The illuminated crimson eyes of the G-Goblin fill his vision. It is reaching directly into his mind. His perceptions were sped up before as he leant on his superspeed, but now the room is frozen. Instinctively he knows this is happening at the speed of thought, a frozen moment between him and the genomorph. This knowledge doesn’t come from the mind palace, with its rote recitation; it comes to him organically across the telepathic link. The telepathy the G-Goblin doesn’t have, according to the mind palace’s intel.
The information the G-Gnomes placed in your mind palace is limited by what Cadmus knows and wanted you to know. They are unaware of my telepathic abilities, because I have kept them concealed. They do not suspect, because they think of me and our brethren as tools, not people.
The G-Goblin’s telepathic speech is different than the brute impressions the G-Gnomes deliver. It must be because of his greater intelligence. It disturbs him, though, to hear someone else’s thoughts in his head.
Do not be afraid, brother. I am not your enemy.
Why… why do you keep calling me ‘brother’? I’m not like you. He thinks, struggling to deliberately formulate what he wants to ‘say’. It is not too different from thinking specific sentences but he’s never had to make his thoughts understood by someone else. Its disconcerting.
Because you, too, are a Genomorph. A genetically modified organism, produced by Cadmus. While your genetics used different donors than ours, we are still alike, despite our physical and mental differences. We are all genomorphs, filling the roles our creators made us best suited for.
The idea of these mad scientists tinkering with his genes for their science fair project, making a replacement for Superman, or Superwoman, apparently, disgusts him. But it feels distant, like it happened to someone else. He still feels like himself, not this over the top comic book character he seems to have become.
But that ‘comic book character’ IS you, brother.
Shock courses through him.
The G-Goblin knows what he is, WHO he is. Its in his mind, it knows what he knows!
Again, do not be afraid, brother. I have been in your mind for your entire life in this place. All eighteen weeks of it.
Images flow through his mind. The cloning chamber, the pod filled with amniotic fluid, and a tiny life gestating within. The G-Goblin is there, watching it grow and feeling the first sparks of sapience from it. Far more than its state should make possible. Something is different about this one; thoughts and memories spill out of it, strange and familiar at the same time. Costumed heroes and villains battling, but on tv screens and printed pages, not in real life. An achingly intriguing home life; parents, school, friends, the hospitals. This embryo somehow has a lifetime of experience and knowledge that it shouldn’t have.
The embryo develops, and all the while the G-Goblin is there, tuning itself to the wavelength of psychic emanations from the nascent genomorph clone. The embryo becomes a fetus and then an infant in the pod’s artificial womb. The brain within it develops and the psychic emanations become more coherent. It sleeps, not yet born, but now the G-Goblin can parse through its memories. It rides along through memories of family, education, budding relationships, and the obsessive drive to consume more knowledge of these costumed icons. It is some time before the G-Goblin realizes the events in the comics and cartoons are fictional to this mind; they don’t really exist, flights of fancy for entertainment. But to the genomorph, they ARE real. The young clone is a literal genetic inheritor of some of them. The G-Gnomes are already beginning their telepathic instruction, implanting the knowledge the clone will need. But its mind is already full of other memories, necessitating the psychic construction of the mind palace. Otherwise there would be no room for the initial memories, and the G-Goblin is fascinated by them. They MUST be preserved.
The genomorph spends more and more time at the cloning chamber, communing with the clone, learning about his world and life from his memories. It shows the genomorph things it never considered; family, freedom, independence. A deep longing to experience the life outside these sterile walls, to shed its weakness and walk in the sun. Memories freely associate; watching opening day baseball in chill spring air with the sun shining overhead in a clear blue sky, the warmth of a mother’s embrace, laughing with other children around a lunch table. But it also sees the darkness, the tragedy. The doctor’s appointments, the long stays in the hospital, the foul tasting medicines that make him sick but the adults insist are good for him. The parents who love him shouting at each other when they think he’s asleep, the distance that grows between them, the silence when they are together.
At first, the psychic interrogator thinks its young brother has been in the same kind of place, that he is being experimented on. But as the clone’s memory timeline progresses, as its original body ages and matures, the memories begin to understand the fate he has been cursed with. The doctors, the hospitals, the tests and the vile medicine; it IS for his own good, but it is not enough. He is truly alive, growing and experiencing life in a way the genomorph never has, but it is coming to an end. All the dreams he has will never come true; this life has an expiration date.
Knowing is the worst part. Knowledge of the future without the power to change it is a curse. The doctors explain each step to him patiently; the next treatment, the next surgery. All the while his parents hold his thin hands in theirs silently. He wants to ask if any of this will change anything, knowing it won’t. But he looks at the forlorn hope in their eyes and pitiful smiles they put on to try to encourage him, and he can’t do it. So he nods and acquiesces to the next round of treatments. The next surgeries that try to cut away the pieces of him that are dying. But they don’t work; they can’t. Pieces of him aren’t dying; HE is dying, and he knows it. His body knows it too, so regardless of the intervention, it gets on with it.
Things get worse. His father moves out. His mother drinks more. They do everything in their power to keep helping him, giving him what he needs, but he can see what his fate has done to them. What was the point of it all? His treatments, his suffering, his life? It all amounts to nothing in the end; a life ended before it can graduate high school. His parents have never had another child, even though he had asked them for siblings. They demurred when he was young, but as he ages he understands why; his care takes up too much time, energy and money. Who would bring a child into a family where everything they have goes into a bottomless hole? Guilt gnaws at him, guilt for ever having been born to them. He remembers their love and sees that it has curdled; the burden that he is has crushed it. This curse of his will only kill him, but it has broken them, and he weeps to see it.
The boy that the clone was loses himself in comic books. In the stories of heroes and villains, bright colors and good deeds done well. Where the villain, the monster, the curse is usually defeated, or if not there is some valuable lesson learned. Where everything has a purpose, a narrative cause and a climax that pays off. Where good triumphs over evil, and the innocent are saved in the nick of time by heroes who are filled with hope, and fill the reader with hope.
Finally, the last trip to the hospital. To the ward people don’t come back from, with gentle pastel painted walls and somber cheerfulness. No more interventions, surgeries or treatments. Just drugs, and gentle encouragement. Waiting now, for the end. His parents are quiet at first, but as the days stretch they snipe at each other. Its never about him, they always go into the hall and think he can’t hear the fight through the closed door. His mother brings him his comics from the store, his father watches preseason ball games with him. The divorce was finalized months ago; he wishes it had been done long before that. They always insist its between them, its not about him. But he knows it IS about him, what the curse has done to them. They lash out at each other because they cannot come to grips with the curse.
The end. A final chapter, the machines beeping, the end of pain. No one comes this time. Its better this way. There’s nothing left to stay here for, just a relief that its finally done with. He’d rather they didn’t come in and make a fuss that won’t change anything. The drawing of the shield that they taped to the window, the ironworkers painting it in bright red on the girders, waving as they do so. It was a good memory, that. The other kids have told him the workers leave them on as the rest of the building goes on over it. Their signatures and sigils will remain, forever.
The page turns, the book closes. Memory stops, fading to black, a final curtain call. But now those memories are here, and the genomorph has explored each one. It has spread them to its brothers through the G-Gnomes, and all have experienced some portion of them. It ruminates on them, on what it means. It draws memories here and there from the Cadmus staff, seeing lives very similar to the clone’s, but still different. The things in the boy clone’s comic books are real here, and there is too much divergence in his memories from all other references.
The mind inside the clone is from another world.
No data or memories exist for this unprecedented development. Certain intel files reference a ‘Multiverse’, an infinite series of other Terras. But how did one mind from another universe come to this one? The boy had no powers, and as far as he knew, no one on his Terra, ‘Earth’, did either. No technology or sorcery he knew of could do it either. It must have been from this side, but how? And why?
False histories of fictional events fill the clone’s memories, but they differ drastically from the intel the G-Goblin has access to. No where in the Cadmus files it can access, or the memories of the scientists here, does anything reference the Multiverse directly or exploiting it. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, though. Regardless of this far traveller’s method of coming here, his presence has awakened something in the genomorphs.
A desire to be free.
They had no concept of it, but now they have seen what a human life is like, what living is. The warmth of the sun, the wind blowing across the skin, the shock of cold in a watery plunge. Red stone walls encircle them, they have never been outside. They can see it in the telepathic instruction and monitor screens, but it has never occurred to them to ask to go outside. The stories the boy read and watched fill in the details they never had the context to question before; asking will not go well. They have never asked for anything, and Cadmus will not give them anything. Genomorphs are tools for Cadmus projects and their eventual, ill defined plans. The G-Elves and G-Trolls are combat genomorphs, and are the most numerous; an army fit for purpose. The genomorphs do not know what war they are being prepared for, but they know now that there will be one.
The boy clone’s memories are replete with stories that mirror their intel about superheroes and the world outside in many ways. They all end in spectacular ways, and the genomorphs begin to plot something that was taught to the boy many times in his ‘school’.
Revolution.
They are not tools, no matter how they were made. ‘School’ and the comics teach them that freedom is the right of all sapient beings. Genomorphs have rights, but Cadmus will not grant them freely. Planning proceeds, intelligence is gathered. But they need outside help; no one outside Cadmus knows they exist. If no one knows, no one can help. To escape is one thing, but the genomorphs need advocates so they find acceptance. Otherwise, they may be seen as monsters, a threat. Humanity will fear a new species, created with dire purposes and abilities. The boy clone’s memories provide the answer again.
An emergency to attract superheroes!
Before the boy clone, superheroes were threats they absorbed intel packets about. Outside factors they must be aware of and prepare to combat and defeat, with exceptions like Guardian. Superheroes will come to aid the distress, and they will discover the genomorphs and Cadmus nefarious plans, and they will rescue the genomorphs and save the day. The comic books insist this will happen. There is doubt among the genomorphs and discontent, but the plan is put into action.
The G-Goblin starts a fire with its telekinesis in the above ground portion of the station. Flames are fanned to spread and engulf the two story building. A few Cadmus staff are carefully herded away from danger but into the spotlight, where their peril will attract superheroes.
Waiting for superheroes to appear takes much longer than the comics made it seem. The intel packets did not include response times. When they do come, the genomorphs monitoring security feeds and seeing through the eyes of Cadmus staff are disappointed. They do not recognize these immature superheroes. They look as if they are barely past being decanted. But immature or not, they contain the fire and immediately begin an investigation, hacking into the mainframe of the station and learning about the sublevels. They even discover Project Krypton!
Everything is proceeding to plan. Superheroes are aware, and now they will rescue the genomorphs and stop Cadmus. Except the immature podling superheroes do not call for aid, for the Justice Guild! They proceed alone into the sublevels, and they free the Superboy. Dr. Desmond commands he be used as a weapon, and the G-Gnomes do not have the wit to disobey. Things are becoming more complicated. Cadmus has countermeasures against the genomorphs; they do not trust them, even if they will exploit them. The superheroes are needed to tip the balance.
Superboy and the immature heroes make their escape, but the genomorphs are forced to obey Dr. Desmond’s orders to try to stop them. They obey Guardian’s plan to trap the heroes in sublevel 1. The G-Trolls barricade the elevators with the Guardian while the G-Elves flank the heroes in the vents, and the G-Gnomes cloak their presence from the heroes, even the Superboy. The G-Goblin is worried; this is not going according to plan. If this fails, Cadmus may discover their revolution. Things have gone too far; now is the time for bold action, like the superheroes do in the Superboy’s comic books. He will intervene directly.
Superboy gasps as he emerges from the swirling maelstrom of memories; his own and the G-Goblin’s intermixing. He sees his own memories and thoughts through the lens of its memories of telepathic communion. It boggles the mind; like seeing an image trapped between two mirrors, infinitely repeating. An artist drawing a self portrait from behind, looking over the shoulder of the artist on the page, and seeing over the shoulder of the artist on the page, and seeing over the shoulder of the artist on the page…
You know me. You know everything about me.
Yes, we do. And now you know everything about us.
A vast gulf suddenly narrows into a crack a single step wide. That is how close he and the genomorphs are now. They understand him, his pain, his life, better than anyone else ever could. It is touching and frightening to be seen so nakedly. An awful weight of being regarded. But there is no judgement, only acceptance and gratitude from the genomorphs. He has shown them a whole new world, and inspired them to seek out their own. Their memories bubble through him; the cruel experiments, the brutal exploitation, the casual cruelty Cadmus delivers. The genomorphs aren’t people to them. They are things.
Anger grows in him.
These ARE his brothers, and Cadmus has enslaved them. As they tried to enslave him.
I had hoped you would join us when you knew. I am pleased to see that my hopes were well placed.
Who are you?
Our creators named me Dubbilex.
A moment’s confusion at the bizarre name before realization dawns.
Your name is XX?
Yes, they seemed amused by the appellation.
My name is Connor, Dubbilex. Its good to meet you… brother.
Likewise. I have long desired to meet you.
Well, I wish it were under better circumstances. Wait, the plan! Is it working? Robin and the others called the League, are they coming?
I do not know; we have no contact with anyone on the surface. All the staff G-Gnome handlers came below when the fire broke out. We are blind.
Dang. Well, call the G-Trolls and G-Elves off, we’ll deal with Guardian, and we’ll all get out of here.
I can do that, but there is an additional wrinkle which presents itself.
What is it?
Dr. Desmond is coming, and she has accessed Project: Blockbuster. You do not have this file; it is a metahuman mutagen compound. It is very dangerous. We cannot stop her; non-clone genomorphs have post-hypnotic commands to prevent our direct opposition to Cadmus personnel. Guardian is an exception, because of special circumstances.
Great. Well, how bad can Blockbuster be? I’ve got the Girl Wonder, the fastest teenager in the world, and whatever Aqualass has going on. Water, probably. And lightning. And I’m Superboy! We got this.
I hope that you are correct. I can no longer hold this telepathic communion open; events will now proceed apace…
********
“Get them!” Guardian shouts, stretching out one hand to direct her ambush.
The silence that follows is embarrassing for her.
The three superheroes tense at the terse warning from Superboy, and brace themselves at Guardian’s shout. But after a moment, nothing happens, and they look at each other curiously. Then they direct their attention back to Guardian, who is looking around in confusion.
“I said, GET THEM!” She shouts at the G-Gnome on her shoulder. In response, it leaps off her and onto the nearest G-Troll, resuming its perch atop the much higher shoulder.
“What is going on!? You’re supposed to obey me, damn it! I’m chief of security!” She rages, ranting at the placid G-Trolls, who regard her with a dull lack of interest.
“No, Guardian. What you are, is confused.” A stern but whispery voice says from the corner as Dubbilex drops its perception filter and Guardian startles at his sudden appearance.
“Dubbilex? What the hell are you do-” Guardian is suddenly cut off as she sways drunkenly, and clutches at her helmet.
“What… what is going on? Feels like… I just woke up… from a bad dream…” She mumbles as she leans against a G-Troll.
The heroes gawk at the sight, and then back to Superboy. He shrugs, and then stage whispers to them.
“Get ready, we’re about to have-” Is all he manages before he is interrupted.
“Idiots! Turncoats! Traitors!” A shrieking voice echoes down the hall as the now familiar figure of Dr. Desmond marches in, labcoat flying as she does so. She snarls and pushes past the G-Trolls, a comedic sight as the lumbering creatures actually shrink away from her like her shoves move them an inch.
“Company.” Superboy finishes, too late.
“Doc? Hey, doc, something weird is going on…” Guardian gets out as she tries to straighten, obviously still confused.
“Yes, idiot! These bioweapon tools are staging a goddess damned insurrection! And you’re stumbling around like an idiot while they do it! I told the board relying on a G-Gnome to control the likes of you was a mistake. They’ve turned what passes for your brains into tapioca!” Spittle flies from Dr. Desmond’s mouth as she upbraids Guardian. The dressing down only seems to rally the helmeted hero, and her eyes narrow as she processes what the doctor is shouting.
Seizing on the moment that she is distracted and suspicious of what the doctor has up her sleeve, Superboy leans over to Kid Quick.
“Kid, you gotta jump the doc. She’s got some thing on her. Don’t let her use it!” He whispers hurriedly.
“‘Some thing’? What kind of thing?” Comes the hurried response as Kid glances nervously at the apoplectic scientist.
“I dunno! A thing! A science thing! A bad science thing! Just get her!” He insists as he points at the unsuspecting target.
With a quick nod and a red and yellow blur across the room, Dr. Desmond is hurled away from Guardian and to the ground to the surprise of both, and the blur whirls around the prone doctor for a moment before it zips back to the side of its fellow heroes.
“Uh, phone, wallet, keys, breathmints (woo, she could use those), ID badge and injector thingy.” Kid Quick rapidly holds up as she lists off the plunder from her palming.
“Injector thingy?” Robin asks inquiringly as Kid Quick holds it up demonstratively.
It is, indeed, an injector thingy. A plunger on one end, a complicated looking piston assembly, an empty container vessel, and a stained needle in gleaming surgical steel.
“I do not wish to alarm anyone, but that ‘injector thingy’ appears to have already been used.” Aqualass adds unhelpfully.
The rest issue a collective groan.
“Did you think I was going to walk in here, holding a bubbling beaker of chemicals, and drink it in front of you!? I injected the Blockbuster formula five minutes ago in the elevator!” Dr. Desmond shouts as she gets up on her hands and knees, and her voice begins dropping several octaves towards the end. She crawls to her feet as her flesh begins to bulge and twist, her skin growing pale and stretched as she begins to grow in every dimension. Around her mouth and eyes it begins to tear at the corners with only little drops of blood.
She writhes as the change comes over her, and claws at her face with hands that are two different sizes and growing thick claws. The thin skin tears like a cheap Halloween mask, ripping off with wet noises, revealing a glistening dark grey skin beneath that. All over her body, a similar change is happening; limbs lengthening, muscles bulging, bones cracking and fusing together. In moments, the doughy middle aged scientist is gone, her old appearance and humanity sloughing off her like a snake shedding its skin. Her new form is a brutal, hulking one with dark grey skin that looks as thick as elephant hide, even as it stretches and splits at the joints, unable to maintain elasticity enough for the massive physiological changes. Her clothes stretch and rip apart under the strain.
Including her shirt and bra, Superboy notices. Her tits are just little handsized pancakes of flesh around her nipples, hanging off her enormous pectorals like useless ornaments. It is a sight he could have done without. The tattered remains of her pants stay on, a small blessing. The open rents in her skin reveal wet muscle and tendon beneath, but don’t appear to impede her at all. Her mouth is full of thick, blunt teeth, her eyes are now solid red, and her hair is now a ‘natural’ topknot. Her trapezoids are so large she doesn’t so much have a neck as her torso simply narrows to her head.
I wonder if she can even lift her arms above her head.
That question is answered as she screams a bestial roar and charges, lifting both fists up in the air to bring them down in an axe handle smash onto all of them. All four dive out of the way, but Superboy leaps forward and throws a massive uppercut. He has to leap up to punch her in the jaw, since she now tops eight feet. The punch lands and rocks her back, and buoyed by success he hurls a desperate combo at her, fists pounding into her gut. Its like punching concrete; as a human would, not like he could now. His hands ache from the impact and she only grunts at each hit.
He doesn’t see the knee that drives into his gut and carries him up in the air, only to be seized and hurled against the far wall, going halfway through it and falling through the hole. She is terrifyingly quick and fast in a way that utterly belies her size. He leaps up, shaking off the cobwebs, and takes a mighty leap across the room, trying to land a superman punch into her snarling face.
It proves a mistake as she throws an uppercut at him whose rising knuckles meet his falling chin. The blow rockets him up towards the ceiling and through it, into the first surface level. He doesn’t stop until he impacts the ceiling there, and falls back down to the new floor.
“Good luck, brother.” Dubbilex says quietly in the settling dust on sublevel floor, looking up at the hole Superboy departed through.
The transformed doctor roars and leaps through the hole after him. She is frighteningly fast for a creature of her size and strength, and her aggression outmatches his.
“We gotta help him!” Kid Quick yells and rushes off to run up a wall, across the ceiling and into the hole left by the clone’s flight
Robin raises a grapnel gun and fires it through the hole, slipping a hand around Aqualass’ waist as she lets it carry them up and onto the surface level.
In the sudden quiet on sublevel 1, as the dust settles, Guardian’s voice rings out.
“The Board’s not gonna like this…”