Green Gotham

The soft splash of water, Harley's laughter, and Pamela's relaxed whispers in the spa complex cut off like a snapped string when the door swung open. Alex entered. But he was a mere shadow of the calculated strategist who had left the base an hour ago. His face was a frozen mask, beneath which a storm raged. He moved past them, unseeing, like a ghost gliding along the edge of reality, and collapsed onto the nearest chaise lounge. The springs squealed under his weight, as if in protest. He stared at the ceiling, but saw only the chaos Zatanna had seared into his mind.

A thick, oppressive silence hung in the air, heavy with the scent of flowers and humidity. Everyone felt his icy tension, lingering like toxic gas. Everyone except Kara. She still reclined half-submerged in the warm pool, her face turned to the tiled wall, her gaze empty and deep, lost in an inner abyss where the echoes of her recent discovery reverberated. The outside world had ceased to exist for her.

Pamela was the first to break the crushing silence. She emerged from the water with the grace and danger of a serpent. Rivulets streamed down her flawless skin, but every muscle was taut, braced for impact. Her green eyes, usually cold as poison ivy, now burned with alarm.

"Alex?" Her voice cut like a blade. "What happened? You look like someone deleted all your save files."

He slowly, as if through an impossible depth of water, turned his gaze to her. His eyes weren't wells—they were chasms, black and bottomless, plunging into the earth's core.

"Yeah," he exhaled, the word escaping hoarsely, like a final breath. "It's coming. The end of the world. In two weeks." The sentence fell like a guillotine, severing the last threads of normalcy.

A collective gasp sucked the air from their lungs. Harley froze, mouth agape in a silent "O," her cocktail umbrella slipping from suddenly limp fingers. Pamela straightened to her full height, her pupils narrowing to pinpricks, nearby plants stirring instinctively, sensing her fury. Even Kara turned her head slowly, with effort, as if through molasses. Her vacant, clouded gaze briefly focused on Alex. A flicker of something ancient, chilling, and familiar—a shadow of Krypton's fall?—flashed in her blue eyes, then vanished, swallowed by her inner void.

Bewilderment, thick and sticky as tar, hung in the air. Fear hadn't arrived yet. It waited just outside the door.

"Uh… uh…" Harley squeaked, recovering first, her voice pitching into a falsetto. "You were just supposed to hand over a flash drive! A shiny little thing! Did Zatanna get mad about transaction fees? Or did you… offend her? I'd be pissed if someone didn't pay for my magic!"

Alex dragged a hand across his face, as if trying to wipe away the nightmare's residue. He closed his eyes. "I gave it to her," he rasped. "Gave her the damned drive. She…" He opened his eyes, revealing bitterness tinged with strange pity. "She dove into the ritual like it was her last hope. Like a drowning woman clutching at straws." He shook his head. "And nothing. No flash, no whisper from the void. Nothing. Because the entire Infosphere… it's screaming. It's burning, like a pyre of worlds. Its whole background is the future. Our future. A future where hell crashes down on Earth. Aliens—not humans, but creatures. An army of darkness, forged to annihilate planets. And leading them…" Alex paused, his gaze glassy, fixed on the vision within. "…a guy. Huge. Dark. Like he's carved from the universe's oldest, angriest rock."

"Who?" Pamela's voice lost its sharpness, turning low, dangerous, like a venomous snake's hiss before a strike.

"Zatanna spat out 'Darkseid' through gritted teeth," Alex answered, his voice hollow. "And then she threw me out. Not with magic—physically. With her hands. Her face…" He swallowed. "…was gray with terror. She only said, 'I need to prepare. You have about two weeks.' Then slammed the door so hard the glass rattled." He gave a bitter chuckle, devoid of humor. "Hospitality's over."

He reached out—a sharp, almost convulsive motion—and grabbed Harley's half-finished neon-pink cocktail from the table. Without looking, without thinking, he downed it in one long, desperate gulp. The sweetness and ice burned his throat but didn't wash away the taste of ash and impending doom. He set the empty glass down with such force that the thin crystal nearly shattered.

"Okay!" Harley bounced up, her playfulness now feverish, stretched taut like a wire masking raw, animal fear. "Stating facts is for boring reports! What do we do, Captain Apocalypse? I haven't learned to teleport galaxies yet! Though… Zatanna! Maybe an emergency crash course?!"

Alex slowly shifted his gaze to her, then drifted back to the void, scanning invisible salvation plans. "What's necessary," he said with dead, chilling certainty. "Warn everyone. Every nation, every government, every general staff." He gave a bitter smirk. "Good luck getting them to believe us without thinking Floravita Industries has lost it to power. Zatanna shoved an illusion of that future into my head. Fragments. Shreds of hell." He clenched his fists, knuckles whitening. "Darkseid himself? I couldn't see his power clearly. But his army? They don't come in ships. They tear the sky open. Portals. Massive, burning sores on reality's flesh. And from them—wave after wave—pours armored death."

He sighed heavily, the sound laden with centuries of exhaustion. "Ugh…" he grated. "I really didn't want to go to Batman. Didn't want to touch his drama. But looks like we have to."

Silence. Thick, ringing. It shattered in near-unison:

"You know who he is?!" Pamela gasped, her eyes widening with shock mixed with sudden realization of possibilities.

"He knows who Batman is?!" Harley squealed, leaping so high that water sprayed everywhere. "Who?! Who?! Tell me!"

Alex turned his head slowly toward them. His face held no shock, no triumph—just the weary, matter-of-fact certainty of someone stating the obvious. "Bruce Wayne," he said evenly, like a newscaster reporting the weather. "Who else?"

He waved off the inevitable flood of questions about how and when. He stood abruptly from the chaise, his movements no longer heavy—only steely, unyielding resolve.

"Pamela," his voice turned commanding, cutting, "mobilize every lab. Every scientist, every crucible, every spore. We need anything that can slow, poison, dissolve, or devour these invaders. Harley," he shot her a glance, "you're with me. Your illusion skills might come in handy. Kara…" His gaze slid to her still figure, "…rest. Pull yourself together. You'll need every ounce of strength."

He turned and strode toward the exit, his long, grim shadow falling across the gleaming marble floor.

The road to Wayne Manor wound through ancient trees, steeped in silence broken only by their footsteps on gravel. The walk was Alex's deliberate choice—time to process the unthinkable. Harley hummed something beside him, occasionally kicking pebbles, but her presence was mere background to the storm of his thoughts.

The enemy. He needed to break down this nightmare logically, or he'd lose his mind. The thought was a cold needle piercing the panic.

1. The Army. Not soldiers—machines. Mechanisms of annihilation, honed for conquering worlds. From the fragments Zatanna burned into his mind… standard bullets bounced off their armor like peas. Missiles? Might drop one while dozens more tore through defenses. Artillery? Airstrikes? They'd delay the tide for a minute, no more. And their numbers… Alex swallowed the lump in his throat. If this Darkseid crushed planets like cookies, his horde was an ocean. Millions. Billions, damn it. They'd come in endless, merciless waves, sweeping everything away. A human army, even fully mobilized, would be a house of cards under a tank. This wasn't a fight—it needed a cataclysm in response.

2. Darkseid. "Rock guy." The name alone, spat through Zatanna's clenched teeth, sounded like the world's death rattle. A mountain of dark flesh, breathing destruction. If he commanded that, what was he himself? Alex tried picturing Superman—the pinnacle of Earth's might, a beacon of solar power. Could he stand against this monster? Or would Darkseid crush him like a grape with one move? Zatanna hadn't shown him in action. That was the worst part. Either she didn't know his limits… or she did, and they were so monstrous her mind refused to project them, even in illusion. That gap in knowledge burned in Alex's brain like a black hole.

3. Portals. The nerve center. The vein to sever. Alex forced himself to recall the vision: the sky tearing like rotten cloth. Blood-red rifts, radiating infernal heat and unearthly howls. From them—stream after stream—poured armored death. How? Did they require a ritual? A massive energy source? Coordinates? Could they be closed? Or at least destabilized before the main flood poured through? Could they bottleneck them in the portals for a nuclear inferno? Finding answers here was the only chance—not just to defend, but to strike meaningfully. Destroy the bridge. Seal hell in its own dimension.

4. Earth's Response. Alex mentally donned the crown of a global dictator. What did he have? A sandbox called Earth against a galactic bulldozer.

- Nuclear Armageddon. The obvious move. Bury every damned portal under every warhead available. Try to blow the bridge on their side. Shut the valve. But the risks if it failed? If a portal collapsed early, blooming a mushroom cloud here? If their armor or biology fed on radiation?

- Silent Death (Bio/Chem Weapons). Pamela's dream. A virus targeting only them. A toxin melting their armor. Nanobots devouring them from within. Elegant. Brutal. Effective. But it needed samples—live creatures or at least their remains. Without test subjects before the invasion, it was just scientists' fantasies. Send a recon team through the first portal? Suicide.

- League of Despair. Assemble Kara, himself (with his pitiful but destructive second), maybe find others—the speedster (Flash), the Amazon (Diana). Throw them into the epicenter like aces. But against overwhelming numbers, tech bordering on magic (or actual magic), and sheer unknowns… It wasn't a battle. It was feeding the best fighters to a meat grinder. And every blow, every earth-shaking explosion, would turn their cities to dust, their people buried under rubble. The planet wouldn't survive such "defense."

- Silver Bullet. Something to kill him. Darkseid. A weapon even Superman couldn't withstand. Exotic radiation? A kryptonite for dark gods? A magical artifact of unimaginable power? But where to find the time? Two weeks was a blink for such projects. A desperate gamble.

- Shadows and Light. The world was… bigger. Far bigger. Zatanna proved magic was real. So were its inhabitants. Demons. To them, Earth was a toy, a feeding ground, a "pasture." But Darkseid was an outsider, barging into their bowl with an axe. "The enemy of my enemy…"—ancient as dirt, but it might work. If there were demons of darkness, there had to be their counterparts—forces of light, gods (as wild as that sounded). Should they knock on those forbidden doors? The risk: unleashing a genie worse than Darkseid. Or one that devoured them first.

The manor loomed before them, its gothic spires like tombstones of faded grandeur. Harley, wasting no time, jabbed the doorbell. Alfred's voice, carved from icy courtesy, crackled through the intercom: "Wayne Manor. How may I be of service?"

"Heya, sweet gingerbread man!" Harley bellowed, plastering her face to the camera lens. "We're here for His Gloominess! With a treat! Look!" She flicked open a garish cake box, revealing a corner of a ludicrously pink-frosted cake smothered in sugar flowers.

"Miss Quinn, Mr…" Alfred began, but a muffled, unmistakably hoarse and sharp voice cut in, heavy with unyielding exhaustion: "Let them in."

The massive gates creaked open reluctantly.

Alfred awaited them in the dim foyer. His posture was impeccable, his face a mask of professional calm. But the shadows under his eyes were deeper than usual, and his glance at Alex carried not courtesy but a heavy foreboding of inevitable doom.

"Welcome," he said, a faint tremor in his flawless tone. "Please, follow me to the dining room. Master Bruce is expecting you."

The dining room greeted them with sepulchral silence and chill. No ostentatious wealth—just heavy, expensive furniture, dark wood, and a museum-like emptiness. At the head of the table, like a statue on a pedestal, sat Bruce Wayne. He didn't rise. His face was gray from sleeplessness and something more oppressive, the shadows under his sunken eyes purple hollows. His gaze, weary to the bone but razor-sharp, pierced Alex, leaving no room for pleasantries.

"Alex," he said evenly, the name sounding like an accusation. "Harley Quinn. Why are you here?"

Alex allowed a corner of his mouth to twitch in a humorless smile. "Bruce." He stepped forward, all pretense of levity gone, his voice low, steely, delivering a death sentence. "In two weeks, the world ends. A full-blown alien apocalypse. An army led by a conqueror named Darkseid. They'll tear the sky open with portals and drown the planet in blood. We'll all die. Unless we stop them now."

Alfred, setting a heavy silver tray with a teapot on the table, froze for a fraction of a second. Only a nearly inaudible, deep exhale—like the groan of a man accepting the inevitable—betrayed him. He placed the tray down carefully, his hands steady but his movements unnaturally slow.

"It seems, sir," he said softly, his usually impeccable voice muted, as if from a well, "we are in for a rather… extended discussion. Allow me to provide tea. And to attend to your gift, Miss Quinn." With impeccable courtesy but unmistakable firmness, he took the cake box from Harley's hands, who had finally fallen silent. Alfred glided away soundlessly, leaving the three in the oppressive, ringing silence of the vast room. Only the steady ticking of an antique clock's pendulum on the mantle counted down the final seconds before the storm.