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SM/DC Chapter 79 : Ashes of Cadmus
🕑 Added 2025-04-04 20:56:10 +0000 UTCThe control panel lit up in a cascade of warning red, too fast, too bright, screaming something no one had time to read.
Lex’s hand came down on the button.
Arthur’s eyes widened.
But Galatea was still between them, her fist slamming into Arthur’s side, throwing him back a step, just enough.
A surge of light exploded from the ceiling and floor in tandem, two immense pillars of raw energy, like lances of gods themselves, shot straight through the chamber.
Kara cried out as the force struck her mid-flight, hurling her into a wall with a violent BOOM, cracking the metal surface like brittle glass.
“Kara, stay back!” Arthur roared.
But the beam had already encased him and Galatea, both caught in the center of the trap.
The light wasn’t just light. It was pressure. Agony. Gravity folded on itself. Arthur’s knees buckled slightly, a rare sight. His eyes narrowed, teeth clenched. His entire body screamed in protest, but he refused to fall.
Galatea let out a shriek of pain, more primal than human, as the force seared into her Kryptonian skin, even she couldn’t handle this. Her clone flesh was unraveling.
Arthur grunted, lifting his head slowly, blood trailing from his nose, and extended one hand toward Lex his will blazing with wrath.
“You… will not… run away!”
Ruler’s Authority ignited.
Lex, already gloating from his safe distance, froze.
“Wai—No—NO!” he screamed, as his body jerked violently, ripped forward like a puppet on strings.
He crashed into the beam, howling in agony as the energy chewed through his suit, his skin blistering instantly. Arthur clenched one gauntleted fist around Lex’s throat, the other barely holding Galatea back.
“YOU...FOOL YOU'LL KILL US BOTH!” Lex rasped, coughing up blood, his eyes wide with panic. “ONLY I... CAN... STOP... IT!”
Arthur, his voice strained but unrelenting, leaned closer.
“You weren’t gonna... stop it... anyway.”
The beam grew brighter. Hotter. The air itself began to warp. Arthur’s vision blurred. The chamber felt like a collapsing star.
“ARTHUR!!” Kara screamed from outside, beating her fists against the containment field, her eyes wide with helpless rage. “Tell me what to do! Tell me how to stop it!”
She launched herself at the energy field again her shoulder cracked from the rebound.
Inside, Arthur was burning from within, shadows swirling violently around him as he forced one arm up.
Kara saw it, his hand reaching toward her.
“Arthur!!”
For a moment… she thought he was reaching for her.
But then his palm opened.
Ruler’s Authority. “Stay back ...idiot...” His voice was faint, barely audible but resolute.
A wall of invisible force snapped up between them, just for a second.
Long enough.
“NO!!” Kara shouted, tears streaking down her cheeks.
And then
BOOOOM.
A flash of light so pure it was blinding, then a shockwave that shattered everything in its wake.
Kara was thrown back, crashing through walls, debris, and steel like a ragdoll. She tumbled through the air before slamming hard into the facility’s outer hull, cratering the wall.
Silence.
Smoke. Sparks. The burning hiss of melting metal.
She struggled to stand, her knees shaking. Her breath hitched in her chest.
The chamber was gone.
The beam was gone.
Lex… Arthur… Galatea…
All gone.
“Arthur…?” Kara whispered.
Silence answered her.
Her fingers clenched into trembling fists. “No... no no no…” Her breath hitched again. “You idiot. This...wasn’t supposed to... happen.”
She fell to her knees, staring at the crater, where he had stood only moments before.
Where he had smiled.
Where he had told her to stay back.
The girl of steel stared into the void he left behind, eyes burning.
And for the first time in a long time
Supergirl felt despair.
****
After the Explosion -
Through the smoke and ruin, Kara stood unmoving in the crater. Her cape fluttered in the wind, but she was a statue of fury and grief.
Her communicator crackled in her ear. A voice, gruff, familiar, persistent.
RED HOOD “Supergirl, are you there?”
“Come on… Kara, do you copy?”
There was a long pause… and then
Supergirl low and broken “…Yes.”
Jason asked calmly “I just heard a massive explosion from five clicks out. What the hell happened?”
Another silence.
“…Arthur… is gone.” Kara said.
Jason couldn’t process what he just heard “…What do you mean Arthur is gone?”
Kara then snapped at Jason “He’s gone, Jason!”
The line went quiet. In the background, Jason could hear glass breaking, metal bending, and the unmistakable sound of Kara losing control. Her rage was a tempest now, tearing apart the remnants of Lex’s cloning chamber.
Jason sighed, lowering his head. “Yeah… well. I’ll let you have your moment. But I’ve got work to finish. No time to dwell on this.”
****
CADMUS COMMAND CENTER -
A steel door slid open with a hiss.
Jason Todd stepped through, twin pistols held loosely at his sides, his red helmet gleaming under sterile white lights. The alarms were silent—he had already silenced them, along with the guards who tried to stop him.
Across the room sat a curved desk. Behind it?
Amanda Waller. General Eiling. A few surviving Cadmus board members.
No guards. No backup.
The room was dead silent except for the low hum of the monitors. Jason's boots echoed on the metal floor as he strolled in, calm as a storm waiting to break. He twirled one of his pistols idly as if he hadn’t just dismantled an entire security team on his way in.
He looked at the scene before him, Amanda Waller seated, composed as ever, and General Eiling nursing a drink like this was any other Thursday night in a war room. A couple Cadmus suits stood awkwardly behind them, pale-faced, sweating bullets.
Jason tilted his head.
“Well, well. And here I thought I’d walk into a villain lair. Test tubes, mad scientists, maybe a half-finished clone in a tank.” He slowly raised both pistols. “Not this sad little PTA meeting.”
Eiling’s hand darted for something under the desk, bad move.
Bang. Bang.
Both hands burst red as Jason blew through them, followed by a third shot tearing through the general’s shoulder. Eiling let out a guttural yell, slumping back, blood spilling across the desk.
“Next one takes your head off,” Jason said coolly.
Amanda Waller didn’t move an inch.
“You’re far from Gotham, Jason.”
He let out a chuckle behind the helmet. “Wow. First name basis? Color me flattered. Thought I was just a ghost story to people like you.”
“You’ve always been on my radar. They might have dragged you back from the dead, but your choices since then have been rather interesting, you have been useful without realizing.”
Jason stepped forward, boots crunching on glass.
“Spare me the talk. I didn’t come here for to have a conversation. We came here to burn it all down. For every innocent you played god with. You built weapons. You used people. You unleashed monsters.”
Waller’s eyes narrowed. “You all are fools, you and that Arthur Blackwynd, he was unstable. Dangerous, everything we stand for here. everything Cadmus is... is to fight people like him.”
“I know.” Jason muttered.
But Waller leaned forward now, elbows on the desk, her voice low and sharp like a scalpel.
“Is this really about ‘innocents’, Jason? Or is this about you?”
He said nothing.
She pressed on, cutting deeper.
“Do you see yourself in those metahumans we experimented on? Is that it? Do you see yourself strapped to that chair, screaming, while Joker carved the boy out of you and left something else in his place?”
Jason’s jaw clenched under the helmet. His grip on the pistols tightened, knuckles white.
“Do you actually care about the innocents?” she asked, voice like venom. “Or is this just the only way you can unleash that anger left in you? Because your real target’s already dead, and there’s no one left to blame but the rest of us.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Jason didn’t respond.
He didn’t have to.
Waller exhaled, slowly. “You do this… there’s no turning back.”
He raised his gun, calmly. Without hesitation.
“I never planned on hesitating.”
Two shots.
“Night night.”
And just like that, the room fell into silence.
Red Hood turned, walking back out into the hallway. No regrets. No second guesses. Just footsteps echoing through the corridors of a crumbling facility.
****
??? -
Arthur’s consciousness flickered in and out, pain screaming through every nerve in his body. His breath was ragged, uneven. He coughed, hard blood splattering onto the scorched ground beneath him. His vision blurred, the world spinning before it slowly came into focus.
The air was thick, humid. The scent of damp earth and greenery filled his lungs.
A forest.
Somewhere… unfamiliar.
His body ached with every small movement, but he forced himself up, staggering onto unsteady legs. His clothes were barely hanging onto him, burned and tattered, his exposed skin riddled with fresh wounds. He took a slow, painful breath, his chest tight.
"Where… the hell… am I…?" His voice was hoarse, strained, every word a battle.
A weak, rasping noise pulled his attention.
Next to him, barely clinging to life, was Lex.
The once-pristine mastermind was reduced to a charred, gasping husk. His skin was burned beyond recognition, his breaths shallow and labored. But somehow, impossibly, he was still alive.
His lips twitched, blood bubbling at the corners of his mouth.
"I-It’s… not a f-failure… after all…" Lex choked the words out, barely audible.
Arthur didn’t hesitate.
His boots scraped against the dirt as he stepped forward, looming over the broken man.
Then crack.
One stomp.
Lex was gone.
Arthur exhaled through his nose, barely sparing the corpse a second glance. "Bastard."
But the moment the words left his lips, his strength faltered. His legs buckled.
He dropped to one knee, body screaming in protest. His vision swam again.
