Chapter Text
General Sam Lane has always been a man willing to do anything for his country.
Following the slaughter of Zero Day, he abandoned his youthful sloth and devoted his life to ensuring that nothing like it will ever happen again. Life, he learned young, is not a black and white affair; most important things happen in the muddiest trenches of grey, a sordid foundation upon which the more innocent, purer white things can flourish.
He’s never had any problem upholding this duty. Whenever his heart wavers, whenever he wonders if he’s found his own line in the sand that he isn’t willing to cross, he thinks of Lois. Sweet, precious, stubborn, opinionated Lois, whose wide eyes are always so full of hope and wonder, zest for a life still unexplored. He thinks of all the things she’ll get to do in her life—pursure her career, meet people, make friends, fall in love.
He thinks of how she can’t do any of those things if Earth is invaded.
He doesn’t struggle with lines much, anymore.
But for the first time in decades, he hesitated. Worse than that, he directly contradicted his duty, allowing a golden opportunity to eliminate Earth’s main threat slip by.
Lois has always been his weakness.
Now, Sam Lane is a General no more; he spends his days holed up in his daughter’s deadbeat boyfriend’s apartment, chugging beers like water, losing himself in the monotony of the television. It’s a humbling, directionless existence, but it’s better than the alternative—acknowledging how he spat in the face of his two-decade-long mission.
Speaking of deadbeat boyfriends, Kent is holed up in his room typing away on his computer. Researching for some case or another, Sam assumes; he’s like Lois in that way, swept up by single-minded passion, sacrificing sleep and general health in pursuit of a scoop. Olsen’s out… somewhere or other, meaning he’s alone with Kent.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
He mutes the TV, reclining further on the couch and letting slip a deep sigh. He can hear Kent’s enthusiastic typing—really, does he have to do that so loud?—so there’s no hope of escaping the looming reminders of his situation. He can’t even go on a quick jog to clear his head, seeing as he is a wanted man.
With a groan, the ex-General clambers to his feet, his back cracking with the motion. He briefly surveys the can-littered filth of a living room, the couch with a sweaty indent in the cushions that have become his home.
God. He really is pathetic, isn’t he?
There’s an itch building under his skin, a need for action, to do something. His military days were structured and regimented; busy, never idle. He can’t feel like a helpless, floundering victim any longer.
Reconnaissance, he decides, looking around the cramped apartment. He may not be able to do much to escape Checkmate’s scrutiny, but the least he can do is know every inch of this dump, map out escape routes and hiding places. It also wouldn’t hurt, he muses, to see if his daughter and her friends are hiding any secrets.
He hasn’t forgotten the familiarity with which the two speak of the alien Superman. The way Lois went so far as to shield it from him.
It’s clear to see that they know more than they tell him.
He can’t exactly search Kent’s room without an awkward conversation, so he stalks over to Olsen’s, pushing open the slightly-ajar door. The photographer’s room is… unpleasant; posters of cartoon characters adorn the walls without any kind of system, and his floor is scarcely visible through the scattered clothes and old takeout boxes.
Sam grimaces as he steps deeper into the room, swinging the door to its state of almost-shut to avoid the possibility of being caught snooping. This room, as expected, has nothing in the way of hiding places or exits.
But if Sam is being entirely honest with himself, that isn’t really why he came in here.
With militaristic efficiency, he begins to search every drawer, shelf, and shadowed corner, yet unsure of what he’s even looking for. Five minutes of this fruitless searching pass: nothing.
And then, in Olsen’s underwear drawer—Sam isn’t proud of it, but there are no lines when it comes to the safety of the world—his fingers hit something metallic.
A frown tugs at his lips, and he closes his hands around the object, pulling it out of the mess. In his grasp is a sleek, white and green sphere, made of a strangely light metal. Sam’s never seen anything like it.
At least, not on Earth.
Wracked by both excitement and apprehension, he fiddles with the strange mechanism for a few moments, until the top of the sphere pops up to reveal a small, green stone. It bathes the room in an otherworldly emerald sheen, its glittering depths somehow seeming alien and unknowable. For a moment, Sam is breathless, lungs frozen with the magnitude of what he’s stumbled across.
Because he’s seen a rock like this before: during Superman’s fight above the Kent farm.
He is torn from his thoughts by a crash in the next room, and a choked cry. Concern rushes in to replace the thrill of his discovery, and he cautiously sets the stone on the ground, before racing to check on Kent.
Sam slams open the door and takes stock of the situation, zeroing in on the writhing form of Kent, curled up in the corner, back to the room. It’s a familiar adrenaline that takes over as he rushes towards the man, already trying to assess his condition to determine how best to help him.
As much as he loathes the man, he would never let Lois’s boyfriend die on his watch.
He crashes to his knees beside Kent, grasping his shoulder and roughly turning him onto his back. The man looks terrible, eyes gaping wide like moons, clawed hands scrabbling at his throat as if he’s choking. He almost thinks he is, until he spots the strange flecks of green staining his skin, and then Sam’s insides go very, very cold.
The sounds of Kent’s suffering become distant, muffled behind a wall, as Sam rakes his eyes over the compelling evidence now presenting itself—evidence that Kent may not be who he says he is.
Those moments, with Superman and Lois in the crater, flash back through his mind: the alien curled into himself, much like Kent is now, with lichtenberg streams of acid green licking at his skin. The image is superimposed over his vision, blending, merging with the groaning man in front of him, until Sam can’t tell where Kent ends and Superman begins.
Numbly, feeling a thousand miles away, Sam stands to his feet. He thinks Kent reaches for him as he does, mouth opening in a wordless cry, hand raised as if looking for salvation.
Sam ignores it.
Very slowly, taking care with each step, he returns to Olsen’s room, then picks up the sphere. For a moment he cups it in his hands, noting the familiar hue that he’d just seen peeking through Clark’s skin, wondering at the connection between the man in the next room and the alien rock in his hands.
Clark is right where Sam left him, having turned his clawing hands to his chest now, as if wanting to rip his own heart out to stop his suffering. Sam takes a step closer, and the effect is almost tangible; a sharp keening sound escapes Kent, and the green in his veins swells, glowing brighter.
Another step. Kent’s breath comes to a wheezing halt, and he clutches his throat.
Another. His face turns a sickly shade of white-green.
Another. A strange sound leaves his mouth—like he tries to scream but has no vocal chords to carry the sound, and instead a choked breath slices through his throat.
One last step. Superman’s eyes lose their focus, icy blue blurring to a dull grey.
Clark Kent, Sam thinks, is Superman.
My daughter’s boyfriend is Superman.
Sam’s mind is racing, but his thoughts are quiet: a dangerous, dagger-sharp silence. It seems so simple, now; why else would Lois choose an alien over him if she hadn’t been fooled into falling in love with it?
The thing on the floor—because Nemesis Omega deserves no names, no identity—is looking at him with terrified confusion, eyes flitting between his statuesque face and the stone in his hands. Comprehension dawns, slower than it ought to—Sam surmises the effects of this stone on the alien aren’t limited to physical strain. “Nnh—” it chokes out between gasping breaths, attempting to shuffle backwards, away from Sam. “No, you—please, don’t—”
His lip curls with disgust as he considers the creature before him. It looks so human, acts so human—Sam has been living with it for a week and never even noticed. That, he thinks, is perhaps the scariest thing of all; not the unbeatable strength, not the laser eyes, but the conviction with which it mimics humanity. For alien strength can be countered with weapons and technology, but what defence do they have against the manipulations of one so seemingly normal?
He moves closer to the alien, feeling a dull thrum of satisfaction at the full-body flinch that tears through its body at his proximity. Then, he straddles the beast with a leg on either side, pinning each of its arms to the floor. The alien’s eyes are wide and afraid, his neck angling as far as he can away from the rock clutched in Sam’s hand.
Now, the critical junction: what does Sam do with the alien?
Checkmate’s original directive was to contain, extract information from, and then execute Nemesis Omega. Something convinced him, back when they had the alien in their grasp, to hold off on the execution: some flicker of perceived humanity, the convincing nature of its tears.
Sam will not make that mistake again. He knows now what game the monsters play.
Had he still been the head of Task Force X, he would be calling for reinforcements now, preparing a new, green-stone lined cell that it would never escape from. Unfortunately, he has neither Checkmate’s resources nor manpower at his grasp, so Sam is on his own.
He cannot allow the alien to live, but he needs answers. He can’t contain it either; he isn’t sure how long this single stone will be enough to keep the beast down.
Answers, he muses, sharp eyes focusing back on the creature under him. The alien’s face is drawn, a sheen of sweat rendering its skin glossy. Trying, feebly, to escape from Sam.
Sam has never been a man to get swept away by the absoluteness of his own power—ego trips of that sort are for fools who burn out before they even get to taste real power, plummeting like Icarus. But Sam has changed in irreversible ways the past few weeks, and so when he feels the satisfaction at having such a powerful being under his control welling up, he doesn’t fight it.
“What,” he grinds out, lowering his face so that it’s parallel to the alien’s, “did you do to my daughter?”
It gasps like a fish out of water, wordless vocalisations building at the back of its throat. Its mouth moves, open and closed, but it can't seem to form the words on its mind.
Sam is too taken with rage to consider its limitations, and he draws back a hand then slaps the alien's cheek, sending its face into the floor. “Tell me!” he demands, spittle flying from his mouth. “Tell me how you’ve infected her, how you’ve whispered venomous deceit into her ears! I knew there was something wrong—no daughter of mine would choose the life of an invader over the safety of the world.”
“I—” Superman manages to choke out, its voice grated and raw. “Nothing—! I did… n—nothing to… Lois…”
The facade doesn’t crack. Even in the throes of what must be unspeakable agony, the alien still manages to school its face into the facsimile of emotion, a truly nauseating sight now that Sam knows what it truly is. Its indomitable composure only serves to make his anger hotter, sharper, and he takes the stone out of its container, moving it slowly closer until it’s right above Superman’s face.
Its eyes go wide, and all of its writhing comes to a careful stop, as if it lacks the energy even to struggle. Its breaths are shallow and ragged, its eyes nearly crossed, intently fixated on the glowing green stone in Sam’s hands.
Keeping the stone carefully in place, Sam leans down until his mouth is beside the alien’s ear. “I don’t believe you,” he breathes out.
The alien flinches.
Returning to his upright position, Sam considers the man—no, the monster—underneath him. He taps into his interrogative training from his early days in Task Force X: find the chink in the armour, and then dig.
He recalls the terror in the alien’s eyes—that’s one emotion that wasn’t faked, not put on for an audience—when he was imprisoned. For one so overwhelmingly powerful, that vulnerability, that loss of control must burn worse than this little green rock.
“Maybe I should hand you over to Checkmate,” Sam muses, posing it as nothing more than a stray thought. He takes care to keep his face composed into a mask of vague neutrality, even when the alien visibly shudders underneath him, eyes wide with terror. “I’m sure they’d have some use for you, whether as a weapon or a lab rat. I could give them this handy little stone, and then they could fix you up a new collar. One you’ll never get off.”
The angle is working; Superman is tossing his head side to side, cracked lips moving to form a word again and again—no, Sam reads with cruel amusement.
Time to drive in the blade. Sam adjusts his grip on the stone so that he’s holding it like a knife, the sharp point gleaming in the light, then settles it casually at the side of the alien’s neck. His other hand shoves its head the opposite way, so that its cheek is crushed against the floor. Its eyes dart up towards him, a mere slit of blue visible through its mussed locks of dark hair. Pleading. Begging.
It’s too bad for Nemesis Omega that Sam knows what it truly is.
Sam exerts force on the stone until it breaks skin, slick crimson blood staining his fingers like wine. The alien’s body jerks, hard, then goes limp.
“Can you imagine that?” Sam asks as he drags the makeshift knife towards the centre of the alien’s neck, a thin line of red splitting like the disturbed wake of the ocean. He’s careful to control his pressure; he wants to inflict harm, not death.
Not yet, at least. Not until he finds out what it wants with Lois.
“Pain. Never-ending, all-consuming,” Sam illustrates, his voice coloured with spite. “Locked around your throat, suffocating. For all your power, all it takes to control you is one little green rock.”
Sam continues to carve his necklace of blood around Superman’s neck, letting the crystal slide deeper and deeper until the liquid gushes from the wound. The anger is thick, broiling; it bubbles under the surface like hungry tar, clawing at the walls. Begging to be let out.
He wants to make this monster hurt. He wants to impart within it every dreg of suffering its kind inflicted on him.
“Lois—” it chokes out, the sound gurgling deep in its throat. It tosses its head with an agonised whine, making Sam’s hand slip, creating a jagged slice erring from the neat cut.
“Lois what?” Sam demands, sliding the blood-stained crystal back into his clenched hand. “Tell me!”
“She’ll…” it begins, sickly green patches spreading like spiderwebs across its skin. Its eyes are blurred, and they keep slipping past Sam's face like it can’t quite focus. “She’ll never for—forgive you.”
The words hit Sam like a blow to the stomach, flattening his lungs and removing all the air from them. Unbidden, memories of Lois flood his mind: the betrayal soaked into her eyes when she stood in that crater, in the battle stance he taught her. God, it hurt to see her like that, poised to fight her own father just to protect the very thing he's devoted his life to fighting.
His life has been so full ever since he got her back, and he doesn’t know if he can lose her again.
The front door opens with a quiet thud.
Sam's head shoots up, and he stares at the closed door of Kent's—the alien's—bedroom. Shit, he thinks, adrenaline boiling in his veins.
Cautionless footsteps approach the living room, and Sam's eyes return to the alien underneath him, meeting its clouded gaze. He manages to slam a hand over the alien’s mouth before it can scream for help, and its pitiful moans are effectively muffled by the General’s thick palm.
Another door opens, closer. “Clark!”
No.
No.
It’s his daughter.
“You better be ready for tonight, or so help me God, I will shove that kryptonite so far up your—” she trails off, perhaps noticing the conspicuous absence of any life in the living room. “Clark?”
You’ve really done it this time, Lane, he thinks to himself as he scans for possible exits, the struggling alien underneath him largely forgotten. Swept up in his anger, he’d forgotten to select a strategic, defensible position that he could escape from, and now he’s stuck here.
Lois cannot find Nemesis Omega. If she does, it’ll sway her with its crocodile tears and sob stories, and she’ll never forgive him, trapped even deeper in the alien’s web of manipulations.
Sam cannot allow that to happen.
As quietly as he can, he brings his elbow down on the alien’s head, and its eyes roll upwards before slipping shut. Leaving the green stone next to it, he stands to his feet, takes one deep breath, then swings open the door.
“Lois!” he says, forcing a smile. “Sorry I didn't hear you. Clark went out a while ago—he said something about grocery shopping.”
She raises an eyebrow, suspicion lurking in those sharp eyes of her. They remind him so of her mother. “Clark and I got groceries yesterday. He never forgets anything.”
“Uh…” He wracks his mind for an excuse. “I think he was talking about a surprise for you? Your favourite dessert, maybe. Although I suppose now I've ruined the surprise,” he says with a lifeless chuckle.
She crosses her arms, but some of her hostility is fading. She's always been so sharp, his Lois. “Wanna tell me what you were doing in my boyfriend's room?”
“Uh—” Sam rubs the back of his neck with an awkward laugh. “My, uh… phone. It was dead, so I came to check if Kent had a charger I could use.”
She studies him for a moment longer, then she pulls her phone out of her pocket. “I’m calling him.”
Internally, Sam prays that the alien's phone is on silent.
It appears that God is not on his side, because a shrill ringing drifts from behind the door Sam is guarding. Lois's eyes widen, and she glares at Sam.
She doesn’t say anything further as she attempts to shove past him, but he grabs her shoulder, forcing her backwards. “Lois,” he says, the word soft, measured. “Don’t go in there.”
Real fear has crept onto her face now, a strange expression on the usually cheery young woman. “Dad,” she returns, equally as forceful. “Move.”
He does.
A horrified gasp sounds from behind him, then a series of hurried footsteps. Slowly, Sam turns to face the open door, seeing his daughter crouching above Superman.
She sends a few frenzied glances around, before grabbing the green stone and shoving it back in the strange sphere it came from. Next, she turns her attention to the alien, cupping his face in her hands and leaning her head closer to check his breathing.
“Clark?” she breathes, the word barely audible and thoroughly entrenched with dread. Her hands hover over him, trembles racking them. A few moments of breathless indecision later, she pulls off her jacket, then presses it gently around his neck.
“What did you do?” Lois asks in a whisper, not turning around. Although there is anger in her voice, it’s drowned out by an all-encompassing, numb horror.
“Lois…” He blinks hard, dispelling the wetness gathering in his eyes. Steeling himself with a slight shake of his head, he answers, “What I had to.”
For the first time in her life, Lois has no words. She has no cutting arguments to make, no insults to throw, no points to convey. It’s just them and the heavy, accusing silence, creeping down Sam's spine like icy fingers.
The alien twitches, then a low whine builds in its throat. It leans into the hand on its cheek, then opens its eyes, blinking blearily up at her. “L… Lois?”
“Hey, Smallville,” she says, voice wet. “How are you feeling?”
“Like a… truck ran me over. Then re—reversed over me… again,” it groans, eyes squeezing shut. They blink open a moment later, still unfocused, and it squints up at her. “Wh’s… goin’ on?”
“Nothing,” Lois assures, her face darkening as she shoots a glare at Sam over her shoulder. The molten steel in her eyes slides between Sam’s ribs, slicing right up to bone. “I’m gonna take you over to my place, okay? And we can watch your favourite soap operas, you know, the ones I always complain about being cheesy.”
Nemesis Omega laughs, but the sound is transformed into a painful-sounding cough, and tears well in the corners of its eyes. Lois rubs its back, her own eyes watering as she stares at it with such frailty.
Sam suddenly feels as if he is an intruder, witnessing a moment of such tenderness he has no right to see. Absurdly, the way they look at each other almost reminds him of him and his late wife; the thought is as sudden as it is unwelcome, and he banishes it.
Superman is not a man. It is not a lover. It is an invader masked behind pretty lies.
The alien lets out a sudden, choked gasp, and it tries to sit up, then winces. “The General—” it wheezes, fear oozing from the word. “Where—?” He was here, he—he knows who I am, Lois!”
“It’s okay,” she assures, running a careful hand through its hair. Her next words are just as gentle, but they carry a hidden sharpness that Sam knows is directed at him. “My dad won’t be a problem anymore.”
Sam doesn’t think he’ll ever forget how Lois looks at him as she leaves, the large frame of Nemesis Omega leaning into her shoulder like it belongs there. She looks at him like he’s the monster, blind to the beast hanging from her arm.
The front door of Clark Kent’s apartment swings shut behind them, leaving Sam standing alone amidst the quiet.