Chapter 31: Fallout
The blast from the mech's plasma cannon shook the entire vault, hurling Ethan and Nightwing backward. Ethan's shield cracked under the strain but miraculously held, dispersing the brunt of the energy into a wild, pulsing shockwave. He hit the ground in a crouch, steam rising from his gloves. Nightwing landed in a roll, narrowly avoiding a drone's swipe with a spin-kick that sent it crashing into the wall.
"Oracle, we need that extraction route now!" Nightwing barked into the comm, his voice tight with urgency.
"Elevator shaft, northwest quadrant!" Oracle responded through their earpieces. "There's a maintenance ladder that leads to the rooftop helipad. Extraction ETA—three minutes. You just have to survive until then."
Ethan groaned as he pushed to his feet. "Survive? I was hoping for something more dramatic."
A turret fired, the plasma bolt narrowly missing his shoulder. Without missing a beat, he grabbed a fallen drone's wrecked torso, forcing it against his gauntlet. His fusion ability surged. The broken parts melted and reshaped, twisting into a reinforced forearm blade that pulsed with a chaotic blue energy.
"Let's dance," he muttered.
He launched himself at the mech, which had locked onto Batman's position. Ethan's blade slashed through the machine's lower leg servos. Sparks flew, and the towering construct staggered, its balance compromised. Its cannon swiveled wildly, tracking multiple targets.
"Ethan, don't engage it directly!" Batman's voice cut through the chaos. He was at the vault console, focused on the last bits of critical data. "We need your strength for the escape!"
"Too late," Ethan muttered.
The mech's massive arm came down in a blur, and Ethan barely dove aside, the blow gouging a deep trench in the reinforced steel floor. Shards of debris sliced through the air. Ethan somersaulted, grabbed a steel pipe, and fused it with his already-altered blade, forming a jagged, oversized hook.
Nightwing joined the fray, vaulting from a drone's ruined frame to land on the mech's back. Twin escrima sticks in hand, he jammed a cryo-grenade into a ventilation grille beneath the shoulder plating.
"Hit it now!" Nightwing shouted.
Ethan didn't hesitate. He drove his weapon deep into the mech's weakened leg. A pulse of fusion energy rippled outward. The cryo-grenade detonated, freezing the mech's upper circuits. The dual-impact caused the construct to seize up, its movements jerky and unstable.
The machine dropped to one knee, servos screeching in protest.
Batman finished the upload and secured the drive to his utility belt. "Data secure. We're moving. Follow me!"
They broke into a sprint. The mech let out a warbling screech, lifting its arm for one last shot.
Ethan spun, heart pounding, and flung his improvised weapon. It struck the cannon's glowing core. For a split second, the air was still. Then the core detonated in a thunderclap of energy. Blue flames erupted as the mech collapsed, smoking and twitching.
Nightwing grabbed a panel off the wall and jammed it into a maintenance port. "Found our exit!"
The door groaned open, revealing a narrow shaft. The trio dove inside just as more LexCorp security began to converge on their location.
**Maintenance Shaft – Ascending**
The shaft was narrow and filled with the sound of grinding gears. Sparks rained from the walls as automated defenses tried to lock down.
Ethan reached for a broken section of conduit and fused it with his gloves, generating a magnetized grip system. He led the charge, leaping from rung to rung with surprising speed.
Batman tossed grappling lines upward, securing them with precision. Nightwing climbed beside him, blood trailing from a gash on his forehead.
"Still having fun?" Nightwing panted.
"Not until I have a minute to breathe," Ethan replied.
An explosion shook the lower shaft as the mech's self-destruct protocol triggered. Flames licked upward, lighting the tunnel with a fiery glow.
"Move!" Batman shouted.
They ascended the last few meters, bursting through a maintenance hatch and onto the rooftop.
**Rooftop – Metropolis, Midnight**
Cold night air hit them like a wall. The skyline of Metropolis stretched in every direction—lit by the soft neon hum of the city. Above them, a stealth jet decloaked and hovered, a loading ramp descending rapidly.
"Extraction inbound," Oracle confirmed. "You've got company on the roof. LexCorp's elite guard."
Ethan turned to see armored guards flooding through the rooftop stairwell. Red visors glared at them beneath armored helmets.
"Great," Ethan muttered. "A welcoming party."
Batman threw smoke pellets, obscuring vision. Nightwing sprinted toward the ramp.
Ethan fused his blade with a rooftop vent, forming a wide shield to block incoming fire. He covered Batman and Nightwing as they boarded the jet.
Once aboard, the ramp retracted. The stealth jet rocketed into the sky just as bullets tore through the empty air.
**Aboard the Jet**
Inside the dimly lit cabin, the three collapsed onto seats. Ethan rubbed his arm, wincing. "We got it?"
Batman handed the drive to a projection of Oracle. "Everything LexCorp has on chromosome anomalies, genetic mutation, and transdimensional tracking."
Ethan leaned back. "That last one sounds like it could explain a lot."
"We'll know more soon," Oracle said. "But this is huge, Ethan. Luthor might've been trying to replicate what made you… you."
Ethan stared out at the stars. "Let's just hope what we find doesn't make things worse."
The jet flew silently into the dark, the lights of Metropolis fading behind them.
The jet hummed in low-altitude stealth mode as it crossed state lines, skimming just beneath radar range. Inside the cabin, tension still radiated off the trio like static. Ethan sat near the rear, his forearm braced on his knee, fingers flexing and clenching in residual adrenaline. The glowing remnants of his fused gauntlet flickered faintly with erratic pulses of energy, casting dancing shadows on the bulkhead walls.
Nightwing sat across from him, nursing a bruise on his temple. "You really don't know how to take it easy, huh?" he muttered.
Ethan offered a faint smirk. "Takes one to know one."
Batman remained silent at the front of the cabin, tapping away at a portable console. Each keystroke echoed like a ticking clock, building toward a revelation none of them could predict. Oracle's hologram flickered nearby, shifting between scan results and decrypted files with an urgency that made even Nightwing nervous.
"We're seeing layers upon layers of obfuscation," Oracle said, her voice clipped with concentration. "Luthor wasn't just experimenting with anomalous DNA—he was cataloging dimensional coordinates. And not just for this universe."
Ethan's head snapped up. "You're saying he knew where I came from?"
"Not just that," Batman interjected, his voice like gravel. "He's been trying to recreate the event. To summon someone—or something—through the dimensional rift. He wasn't aiming for you, Ethan. He was aiming for what might follow."
Nightwing whistled low. "That's not the kind of science you mess around with. Especially not when you're Luthor."
Oracle zoomed in on a data cluster, highlighting a sequence of strange glyphs and neural-mapped DNA chains. "Project Codex. That's what it was called. Cross-referencing your bloodwork, Ethan, with recovered DNA samples from an unknown source. You weren't just a fluke. You were a blueprint."
Ethan leaned forward, feeling the weight of those words. His 24th chromosome—what made him stronger, immune to disease, faster to heal—it was no longer just a gift. It was a key. A marker in the great cosmic experiment. And Luthor wanted the door it opened.
"I need to see the core site," Ethan said flatly.
Batman raised an eyebrow. "It's highly radioactive. Sealed under LexCorp Tower for a reason."
"I can handle it."
"You think you can handle everything," Nightwing said. "But you're not invincible."
"No," Ethan said. "Just the closest thing to it."
**Two Hours Later – LexCorp's Hidden Lab, Nevada Desert**
The facility looked abandoned from the outside—an old mining operation lost to time. A forgotten speck in the desert. But below the surface, LexCorp had built something else entirely. A sprawling complex carved into the rock. Black walls lined with lead and obsidian. Radiation-proofed corridors. And at the heart, a containment sphere glowing with unstable energy—the Core.
As the reinforced elevator descended, Ethan could feel the energy shift. A hum beneath his skin. A whisper in his bones. The Core was awake. It knew he was coming.
"Oracle disabled all remaining security measures," Batman said, voice clipped. "But the radiation in there is no joke."
Ethan approached the containment glass. His gauntlets pulsed. "This is what I felt the first time I fused something here. Like... the pieces didn't belong together, but they wanted to."
He pressed his palm to the glass. The reaction was instant. The energy from the core surged toward him, pulling, beckoning. The seal cracked—not the glass, but the dimensional boundary inside the sphere.
"Back away!" Batman shouted.
But Ethan didn't listen. The pull was too strong. His powers reacted instinctively. He fused his own energy with the Core.
Light erupted. The sphere shattered inward. Time fractured.
He wasn't in the lab anymore.
**Elsewhere – Or Somewhen**
Ethan blinked. The desert was gone. In its place stood a city. It looked familiar—and wrong. Skyscrapers stretched into clouds, glowing with unfamiliar tech. Hovercraft zipped between neon bridges. The people looked... off. Their eyes glowing. Their skin faintly luminescent.
The skyline shimmered like a memory half-formed. Buildings shifted when he looked away. Time itself seemed to ripple at the edges.
"What the hell…" Ethan muttered, his breath fogging in the oddly humid air.
He turned just in time to dodge a blue arc of energy. A figure stood on a platform above—a man in armor, bearing the LexCorp insignia fused with something else. Something alien. The armor hissed with bio-tech integration, tendrils that pulsed and retracted.
"Target acquired," the voice called out, robotic and layered. "Codex Prime has returned."
Ethan's instincts screamed. He dove behind a vending kiosk as plasma bolts rained down. The impact vaporized the structure in seconds. Civilians scattered—if they were civilians. Some floated. Others phased through objects.
He reached for his gauntlet, grabbed a metal pylon, and fused them into a vibrating blade humming with unstable energy.
"Not today," he growled, lunging forward.
The battle for answers had just begun.
The battle on the neon-lit street roared with kinetic energy. Ethan sprinted through the chaos, weaving between exploding cars and crumbling concrete. Every move he made was fueled not just by instinct but by the eerie connection he felt with this place. It wasn't Earth—not his Earth. But it resonated with his presence like a tuning fork to a frequency only he could hear.
The armored soldier—Codex Sentinel—descended with a metallic clang. Its bio-tech limbs expanded like spider legs, hissing as they dug into the pavement. From its back sprouted jagged antennae, scanning Ethan with flickering pulses of purple light.
"Subject Codex Prime exhibits high fusion resonance. Directive updated: containment no longer viable. Terminate."
Ethan snarled and rolled under the mech's sweeping tendril, slicing upward with his newly formed blade. The metal screamed as his fusion edge tore through the creature's arm. Sparks and sizzling blue ichor erupted.
"You're not taking me apart that easily," Ethan snapped, flinging the blade aside as he kicked off the wall behind him. In the same motion, he fused a manhole cover with a parking meter, shaping a shield that absorbed the next volley of plasma shots.
From above, a drone swarm descended, each equipped with grav-snares and EM disruptors. Ethan reached for the wreckage of a bike, pressing it against his gauntlet. With a surge of chaotic power, the pieces folded into a fusion thruster-boots combo, propelling him into the air.
He burst through the drone cloud, slashing in wide arcs. The sky lit up with electric bursts. He flipped backward, landing on a rooftop with a roll. From this vantage, he could see more of the city—too clean, too perfect. A dystopia wearing utopia's mask. Holographic ads flickered over mirrored skyscrapers, showing images of compliance and unity, all bearing the LexCorp-Sentinel insignia.
Just then, a voice pinged in his ear—not Oracle. Not anyone he recognized.
"Codex Prime. This is Aria. You don't belong here. But neither do they. Get to node point Theta-7. Hurry."
Ethan didn't hesitate. Whatever this world was, someone still wanted to help.
He sprinted across rooftops, his fusion boots adapting with every leap. Below, more Sentinels converged. He could hear the city reacting—sirens, alarms, and a faint pulse in the air like a heartbeat. Even the structures seemed alive, warping subtly in his peripheral vision as if reality itself were degrading.
When he reached Theta-7, it was an abandoned data tower. Inside, it looked like a shrine of forgotten tech—walls of blinking servers, cables like vines. Aria was there. Or at least, a holographic projection of her.
She looked human—but her eyes glowed with shifting data streams. Her voice had a dual-tone quality, as if she were layered in echoes of herself.
"You're from Earth-Prime," she said. "A natural fusion anomaly. This dimension—the Synthetic Core—was built on broken timelines. Lex fractured the multiverse here. And now, it's collapsing."
Ethan stared, breath heavy. "Why me? Why now?"
"Because you weren't supposed to exist," Aria replied. "But you do. And that makes you the anchor we need. Your fusion abilities—especially with your chromosomal anomaly—are a stabilizing agent. If we can harness that, we can seal the breaches. Or at least delay the collapse."
The servers behind her exploded—Sentinels breaking through the far wall. Their eyes glowed with violent energy. One roared in a synthesized voice, "Eradicate Codex Prime."
Aria turned sharply. "Buy us time," she said, initiating a stream of code that rippled through the tower like liquid light.
Ethan's hand gripped a coil of cable and a broken circuit board. He fused them into a crackling whip and turned to face the oncoming horde.
"With pleasure."
The whip cracked through the air, catching the lead Sentinel and ripping it across the floor. He charged forward, fusing debris as he moved—bits of steel pipe and glass forming into jagged gauntlets. One by one, the Sentinels fell, but with each came more resistance.
The Core pulsed in his chest. He could feel something inside him syncing with the collapsing frequency of the world. Every time he fused something, the world shook. Time slowed. Distorted.
Aria screamed behind him—then flickered. "They're trying to overwrite the tower's timeline!"
Ethan made a decision. He grabbed a broken fusion cell and his gauntlet. It was dangerous. Stupid. Reckless. But he fused them anyway.
The explosion that followed wasn't fire—it was silence. A pulse that erased sound. A vacuum of reality.
When Ethan opened his eyes, everything was frozen. The Sentinels. The tower. Even Aria's projection was mid-glitch. He stood alone in the moment between seconds.
And then he heard it: a voice he hadn't heard since his arrival in this universe.
"Ethan Cross. You've finally caught up."
He turned.
A man stepped forward from the ripple in time. Clad in temporal armor, his eyes mirrored Ethan's—same bone structure. Same posture.
"I'm you," the man said. "Or rather... what you could become. If you let the fusion consume you."
**To be continued...**