Chapter 294: One grand game

Metropolis had developed an impressively detailed response to Superman getting into a serious fight. Kieran discovered this almost immediately after leaving LexCorp Tower, when his driver was forced to slow behind a line of emergency vehicles establishing a perimeter around several blocks. Police cruisers had already sealed off the nearest intersections, directing traffic away from the affected area, while firefighters and paramedics moved through the streets in coordinated teams. Municipal workers were unfolding barricades from the backs of trucks, and officers with megaphones were directing pedestrians toward designated evacuation routes. Somewhere in the distance, beyond the towering buildings, the low rumble of an impact rolled through the city, followed by a brief chorus of car alarms.

The people around him barely seemed surprised. Office workers emerged from buildings with their bags already slung over their shoulders, shopkeepers pulled down their shutters, and parents hurried their children toward underground stations and reinforced public shelters. A few people stopped long enough to glance toward the distant commotion, but most continued along the designated routes with the weary efficiency of commuters navigating a familiar traffic jam. Some were even checking their phones for updates on which roads had been closed, as though they were deciding whether to take the highway or a side street on their way home.

Kieran watched them through the tinted window, finding the whole thing equal parts amusing and depressing. The world had become so accustomed to superhuman violence that ordinary people had developed routines for surviving it. They knew which buildings offered the best protection, which streets were likely to be cleared first, and how long they could reasonably expect to be inconvenienced before the city returned to something resembling normality. Somewhere, a municipal department had probably calculated the average cost of a Superman-related incident down to the last dollar, then incorporated the figure into its annual budget. Insurance companies had undoubtedly developed entire departments dedicated to assessing damage caused by beings capable of throwing tanks through office buildings. Contractors would have established emergency agreements for repairing shattered windows and collapsed facades, while local businesses learned to expect a temporary decline in customers whenever the Man of Steel started trading blows with something particularly unpleasant.

It was remarkable how thoroughly a handful of extraordinary individuals could reshape the ordinary functioning of the world. Superman had changed more than the public’s understanding of what a man could do. He had altered urban planning, insurance policies, emergency services, and the daily habits of millions of people who would never meet him. The same was probably true of the other major heroes, even if their particular brands of destruction were less predictable. Humanity had not simply learned to live alongside them. It had reorganized itself around the possibility that they might need to save it.

Kieran supposed crime had worked much the same way for centuries, albeit on a smaller and less spectacular scale. People learned which streets were safe after dark, which bars to avoid, which shopkeepers paid protection money, and which names were better left unspoken. Parents warned their children about particular corners, residents developed elaborate detours around dangerous neighborhoods, and respectable businessmen pretended not to notice the men who collected payments from the establishments on their blocks. Most people never thought of these habits as part of an organized system. They simply adjusted their lives to accommodate the dangers they had come to accept as permanent.

That, Kieran thought, was where the Underpass could eventually become something much more significant than a criminal organization. It did not need to control every street or put a soldier on every corner. It only needed to become an accepted part of the world’s invisible structure, a name people associated with certain rules and consequences. Perhaps a shopkeeper in Gotham would begin treating the homeless man sleeping outside his store with a little more patience because he suspected the man answered to someone. Perhaps a police officer would think twice before harassing a woman living beneath an overpass, uncertain whether she might have friends in places he could not see. Perhaps a businessman would discover that the quiet fellow who cleaned his office after hours had a better understanding of his private affairs than any of his employees.

Fear would play its part, certainly, but Kieran did not want fear to be the only thing holding the system together. Fear was expensive to maintain, and it made people unpredictable. A reputation for keeping promises, offering protection, and punishing those who violated established rules could accomplish far more over time. If the Underpass provided enough people with a reason to respect it, then eventually that respect would become habit, and habit would become something close to culture. People would adjust their behavior without needing to be reminded why.

He had already seen the beginnings of it in Gotham. The homeless had started to become more than an inconvenient feature of the city’s landscape; they were workers, informants, messengers, and members of a community with its own structure. The wealthy might never know their names, but some of them had already begun to understand that the people living beneath their notice were not nearly as powerless as they had assumed. Kieran wondered what it would look like when that realization spread beyond Gotham, when the Underpass became a quiet presence in cities that had never imagined the people beneath their streets might one day have a say in how those streets were governed.

Wouldn’t that be a sight to see?

The thought followed him back to the hotel, where the laughter of his other personalities was already waiting.

"Politics," Quentin declared, laughing so hard that he had to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye. "He’s actually planning to go into politics."

"We already knew that." Vey rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair with the long-suffering patience of a man who had been forced to endure this sort of nonsense for far too long. "Stop acting as though he’s announced his intention to conquer the moon."

Quentin swiped another imaginary tear from his face. "But it’s hilarious, Vey. Think about it. What is more supervillainous than making a play for political power? The man already has a corporation, an army of lawyers, and enough money to make entire neighborhoods disappear from a balance sheet. Now he wants a government office. At this rate, he’ll be building a secret volcano lair by next year."

Vey raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps he could start by using the homeless to build a criminal empire."

Kieran and Quentin erupted into laughter. Quentin leaned forward and slapped Vey on the shoulder, delighted by the observation, while Kieran shook his head with a broad grin. "We aren’t Lex-level evil," Kieran managed to say.

"When you phrase it like that, we sound terrible," Quentin added, his voice still thick with amusement.

"You sound terrible because you are terrible," Vey replied, though even he struggled to keep a straight face.

Nolan watched them with growing exasperation, waiting until their laughter had subsided enough for him to be heard. "All right, enough. Can we focus for five minutes?" He rubbed his face, trying to shake off the absurdity of having a serious strategic discussion interrupted by an argument over which of them was the greater supervillain. "We learned a lot during dinner, but there is one thing I still don’t understand. Why were we invited in the first place? I understand that we’ve grown, and the Continental has a respectable name, but our influence in Metropolis is a speck compared to that of the people sitting around Lex’s table. Those people control banks, news organizations, power infrastructure, and businesses that probably have more money moving through them in a day than we have in all our accounts. What exactly does Lex think we can offer him?"

"I had the same question," Kieran said, his amusement fading as he rose and began pacing across the room. He had removed his jacket, but he still wore the immaculate shirt and trousers he had chosen for dinner. His expression had settled into something more serious as he reviewed the evening in his mind. "It wasn’t a charity dinner, and Lex wasn’t assembling a group of people merely because he liked their company. Every person at that table had a particular kind of influence, and none of them were there by accident. More importantly, everyone else was legitimate. Shady, certainly, but legitimate. Their businesses could survive an investigation, their political connections were public knowledge, and their reputations were assets they had spent decades cultivating. The Underpass is a criminal organization. If anyone connected it to me, it could jeopardize everything I’m trying to build, including the Continental. It would be an absurd risk for Lex to invite us into a room like that if all he wanted was a business relationship."

"Unless the risk is precisely why he invited us," Vey said.

Nolan turned toward him. "Explain."

"Lex is part of the Light, just as Ra’s is. We know Ra’s has an interest in us, and we know Lex is the sort of man who keeps track of anything that might become useful. He doesn’t need Ra’s to explain every detail of his dealings with us to recognize that something unusual is happening. Ra’s doesn’t strike me as a man who shares information freely, but Lex is obsessive about gathering it. If he discovered that we had been meeting with Ra’s, he would want to know why, what Ra’s hoped to gain, and whether our relationship might affect the Light’s interests." Vey folded his arms, his expression calm and analytical. "That would explain why Lex invited us despite our relatively limited presence in Metropolis. We aren’t there because we’re important to the city yet. We’re there because we have become interesting to him."

Nolan’s expression brightened as the pieces began to fall into place. "You think the meetings with Ra’s have drawn his attention, and that he’s trying to determine whether we’re an asset, a liability, or something he should eliminate before we become a problem."

"Exactly," Vey replied. "He may not know what you’re negotiating with Ra’s, but he knows enough to suspect that it matters. And if Ra’s is willing to spend time with us, Lex will want to understand what he’s seeing that everyone else has missed."

Quentin clapped his hands together, his earlier amusement giving way to the unmistakable enthusiasm he displayed whenever a new scheme began to take shape. "Which puts us in a rather interesting position, doesn’t it? A position absolutely ripe with opportunity."

Nolan sighed. He knew that tone. Quentin had already built the plan in his head and was now waiting for someone to ask him to explain it, preferably with the sort of enthusiasm usually reserved for an audience watching a magician pull a rabbit from a hat. "Please, Quentin. Tell us more."

"Gladly." Quentin rose from his chair and began pacing in the opposite direction from Kieran, apparently unwilling to leave the room’s limited floor space uncontested. "What do we know? The Light has been manipulating events for years, and now the Reach invasion has created the perfect environment for one of its members to make a move. Most of the major heroes are occupied with a crisis beyond Earth’s borders, or with the political and legal consequences surrounding it. The people who would normally notice the warning signs are distracted, and those who remain are busy pursuing their own objectives. Lex intends to take advantage of that chaos. He’s using the Reach crisis as a means to secure a position of genuine political authority, and if he succeeds, he’ll have far more influence over Earth’s response to the invasion than any ordinary businessman could ever hope to possess."

"Assuming that is what he’s doing," Nolan interjected. "We know he wants political power, but we don’t know how much of this is the Light’s plan and how much is Lex pursuing his own ambitions."

"Fair distinction, but not one that changes the immediate opportunity." Quentin dismissed the objection with a wave of his hand. "Young Justice may suspect that something is wrong. They might even have pieces of the puzzle already. But they’re young, stretched thin, and trying to understand a situation that is moving faster than they can comfortably follow. The League has its hands full, and the people who should be watching Lex are either occupied or looking in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, Lex has every reason to keep his intentions hidden until his position is secure."

Kieran stopped pacing. "And you believe we can use that."

"I know we can use that." Quentin’s grin widened. "Information, my friends. Information is what separates the people who get crushed beneath a changing world from the people who learn to profit from it. We don’t need to fight the Reach, and we certainly don’t need to announce ourselves as enemies of the Light. We simply need to make sure the right people learn the right things at the right time."

He turned toward Nolan, his hands clasped behind his back as though he were addressing a board of directors rather than the other occupants of his own mind. "Bruce is already years into investigating us. He wants to stop the underpass but he also wants to stop the light. We give him information about Lex’s ambitions, carefully selected and supported by enough truth that he can’t dismiss it. At the same time, we pass a different piece of information to Ra’s. The great Batman is learning about the lights play for power."

"The light could account for it." Vey pointed out

"Of course they might. Which is why we don’t assume ignorance. We give him something useful enough to confirm, deny, or investigate. The point isn’t to tell either man something they can simply accept at face value. The point is to make them ask questions." Quentin’s expression sharpened. "Bruce will wonder how we learned about Lex’s ambitions. Ra’s will wonder whether we have other sources inside the league. Both will want to understand how much we know and what else we might have discovered. They may suspect we’re manipulating them, but that doesn’t make the information any less valuable. For the moment, their immediate concerns will matter more than the question of where we acquired it."

"And while they’re busy investigating one another," Kieran said slowly, "we expand."

"Precisely." Quentin spread his arms, looking like a man presenting the inevitable conclusion to a problem that had baffled everyone else. "We strengthen our position in Metropolis, secure the properties we need, establish our connections, and make the Continental indispensable before anyone decides to examine us too closely. We build the foundations while the people who might interfere are looking somewhere else. By the time they turn their attention back to the Underpass, they’ll find something much harder to uproot than the organization they thought they were trying to stop or seize."

For a moment, Nolan said nothing. The proposal had merit. It was also the kind of plan that could leave them caught between two of the most dangerous power structures on Earth, with the Justice League on one side and the Light on the other. Bruce Wayne was not a man who took kindly to being manipulated, and Ra’s al Ghul had spent centuries ensuring that people who threatened his ambitions did not live long enough to try again. Lex Luthor was arguably the worst of the three in a different way: a man who could smile across a dinner table while calculating precisely how to dismantle someone else’s life. They were not dealing with ordinary gang leaders or corrupt politicians. One mistake could turn their entire organization into a common enemy.

Nolan eventually laughed, shaking his head at Quentin’s triumphant expression. "It has merit. I’ll give you that. But we need to remember not to become greedy. We don’t know how much Lex suspects, how much Ra’s has told him, or what the Light already knows about us. If we give Bruce information that leads him straight back to the Underpass, we’re finished. If we misjudge Ra’s, we could lose more than our position at the table. And if the Justice League discovers that we’re deliberately feeding information into a conflict between them and the Light, we might find ourselves dealing with both sides at once."

"That’s the beauty of it," Quentin replied cheerfully. "We simply don’t make a mistake."

Kieran stopped and stared at him. Vey closed his eyes with the exhausted patience of a man who had heard far too many plans begin with those exact words, while Nolan’s mouth twitched despite his best efforts to remain serious.

"It’s one grand game of chess!" Quentin declared, spreading his arms as though the metaphor alone guaranteed their victory. "And we’re going to win."

Nolan tried to hold it in, but the laugh escaped him before he could stop it. It began as an uncomfortable chuckle and quickly grew until he had to lean against the edge of the table, one hand pressed to his stomach. Quentin looked offended by the interruption, Kieran’s lips curved into a knowing smile, and Vey watched Nolan with a faint, questioning frown.

"What?" Quentin demanded.

Nolan struggled to catch his breath. "Must I be the one to remind everyone?"

He looked up at Quentin, still laughing, and delivered the verdict with all the solemnity he could manage.

"We have never won a game of chess."