The Anti-Monitor lowered his head and reached out, preparing to absorb the divine domains within Darkseid. He was no stranger to this kind of power—he could identify its signature, shape it, reforge it into a Mobius Chair if he chose. Five distinct divine domains blazed inside Darkseid's body; he had already begun ranking them in his mind, calculating the optimal order of absorption.
Then his peripheral vision caught something.
A dagger lodged between Darkseid's ribs. Golden all the way through, its blade faintly threaded with the slow drift of passing time.
Whose dagger? He mentally ran through everyone present—himself, Darkseid, Steppenwolf, the Black Racer. None of them used daggers. So who had stabbed Darkseid?
The answer hit him half a beat too late.
Darkseid had stabbed himself. He'd been using it to slow the death spreading from his wound.
Half a beat. That was all it cost him.
Darkseid shed his earlier weakness like a discarded mask. He launched upward, drove one fist clean through the Anti-Monitor's chest, then plunged his left hand in after it. He wrenched both hands apart and tore the Anti-Monitor in two.
Watching from outside, Thea winced. She recognized that dagger—an artifact forged by the Egyptian Pantheon during their campaign of vengeance against Darkseid, later given to Batman by her own hand. She'd heard Batman had buried it in Darkseid's body; by all accounts the effect should have been long since spent. Apparently Darkseid had kept it there the whole time, slowly coaxing some of its power back.
Two things at once: suppressing his injuries, and setting a trap. Luring the Anti-Monitor to step into it himself.
Darkseid had always worn an expression like carved stone. She hadn't expected him to be a halfway decent actor.
The Anti-Monitor wasn't dead yet, but he'd lost all ability to move. For the second time after Nekron, he had been beaten to the very threshold of oblivion—only this time, there was no White Lantern to drag him back.
With the Anti-Monitor completely incapacitated, the Anti-Life Equation ceased its operation on its own. Freed from its compulsion and control, the Black Racer and the Parademons recovered their minds.
The Black Racer realized the scale of the trouble he had caused, said nothing, and ran. He was gone before most onlookers had registered the movement—a blur, then nothing. Thea felt a flicker of regret. She'd had half a plan to recruit him.
Didn't expect him to be that fast.
The Black Racer could afford to flee. The Parademon foot soldiers could not. The assembled horde stood in nervous clusters, eyeing their master.
Given Darkseid's usual temper he would have butchered every last one of them, and done it as slowly and bloodily as possible. But he knew his own condition. He simply had no strength left for it.
The Black Racer's damage was not, in itself, complicated. In terms of both kind and quantity it was far less than what Thea had inflicted—clear it out promptly and it wouldn't be too troublesome. After all, Darkseid had strung the Black Racer up and studied him for over ten thousand years.
The problem was what he'd done to contain it. To bait the Anti-Monitor, Darkseid had employed a far more aggressive method of suppression, and now the wound was a tangle: temporal energy from the Egyptian Pantheon's artifact, death-power from Osiris, death-power from the Black Racer—New Gods, Old Gods, and time all knotted together into something that would take a very long time to unravel.
The Anti-Life Equation was another matter entirely. It wasn't a chip or an artifact that could be dropped on death. Even if the Anti-Monitor died ten times over it wouldn't fall out of him. It had to be drawn out from the depths of his soul, piece by piece—slow work, the kind that required patience, because the Anti-Monitor's tier of existence was higher than that of any New God.
Evil had enemies too. Not just the heroes—the other villains were already circling. The Dark Lord had just publicly claimed a weapon of ultimate cosmic power, and envy was inevitable. At minimum, several of Hell's archdemons had been watching him with unblinking interest for the past several minutes.
The implication was not subtle.
Time was short and the stakes were high. Darkseid hoisted the Anti-Monitor's bisected body, barked at Steppenwolf, and retreated.
The battle was over. Thea turned her gaze away.
She had no interest in the Anti-Life Equation. Let the villains squabble over it. Even if Highfather decided to throw himself in, she wouldn't stop him—though Highfather had stood watching the entire time without finding the courage to act.
The Justice League returned to Earth. The government handled the aftermath, while the League convened to discuss the prisoners.
Ultraman was straightforward—without Kryptonite to replenish his energy, under a yellow sun he was weaker than an ordinary man. The cowardly Hal Jordan posed no threat whatsoever. But Superwoman gave the assembled heroes pause.
A superpowered supervillain who was also visibly pregnant. None of them quite knew what to do. Where to hold her? How to handle the situation?
"Based on my observations," Thea said, weighing her words, "the child she's carrying also has abilities. And... the child is Lex's."
A collective groan went around the room. Superwoman had really outdone herself—Ultraman's official partner, secret rendezvous with Owlman on the side, and now expecting a child by Lex.
General contempt for this arrangement was unanimous. While everyone else was distracted by the soap opera, only Batman had zeroed in on what actually mattered.
"The child has abilities?"
"Yes. The same kind Lex has—absorbing others' powers and making them his own. But in this child it's innate. At the genetic level it's already fully integrated, which is different from Lex's engineered version."
They watched Batman's expression shift toward interest and moved collectively to talk him out of whatever he was thinking. In the end all prisoners were remanded to A.R.G.U.S. custody, with Superwoman and her child assigned the highest security classification.
The child would be born a blank slate; the League hoped to instill a sense of justice from the beginning. But nobody could guarantee the child hadn't brought something of that other world's darkness with it—Thea included. Better to hold them for now. No one disagreed.
Everyone went their separate ways. Diana headed off with Green Arrow and Mister Terrific to deal with Silver Swan. Thea found herself with nothing pressing, and went to the Underworld.
"Go," she told the soul that had been her dark counterpart. "After this we won't meet again."
The soul waved a hand at her, then followed the staff into the reincarnation process. She would begin a new life—one that had nothing to do with the name Thea Queen.
Johnny Quick's soul was drawn into the Speed Force. His abilities had been middling at best; Thea couldn't be bothered to intercept it.
Lex went straight to Hell. Whatever contracts he'd signed in life must have been extensive—he skipped the usual processing entirely and was dragged away without ceremony.
Thea didn't linger in the Underworld. She assembled her forces and launched them toward the Antimatter Universe in full force.
Raiding someone's home while they were lying half-dead—that was just who she was. No shame about it whatsoever.
On Apokolips, Darkseid was busy rigging up an enormous absorption device to draw the Anti-Life Equation out of the Anti-Monitor. He'd been startled when he first saw her mobilizing her army, but once he realized she was heading for the Antimatter Universe, he let out a breath.
As for the Anti-Monitor—beaten down to his last sliver of existence once again—even if he'd wanted to object, he was in no position to.
The Boom Tubes opened. The army of the Underworld descended into the Antimatter Universe.
"Leave nothing but needles and thread—everything else of value, take it."
Her forces fanned out and began stripping the place clean.