Tuesday, May 19th, 2009, 7:23 PM
Metropolis Harbor District
The first thing James noticed when he got out of the cab wasn't the destruction. It was the silence.
No screaming. No sirens. No panicked voices shouting orders. Just this weird, heavy quiet that made the hair on his arms stand up. Like the whole city was holding its breath.
Then he saw the crater.
What used to be Pier 47 was now a smoking hole in the ground big enough to park a city bus. Concrete slabs jutted up at impossible angles, twisted rebar reaching toward the sky like skeletal fingers. The smell hit him next, something metallic that reminded him of blood.
"Jesus Christ," he whispered, pulling his camera out of its bag.
That's when the quiet ended.
The roar came from somewhere in the harbor, low and guttural and definitely not human. James felt it in his bones, in his teeth, vibrating through the ground and up into his chest. Whatever made that sound was big. And pissed off.
"WHERE IS HE?"
The voice boomed across the water, loud enough to rattle windows three blocks away. James raised his camera instinctively, finger finding the shutter release.
"WHERE'S THE LAST SON OF KRYPTON? THE BASTICH WHO THINKS HE'S TOO GOOD TO ANSWER A CHALLENGE?"
Something massive broke the surface of the harbor. James got one good shot before his brain caught up with what he was seeing. Nine feet tall, built like a bodybuilder who'd been hitting the steroids for about fifty years too long. Skin like chalk, black hair hanging in a greasy curtain around a face that belonged in nightmares.
And he was flying. Actually flying, not jumping or gliding. Just hanging in the air like gravity was more of a suggestion than a law.
"Oh, shit," James breathed.
The thing, because calling it a man seemed wrong, surveyed the harbor district like a predator looking for prey. When its eyes landed on the office building behind James, it smiled. The expression was all teeth and malice.
"MAYBE I NEED TO GET HIS ATTENTION."
James didn't wait to see what that meant. He turned and ran toward the building, shouting at the handful of office workers who were standing around gawking like idiots.
"Get away from the windows! Move, now!"
Some of them listened. Others just stared at him like he was crazy. James grabbed a woman in a business suit by the arm and physically pulled her away from the plate glass just as the creature raised one massive fist.
The punch sent a shockwave through the building's foundation. Windows exploded outward in a shower of glass, and James threw himself over the woman as shards rained down around them. When he looked up, there was a hole punched clean through six floors of reinforced concrete.
"Run," he told her, and to her credit, she ran.
The creature laughed, a sound like grinding metal. "BETTER. BUT NOT GOOD ENOUGH."
It moved to the next building, and James realized with sick certainty that this wasn't random destruction. This thing was methodically working its way through the district, turning occupied buildings into rubble. Drawing attention. Making noise.
Trying to get Superman's attention.
James pulled out his phone and dialed 911, knowing it was useless. What were the cops gonna do against something that could punch through skyscrapers? But he had to try.
"911, what's your emergency?"
"Metropolis Harbor, some kind of... I don't know what the hell it is. It's destroying buildings. People are gonna die."
"Sir, we're aware of the situation. Emergency services are en route. Please evacuate the area immediately."
Emergency services. Right. James hung up and looked around. There were still people in the area, frozen in shock or taking pictures with their phones like this was some kind of show. A family with two young kids stood on the sidewalk, the parents arguing about whether to run or try to get closer.
James made a decision. He stuffed his camera back in its bag and jogged over to them.
"You need to get underground. Now."
The father, a heavyset guy in a Yankees cap, looked at James like he was speaking a foreign language. "What?"
"Subway entrance, two blocks south. Get your family down there and stay down until this is over."
"Who the hell are you to tell us—"
The creature chose that moment to rip a streetlight out of the ground and hurl it like a javelin. It crashed into a parked car twenty feet away, and the family stopped arguing.
"Subway," James repeated. "Now."
They ran.
James spent the next ten minutes doing the same thing, finding people who were too shocked or stupid to save themselves and pointing them toward safety. An elderly man who couldn't move fast enough got a piggyback ride to the nearest subway entrance. A woman whose leg was cut by flying glass got James's belt as a makeshift tourniquet and directions to the emergency shelter forming in the underground shopping center.
He wasn't thinking about being a hero. He was thinking about Maria Santos and Tommy Kowalski and all the other people whose photos were sitting on his desk back at the Planet. People who mattered. People who deserved to make it home.
That's when Superman arrived.
James felt him before he saw him, a rush of displaced air and that weird electric feeling you get right before lightning strikes. Then there he was, red cape snapping in the wind, floating about twenty feet off the ground like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"That's enough," Superman said, and his voice carried the kind of authority that made you want to stand up straighter. "You've made your point. Let's take this somewhere with fewer civilians."
The creature turned, and its smile got wider. "THERE YOU ARE, BOY SCOUT. TOOK YOU LONG ENOUGH."
"Lobo," Superman's voice had gone flat, emotionless. "I should have known."
"SHOULD HAVE DONE A LOT OF THINGS DIFFERENTLY, KRYPTONIAN. BUT WE'RE PAST THAT NOW."
James had ducked behind an overturned police car to watch, and something about Superman's posture made his stomach clench. The man looked... tired. Like he'd been fighting this particular fight for a long time and wasn't sure he could win it.
Lobo attacked without warning, launching himself at Superman with enough force to create a sonic boom. They collided about fifty feet in the air, and the sound was like a building falling down. Both of them went flying, Superman backward into a construction crane, Lobo down into the street hard enough to leave a crater.
James's hands found his camera automatically. This wasn't news anymore. This was history.
The fight that followed wasn't like anything James had ever seen. Not the clean, choreographed battles from superhero movies. This was brutal and messy and real. Lobo fought like a bar brawler with the strength of a god, throwing wild haymakers and trying to bite Superman's throat. Superman fought like a boxer, quick jabs and defensive footwork, trying to control the distance.
But Lobo was relentless. Every time Superman created space, the alien closed it. Every defensive move Superman made, Lobo countered with something dirtier and more vicious.
They crashed through buildings like they were made of cardboard. A forty-story office building took a direct hit from Superman's back and developed a Superman-shaped hole that went clean through to the other side. Lobo grabbed a city bus and swung it like a baseball bat, sending Superman tumbling through three more buildings before he could recover.
James kept taking pictures, but his hands were shaking. Not from fear, though he was scared as hell, but from a growing certainty that Superman was losing.
It wasn't obvious at first. Superman was still throwing punches, still flying, still fighting. But James had an eye for details, and the details were wrong. Superman's movements were getting slower. His punches weren't landing as hard. He was breathing heavy, sweat visible on his face even from a distance.
Lobo, meanwhile, looked like he was having the time of his life.
"WHAT'S WRONG, KRYPTONIAN?" Lobo's voice boomed across the harbor as he grabbed Superman by the cape and hurled him into the bay. "FEELING YOUR AGE?"
Superman burst out of the water, but it took him longer to get airborne than it should have. When he did, there was something wrong with his flight pattern. Less smooth, more labored.
James lowered his camera and really looked at the scene. At the destruction spreading across six city blocks. At the people still trapped in buildings that might come down at any second. At Superman, who was supposed to be invincible, getting the shit kicked out of him by something that looked like it crawled out of a nightmare.
And for the first time in his life, James Olsen started thinking about what he would do if Superman lost.
If Clark lost.
The thought hit him like ice water. Clark. His best friend since college, the guy who brought him soup when he was sick and listened to him complain about his love life and always seemed to show up right when James needed him most.
Clark, who was about to die in front of half of Metropolis because some alien psychopath wanted to prove a point.