Phantom 39

“This is outrageous!” the senior senator shouted the instant the doors closed and the table mics lit red. “Two national-scale alien crises in as many years, and our posture is to hope the capes show up?”

“Yes, Senator—your tweet told us that,” a congresswoman cut in, dry as salt. “Maybe save the performative outrage for the lobby cameras.”

“Enough,” the President cut in, voice clipped. For once, he was not sitting placidly, laid back and untouched by the chaos that had gripped the world. He held onto the back of his chair and swept the room. Cabinet secretaries, joint chiefs, agency heads, Hill liaisons—the whole government ecosystem crushed into one airless place. 

Three seats down from the head, Amanda Waller took it in with that practiced stillness. Listening, collecting, weighing as the POTUS continued, “We’re not here to rehearse talking points. We’re here because a U.S. city was almost lost this afternoon. General.”

The four-star didn’t even look at his notes, eyes sharp and words ready on his tongue, “Mr. President, the situation in Detroit is dynamic and ugly. As of twenty minutes ago, twenty-five hundred confirmed dead and climbing sharply. FEMA reports over seventy-five hundred injured—those figures exclude missing persons and ICU escalations we’ll see overnight.” He pushed a stack of glossy photos halfway into the center: aerials, street-level shots, heat-bleached frames. “Cause of death is already divergent from the Imperium incident. Today we’re looking at: direct kinetic trauma from airborne hostiles; shrapnel and building collapse, trampling during mass flight; and a disproportionate slice from vehicular collisions. When the grid failed across six districts, traffic lights died and everyone sped one9=214- way or the other in terror. If that wasn’t enough, later on, you had terrified people trying to outrun something with wings while every intersection became a four-way game of chicken at fifty miles an hour.”

“Stampedes?” the Secretary of HHS asked, voice tight as everybody looked at the graphs and images projected on the screen.

“Multiple,” the general said. “Wayne State campus, Greektown, the People Mover platforms—even though half the lines were dead anyway. Folks saw the first wave of those things skim the river and just ran. Stadium evac at Comerica turned into a crush when the east gate jammed. EMS did what they could, but you can’t triage a moving stampede.”

“And the grid?” the DHS Secretary asked.

“Not a clean EMP. The parademons’ kit throws off a dirty spectrum—we’re still modeling. But the effect is the same. Substations tripped, transformers cooked, and district-level switchgear arced out. DTE was blind for forty-five minutes over large patches. Hospitals went to backup but lost telemetry. One NICU rode battery for seventeen minutes until the National Guard slung in portable generators. We’ve got civilian deaths due to power loss alone.”

The President’s jaw flexed. “Facilities?”

The general swept another set of images forward. “GM Renaissance Center’s glass and some structural braces compromised; the tower didn’t topple, but she’s hurting. Multiple high-rises with curtain wall damage. The three downtown casinos took collateral and fire. Cobo’s roof membrane tore open in two places. Riverfront terminals got chewed; there’s a semi-submerged container barge sitting half-sunk across from the Ambassador Bridge. Autofactories at Jefferson North and a cluster of parts depots along the riverfront have smoke and water damage. Early loss estimate in the thirty to fifty billion range; our friends at Treasury say that’s conservative.”

“Christ,” someone breathed.

“That is just the basics of it, the things what happened due to direct power loss,” the General continued, face grim as the projections and images changed again. “The fighting between Superman and that ET was sending out localised seismic waves, and their attacks caused many of the already shaking, crumbling buildings to collapse entirely even at a range of 5 miles. The Flash and the Green Lanterns assisted where they could, but from what it appears, one of the Green Lanterns was burnt out while fighting Flash and Grodd.”

Amanda didn’t move. Numbers, pictures, summary maps with red rings—she’d seen uglier tapestries, but seldom this quickly after the fact. People in panic patterns always died the same way. Trampling pressure, stairwell choke points, vehicles pinwheeling. You could engineer around a bomb. You couldn’t engineer around a city deciding all at once that the street was a no-go zone. She made a note, eye still on the map of Detroit that showed the points where the traffic and people, both, had choked on each other. 

Crowd control comms—instructions wired to phones, social media.

The President exhaled. “Now tell me what it was we were fighting.”

“Parademons,” the general said flatly. “That’s the term the off-worlders used—including the chatter between the heroes that we caught. Hostiles with membrane wings, partial armor, organic-mechanical integration, cyborgs essentially. Strong, fast, and aggressive. They grabbed civilians—their tactics included abduction. We now believe that’s for conversion into more of them. They showed rudimentary intelligence and tactics, but nothing that can outmatch even a civilian.”

Murmurs ensued in the wake of the General’s words. After all, cyborgs were still a realm of fiction for almost everyone in this room, and the fact that these parademons were aiming to convert humans into the same thing was certainly disturbing. The senator from the opening volley found his anger again. “And we stopped them, how? By letting a bunch of vigilantes do close air support? That’s our new air superiority plan? Maybe we should scrap the plans for the reapers and drones now?!”

“Sir,” the Air Force chief said, voice controlled but hiding his exasperation or irritation at the man, “fast movers couldn’t get rule-of-engagement clearance to fire into downtown fog-of-war while civilians were everywhere. Our tech still hasn’t reached levels where an automated, sentient reaction is possible mid-flight. And conventional rounds did little. These things shrug off 5.56 and 7.72 unless you hit nerve clusters we didn’t know existed at noon today. We targeted them with what AA batteries and machine guns we could set up, but I made the call of not firing indiscriminately into their swarms since there were hostages involved. F-22 and F-16s were airborne at all times around Detroit, but other than seven 120 AMRAAMs, the pilots were not authorized for any other actions.”

The DHS Secretary raised two fingers. “We do have clarity on one point: Superman neutralized the bulk of the airborne swarm. Satellite IR, airborne police cams, even doorbell cameras—there’s cross-confirmation. When he arrived, he opened up with heat vision on a width we hadn’t seen before. He didn’t ‘discriminate’ by target; he burned a corridor through anything with a wing and a pulse. He vaporized hundreds in seconds, thousands even. What was left turned to slag and ash.”

“Collateral?” the senator asked.

“His beams tracked to the sky,” DHS said. “Cause almost nil damage to the ground-level infrastructure. And by the time he arrived, the Flash and the Green Lanterns had already cleared out most of the stragglers from the whole city. He was careful. He was also the only combatant who could put that many targets down that fast.”

“Then why not target the swarm with SAMs?” the young congresswoman asked, eyes flicking to General Lane. “We had heavy artillery and surface-to-air on site, didn’t we?”

“As General Richards said,” Lane responded evenly, looking at the CSAF, “We did have all manner of ordinance mobilised and airdropped. But the problem came with the potential hostage situation. Our recon units and cameras couldn’t get a confirmation on the presence of hostages within each localised swarm, or the big one in the sky. Superman, however, has the confirmed ability to see through objects. That is why he could commit to such a large-scale, destructive attack. However, I assure you ma'am, where we had the opportunity, our tanks and artillery did their job.”

“Let’s get the sequence clear,” the President said. “I’m told the parademons didn’t just appear out of a clear sky, and I saw the press reports, there was something else going on before the incident exploded.”

The CIA’s operations chief toggled a tablet to push a timeline onto the screens along the walls. “We are still recording a detailed account of events from Dr. Silas Stone, the Head of Research at STAR Labs Detroit. But the rudimentary account he gave to us has shed some light on the events. Detroit started to experience power fluctuations at 13:20, short circuits, fuse burnouts etc. DTE was notified promptly once the cases went up to hundreds, and they deployed technicians along the plants and power lines to check for disturbances. At 14:05, blackouts started throughout the city, every bit and speck of electricity being drained by STAR Labs. Within moments, Detroit was dark save for the sunlight, and those systems not connected to the city’s power grid.

“Has Dr.Stone disclosed just what kind of thing they were doing in that lab?”

“They’d been working on an ancient artifact, designated “Motherbox”—origin unknown—under containment. According to Dr. Stone, the motherbox has a quasi-sentient nature, similar to a virus. It remains inert for the most part, except when it is connected to a power source of any kind. The artifact was the cause of these electrical fluctuations and blackouts, draining power from Detroit, and then Troy, Birmingham, and the surrounding areas at an unprecedented scale. Dr. Stone claims to have hit the kill switch on the device, but the Motherbox overrode it and the Star labs systems, drawing in enough power to be only a few minutes away from being equivalent to the energy of the Little Boy. The Flash entered at that moment, and carried Dr. Stone out of the danger zon-”

“He did not attempt to further route the danger or stay on site in case help was needed?” The President lowered his hand, eyes narrowed as he looked at the profile or Dr. Stone on teh screen.

“While he has not mentioned anything, our hypothesis is that there was someone else on the site, because the Motherbox did quiet down for about half an hour after that,” the OC answered, eyes flicking down to his watch. “We have demanded a statement from Star labs, as well as their security footage, and as a backup, our best hackers are currently breaching into their servers. By tomorrow morning, we will have the complete image.”

The president motioned for the man to continue, and the official nodded, pressing a button on his laptop to change the slides yet again, showing the profiles of Grodd and Snart both, along with a few grainy, hazy recordings—courtesy of store cams and surveillance drones.

“During this time, the Green Lanterns arrived and started assisting the DPD and the Army in evacuations. They airlifted buses, ships, and entire cars out of the city’s edge, collaborating with the forces and the initial FEMA response teams. At 14:10, Batman entered Detroit in his LAV and coordinated civilian rescue with the Lanterns and the Flash. By 14:25, almost every civilian had been evacuated from the city’s roads, and even the buildings had been mostly cleared. However, the DPD chief caught a distress call from the Police Station about an armory break-in. The Flash was nearby at the moment, and he went ahead to respond, encountering metahuman criminals, Grodd and Snart.”

“I remember him,” the President muttered, “He is the one who was caught in Central City a few months ago, wasn’t he? Ice powers?”

“Correct Mr. President,” the CIA official nodded, pulling up a spherical device, as well as two gauntlets on the screen. “However, his tech has been massively upgraded. We assume it was Grodd who did it. He is the ape, visually similar to a gorilla, only larger and with a suggested IQ above 160.”

“Wait, we have gorillas as criminals now?” Senator Johnson laughed, only to stop as he saw no one else joined him, and his spectacled gaze returned to the large primate’s face, “Are you being serious?”

“Dead serious, Senator Johnson,” Lane intervened, “We have recordings of Grodd holding verbal communication with the Flash, and what recordings we could scrounge from the station, the gorilla as smart as hell—and dangerous. He can control minds, and that is how he killed everyone in that police station, turned them into puppets and made them shoot each other.”

Murmurs of shock swept through the room, and Amanda silently noted the term mind-control on her notepad, thoughts whirling and slotting into place even as the reports continued.

“Grodd took control of Flash once the Lantern arrived to support him, but he broke through the control a few minutes later. At around 14:50, Grodd made contact with the other Lantern and Batman, along with Snart. Drone footage captured Batman escaping the engagement on his vehicle and returning towards Gotham through his aerial craft once out of city limits.”

“At 15:17 dot, the Flash broke through Grodd’s control, and somehow reached ubersonic velocities before teaming up with the other Green Lantern to take down both Snart and Grodd at once. During this altercation, the first Lantern was teleported away from the scene by some green vortex, only to return to Detroit twenty minutes later. They once again combed through the city for any civilians.” The man paused for a moment, looking up from his file at them all. “Then, the Motherbox once again went active in a surge of power. The initial wave of energy was emitted as an EMP, disrupting all communications and equipment for miles. The STAR Labs infrastructure was sucked into a localised singularity. Parademons emerged from the portal that was created then. Millions at once, and thousands coming every minute.”

“And this…motherbox,” the President said carefully, as if the word itself might bite. “We have one?”

“Had,” the CIA man said. “Semantics pending. STAR Labs and the surrounding five hundred feet have been cordoned off due to irregular ambient radiation. We also need to set up a special team to comb through the ruins.”

“What about Wonder Woman?” the Secretary of State asked. “We all saw the presser when the fighting stopped—she was at Superman’s side along with Batman.”

Amanda kept her face blank at the mention of Gotham’s Vigilante. She had a very short list of men whose money, psychology, and training profile could produce that silhouette. One name sat at the top with an underline. But suspicion wasn’t proof, and with people like him, proof was the only currency. She kept it filed as suspected, not confirmed, and let the thought go by, even if it had been years since she had first decided to unmask the face.

“She wasn’t in Detroit,” the CIA man said. “She was fighting elsewhere. Our feeds and…other sources,” he glanced quickly at Amanda, “suggest Themyscira—her island—was hit simultaneously. She was engaged against a New God commander. That’s why she’s not on the Detroit tape, and why she and Phantom came at the end with the skull of what they were fighting against.”

“Phantom?” the congresswoman asked, eyes narrow. “He didn’t show in Detroit either, correct?”

“Correct,” the CIA agent said. “No verified sightings in the AO. His most recent public reemergence remains Las Vegas a month ago, when he confronted Felix Faust, and then at Luthor’s press conference. Since then, largely dark. There are unverified reports of him in the Atlantic Ocean today, battling some giant creature, but nothing concrete.”

The senator’s jaw tightened. “So the one who likes to threaten people on camera didn’t show. Convenient.”

Amanda spoke for the first time, even, measured, looking at the woman, before her eyes turned towards the still of the Phantom’s face depicted on the screen, those mocking brown eyes staring at them haughtily. “He didn’t show in Detroit, Senator. But his absence doesn’t erase what he said a month ago. Intergang has been trafficking alien weapons on our soil, providing them to every gangster and criminal with a deep enough pocket. The parademons’ remains may confirm that pipeline or open new ones. We’re already behind. Pretending Phantom’s warning didn’t happen is how you get blindsided by a crate in a Gotham dock tick-tocking towards downtown, or the increased payload of back-alley weapons and crime scenes ever since.”

The room shifted—anger cooling into the practical discomfort of having to act. The Pentagon’s science liaison slid another folder forward. “On that point, Recovery. What Superman and our weapons didn’t turn to ash, the Lanterns and Flash brought down in ways that leave material. We have scattered intact carapaces, wings, and weapon assemblies. Recovery teams are sweeping the grid edges, prioritizing sites where Lantern strikes shattered exoskeletons instead of incinerating them. We have joint custody flowing to STAR Labs and LuthorTech facilities—under federal protocols of course—for immediate analysis, under in-person supervision of the Pentagon.”

“Joint custody?” the congresswoman said sharply. “You’re giving Lex Luthor first look at alien war tech?”

The liaison didn’t blink. “He has hardened, purpose-built labs with clean rooms and particle diagnostics we can’t replicate in a week, and we don’t have a week. He’s under contract, cleared for this. All samples remain federal property and under chain-of-custody with a Pentagon-approved official on site. STAR Labs is the second leg. We split risks and we split egos.”

The President didn’t correct him, his approval silent. Amanda wrote one word in her notebook, leash. Luthor’s labs would produce answers, and invoices, and a press conference where he’d praise heroism and imply he’d saved Detroit with a wrench. He’d also make himself indispensable—again. Useful and dangerous. As always, both things went hand in hand with the man.

“Back to the fight,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said as everyone took a breather from the massive information dump it had been for one or the other, “Who turned the tide?”

“Superman’s heat vision cleared the sky,” the CIA man said. “The Green Lanterns—Jordan and Stewart—handled massed clusters and kept escape corridors sealed, while rescuing civilians as the Parademons focused on Superman. We are a little unsure about the chain of events here, as the portal kept interfering with our networks and circuits, but somewhere in all of this, the Flash was taken down. Presumably, by the heavy hitter that Superman later engaged, the Parademon’s commander.

“And Batman?” the senator asked, acerbic. “Did he glower them to death?”

Amanda snorted mentally at Johnson’s vendetta. Though she could understand his stance, having lost billions in a backstage deal with the penguin that Batman had busted. It was a wonder the case didn’t go public, but then again, Johnson was a seasoned politician. Media and public opinion was his forte, if nothing else.

“Batman,” the CIA man said, jaw tightening, “did street-level. He organized police lines, redirected crowds, cut power to blocks that were about to turn into flash-fry traps. He kept bodies out of the death funnels. That doesn’t show up as fireworks on feeds, but it saved hundreds. And when he went back to Gotham, it was to confront a new entity that proclaimed itself to be ‘Solomon Grundy’. The thing was shrugging off everything the GCPD had in its armory, and even an RPG round did nothing but stun it for a moment. Batman came in and redirected the monster by making himself a target, taking him into the bank to secure him inside the vault. However, the plan fell apart, and then he coordinated his effort with Appolina to take the enemy outside the city limits and destroy him cleanly. Just like he did a year ago when the Imperium came.”

Amanda let the praise sit. Batman’s value wasn’t in spectacle. It was in the way he turned a cityscape into a chessboard and moved the pawns where they wouldn’t get swept. She still remembered when he had gone on a one man crusade against every criminal in Arkham, saving Gotham in a single night when the whole GCPD and SWAT were nothing but sitting ducks.

The President looked as if the exhaustion of three hours had hit him all at once. “We keep coming back to one year ago,” he said. “The Imperium. We told the public we’d learn from that, we’d be ready for the next…the next whatever. And now we have parademons and a ‘boom tube’ and another fight saved by the same people we don’t control. We owe the country an answer beyond ‘hope Superman shows up’ or ‘Maybe Batman can think of a plan’.”

“Mr. President,” the Air Force chief said, patient yet certain with his words, “control isn’t on the menu here. Coordination is.”

“Coordination?” Johnson snapped. “Like when Batman and Superman broke a Martian out of a government facility because they decided we couldn’t be trusted with him? That sort of coordination?”

That brought the room to a stop. Everyone remembered the incident. The Martian who’d warned them about the Imperium—J’onn J’onzz—lying under government lights, a dozen agencies circling like vultures with clipboards and sterilized questions. And then on the day the Imperium had suddenly attacked the entirety of America at once, Batman, Superman, and Phantom had broken out the Martian, before saving the day. 

“This is how you lose legitimacy,” the senator said, quieter now. “We look like we only ever react. We look like we can’t keep hold of what falls into our hands, or manage our assets. Whether it be credible information or a power that can reshape borders as easily as breathing.”

“You are talking about keeping a sentient creature locked up, or weaponizing these individuals,” the congresswoman shot back. “There’s a moral ledger here, too.”

“I am talking about how wrong our priorities are here!” he answered back just as hotly, pointing at the Martian’s profile, “We had him in our grasp, and we could have had our answers if only we had been more competent with our resources. That Martian and its information, both were crucial, and we let both slip out of our hands into the open.”

The Secretary of State pinched the bridge of her nose. “Enough, Senator Johnson, Senator Clint. Public opinion is already pattern-recognizing. Imperium one year ago—saved by heroes. Today these Parademons and that Kalibak—and again, it was the “heroes” who came to rescue. They are forming a league in the public mind, whether they sign something or not. For Christ’s sake, they stood together in front of the press, and made their statement about forming a team. The press will do the rest. Our options are to fight that narrative and look petty, or to shape it. And we can’t shape it if we pretend Superman, Flash and the Lanterns have not saved millions today. Or that the Phantom and Batman are also going to be a part of this thing.”

“Phantom didn’t show in Detroit,” the senator insisted. “He’s not a part of anything.”

“Not today,” State said. “But he also doesn’t work like the others. He’s appeared maybe half a dozen times, total. He comes when the threat profile crosses some private threshold, and then he disappears. He is not a joiner. He is not making himself available for debrief in the Roosevelt Room. But the country didn’t forget the Imperium when he brought back Superman from being mind-controlled and fought against the invaders. Hell, he saved people in Metropolis when he destroyed the machine that had attacked Superman. Or Las Vegas, where, while he did show a disregard for civilian casualties, he did destroy a threat that we were wholly unprepared or unequipped for. Or the way he used that stage to warn about Intergang and alien weapons,” the man paused for a moment, giving Johnson a level look as if saying ‘Dumbass’, and continued heavily, “If the parademons’ remains prove compatible with any black-market pipeline, guess who’s going to say ‘I told you so’ the loudest? And from a glass rooftop, not a podium.”

Silence ensued in the wake of the facts thrown at the table, and Amanda rolled her eyes at the stubborn, red-faced Senator, somehow still unconvinced and opening his mouth for another argument. Thankfully, the President seemed to understand that Johnson’s daily quota for words was finished, as he raised a hand for silence and turned towards her. “Director Waller. You’ve been quiet.”

She let the words stretch three beats—enough that they leaned in. “Because the problem set is what it is,” she said. “Not what we wish it to be.” She nodded at the timeline on the wall. “We’ve had exactly two reference cases for extraterrestrial mass-hostiles on U.S. soil in living memory. In both, conventional forces were at best a delaying action. In both, the quickest path to stopping the bleeding was coordination with metahumans and off-worlders. Pretending otherwise is a luxury we don’t have.”

“And Phantom?” the senator prompted, unable to leave the bone.

“He didn’t fight in Detroit,” she said. “He fought in Las Vegas weeks ago and turned a sorcerer into atoms to stop a city-killer from changing hands. He threatened Intergang on live feeds. He told us there’s a stream of weapons we can’t trace. Then he vanished.” She folded her hands. “He’s a variable. He is not an asset. I will not insult this table by pretending I can put a leash on him at 0900 tomorrow, but we monitor him. We prepare for him to be a spoiler—on our side or someone else’s. And we act on the only part of his warning we can control.”

“Intergang,” the President said.

“Intergang,” Amanda agreed. “We already have open cases in Metropolis’ Suicide Slum, Keystone’s old industrial sprawl, the Blüdhaven docks, and Opal’s salvage yards. Recently, a case popped up in Gotham too, matching the weapon profiles and ballistic reports we have from different crime scenes. We tie those to the scrap flows we’re seeing after Detroit. We seize warehouses under material-threat warrants. We let Luthor and STAR Labs chew their samples, but we don’t let either of them become the only mouth at the table.” She glanced at the science liaison. “You will put two federal science teams on every bench they open, no exceptions. One from DARPA, one from ARGUS. Chain-of-custody runs through DOJ.”

The science liaison nodded. “We can do that.”

“Good,” Amanda said. “Now crowd control. The next time the sky opens, we cannot have a repeat of today’s stampedes. DHS, you push WEA—Wireless Emergency Alerts—that say ‘Shelter in place. Avoid intersections. Follow ground guidance.’ Get Instagram, Facebook, and whatever else the public uses more than their ears to push notifications and warnings. We get those on screens and in ears in sixty seconds, max—not fifteen minutes. Local police need scripts they can shout through loudhailers that won’t trigger a run. And for the grid; DOE and DTE need fault-tolerant microgrid islands around hospitals and water plants. We can’t afford to lose NICUs because a winged thing sneezed EMP. ”

The HHS Secretary scribbled hard, while the DHS one was already typing on her phone under the table, emailing instructions on the spot.

“Defense posture,” the Chairman said to Amanda, an invitation and a test.

“We put eyes up and keep them up,” she said. “TASKFOR—” she stopped herself, knowing that many at the table would disagree with her on principle. Amending her words, Amanda carefully thought about the idea that had been brewing inside her head for years, which had already been solidified after the Imperium incident and Las Vegas, “A joint task element stands alert for anomalous energy spikes. If anything other than a dust particle makes entry into the atmosphere, we need to know fifteen minutes before. We put a hard ring of eyes around STAR Labs even as we pretend not to stare—because after today, every rogue with a radio knows where to aim a truck bomb for maximum chaos. After the Parademon weaponry is analysed, we should aim for integration of their tech into our arms, meant specifically for usage against metahumans and aliens. And lastly, we talk to the off-worlders—quietly.”

“You mean the Lanterns,” the CSAF muttered, tapping a finger on the desk, where photos of every superpowered individual active in America today were scattered.

“I mean the Lanterns,” Amanda nodded, giving each official and dignitary a look, converting her seriousness through her eyes, before returning to the President, “and New Genesis if we can get a line through the Lanterns. Orion didn’t come for us. He came for them—Apokolips. He knows what a parademon is. That knowledge saves time. We make a channel. We don’t cede control, we share data with a read-receipt, we collaborate to control the pacing, to set the board. And we draft an MO for our conduct with what the public is already calling The Justice League.”

Johnson bristled at her words, and she took note of who immediately changed their faces at his displeasure, “You’re proposing we legitimize vigilantes.”

“I’m proposing we stop pretending we can fight space-gods with a white paper,” Amanda said, voice flat. “You want legitimacy? You get it from results. You get it from not having to send a condolence letter to a NICU because the lights went out. We shape the narrative by being in the room where the narrative starts, not by discussing it six hours after shit has already been shovelled by someone else.” 

The Secretary of State nodded slowly. “We can draft language. Not a treaty. A…standing coordination notice. Something along the lines of; ‘When an extra-national event occurs, parties will share threat telemetry and delineate zones of operation.’ It gives us a piece of paper to hold up.”

“And if Phantom shows?” the congresswoman asked. “Does he get a copy of the paper?”

“He won’t sign anything,” Amanda declared, stone-faced as she looked down at two pictures. One showing the Phantom’s robed figure, conjuring fire that had turned Las Vegas to ruin, the other showing his smirking face—a fake, no doubt, but still, the only thing they had to make him at least appear human. 

“He’ll do what he wants. But a paper on the table signals he can work around us or with us. Every time he chooses ‘with,’ that’s data. Every time he chooses ‘around,’ that’s justification for a firmer response if we need one. Meanwhile, we go crush Intergang like bugs in a sink. If there are alien guns out there that look anything like Parademon scrap, I want them on my desk with a forensics bow on top. Preferably with its user strapped to a chair in the next room.”

“Public,” the Press Secretary said from his corner, finally risking a word. “The presser this evening bought us some goodwill. Superman’s tone was humble. Wonder Woman came off like she’d been doing this for centuries—which, depending on your myth tolerance, she has. Batman, too, said coordination is acceptable. If we’re going to roll out a statement welcoming them, do we do it tomorrow?”

“Not tomorrow,” the President said. “We don’t look like we’re capitalizing on fresh bodies.”

“Day after,” She nodded along, leaning back in her chair as she looked at the live feed still being projected across numerous screens. “With visuals from rescue operations, Guard handing out blankets, power crews swapping transformers at three a.m. FEMA and the Army constructed shelters and temporary infrastructure. Let the public hear ‘The government, together with partners, acted.’ Not ‘We watched in awe as Superman and others saved the day. Again.’”

The President nodded once, decisive again. “Interim actions, then. Treasury, open the spigot for Detroit. FEMA, Stafford Act authorizations—no piecemeal. DOE, microgrids—hospitals first. DHS, WEA scripts; I want them field-tested in Cleveland and Chicago by week’s end—Metropolis too, for that matter. DOJ, draft the joint-custody MOU in a way that keeps us first in line over every sliver of parademon metal going into LuthorTech and STAR Labs. CIA and ARGUS,” he glanced at her next, “you will give me a list of Intergang targets before I go to bed. You have the full authority to get support from all departments for this task. And State—start the quiet work with the Lanterns the next time they appear. If Orion wants to talk, he can send a postcard. If he doesn’t, we learn what we can from the Lanterns.”

The senator opened his mouth again—force of habit—but the President cut him with a look. “And you, Senator, can save your fire for Appropriations. You want to look like we’re doing something? Fund the something.”

That brought a thin smile from the congresswoman and a strangled noise from the senator that he managed to swallow. Even the military men looked distinctly pleased with that command.

“Two final items,” the Chairman said, glancing at his pad. “One: Hawkgirl. She played a decisive role a year ago; she’s been off-grid recently. We monitor for her reappearance and make sure the first conversation isn’t a mob with a microphone. And the Martian, we don’t have him. He isn’t ours. But if the Imperium ever tries a round two, he’ll be the first to know. If Batman and Superman trust him, we accept that he’s not an enemy and stop wasting cycles trying to snag him for a lab. Allocate those resources to something more fruitful.”

The senator’s nostrils flared, but even he didn’t want to revive that fight on a day like this.

The science liaison cleared his throat. “We should assume the first wave of parademon scrap will hit the black market inside a week. Not from Detroit—we have that locked—but from opportunists grabbing whatever fell outside the perimeter and driving it to a garage. Luthor’s people and STAR are already pinging us on unique alloys, unknown organics, power residue signatures. That will leak. It always leaks.”

Amanda nodded once. “Then we move faster than the leak. We seed the market with countermeasures and tracer buys. We buy the first batch ourselves with front companies and let it lead us to the sellers. When we hit them, we hit hard, and we put something in the press that says: ‘You pick up demon trash, you go to prison.’”

“Ms. Waller,” the President said, “what about…suspicions.” His eyes flicked to her for a beat that only a few in the room would understand. It was a question without a name: Do you know who Batman is?

Amanda didn’t blink. “We have hypotheses,” she said. “We do not have confirmation. The difference matters. You want me to act on a suspicion? I can bring you a mask and a headline. You want me to act on proof? I’ll bring you a choice. Today is not the day to make either mistake.” She felt the senator twitch and resisted the urge to smile.

“Alright,” the President said, finality in the word. “We reconvene at 0800 with updates from every line of effort: casualties, power, salvage, Intergang. Press will get a holding statement tonight. And for God’s sake, if any of you talk to the cameras before we’ve got our story straight, I will know, and I will not be smiling.”

Chairs scraped. Papers snapped into folders. Phones lit with messages to staff already halfway through the orders they’d heard implied. The room began to empty in clusters: uniform first, then the cabinet knotted in twos and threes, then the Hill contingent trailing complaint and calculation in their wake.

Amanda stayed seated as the table cleared, watching the screens cycle through the last thirty minutes of satellite video again: a dark stain at the edge of the river where the portal had chewed reality; a spear of red heat sluicing a corridor through winged dots; a green flare where a ring turned a storm of bodies into a net; a scarlet streak aiming at a mountain of a man and being swatted like a gnat; a blur—Orion—arriving like an answer to a prayer no bureaucrat would ever sign.

Only when the President’s detail had the door a quarter open did she rise, the leather of her chair sighing back into place. Her notebook looked small on the expanse of polished wood, but the lines she’d written were heavier than ink: WEA scripts. Microgrids. Intergang raids. Joint custody—DARPA/ARGUS embedded. Lantern channel. New Genesis whisper. Hawkgirl soft landing. Martian off-limits unless he chooses otherwise. BATMAN—suspected, not confirmed. PHANTOM—monitor; do not provoke; prepare.

She tucked the book under her arm and stepped out into the corridor, her mind already subdividing tasks into people, people into pressure points. The government could pretend to be shocked by the next crisis, could grind its gears on subtitles and spin. Amanda Waller didn’t intend to be surprised again. If there were guns in a dockyard that could turn a block to glass, she wanted them off the board before sunrise. If there were gods arguing over the earth, she wanted a seat where she could hear the argument and take notes in a language they’d understand.

Someone fell into step beside her. The DHS Secretary, eyes sharp despite the exhaustion. “You really think Phantom’s going to come to our table?”

“I think he’ll come to whichever table is sitting closest to the next fire,” Amanda said. “Our job is to make sure it’s ours.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“Then we move it,” she said. “Or we move the fire.” She didn’t smile. There was nothing to smile about. “Get me those alert scripts in an hour. And call your regional directors. Tell them tonight isn’t for sleep.”

Outside, sirens were still painting the city in stuttering sound, and the screens in the press office were already splitting themselves into quadrants labeled DETROIT LIVE, HILL REACTION, HEROES RETURN, and WHAT IS A PARADEMON? It would be a long night of answers and a longer morning of questions.

Thankfully, Amanda did not need to be held by her hand for either.