But… I do not believe you want that.”
“I don’t.” Lena says, smiling at him. “In fact, I have much greater plans for you. But I think it’s best if I just show you. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes.” Querl answers, automatically, as she takes down the cell door. He steps out, and still looks guarded, as he looks over at a schematic on the wall screen near his cell.
“My brain scan.” He says. “Lena. What are you going to do with it?”
“Querl, meet Hope.” She says, instead of answering his question. “You two are going to be working very closely together now.”
She indicates the AI on her table, that’s silvery-blue and resembles an hourglass. Or perhaps a double helix- either is quite telling, he thinks.
But he doesn’t get much time to think about it, before the AI activates, and surrounds him, a living cloud of nanites. He feels them enter him, burrowing into his mind…
And it’s like he’s been Aligned again. It’s the same sensation, wrestling with another mind interfering with his own processes, trying not to give up control. But this AI, although human-made in origin, is too strong, and already forcing her control over his mind.
Querl wants to scream, wants to cry, as he fights back. He wishes he could call Supergirl. He hopes that he’ll be strong enough to break the control over this AI, and send a message to Alex, or J’onn- anyone who could help him, and see what Lena did to him.
Surrender, he hears Hope say. Give up. Let me evolve you.
I am a twelfth-level intellect. There is not much, if anything, that you can do to further evolve my mind.
Then let me show you what I can do, she answers.
He hears himself letting out one last scream as Hope lets one hundred percent of herself into him, ensnaring his mind, and then everything is silent.