Artisan's POV
"Well, I expected some kind of extreme reaction, but certainly not this," I said to a nervous Gina, resting a hand on my hip as I watched Tyler's son squirm in the sand. His body convulsed as the Blockbuster and Venom serums tore through him, rewriting his DNA strand by strand.
We had tried feeding the serums to several metas over the past months, and the results were always… messy.
Still, I would've bet good money that Julius would beat the odds. His meta-gene expression wasn't the most powerful, but it was undoubtedly one of the most versatile. Even so, I imagined that it would change somehow once this ordeal was done. Hopefully for the better—but with evolution, you never really knew.
Luckily, we had collected enough of his DNA to clone an entire country full of Juliuses. And with the breakthroughs I'd made in gene manipulation, I was certain I was only a few hundred clones away from producing his exact meta-expression—no external stimuli needed.
There were still his Techniques to worry about. Fortunately, his brain seemed to be the only part of him unaffected by the storm of evolution ripping through his body.
I sighed. Luthor was going to throw a fit over this. He'd likely use it as leverage to pressure me into taking a look at his clone's DNA now that he knew I could read and rewrite it. That effort could be better spent pushing our enhanced soldiers to their next biological limit—denser bones, dynamic vision, accelerated healing, agelessness. All of those answers lay within the human genome.
But a deal was a deal.
"He stuck the needles in his thighs so fast—I couldn't stop him," Gina said finally, pulling me back to the moment. My eyes wandered lazily to her.
"You couldn't stop him, or you wouldn't?" I asked.
"Artisan—" she began, but I cut her off.
"Everyone with eyes knows you're sweet on him," I said. "You blush when you talk to him. Your heart rate spikes every time he's near. Don't get me wrong—I don't begrudge you a crush, as long as you understand that he belongs to me."
She cupped her hands, resisting the urge to clench them, and breathed faster before bowing.
"Yes, Artisan."
I nodded, satisfied for now, then turned back to Julius, frowning slightly. I had expected a suicidal charge, maybe even a bomb, some last-ditch effort to contact the League—but certainly not this.
Somehow, I thought he was too careful to risk it all like that. Perhaps I didn't know him as well as I liked to think.
"Take him to Priya," I commanded. "She'll know what to do."
With that, I turned and walked out of the arena.
Julius' POV
I woke up screaming, thrashing against the massive inscribed shackles that held me down. My changing body and mind fought me as viciously as the faceless guards did. I lashed out, biting and clawing, flooding my body with cursed energy in a desperate attempt to break free.
The chains groaned. The shackles strained as my muscles ballooned. I pushed harder and harder until my cursed energy tore through me, ripping muscle and snapping bone.
I drowned in pain, praying for merciful relief yet refusing to relent—until someone drove a spike through my eye, severing the world into blackness.
The light faded.
Then I woke up screaming again.
Artisan's POV
"I can't believe you actually know Bryan Taylor!" Ashley Kenning squealed so loudly her Secret Service guards winced as we rode up the elevator of a luxury hotel in New York. She went to NYU, and I was her glamorous model friend who partied with celebrities and the independently wealthy.
"What's he really like?" Ashley grabbed my hand, and I let her jostle me, laughing softly.
"Hot. A bit full of himself. And single." I gave her a meaningful look.
Her eyes widened. "You don't think—"
"Why not?" I shrugged. "You're the President's daughter. He's an international pop star. Opposites attract."
She laughed, cheeks blooming red. Her grip on my hand tightened.
"Now stop with the death grip and pull yourself together," I said, smiling. "He's expecting a princess."
The guards groaned at our antics. Ashley squealed again but gathered herself quickly as the elevator doors hissed open—revealing a Cadmus facility.
Mind Genomorphs drifted across the hallways, and scientists monitored massive chambers filled with clones—exact replicas of my three visitors.
They froze at the sight of their unconscious doubles. The guards recovered first, reaching for their weapons—a moment too late.
I spun and reached out, pressing a finger to each of their foreheads. Both men dropped instantly, moments before Ashley did. The poor girl's knees buckled, and she trembled like a baby bird caught in the rain.
She didn't meet my gaze as I squatted down beside her. Her attention was fixed on the pop star she had come to meet. Bryan was deep in conversation with a lanky Genomorph with curved horns.
He caught me watching and gave a brief bow before walking away, ignoring Ashley completely.
"Don't mind Bryan," I said. "He's always been terrible with people." Type-A personality, of course. When I first found him, he was a short, overweight kid with a knack for musical composition and an appetite for money. It took one afternoon to transform him into Bryan Taylor—a six-foot-one, blond, blue-eyed heartthrob with flawless skin and the voice of an angel.
I learned early on that with Idle Transfiguration, making pawns was far more efficient than bargaining for them.
Over the years, I've made thousands—models, actors, athletes, crime lords, and politicians. They made it easy to overtake entire nations from the shadows.
But this time required a more delicate touch.
"H-how? Why are you doing this to me?" Ashley stammered.
"It was never about you, dear," I said, tilting her chin upward. "Your daddy was always the target."
Percy Kenning—the most protected man on Earth. He had magicians, metas, and an open line to the Justice League. One scan from Zatara, and this whole operation would crumble.
That was why I borrowed from Luthor's playbook—without his knowledge, of course.
His Genomorphs, who were now in open rebellion, were more than happy to help me grow my own set of clones in exchange for safe passage to a secluded part of Ukraine—which, incidentally, I owned.
No one would ever find them there.
The plan was all coming together, and just in time. A thunderous crash shook the building. The Injustice League had made their move. If everything went according to plan, their chaos would spill into this building, injuring plenty and buying the Genomorphs enough time to transfer the collective memories of the girl and her bodyguards into their clones.
I checked my watch, lips curling.
I wondered how long the Justice League would take to clean up this little mess.
Artemis' POV
I let loose a string of electric arrows that sank deep into the scaled back of a mutated alligator. It roared and stumbled backward, sweeping a massive tail toward me. I ducked low and fired a foam arrow that exploded against its head, locking it in a sticky white cocoon.
The creature thrashed and fell into the swamp's shallow waters as I nocked another arrow, this time targeting a massive insect that Robin was fending off with his electric baton.
"Duck!" I shouted.
Robin dropped instantly, clearing my line of sight. I loosed the arrow—it struck true, piercing the bug's head. It collapsed as Aqualad emerged from the murky water, Superboy beside him, flinging a pair of crocodile mutants across the swamp.
Miss Martian floated down next to me. "I think that's the last of them for now," she said. "Do you really think they might know something about Julius?"
My muscles tensed at his name. We'd been tearing through the criminal underworld since his abduction, hunting for any clue—anything at all—and finding nothing.
"I doubt it," I said quietly.
"Somebody has to know something," M'gann murmured.
"Yeah," Robin scoffed. "We both know who."
Lex Luthor. I let out a shuddering breath.
It couldn't be a coincidence that the sorcerers struck mere seconds after Julius and Kaldur completed their mission in Rhelasia. Superman and Batman had been hounding him for weeks with no results.
"And we both know Luthor won't give Artisan up unless there's something in it for him," I said.
"They're still searching," Wally said, appearing in a yellow blur. "Flash, Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel—the works. They're going out there every chance they get."
"It's been over a month," I said slowly.
Superboy placed a hand on my shoulder. "Julius is as tough as they come."
"Yeah," I admitted.
And that was what scared me most. Whatever he was becoming under Artisan's control—it wouldn't be human. I didn't know which terrified me more: an angry Julius, or the mindless monster she'd turn him into if he ever accepted her Vow.
My breath hitched.
Oh God.
What kind of monster was I—to think of a friend like that? Julius and I may have had our differences, but he was reliable. Come rain or shine, he was always there. Which made it all the worse to realize that I had dragged him back into the spotlight after Gotham.
He had been free and clear in Texas. But after Metropolis, there was no hiding from Artisan.
"What's the status around the perimeter?" Aqualad asked, voice clipped and face unreadable.
He had taken the incident in Rhelasia the hardest. The Sorcerers of Atlantis had to piece his mind back together even after Julius healed him. He hadn't spoken for nearly two weeks. When he finally did, he dove back into training and missions as if nothing had happened.
Canary insisted he see a psychologist, who cleared him for duty after a few short days. But there was no mistaking the weight he carried—like a coiled spring ready to snap.
"There's movement near the dome," Wally reported. "They're less than a minute out. Heavy hitters like Black Adam, plus at least twenty mutated brutes. Should we call for backup?"
Kaldur thought for a moment before replying, "Yes. We are stronger than ever, but there's no reason to take unnecessary risks."
We all nodded in agreement.
Caution.
It had become our mantra after Julius. Injury and death were always part of the job, but nothing drilled it in like witnessing it firsthand.
We all still wanted to save the world, but without our ego's doing the leading.
Read up to Chapter 108 on Patreon.com/artandcreativewriting