Morden Man — Roleplayer Guild

LexCorp Building, Metropolis

Jonathan Corben sat awake in his tiny cell with his head in his hands. He could feel the coldness of the metal pressed against the square of flesh that remained on one side of his face. The cold reminded him of the horror of his situation. It had been a little over nine months since Lex Luthor had found him. Corben had been down and out then, a decorated Iraq veteran laid low by the loss of his limbs, but Luthor had promised to make him more than that. He promised to make him more even than he’d been before. Jonathan had been naïve, he’d taken the billionaire at his word, allowing dreams of becoming a Captain America for the twenty-first century to overpower the lingering doubts in the back of his mind. Instead Luthor had turned him into a cold, unwieldy machine capable of channeling the radiation that emanated from Luthor’s treasured meteor rock. He’d turned Jonathan Corben into a living battery for his clean energy generator.

Suddenly the familiar whirring and crunching began. It could mean only one thing. Lex was back to gloat, to lord it over Corben once again, and remind him that he was Luthor’s proper for now and ever more. He was wont to do it from time to time but never twice in one day and never usually this late at night. As much as Corben was loathe to admit it, he savoured Luthor’s visits and the hate it stirred in him. At this point the hate was all that kept him sane. Slowly the parts of the generator drew back and the green light of Corben’s cell lit up the generator room. There was nothing.

“Luthor?”

Suddenly a pinkish-green beam of light shone down from the heavens and a figure stood before him. A green-skinned man of slender build stood before Corben. He was clad in a futuristic-looking black bodysuit that had orbs of pink light along it. Those same orbs of pink light were dotted along the figure’s forehead. When he spoke his voice was cold and precise.

~No, Jonathan Corben, I am something much more.~

Corben’s eyes drew back in shock.

"Who are you?"

The figure shook its head so curtly that the gesture could barely be seen. It stood with its hands clasped behind its back. Though Corben could see him, see even the wrinkles on the figure’s green skin, it was clear the figure was a projection of some sort. He shimmered slightly when Corben looked at him from an angle.

~Who I am is not of concern to you, Jonathan. It is what I can do for you that should concern you.~

Corben nodded.

"I’m listening."

~You are familiar with this man, are you not?~

The figure lifted one of his green hands. An orb along the man’s black gauntlet flashed slightly and a projection of Superman appeared. Footage of Superman fighting a figure, almost a mirror image of himself but for cybernetic parts, flashed before Corben’s face. 

"Are you kidding me? That’s Superman. You’d have to have been living under the rock to not be familiar with him."

The comment was met with cold indifference.

~You are to destroy him.~

Corben stepped back from the glass a little, allowing his metal hands to sag away from it, and began to shake his head. 

"Why would I do that? The man’s a hero. He’s saved thousands of men, women, and children without so much as asking for a dime. If you think I’m going after Superman, you’ve got another thing coming."

~You do wish to be free, do you not, Jonathan?~

The metallic man stared down at his hands, the frigid cold digits that squeaked and ground as he moved them, and pondered what possible life he could have on the outside. There was no place he could go that he wouldn’t be hounded and no city he could lay his head where he wouldn’t be treated like a freak. He was a freak. Though he dreamt of seeing the sky again, watching the clouds pass him by, he wasn’t prepared to become a murderer to do it – especially if it meant murdering Superman. The Man of Steel was one of the good guys, he’d seen Luthor for what he really was long before anybody else, and Corben wasn’t going to deprive the world of the gift, the hope, he gave them. Not to live the life of some whipped cur away from the people he loved.

"Not if it means I have to kill Superman."

One of the orbs on the green-skinned man’s head flashed and his eyes glazed over for a fraction of a section. To Corben it felt like little more than a pin pricking his mind. The figure had downloaded his memories, all of Corben’s knowledge, into his brain and was sifting through them at great speed.

~You have killed before.~

Corben shook his head.

"That was different. I had to kill then. I did those things to protect my country, to protect the people I loved, not because I wanted to kill anyone. If I hadn’t killed those people they would have killed me. It was self-preservation. This is… this is murder."

There was another flash and images of Jonathan Corben, depleted and gaunt, laying dead on the ground of his cell flashed from the other gauntlet. The images played over and over again, showing possible timelines, each grimmer than the next. Each carefully selected to force Corben’s hand.

~You will die in this cell if you do not agree to these terms. I have foreseen it. Luthor will drain you until you are of no use to him and leave you for dead. No one will know of your sacrifice. No one will know of your death. Is this then not a case of self-preservation?~

A defeated sigh slipped from the soldier’s lips as he mulled the options laid before him.

"It’s not enough."

For the first time and if only for a moment there was intrigue splashed across the man’s green features. There was not a semblance to uncertainty to him as he spoke, there was none of Corben’s anguish in his commands, only a sterile, logical abruptness. Corben’s reluctance to act even in his own self-interest seemed to unsettle him somewhat. It was a sentiment entirely alien to him.

~You would condemn yourself to death for him?~

Jonathan looked up, a single tear resting on his own remaining eyelid, and shook his head.

"No, I mean… I… If I do this, I want you to change me back. If I kill Superman, I want you to undo what Lex has done to me, I want to be the man I was before all of this, before I got hurt too. I want to be me again and not this thing. Can you do that?"

A satisfied smile appeared on the man’s face.

~I can do all things.~

Again there was a flash of pink light from one of the man’s orbs and another projection appeared. This time it was of a Jonathan Corben restored, his face and limbs intact, lying with a young woman in a field. His hands reached out and brushed her face gently, pulling it closer to his for a moment, and planting a gentle kiss on her lips. The woman rubbed her nose against his with a giggle and the pair began to roll around in the grass in fits of giggles. Corben watched on captivated and dreamt of the possibilities and the life he could have. Eventually a smile appeared on his lips as he arrived at a decision.

"I’ll do it."

The man reached out one of his hands and pressed it against the glass that kept Corben entombed in his cell. What began as a gentle hum, vibrating the glass that lay between the two of them, slowly picked up into a screech. Cracks began to appear in the glass and pieces began to fall apart and crumble to the ground. Once the man was satisfied the glass was sufficiently weakened he took a step backwards, pressing one of the pink orbs on his chest, and began to glow with pink energy once more.

~Go then, Jonathan. Search Superman out and destroy him. You have my word that once you do this I will make you whole once again.~

As he had arrived the green-skinned man disappeared. The green and pink energy caused his form to disappear from the generator room entirely and Jonathan Corben was left, a broad grin across his face, as he prepared to launch one of his metallic fists against the glass in front of him. It breached the glass with ease, smashing what had survived the screeching into a thousand pieces, and Jonathan Corben’s metallic feet crunched over the broken glass and into freedom. Or at least one step closer to freedom.
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