The Argument

The footage kept playing. Onscreen, Chu Men suddenly stopped what he was doing and slowly raised his head.

He stared straight into the camera.

Through the screen, through thousands of kilometers of network cables, through layer upon layer of top-tier encrypted firewalls.

Chu Men's mouth spread into a smile of utter cruelty.

The moment he spoke, the surveillance feed warped and dissolved into static.

Barry's mouth fell open. His breathing quickened.

He stared at the black screen, his legs carrying him backward without his control.

The sneer froze on Arthur's face.

Inside the Medical Pod, the instruments shrieked an alarm.

Hal yanked the IV tube from the back of his hand and stumbled out of bed.

He rushed up to Bruce and clamped both hands around his wrist.

"Where's that Kryptonian?" Hal's eyes were bloodshot, his voice hoarse with the desperation and obsession of a dying man. "If we have him, we can at least put together a vanguard that can fight! Where is he?"

Every eye in the room snapped to Bruce.

Barry, Arthur, Diana, Victor.

All of them were looking at him.

With the twin apocalypses of Apokolips's invasion and Chu Men the Tyrant bearing down on them, the man with the "S" on his chest had become their last hope, their final trump card.

Bruce let Hal keep his grip on his wrist.

He looked at the black surveillance screen.

"He flew into the sun."

The air in the Batcave was as cold as an ice cellar.

At the main console, the holographic table cast a dim blue glow.

How much time had passed was anyone's guess. Maybe days. Maybe hours.

Bruce Wayne braced both hands against the metal tabletop.

The cold light of the computer screen fell across his sharp jaw, illuminating the gloom in his eyes.

"We have to deal with Chu Men first."

"You're insane." Diana gritted her teeth. "The Mother Box on Apokolips has already transmitted Earth's coordinates. The alien fleet could arrive any moment. I saw Steppenwolf's projection with my own eyes! That monster can tear space apart. And you're telling me that instead of preparing to fight the most brutal invasion force in the universe, we should provoke the monster who crushed Superman?"

Bruce straightened and brought up a set of data.

"We're eliminating a threat." Bruce spoke rapidly. "Victor, bring up the model for the spatial passage."

Victor stood in the shadows.

His half-human, half-machine body gleamed with cold metal.

A red light flashed in his left eye, and a complex set of spatial-folding equations appeared above the table.

"According to calculations based on surviving S.T.A.R. Labs data and the Mother Box's energy fluctuations," Victor said in a flat mechanical voice, "the Apokoliptian army needs a stable spatial passage for intergalactic transit. The gravitational field around Earth is already changing. The passage will require at least another forty-eight hours to fully form."

Bruce tapped the table with one finger.

"Forty-eight hours. That's all we have." Bruce looked around at them. "Diana, you're a warrior. You understand war better than I do. If we commit everything to a head-on battle with Apokolips, what do you think that Tyrant will do?"

Diana's brows drew together, but she said nothing.

"He's a madman, plain and simple." Bruce switched the display to footage of Chu Men's massacre in the East End. "He has no sense of the bigger picture, no concept of humanity's survival. All he cares about is having fun and being in control. If we and Steppenwolf tear each other apart on the front lines, he'll fly in from behind and burn us and the aliens to ash."

Bruce clenched his fists. "We have to deal with the threat at home before we can fight the one from outside. Chu Men is an uncontrollable nuclear bomb. If we turn our backs on him to fight, Earth will be a dead planet tomorrow."

"Well said!"

Arthur planted his dark-gold Trident into the ground. Chips of stone flew.

He strode up to the table, a cold sneer on his rugged face.

"The Bat's got it right." Arthur pointed at Chu Men's projection. "I'm not afraid to fight alien scum to the death. But I'm not turning my back on that rabid dog. We fight up front while he sits back and enjoys the show? Not a chance. We kill him first, then we can get down to chopping off alien heads."

Diana whipped her head around, her gaze sharp as a blade. "Kill him? With what? Your fork or Bruce's batarangs?"

Diana pulled the Magic-Breaker from the tabletop and held its blade out before Bruce.

"Look closely."

Bruce lowered his gaze. There was a tiny chip along the edge of the blade.

"This sword was forged with the divine power of Olympus. It can cut through a god's shield." Diana drew a deep breath. "But on Themyscira, when I struck the Mother Box's energy barrier with it, the blade went in less than an inch before it was thrown back. And Chu Men..."

Diana paused.

"I watched him in the East End. Hundreds of missiles hit his force field without causing so much as a ripple. How are you going to kill him? Throw lives at him until he dies?"

Victor took a step forward.

The heavy thud of metal feet echoed through the cave.

"Tactical assessment: one hundred percent chance of failure."

The red light in Victor's left eye fixed on Bruce.

"Ten minutes ago, I tried to analyze his data through a surveillance feed. I never even made physical contact with him." For the first time, a tremor entered Victor's voice. "He looked at me through thousands of kilometers of network cables."

Victor pointed to the flashing red core in his chest.

"An inexplicable psychic pressure slammed straight into my brain. Three of my core processors burned out on the spot. If he'd wanted me dead, I'd be a pile of scrap metal right now. His energy readings are off the scale, beyond the limits of Earth's physical laws. Trying to kill him is suicide."

"So we just wait to die?" Bruce slammed his hand on the table, his voice rising. "Let him turn Earth into his private slaughterhouse?"

"Cough... cough..."

A violent fit of coughing came from the Medical Pod.

Hal Jordan struggled to grip its edge, gasping for air.

"You... don't understand." Hal weakly raised his head. His cracked Green Lantern Ring flickered with a sickly light. "Apokolips... isn't a war. It's a calamity. Parademons will blanket the sky like locusts, drain the oceans, and turn the whole planet into a furnace."

Hal stared hard at Bruce.

"Chu Men may be powerful, but he's only one man. Darkseid... is the ultimate darkness of the universe. We have to establish a defensive line. Apokolips has to come first."

The two sides were deadlocked.

The air seemed to congeal.

Crunch. Crunch.

A crisp chewing sound suddenly came from the corner.

Everyone turned at once.

Barry Allen was huddled behind an old generator.

He held a family-size bag of potato chips, his mouth stuffed full. When he saw everyone looking at him, Barry flinched.