Today is the day.

Lex is practically walking on air as he speeds down the hall of his most secure underground facility. His scientists are murmuring to one another, he knows—but it doesn’t matter, as long as they’ve set up what he needed them to. The facility is gray, built of metal and the foresight to have trace amounts of lead mixed into everything. Not enough to cause negative effects to humans, but enough to keep it from seeing anything it shouldn’t.

There will be no escape for the alien.

The thought fills Lex with a giddy kind of joy. Finally, humanity has prospered. Finally, he has won.

There is no way that the alien is getting out.

He stops in front of a large metal door, leaning down onto the scanner for a retina scan instead of a typical passcode. He scans his keycard as well. Lex watches the large door sink down into the ground, and then he walks through the threshold with the confidence of a man who just won a war he’s been waging for years.

His scientists are crowded around the room. Occaisonially they’ll write things down on their notepad as they look through the window down into the cell that holds the biggest threat to humanity that has ever crash landed onto this planet. Lex had the one way glass specially made—after all, he doesn’t want to kill the alien. Not yet. Not before they’ve uncovered all of its secrets, where it came from, and unraveled what exactly makes it so different in its DNA.

Then he will kill it. He will triumph.

Melissa Tickman, one of his most promising young scientists, willing to do almost anything to kill the alien after it crashed into her apartment in Metropolis with her child in its arms, quickly walks up to him once she catches sight.

“Mr Luthor,” She says, prim and proper, as Lex moves to look down on the ticking time bomb of an alien through the glass, “We’ve managed to hold down the specimen with the green rock pulse like you required. It appears to harm them more than we assumed—their veins are turning slightly more green, their pulse is up, and their brain activity seems slow.”

“It, Melissa,” Lex corrects, eyes roaming over the crumpled body far below him on the ground, “It’s an alien. It isn’t human.”

She blinks. “Ah.. yes, sir. It’s brain activity seems slow, but it’s in no state to be moving. Would you like to see the data—“

“No need,” He interrupts, clapping loudly to get everyone’s attention. “Everyone out! Take your lunch break, go home, I don’t care, just leave!”

The scientists shuffle out of the door as Melissa gapes at him. “But Mr. Luthor, we’re in the middle of—“ “Melissa,” Lex says, turning back towards the glass, “I believe I made myself clear.”

He waits for her to leave. Footsteps fading as the door opens and closes.

Then he makes his move. He opens the heavily reinforced door leading to the small elevator leading down to the containment center, and enters the passcode to make it move. There’s only one destination. And Lex is greeted with a glorious, glorious sight once the doors open.

He walks into the cell. Dress shoes tapping against the ground as he leers at the alien, crumpled in a straitjacket and with wires strapped to its body. His employees haven’t figured out how to pierce its skin yet, but it’s only a matter of time. The green meteor rock’s pulsing is amplified from across the room, it being a small hum to Lex, but he knows its worse for the alien. The mimicry of slight pain on its face tells him as much.

Lex places his hands behind his back.

The thing is disgusting.

“We meet again, alien,” He states calmly, a cold but slightly smug tone in his voice, “What’s the matter? You can’t mimic my language anymore?”

He watches it struggle.

It’s almost pathetic, but so, so satisfying. Lex has triumphed in the end. He leans slightly closer to the thing’s face.

“Maybe you’d like something a little closer to home. Why don’t you speak your own tongue?"