Fumes hung heavy, a bitter mix of scorched tires and sharp electric burn filling every breath. My feet stayed light above broken concrete, each inhale dragging that acrid weight deeper into me.
Beneath my feet, one lone OMAC twitched - the remnants of a man once wearing a courier's outfit. His scorched armor cracked apart, crumbling like burnt paper. Inside, the tiny machines broke down completely, turning into lifeless powder.
His eyes fluttered open, foggy, his pupils returning to normal. "Was someone… was someone hurt because of me?" he asked, hoarse, and that bare regret pressed against my ribs.
Beside me, Supergirl touched down quiet, dirt puffing under her shoes. The silence was there while she stared at the man staggering up, unsteady as if learning to stand for the first time.
Broken glass glittered next to flipped vehicles while sirens faded into the background. At least the screaming had stopped.
Moving next to me, Supergirl let her cape graze my arm. Her words came out hushed, clearly just for me. "You sure this is the only way?"
It took me a moment to speak. Wonder Woman was about to snap Maxwell Lord's neck on live television. Cameras would film every second of it. People everywhere would see it, from protector to killer.
"It's the only play," I finally admitted, flexing my fingers. "Brother Eye's protocol is tied to his heartbeat. No pulse, no signal. No signal, no more OMACs." The words tasted like ash.
I couldn't kill him secretly because Kara wouldn't have liked it. The moment belonged to Wonder Woman, arriving without warning, as if the solution was naturally discovered.
A light blinked awake across broken displays inside empty shops. Our skin turned cold with that sharp blue shine when Wonder Woman's shape took over the screen, strong shoulders, standing firm, the glowing rope tight on Maxwell's neck. He grinned anyway. A pride that showed despite facing death itself. Certain people never understand the gravitas of a situation until it's too late.
Breathing hard, he muttered, voice almost lost beneath the crackling noise. "You won't do it," he said. "Heroes don't kill."
One twitch of Diana's hand. That was all it took. A thick noise filled the air, like a period at the end of a long, messy paragraph. His head dropped sideways. Surprise finally lit up his face - he understood too late what the bet had cost. Then nothing moved. He was then just matter. The screen went dark without warning.
What caught my attention was the speed of it all. A sudden turn, then silence broken by a soft crack. His body gave way like paper folded wrong. That tilt in his neck said everything. Life had left him mid-motion, he just suddenly became a ragdoll.
It had been so important in comics, but reality was completely different. Life kept turning where pages would have stopped.
I knew exactly what came next—what had to come next—before Kara could even turn to me with that conflicted furrow in her brow. The thing about cosmic awareness? It ruined surprises. Brother Eye was still up there, a malignant eye staring down from orbit, protocols already recalculating, rerouting, adapting even as Maxwell's corpse cooled. The second his heart stopped, it would've saw that as reason to eliminate all metahumans immediately. The only difference was I wasn't going to give it the chance.
My boots left the ground. The wind screamed while I tore upward, sky splitting open. Heat sparked along the edgees of my suit, turning it into a trail of that looked like a comet from behind.
Beneath me, I could hear Kara shouting about something - likely wondering where I was going. Light bled out of the world, swapped for deep space in less than a breath.
The satellite was in sharp contrast through the starfield, clear even when I couldn't yet see it - panels sharp at the sides, small red lights blinking like faulty nerves. It was quiet up here, inner workings of it's machinery somehow compensating for it.
Up high, it seemed tiny. Another act of pride drifting through empty space.
Mid-air, I spun without warning. The impact came before Brother Eye could react - no alarms, no signals sent to distant allies who might've help it against me like Checkmate. My fists struck hard, pushed by the force of the turn, driving straight ahead. It snapped through the metal shell as if tearing soaked paper. Light burst without noise, floating apart where space pulled it, flames curling once then vanishing like ash caught in the wind.
There was a pause. The broken pieces stayed frozen, shining like fake treasure. Then down they went, pulled by Gravity. Far across the Pacific ocean, bits of burning wreck would fall. Tiny machines scattered into the waves. It was going to be ome poor sailor's UFO story for the grandkids.
###
There was a lot of noise afterwards - chatter on TV screens melting into white noise inside my head, analysts weighing Diana's decision like they understood sacrifice, officials shifting speeches fast once the OMAC danger turned to dust.
There was a lot of doubt in people's eyes. They'd seen rescues unfold, true enough - but they'd just watched one of their saviors take a life on live television. That sight stuck. No explanation could make it fade.
Out of everyone, Bruce broke the silence first once the League gathered - naturally it would be him - hands armored, fingertips pressed together beneath his jaw as if that pressure could keep somehow keep his guilt from rising. Brother Eye had been his creation, his contingency plan gone rogue.
"You acted unilaterally," he spoke, his voice worn thin after long fights with lawmakers. The cowl's lenses hid his eyes, but I knew his gaze moved - toward Diana first, then me.
"No consultation. No warning. Just—" His words came slow, like gravel under boots. "Obliteration."
Bruce's voice cut through the quiet of the Watchtower, colder than ice. Barry's fingers tapped on the fabric, steady but uneasy. The Martian stared ahead, eyes blank as stone. A green glow pulsed at Hal's hand, quick then slow. Diana was still coming to terms after making a grave choice. Across from me, Clark wore that hard stare, as if he got tired of being kind. They were waiting for my defense. The Truth? I had none ready.
Things could've gotten worse. It wasn't only a broken machine - Brother Eye carried Bruce's misgivings into code, his distrust wrapped in logic gates. Without brakes, it'd recruit every screen, lens, even kitchen gadget, turning them against anyone wearing a symbol on their chest. But I couldn't say that, it meant that I knew too much that I let one, things no one saw coming, except perhaps J'onn, who sensed pieces of my headspace drifting by like burnt toast smell under a door. My shoulder lifted slightly. Clark's silence pressed hard near my temple.
"Satellite had to go," I said simply, rolling my shoulders until the vertebrae popped. "Protocols were already rewriting themselves to target all metas. Figured you'd prefer I didn't wait for your approval while it uplinked to every military drone on the planet."
Batman didn't react - impressive since he had no rest for three full days - his eyes never even moved. Still I saw the instant it shifted behind them. A tiny flare in his nose gave it away, just like how the blood splatter on the walls refused to line up with what people claimed.
"You knew the killswitch was tied to Lord's vitals," he stated, not asked. "Before Diana acted. Before any of us had decompiled Brother Eye's source code."
A silence settled, soon after. Not shouting, no threats - just truth placed out in front where nobody could miss it. That was how he worked, peeling back stories until only bones remained.
Hal, sitting oppositely, ring flashing with increased light and accentuating the creases of his concerned expression, spat incredulous, "What? You mean Cornsweat actually fore-saw the OMAC fail-safe?" A louder, dismissive laugh, "Superman's got precognition now?"
I sensed Clark's eyes on me, solid, in the way of a moving train - not distrust, not yet, but a slow rebalancing, the realization that a man was moving to checkmate as all the rest of us were busily playing checkers. The temperature of the Watchtower shifted, even the recycled air infused with accusation. Barry's restless leg trembled with pent electricity, his hand paused in the midst of its rhythmic motion against his thigh.
"You're not answering the question," Batman said, his tone almost a whisper. His fingers relaxed, spreading ever so slightly on the table; I recognized the gesture, had seen it a dozen times before. He was counting, ticking off all the usual markers—pulse, breathing, dilation and contraction of the pupils, even the hang of my cape.
I snorted, savoring the disinfectant tang of Watchtower air recycling and a hint of smelted wreckage from Brother Eye's last moments.
"Because you already know the answer," I replied, my eyes flickering closed for a moment longer than necessary - not tiredness, just calculation. "I didn't predict shit. I knew."
The confession was sour, like a licked battery.
"I knew just like I know that Bruce Wayne has three back up plans to defeat everyone at this table if we decided to go nuts, or that Diana's sword can slice realities if she really uses her elbow grease."
The Watchtower flickered, once, as though it itself had recoiled at my statement. Barry spat a wad of phlegm into his fist, Hal's ring pulsed like a near-dead neon light. Even J'onn lost his poker face, his red eyes spreading ever so slightly. Bruce didn't flinch, but I could see the tiny flutter in the artery in his neck. A sign that even the most hardcore warrior can't suppress; the automatic physical response of your body when your brain registers a bull's eye.
"You're right," I said, cracking my neck. "I knew Brother Eye's protocols because I've been through this before—not here, not precisely, but close enough that the differences didn't matter."
The words slid down my teeth like cheap whiskey, searing as they went. "I have a special power of perception, visions of possible futures, of the way things might have gone or the way things will go..." The lie was just as bad as the truth.
"And in every one of those places where the satelitte still stood, Brother Eye murdered countless numbers of you." I glanced over to Clark, to Diana, leaving the wordless subtext hanging in the air. "You want to nail me to the cross for taking action? Fine. But don't act like for one second that you wouldn't have done the same if you saw what I saw."
The silence was palpable. Bruce clenched his jaw, literally clenched it, and then pressed his lips together, his nostrils flaring as he pushed out a hot breath, before easing back into his chair. That was the closest thing to a "my bad" the Batman ever gave you. The light from Hal's ring faded down from an angry green, to a more cautious shine, and his hands relaxed, releasing fists he hadn't even realized he clenched.
"It's not that we blame you for what you did," Diana was the first to say, her tone laced with the guilt of her own recent transgression. "Only wishing you had let us known sooner." She was stroking the surface of the Justice League table, as if it brought her comfort.
Her hands ran along the wood grain, tiny human gestures, from a goddess. "You wouldn't have believed me," I said, not really accusing. "You would have taken weeks of deciding whether to act on information from some sort of…dimensional déjà vu." I almost smiled. "And Brother Eye would have rewritten itself six times over, then we'd be having to dodge railgun rounds from the GPS satellites."
His breath was barely audible but against the recycled atmosphere of the Watchtower, it was tantamount to a hurricane. Superman slumped a bit, arms stretched out before him to support himself and his voice was not Kal-El, but Smallville.
"You're right." It was the most blunt of two-word expressions. "We would've wasted time we didn't have."
For a moment his blue gaze went to Bruce and back again—a tacit recognition of the underlying friction.
"Next time just tell us 'the satellite is going to kill us,' okay?"
His statement sliced through the atmosphere like a dull blade through an overcooked roast - not very sharp, but it did the trick. I found myself almost smiling, and all at once the heavy springs that had been wound up inside the room released their pressure, like the hiss of escaping steam from a burst valve. Bruce breathed out through his nose, that's as close to a sigh as he gets, and aligned the files on the desk before him with crisp exactness, a gesture that was as close to 'you may leave now' as I'd ever seen him give. Diana slowly released her grip on the edge of the table, where her nails had gouged a series of crescent marks into the varnished surface.
I left the Watchtower's conference room with the feeling of leaving an interrogation room, like the gravity had just been reduced by ten pounds. As I stood there in the stark corridor with only the gentle whoosh of the air recycling systems for company, I realized just how pointlessly cautious I had been, how much pointless drama I had piled on top of facts that this lot thought nothing of. People who saved the world from certain doom before their morning cups of coffee. If I'd just TOLD straight up, they would have known and understood.
It was a bit ironic, like when you take a big bite of an apple only to discover that it has been filled with salt. Not bad, per se, but certainly not what you were expecting. They weren't comic book characters anymore, they were real life morons who bickered about who ate the last donut in the break room, who stepped on their own cape when they weren't paying attention, and who had already encountered so much wacky shit that a fifth dimensional imp wearing Superman's body wouldn't even make their top ten list. In fact, more than half of this team had already encountered alternate realities. Barry probably kept count in his head.
Clark said it perfectly, next time just say 'the satellite is going to kill us.'