"Diana and I aren't just protecting Earth or this universe—there are parallel dimensions that need safeguarding too. We can't always be around. Your trip to Apokolips was a perfect example." Thea barely stopped herself from dropping a with great power comes great responsibility line, but the meaning was the same.
"You're saying we should destroy it preemptively?"
"No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater." Batman understood Chinese—Thea dropped the occasional idiom, and he caught every one of them.
"Find people you trust—Barbara, Tim, Mister Terrific, whoever—give them access to the source code, let them add safeguards, and make sure you're not present and that no records are kept." She offered the solution casually. Trust was the core issue here, and she hadn't volunteered herself. Instead she put forward Batgirl and Red Robin—the people Batman trusted most.
The subtext was crystal clear: I'm warning you not to pull anything. Being guarded to his face like a potential threat didn't bother Batman in the slightest. If anything, he agreed completely.
It was an excellent idea. Batman nodded his approval.
With that minor sidebar resolved, the AI had also located its target.
The footage was grainy—civilian surveillance cameras. A pale-blue humanoid muscle-bound creature could be faintly seen pressing its hands against a pedestrian on the sidewalk. The victim thrashed desperately, but those hands clamped his skull like a vise. Then his skin began to ripple and dissolve, and he too turned pale blue.
The bystander's muscles swelled, his clothes tore apart, and something burst from his chest before the two "people" moved out of frame one after the other.
"What was that thing that flew out?" Damian asked quietly.
"A heart. Slightly deformed." Thea had seen it clearly.
Diana asked Batman to replay the footage. "Is this an isolated incident? Or some metahuman?"
"Brother Eye runs a threat-level algorithm I designed. It flagged this as the highest priority—there must be a reason." Batman was still going frame by frame, not bothering to turn around.
Thea had her suspicions but wasn't certain. This world had far too many unknown abilities and superpowers to narrow it down.
"Give me the location. I'll go grab one—" She hadn't finished before a Star Sapphire ring flew out of Diana's bag. As an honorary member—and thanks to Thea's influence—the Zamaron Queen had gifted Diana a violet ring.
The comm channel opened instantly. Carol Ferris, a Star Sapphire warrior, appeared on screen, weeping uncontrollably. "Hal Jordan is dead! His body has been desecrated—the violet light can't resurrect him."
The words hit like a thunderclap. Even Batman's eyes carried a flicker of shock.
If anyone in the Justice League loved contradicting Batman most, it was Hal Jordan. Reckless, impulsive, zero regard for protocol, never thinking before acting—those were the labels Batman had slapped on him. But Hal was a hero. Nobody disputed that.
The Star Sapphires did possess a form of resurrection—but they could only revive a loved one, and only immediately after death. Once that window closed, the power became useless.
"How did he die? How did you confirm it?" Batman addressed Carol directly.
Carol hadn't expected Batman to be present. On any other day she'd have taken the opportunity to study the legendary Batcave. Now she couldn't muster the interest.
"The violet light maintains a psychic link with their beloved. That link severed suddenly, so..."
"Could he have entered an unknown dimension?"
"No dimension can block the Star Sapphires' love!" Carol's answer was absolute. Diana nodded in agreement.
"Don't bother investigating—Hal is dead. And it's not just him. Sinestro is dead too. The bodies have been recovered. Based on the wound patterns, if my analysis is correct, it was Black Hand." While they'd been talking, the Yellow Lanterns had contacted her as well. Arkillo, the Yellow Lanterns' top general, had just finished his report.
"Black Hand? William Hand? Wasn't he locked up by those Green Lanterns?" Diana smelled conspiracy—thick and unmistakable.
"The Guardians have probably cooked up another brilliant scheme." Thea's expression was flat. She turned to Carol. "Relax. Hal will be resurrected."
Carol assumed she meant the white light and couldn't stop thanking her. Side effects? Who cared about side effects right now?
Batman's lips moved as if to speak, then he held back. Even setting aside the League's feelings, Hal's service record alone warranted resurrection. This was fundamentally different from bringing back every hero's deceased relative.
Thea wasn't overthinking it. With the Underworld in her hands, living wasn't easy—but dying was just as hard.
Unless Hal Jordan worshiped some Greek or Egyptian deity, the man was definitely wandering around her Underworld right now.
Whether Sinestro had alien religious affiliations, she had no idea.
But the Underworld's resurrection process was nothing like the White Lantern's.
The White Lantern had serious side effects, but it was undeniably fast—one flash of white light and off you go.
The Underworld, as a bureaucratic institution, had its own procedures. Registration, queue, processing, filing—the full administrative circuit took at least a month, and that was with someone pulling strings. Without connections? Get comfortable waiting.
Thea considered for a moment, then told Batman, "Assemble the League. I'm afraid this is another cosmic-level disaster. I need to head back to the White House first. That blue-skinned creature wasn't an isolated event."
The reality matched her estimate. Across the US alone, hundreds of people had spotted the blue-skinned creatures. They could fly, possessed tremendous strength, and most critically, they could assimilate ordinary people—converting a civilian into an identical copy in under three seconds.
The Pentagon had already canceled all military leave and elevated to wartime alert status.
It wasn't just Earth. Sightings of these creatures had appeared across the cosmos. Their numbers were staggering, and they spread like a virus, assimilating intelligent life without pause.
The Yellow Lanterns, the Indigo Tribe, and the Blue Lanterns had all suffered attacks to varying degrees.
This was different from the Black Lanterns. Even the Ruichi Swarm could be converted, and the conversion speed was terrifying. Queen Kerrigan had deployed her swarm armies to exterminate them, but the results were negligible.
From the moment Thea received the initial intel in the Batcave to the time she'd compiled reports from multiple sources, only half an hour had passed.
Yet in just thirty minutes, the blue creatures' numbers had surpassed one billion—and the growth rate was accelerating.
They were blindingly fast. When the various Lantern Corps moved to engage, the creatures scattered and fled. The moment the Corps pulled back, they returned and resumed assimilation.
"Thea, what the hell are these things?!" Moira was increasingly convinced this presidency was a nightmare job. One crisis after another—the aftershocks from Rao's invasion had barely settled, and now this.
She was in her second term. Normally, both parties' candidates would already be posturing, running internal primaries full of backroom deals, horse-trading, even smearing their predecessors.
Now? Dead silence. As if every politician in the country had collectively lost the ability to think. A few staffers even joked that at this rate, for reasons that couldn't be publicly discussed, she might end up serving a third term.