Chapter Text
Somewhere far below ground, in a location so highly guarded even the best hackers in the world didn’t know it existed, an unsuspecting intern was about to make the biggest mistake of his life.
“Alright,” Lou muttered to himself, peering irritably down at the tablet in his hands, “Mr. Luthor said Experiment Thirteen is almost complete; just needs the data download and we’re all set. Hmm… What to add?”
Mr. Luthor had said he wanted the experiment to have a high level of education, so that part was easy—Lou just selected the basic learning models for elementary through high school learning, followed by a few university courses that seemed interesting. Notably, Mr. Luthor hadn’t added any philosophy or psychology courses; presumably it would be counterproductive if the experiment was able to recognise psychological manipulation or develop any kind of advanced moral compass beyond the one Mr. Luthor wanted to create himself.
Personally, that didn’t bother Lou. He’d decided pretty early on that morals were boring. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t be here, making an absurd amount of money for an intern and utterly disregarding the scientific community’s rigorous rules (which should really just be guidelines) around human/intelligent organism experimentation.
Still, beyond the education requirement and the carefully curated information on current world events—which Mr. Luthor had downloaded himself—the instructions on what else to give the experiment were vague at best. But there had to be more, right?
Lou thought for a moment. What sorts of relevant information would a genetic experiment need? He consulted the Ethically Dubious Tablet. Oh—there was a section on fine motor skills. Huh. He hadn’t even considered that that could be a problem.
After another minute, Lou added language skills. Man, he sort of wished he could download stuff to his own brain now. Imagine learning like a dozen languages in seconds—his friends would be so impressed!
Just as he was thinking that, his phone—which he never left more than two feet away from him—chimed, notifying him that someone had sent a message. Instantly, Lou set aside the tablet, and for the next ten minutes, he was fully distracted by a debate over whether or not cereal counted as a soup. Lou was certain it wasn’t. His annoying friends were playing at being the devil’s advocates to spite him.
Just as he was about to send another searing counterpoint—soups have to be cooked, dammit—Mr. Luthor stalked into the lab, his gait attempting to project ‘terrifying supervillain taskmaster’ but coming off as more ‘frazzled parent on a deadline’ due to his eyebags.
“Well?” he shouted at the room at large, as Lou attempted to hide his phone, pick up the Tablet, and pretend he had been doing something important all at the same time. “Are the data download preparations complete?”
Lou hesitated; he hadn’t actually looked over all of the packets yet. He was fairly certain all the important stuff was selected, but…
As if he had some kind of internal radar for poorly hidden procrastination, Mr. Luthor’s eyes landed right on Lou. “Well?” he pressed, sounding significantly more threatening.
All concerns promptly vanished, replaced by self-preservation—namely, a desire to avoid ending up like poor Henry, the last intern to disappoint the boss.
“Yes, sir!” Lou yelped, hitting confirm to send the dataset to the body floating in the tube behind him. “All finished, sir!”
Mr. Luthor narrowed his eyes.
Lou gulped.
“Good,” Luthor said slowly. “Even if it wasn’t, I doubt anything could truly derail my glorious plan. None of you are competent enough for that kind of elaborate sabotage.”
If you don’t think we’re competent, then why did you hire us…? Lou couldn’t help but wonder.
Still, with confirmation that he wasn’t about to have his life absolutely ruined, Lou relaxed. One of the other scientists, an older woman with graying hair, tapped his shoulder to get his attention.
“You can go home, son,” she said. “The rest is up to us.”
Lou didn’t need to be told twice—he sped out the lab door, excited at the prospect of sunlight. He had been working for almost twenty four hours straight. Mr. Luthor might pay well, but he expected his employees to run on caffeine and ‘villainous drive’.
Some good, greasy fast food was all Lou wanted right now. It was all he could focus on, in fact.
Perhaps that was why he didn’t notice the commotion behind him as the lab he had just exited erupted in a cacophony of noise. Perhaps that was also why he never stopped to realise that there was one section on the Tablet he hadn’t even glanced at: Socialisation.
As it turned out, no matter how much intellectual knowledge you give a person (cloned or otherwise), if they have no understanding (or, more relevantly, no respect) for social norms like no biting and politeness, problems arise. Namely, the Superman clone Luthor had been working on for months, once presented with a vaguely threatening environment full of people carrying threatening equipment and shouting at him, responded by… Well.
___
“GET HIM OFF ME!” Lex shrieked, dignity decisively discarded as the clone—Experiment Thirteen—continued to chomp on his arm like it was a chew toy. He could only be thankful that Experiment Thirteen didn’t seem to have developed any powers yet—if he had been as strong as the alien, Lex’s arm would have found itself detached from his body in seconds.
One of the security guards Lex had brought with him just in case the experiment had an adverse reaction to waking up hesitantly raised his gun, finger twitching on the trigger. Somehow, the experiment caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and flung himself backward, with a force that even seemed to surprise him. He yelped in surprise as he nearly launched himself over the top of the now-empty tube he had formerly been housed in, barely managing to hold onto the edge. The experiment scrambled to get fully on top of it, and moved as close to the center as he could once he did, where he proceeded to hiss at Lex and the gathered onlookers below.
Lex felt a vein in his forehead twitch. Had someone added cat DNA to his perfect creation? Which idiot—
The experiment hissed again.
Right. Deal with the feral weapon first. Fire the researchers later.
“Get down here this instant!” Lex demanded. “I am your creator, worthy of respect, and I command that you stop this nonsense at once!”
“Don’t wanna,” was the thankfully verbal reply.
At least that fixed one problem: the experiment could talk. He just chose not to.
Discretely, Lex motioned for one of the researchers to bring over the knockout drug she had been working on. It should have been administered immediately after the experiment woke up, but Lex had been more preoccupied with the fact that his perfect creation was attempting to gnaw his arm off at the time. He loaded the syringe into a custom gun, doing his best to be quiet, but knowing it was likely a pointless endeavor—the experiment appeared to already have some abilities; super hearing was likely among them.
Sure enough, the experiment’s head popped up over the opaque lid of the tube.
“What are you doing?” he asked suspiciously.
“This,” Lex replied, pulling the trigger. The experiment only had time to widen his eyes before the syringe embedded itself in his neck. He dropped immediately, falling over the edge of the tube. Oh, well. It wasn’t very high up, anyway.
Besides, having the last word always felt good.
Now that he was no longer at risk of getting spit on his perfectly tailored suit, Lex strode over to examine his experiment. He wrinkled his nose in disgust at what he saw.
“He really does look like the alien.”
“Wasn’t that… the point?” One of the scientists asked. “Sir,” he added hastily at Lex’s glare.
“Of course it was the point—that doesn’t mean I want to look at that stupid face for however long it takes to get this brat socialised.” Lex sighed. He was not looking forward to this. “Bring him to the reinforced suite—the one lined with lead. I will have my weapon, and he will be tamed.”
___
A week later, Lex could begrudgingly admit that he may have bitten off more than he could chew. Yes, the experiment—who he had taken to just calling ‘clone’—was marginally less actively mutinous now, but this wasn’t a sustainable system. Every time he wanted to perform a test, the clone had to be subdued with kryptonite and chained to a medical table before the experiment could begin. At this point, Lex had just stopped releasing him afterwards, which just wouldn’t work in the long run.
The clone still tried to bite people, too, which was really uncalled for. Why did he care so much about a bit of excruciating pain, anyway?
Besides those problems, from what Lex had observed, the clone was woefully inept at interacting socially with others. Granted, most of those ‘others’ were scientists actively trying to stick needles made of kryptonite in his arms, but still. Lex needed to know how he would react to an ordinary civilian.
So, naturally, Lex needed to kidnap one.
But how to go about it? Ideally, he wanted a child close to the clone’s biological age—around fifteen, perhaps a bit younger so as to avoid yet another snarky teenager—but parents were so overprotective. How was he supposed to snatch a child when they were so fast at reporting it? Hmm… Maybe if he—
“Mr. Luthor,” his secretary said, knocking on the wood of his desk to get his attention.
“Ah… yes?” he replied, giving her a smile to hide how startled he was. “What is it?”
“The businessmen from Gotham will be arriving in ten minutes. You’re supposed to greet them.”
Gotham! Of course!
Like any other citizen of Metropolis, Lex had a healthy disdain for his city’s dirty counterpart. Considering the crime rate in that place, it wouldn’t be surprising to anyone if another brat went missing. And the cops were so corrupt that they wouldn’t even bother to look for a missing kid without a bribe. Batman and Robin were an obstacle, of course, but there were so many kidnapping cases in Gotham every year—it shouldn’t be hard to hide this one.
Looking up, Lex realised his secretary was still waiting for him.
“Right. I’ll be there in a moment.”
His plans were all falling into place…