"Boss? Is that you? I thought you were dead." Mercy took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes hard, making sure what she saw was not an illusion. "You look grayish-white. What did they do to you? Was it Superman?"
To keep Superman from hearing, she even lowered her voice in a futile attempt at secrecy.
"I did it to myself. An evolution, or perhaps a curse?" Luthor turned and resumed fiddling with the massive terminal. "But I'm afraid I was deceived by a bad woman. Those who call themselves Mother are never very reliable, are they? By the way, you can speak freely here. Just as I blocked your phone signal, I've blocked every form of surveillance, including Superman's hearing."
The female secretary tilted her head. Only now did she recover from the shock of her boss returning from the dead. Looking at her lovely room, with a huge hole Luthor had punched through the wall and electronic wires spread everywhere like a Spider Web, she pressed both hands hard against her cheeks.
"Wait! So you didn't die—you just went somewhere, then hid in my apartment and started messing around?"
"I have hundreds of Safehouses around the world, but Superman or Deathstroke might find those, so they're no longer safe." Luthor smiled, though it looked rather terrifying on his monstrous face. "Temporarily modifying your home isn't bad. Besides, who do you think kept Metropolis untouched during the Mushroom Zombie Crisis? You should thank me and my Nanomachines network."
"So you saved the city, and that means I have to host you in my home?"
The secretary felt a headache coming on. She was going bankrupt. Any technological equipment was a huge power drain, though she had no idea how her former boss had connected it to her household wiring.