Guard against fire, guard against theft, and above all guard against your colleagues. Apokolips's finest tradition was on full display.
Everyone had greed. The question was whether you had the sense to keep it in check. Unfortunately, the gods of Apokolips were a crew with outsized ambitions and undersized restraint.
Thea watched Kalibak, Darkseid's eldest son, sneaking constant glances at the Anti-Life Equation. Steppenwolf and DeSaad were likewise making quiet preparations of their own, each wary of the others, each exploiting the others.
This team is absolutely impossible to manage... Thea sighed inwardly. In terms of raw aggression, the forces of evil had every advantage. But when it came to unity, the forces of lawful good had them beat a hundred times over. Back in Highfather's day, not a single one of his subordinates had ever coveted the Life Equation.
Darkseid was under the most pressure right now. He had to hold the gods in check while simultaneously being first to seize the Anti-Life Equation. The strain on him was immense.
And it was precisely that strain that cost him most of his caution, ultimately leading to tragedy. What goes around comes around. In truth, this outcome had been sealed the very first day Apokolips was founded on the principle of survival of the fittest.
Everything decided by force. Whatever you could take was yours. In the face of profit, every constraint could be ignored. Apokolips's twisted system of advancement would make Darkseid pay the price today.
"Stand back!" Darkseid barked, unaware that someone else was watching from the shadows.
A few meters of distance meant nothing to New Gods. This was really about testing how long his authority could still cow them.
The answer: he was still the fearsome Darkseid. His subordinates didn't dare resist, retreating several steps on pure instinct.
The tyrant was satisfied. His gaze returned to the Anti-Monitor. Once the Anti-Life Equation was extracted, this husk's usefulness would plummet. Darkseid intended to make a trophy of him, announcing his supreme power to the multiverse.
What he didn't know was that the very trophy he had in mind was chatting with Thea. The Anti-Monitor couldn't move a finger at this point, but his level was high enough that he could see her.
Thea didn't draw hard lines between good and evil. She'd sat down for drinks with Lucifer, the King of Hell. Having a chat with the Anti-Monitor, who'd destroyed countless universes, was hardly a big deal.
They'd been discussing the Anti-Monitor's post-layoff career prospects.
Once the Anti-Life Equation was extracted, the Anti-Monitor would be completely free. He'd shed the burden of endlessly destroying universes and become Mobius once more.
"From where I'm standing, you're not dying today. The bit of life energy needed to reshape you is nothing to me. But why should I help you? If I recall correctly, Nekron killed you last time, and it was my White Lantern that brought you back. You still owe me." Thea never took a losing deal.
In the mental plane, the Anti-Monitor was seething. That was Dark Thea's doing! And even if you did revive me, what did you do after that? You sicced Darkseid—that brute—on me! Do you have any self-awareness about what you've done?
Getting killed again while already on his last hit points was not, by any measure, a pleasant memory.
Still, he was in no position to push back against Thea right now. He could only play his cards, saying as diplomatically as he could manage, "What about the anti-matter cannon? Didn't I help you take out Nekron?"
"He was your enemy too. You were just venting, weren't you?"
The Anti-Monitor insisted, categorically, that it had nothing to do with venting. It was entirely a matter of justice! Thea didn't believe a word of it. But thinking it over, eliminating Nekron had genuinely been a critical step on her path to becoming Death.
"Fine. You look pitiful enough. We'll call everything before this even. Tell me what you can offer me now, and if I like what I hear, I'll save you once." Thea was in no rush, waiting for him to name his price.
"The Anti-Monitor Tower is in your hands, correct?"
"...I call it the Underworld Tower now."
Thank god this was happening on the mental plane, because the Anti-Monitor nearly choked on his own outrage. Have you no shame? "Right, right... the Underworld Tower. The Tower can adjust the vibrational frequencies of the multiverse, and control access is currently in my hands. Your Endless family should be aware that the multiverse will soon face an unprecedented darkness, and this... this Underworld Tower will play a critical role in that crisis."
"A friend of Life. Saving the innocent. Doing everything in your power to help ordinary people. Isn't that your mission? Two multiverses merging smoothly while saving as many civilians as possible—isn't that exactly what you've always done?" The Anti-Monitor knew her principles well, and he laid them out word by word.
Thea ran the calculations in an instant. The universe wanted to evolve. It intended to fully consume the Dark Multiverse and make it part of itself, and the Dark Multiverse intended the same in reverse.
From a cosmic perspective, there was no difference between the two outcomes. No matter how the evolution played out, the universe as a whole remained the same. The universe didn't care about good or evil.
But from the perspective of life, it was an entirely different story. Thea couldn't guarantee how many people she could save. Just as she'd told Daniel, at her level, opportunities to act directly were few and far between.
Most of the time she was a chess player, setting pieces in motion rather than stepping onto the board herself, because doing so would shatter the balance between the powers at play.
Thea neither accepted nor refused. She asked, curious, "Once you take off that armor, where will you go?"
She actually understood the Anti-Monitor's decision to abandon his power. An intelligent being reduced to a program, passively executing a single function forever—no one could accept that.
When Mobius first became the Anti-Monitor, he'd probably lost the very concept of self. All he could do was mechanically carry out his task. It had taken two brushes with death before he finally broke free of that control.
Faced with her question, he answered without hesitation. "Away from here. Away from this world. To see new things, new rules. So—do we have a deal?"
"...We have a deal."
With the terms settled, they both turned their gaze back to Darkseid. Like they were looking at a dead man.
A crushing sense of dread settled over Darkseid, but he forced it down, telling himself it was the environment making him anxious.
His mountain of a body stood there, silently waiting for the final result.
Oppressive tension hung among the assembled gods. Each harbored their own designs: some wanted others to make the first move so they could swoop in for the spoils; some hoped the coming fallout wouldn't drag them in; and others dreamed of replacing the tyrant outright.
Time crawled. Ten minutes. Thirty minutes. An hour.
Finally, after nine hours, the Anti-Life Equation was fully extracted.
Wisps and threads of vivid crimson energy spiraled outward, shot through with countless black particles. Destructive energies coiled and churned around each other like a miniature universe.