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  38 AND COUNTING,

  ' AP0K0LIP1.

  fill torture chamber reeked of fear, pain, and blood. Humanoid bodies hung on meat-hooks from the vaulted ceiling of the subterranean chamber, buried deep beneath the smoldering surface of an alien world. The grandiose architecture blended the medieval with the futuristic, the high-tech trappings failing to conceal the primal horror of the scene. Glowing rods, embedded in the gloomy stone walls, cast a sanguinary crimson radiance over the chamber. Agonized whimpers escaped the lips of suffering wretches who had long since lost the strength to scream. A stooped figure in a hooded purple robe applied a scalpel to the bare skull of yet another prisoner, who was strapped onto a cold steel operating table. The harsh white glare of elevated spotlights threw the unfortunate victim’s captivity into even starker relief. A worn leather gag muffled his cries of torment. His anguished eyes held no trace of hope, only dread. Blood from the incision trickled down the side of his head before dripping into an ornate basin at the hooded figure’s feet. The steady drip of the blood punctuated the pitiful moans of the prisoners awaiting their turn. Desaad, chief inquisitor of the planet Apoko-lips, savored every whimper.

  “What is the worth of a single life?” he reflected, moved to philosophize by the charnel house atmosphere of the dungeon. Bangs of stringy black hair drooped out from beneath the top of his hood. Cruel blue eyes peered from his sly, vulpine features. “How does one measure its power? Even the humblest of souls touches others, its ever-widening ripples spread across the universe, altering for better or for worse the destinies of countless beings on infinite worlds.” He scowled in disappointment as the Lowlie upon the table inconveniently went into its death throes after only the briefest exploratory surgery upon the pain centers of its brain; Desaad had apparently miscalculated the wretch’s ability to withstand the procedure without anesthesia. “And yet, for all the good and ill that life accomplishes, it perishes at last with an imperceptible whisper... as if it had never existed at all.”

  A deep bass voice intruded upon his soliloquy. A looming black shadow fell across the operating table. “Your analogy is depressingly nihilistic.”

  “A thousand pardons, master.” Desaad laid his scalpel down beside the corpse of his latest experiment and turned to greet the source of the shadow.

  Darkseid, supreme ruler of dread Apokolips, stood atop a stone stairway looking down into the dungeon. His craggy gray features looked as though they had been chiseled out of solid granite. Crimson eyes glowed like embers beneath his beetling brows. A somber blue cuirass encased his stocky frame. A wide metallic belt girded his massive torso. A matching blue helmet, gloves, and boots completed his imperial raiment. Over eight feet tall, he towered over the spindly torturer.

  Although quick to apologize to his master, Desaad felt emboldened to speak further. “And yet, no disrespect meant, of course, do you refute its ultimate conclusion?” “Were I hobbled by your limitations, I would say no,”

  Darkseid conceded. He turned away from the doorway and Desaad scurried after him, hiking up the hem of his robe as he crept up the stairs to a war room one floor above. “Fortunately, my vision encompasses a greater horizon.”

  Darkseid contemplated a chessboard upon which were arrayed miniature figurines fashioned in the likeness of various inhabitants of the planet Earth. That seemingly insignificant world, separated from Apokolips by vast gulfs of time and space, had often figured in Darkseid’s ambitious designs and machinations. That his plans for universal conquest were frequently opposed by Earth’s myriad superpowered champions only made that world a more tempting prize. Joining his master before the table, Desaad identified the figures as representations of Superman, Captain Marvel, Black Adam, Eclipso, Harley Quinn, Donna Troy, Jason Todd, Klarion the Witch Boy, and many other Terran nuisances, both celebrated and obscure. He looked forward to the possibility of treating all or more of said personages to his singular hospitality. He licked his lips in anticipation of testing their individual pain thresholds. What new campaign, he wondered, does the master have in store?

  “I see the time fast approaching,” Darkseid revealed, “when existence itself shall be re-created and Darkseid shall be its architect.” He plucked a tiny statue of James Bartholomew Olsen from the table and repositioned it upon the board. “But your venomous tongue speaks at least one truth, Desaad. Even the humblest soul touches others...

  37 AND COUNTING.

  GOTHAM CITY.

  Arfcfean Asylum, home for the criminally insane, looked like something out of an old Basil Karlo movie. The forbidding Gothic edifice, with its sooty brick walls, slate shingles, and turrets, was located on the outskirts of Gotham, not far from the DiAngelo Sewage Treatment Plant. A noxious miasma wafted up from the river as Jimmy Olsen approached the infamous asylum, which usually housed any number of Gotham’s most notorious homicidal maniacs. Iron rods barred the windows. Razor wire topped the spiked metal fence enclosing the hospital and its grounds. Gargoyles perched on the eaves of the old Victorian mansion. The red-haired cub reporter and photographer swallowed hard as he snapped off a couple of shots of the asylum’s gloomy exterior with his new digital camera. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all?

  Then again, he thought, if 1 want the Chief to take me seriously as an investigative journalist, and not just a photographer, I need to follow a story wherever it takes me... even to Gotham and this creepy old place.

  Armed guards escorted Jimmy to a checkpoint outside the maximum security ward, where he was asked to strip down to his boxers. “Just a precaution, Mr. Olsen,” a guard explained. A sign posted on the wall read:

  NO

  WEAPONS, COINS, UMBRELLAS, PLANTS, BOTTLED WATER,

  PLAYING CARDS, OR COOLERS BEYOND THIS POINT.

  Guess they’re not taking any chances, Jimmy realized. Embarrassed by the strip search, he wished that he hadn’t worn the boxers decorated with Superman’s S-shield on them today. His press pass dangled on a cord around his neck. A chilly draft raised goose bumps on his exposed skin. “Maybe you guys could turn up the heat in here?” “Sorry about that,” a guard explained as he swept a metal-detecting wand under Jimmy’s outstretched arms. Jimmy’s wristwatch elicited a beep, but otherwise he was clean. “Mr. Freeze brings the temperature down in the entire building.”

  Right, Jimmy thought. 1 forgot about him. Not for the first time, he decided that Gotham had way too many scary villains. This is why I live in Metropolis. Sure we get plenty of mad scientists, giant robots, and alien invasions, but we have Superman too. Gotham just had Batman, who was almost as spooky as his foes.

  Mercifully, the guards let him put his clothes back on before admitting him to the ward. Locked doors lined both sides of a long corridor that stretched down one entire wing of the former mansion. Closed-circuit TV cameras tracked Jimmy’s progress as he made his way down the hallway. His footsteps echoed on the scuffed linoleum floor. The refrigerated air smelled of unwashed bodies and antiseptic. Sobs, cackles, and hysterical laughter escaped the inmates’ cells. One prisoner (Two-Face?) argued ve-

  hemently with himself. Horizontal slits were cut at eye level into the sturdy iron doors of the cells. Jimmy could practically feel the lunatics’ eyes upon him. He nervously fingered his wristwatch.

  “What do 4-D beings look like?” a voice hissed at him. Crazed, dilated eyes peeked out through the slit in a door. “Could they be inches away from our 3-D world, ready to eat our chocolate cake?”

  “I... am ... hope not.” Jimmy quickened his pace, the faster to get away from those manic eyes. Who the heck was that?

  At last, he came to the end of the corridor, where Arkham’s most dangerous inmate occupied a special cell of his own. The Joker squatted on the floor in front of Jimmy, behind a thick wall of clear,
bulletproof plastic. A canvas straitjacket bound the evil clown’s arms against his ’ chest. His head was drooped forward, concealing his face, so that only his wild green hair could be seen. His bare feet, bleached white as chalk, emerged from the trousers of a bright orange institutional jumpsuit. His bleak cell was furnished with only the barest of necessities: a cot, a sink, a commode. Disk-shaped air holes in the plastic wall allowed Jimmy to hear the Joker chuckling quietly under his breath.

  What’s so funny?

  Jimmy cleared his throat, but the Joker didn’t give him a chance to introduce himself.

  “Lookie, lookie, it’s Superman’s pal, Jimmy Olsen! The redheaded stepchild of the Daily Planet .” His shrill, sarcastic voice made Jimmy’s blood run cold. “Let me see the watch, Jimbo. Get Superman on the line. Nurse Ratched won’t let me watch the World Series!”

  Jimmy got the reference. Apparently, the Joker was a Jack Nicholson fan. He caught himself hiding his signal-watch behind his back, then attempted to get down to business. “I... I’d like to ask you a few questions, Joker.”

  His voice quavered only a little.

  “I’d like to strangle your pink little neck until your eyes pop out of your head,” the Joker said savagely, revealing the malice behind the mirth. He kept staring down at the floor, not even bothering to make eye contact with the young man whose life he had just threatened.

  Jimmy’s mouth went as dry as the Great Kahndaqi Desert. His face paled behind his freckles. Part of him wanted to turn around and catch the first train back to Metropolis, but the reporter in him was determined to stand his ground, just like Lois or Clark would. Don’t let him spook you, he urged himself. You can do this.

  “It’s about Lex Luthor,” Jimmy said. “There’s a rumor going around the underworld that you killed him—or tried to—after that big Crisis in Metropolis a year ago. But there are also stories that you and Luthor have been working together occasionally.” He tried to fix the Joker with a steely gaze. “So what’s the story, Joker? Are you in cahoots with Luthor? Or did you murder him?”

  “Murder Lex?” The Joker looked positively stricken by the question. His lurid grin turned upside down. “Are you telling me Lex is deadT

  “I don’t know,” Jimmy admitted. Superman’s archenemy hadn’t been seen in months. Nobody knew if he was just lying low, plotting some campaign against the Man of Steel, or if he was truly dead. “Do youT

  “Poor Lex ... dead? No! Say it isn’t so!” The prisoner grew increasingly agitated. Leaping to his feet, he lunged at the plastic divider separating him from Jimmy. “Who could have done such a terrible thing? Was it youT Jimmy recoiled from the wall. “No! I... I was hoping you might know.”

  “Know what?” the Joker asked.

  “Where Lex is. If he’s really dead.”

  The Joker looked confused. “Do you know?”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “Asking me what?” the Joker demanded. “If I’m in on the joke?”

  Jimmy decided he’d had enough. “Okay, this was obviously a bad idea. You don’t know anything.”

  “I know more than you, Jimbo!” The Joker pressed his face against the transparent plastic so that one of the holes circled his right eye like a monocle. His malevolent grin stretched from ear to ear. “You’re a photographer. You have the all-seeing eye of the camera, but your lens cap is still on. You’re out of focus. You can’t see the Big Picture!”

  “What Big Picture?” Jimmy challenged him.

  The Joker’s bloodshot eye nearly bulged through the circular gap in the wall. “Come closer and I’ll show you.”

  “No way, Joker.” Jimmy knew better than to get too near the murderous clown. Even bound and caged, the Joker was nobody to let your guard down around. “What’s the Big Picture?”

  ' “It’s a universal conspiracy, Jimbo! It’s all around us. Something’s not quite right with the world. Haven’t you noticed? Haven’t you felt it?”

  By now, Jimmy’s goose bumps had goose bumps, but he tried not to let the Joker’s unhinged ravings get to him. “You’re crazy and locked away. How would you know?”

  The Joker shrugged his shoulder beneath the straitjacket. “You’re right. I’m a conspiracy nut! And you know what else? Oh, this is the kicker. I did kill Lex! Or rather, I killed a Lex Luthor, but not our Lex Luthor. Doppelgangers gone wild, Jimbo! When Earths collide ... hah!” His maniacal laughter escaped his cell as Jimmy turned away from the imprisoned clown. “You slay me! Let me slay you in return!”

  “Freak show,” Jimmy muttered. Talk about a waste of time! Out of the comer of his eye, he spotted an armored guard escorting Killer Croc to a vacant cell. The scaly green monster was over seven feet tall and looked more like his reptilian namesake than a human being. Slitted vertical pupils divided his bloodred eyes. Drool dripped from saurian jaws. His clawed hands were cuffed tightly behind his back, while heavy leather straps bound his arms to his sides. A ridged tail swept the floor behind him. Jimmy recalled that Waylon Jones suffered from a unique genetic disorder that had slowly transformed him into a human crocodile. The cannibalistic murderer towered over his captor.

  “Keep moving, Jones!” the guard ordered through his protective faceplate. Croc’s escort was decked out in full riot gear, for safety’s sake. An electronic cattle prod goaded the prisoner forward. “Give me any more trouble and you won’t get fed tonight! No raw meat for you!”

  Jimmy considered snapping a picture, but then the Joker called out from his cell, distracting him. “So long, Jimbo! Be a sweetie and send me the obituaries!” He rocked back and forth upon the floor, convulsing with fiendish glee. His diabolical laughter echoed loudly. “Y’all come back real soon, ya hear?”

  Uh-huh, Jimmy thought. Like that’s going to happen. He fished his cell phone from his pocket. Better touch base with Lois, and let her know this whole thing has been a dead end.. . .

  A ferocious roar suddenly drowned out the Joker’s hilarity. The guard shouted in alarm. Twisted metal screamed in protest. Jimmy spun around to see Killer Croc break free from his restraints. The cuffs came apart, the leather straps snapping like rubber bands. Electricity crackled as the panicked guard jabbed Croc with the prod, but the high-voltage jolt only served to enrage the reptilian monster further. An immense green arm smashed the guard into the wall hard enough to crack the man’s body armor. Hissing furiously, his tail savagely whipping the air behind him, Croc took hold of the hapless guard and bit the man’s head off, helmet and all, in an explosion of blood and gore.

  Holy cow! Jimmy thought.

  It all happened so fast. One minute Jimmy was calling the Planet. The next, he found himself alone in the dismal corridor with a bloodthirsty carnivore. His cell phone slipped unnoticed from his fingers. He groped frantically for his signal-watch, desperate to summon Superman, but Croc was already lunging toward him. Frozen in shock, Jimmy could only watch in horror as Croc’s blood-splattered jaws opened wide for him. Razor-sharp claws swiped at his face....

  And then things got really strange.

  At the last minute, right before Croc’s claws ripped off his freckles, Jimmy’s neck stretched out of the way of the monstrous claws, elongating like taffy until it was at least five feet long! Seconds later, as Jimmy threw himself backward, his arms and legs stretched as well, so that the charging crocodile-man missed him entirely. The elastic limbs, extending far beyond his sleeves and trousers, flailed about wildly as the startled reporter tumbled clumsily onto the floor.

  Huh? Jimmy thought. His tangled limbs looked like a pile of pink spaghetti. Am I really doing this?

  Croc’s momentum carried him past his intended prey. His claws and fangs meeting only empty air, he skidded to a stop and turned to look for Jimmy. A bewildered expression momentarily replaced the naked bloodlust on his bestial face. His slitted eyes blinked in puzzlement. “What the hell?”

  Good question.

  He lunged at Jimmy again, and the reporter kicked one leg up to defend himself. To his
amazement, the leg extended halfway down the hall so that his heel connected with Croc’s chin. The blow, which seemed to startle the monster more than damage him, only slowed Croc down for a moment. He eyed Jimmy warily as he stalked toward the fallen reporter, whose elastic limbs retracted in fear from the advancing saurian. Scooting backward on his butt, Jimmy found himself trapped against the unyielding stone wall behind him. There was no escape....

  “These people pump me so fulla meds, I can’t even trust my own eyes anymore,” Croc groused. Resentment permeated his gravelly voice. The creature’s slavering jaws were only a few feet away from Jimmy now. “But I’ll bet you taste fine. Maybe just a little rubbery ...”

  Jimmy frantically pushed the signal button on his wrist-watch. In theory, the watch emitted a supersonic alarm that Superman—and only Superman—could hear anywhere on Earth. The Man of Steel would make short work of Killer Croc, but apparently he was occupied elsewhere. Probably rescuing a sinking ocean liner, Jimmy figured, or saving the entire world from a killer asteroid. Unfortunately, not even Superman could be in two places at once.

  A vivid memory of the guard’s head exploding between Croc’s jaws flashed through Jimmy’s mind. Closing his eyes in anticipation of the end, he wondered if his gory demise would rate page one of the Planet....

  ' This wasn ’t exactly how I wanted to make the front page.

  A loud electric zap caught him by surprise, even as a bright blue flash penetrated his closed eyelids. Croc let out an agonized roar, only inches away from Jimmy. The reporter's eyes snapped open and he saw his attacker stiffening in shock as an entire team of Arkham security guards attacked him from behind with their stun rods powered up to the max.

  Reinforcements, Jimmy realized. Thank goodness!

  Multiple electrodes succeeded where that lone guard’s cattle prod had failed. Amazingly, Waylon Jones managed to stay on his feet for a few minutes, despite the relentless galvanic barrage. Fiery blue sparks raced across his scaly hide. He twitched spasmodically like a frog in a science experiment. Smoke rose from his head and shoulders. The unmistakable scent of ozone suffused the air. Tiny hairs rose up all over Jimmy’s body just from his proximity to the massive electrical discharges. Croc roared one last time before toppling face-first onto the floor. Jimmy had to quickly roll out of the way to avoid being squashed beneath the falling monster.