Madalyn Addams

"No use in playing stupid, Emmy," Roman said. "I can hear everything in this building and when you arrived, so did four additional, distinctive heartbeats. You didn't come here alone, like you promised. You're just down here to distract us."

He could hear everything in this building? That wasn't something Dick and I had planned for. I just hoped he and the others had enough time to get further in. There was something about the way Roman was watching me that said he hadn't expected me to actually show up alone to begin with, but he was still too much a mystery for me to know what that entailed on his end. Without knowing what else he was capable of, I decided to play along and stall as much I could, hoping Dick, Conner or Gar managed to find Jason soon. With Krypto the super dog sniffing around, it shouldn't be that hard to do.

"Fair enough," I shrugged, playing cool. "but I don't know what you want me to say. Except that... Titans are back bitch."

A look of annoyance flashed on Hurricane's face, though I couldn't imagine why. He turned to whisper something to Roman who nodded his head briefly and watched as Hurricane dissipated into fog. I caught myself stepping forward, nervous to have him out of sight. Hurricane was the only known in our plan and not having him where I could see him meant that anything that came next wouldn't be something I could see coming. Especially not with my manipulative twin and his excess of unpredictable powers.

"Where's he going?" I demanded, hoping my anxiousness came off more as anger.

"To go greet your friends," Roman answered with a smile. "Most particularly your Robin." I gritted my teeth, my hand balling into a fist beside me and he laughed. "Don't fret sis, he promised he won't let him suffer. Much."

"If anyone gets hurt because of him and his stupid jealousy—"

"Yeah, yeah, you'll kill us all," Roman said with a wave of his hands like my words were just that. If he knew me half as well as he pretended to, he would know that I'd already killed him four different ways in my head. Though for all I knew, he'd watched the scenarios play out. "Wouldn't that be a dumb move, though, considering you want answers and I'm the only one who can give them to you?"

"And yet you haven't given me any so far."

"Oh come on, you just got here, Emmy. What am I supposed to do, just blurt everything out on the spot? That's not very conducive for family time, you know."

"You want family time?" I scoffed, inching closer to him if only to make it easier if my pheromones became necessary. "Maybe you should've thought of that before you let CADMUS kill and dump me like unwanted trash. Or rather, before you let them kill and dump Emersyn. Because Emmy is dead, Roman, and she isn't coming back. I'm Madalyn now and I have been for years."

In the distance I heard gunfire echoing off walls, adrenaline speeding through my body as I tried to keep myself focused on my own situation. Still, I couldn't help but worry about the others. Gar and Conner were just children that didn't have anything to do with any of this, Jason had already been through hell and Dick was probably more stubborn and determined than Hurricane. I knew he definitely matched me in that department and whether I liked it or not, he wasn't leaving here until he found who was responsible for anything that ever happened to me. Even if that meant dragging himself across the floor, riddled with bullets.

"I didn't let anyone do anything," he replied. "Our parents did that all on their own. They were already employees of the Luthors before we were born and when my ability surfaced and CADMUS formed, they couldn't have jumped quicker to volunteer us for the programs."

"They volunteered us?" I already suspected as much, but it still stung to have confirmed. I thought back to my room, Dick trying to reassure me that such things couldn't have been true and then shook my head clear of it. I needed to focus on the present if I was going to make sense of any more of the past.

Roman nodded, his smile long gone and replaced with a stoic stare. "Mom and Dad couldn't figure out why I had an active metagene and you didn't. They put us through stress trials to see if they could trigger it, but nothing ever happened. Lex Luthor wanted to clone metagenes, make soldiers that could fight the Justice League and anyone else with powers who let it get to their heads. But he didn't just want to clone, he wanted to mix things up. He wanted to try different concoctions that would create stronger results. When Mom and Dad couldn't naturally get your gene to activate, they figured it made you a perfect candidate for the experiments. You already had a necessary baseline that the injected DNA samples could cling to. Project Dahlia wasn't only one of the first of the experiments, but the first success."

I couldn't help the laugh that escaped me at his words. He really sounded like he believed them and I couldn't decide if that made him a scientist like our parents or just plain stupid...evidently, like our parents. "Success? Is that why I was killed and left on the side of Gotham River? That defines success for you?"

"Unfortunately, yeah," he answered. "You'd become too strong, far exceeding what they expected you would after the injections. The final one did something...I don't know, it's like it drove you insane and you just snapped. I saw the video later and I couldn't believe it. You just killed everyone in the room without so much as raising a pinky and it was only using one power strain. Lex was furious when he found out, but even he had to agree that there didn't seem like much of an option otherwise. Those guards had to kill you or you could've massacred who knows how many others. You definitely would've demolished the building."

"For someone trying to convince me that he didn't let them kill me, you sure as hell sound like you condoned it."

"I didn't," he snapped, the line of his body tensing and pushing me further on edge. I thought I heard the roar of a tiger from upstairs and briefly spared a glance in an attempt to see through a window. Unfortunately, either the lights were out or the glass was tinted black. "I was having my own tests run that day, so I didn't know what happened until Daniel told me. No one else around would say a word until after Lex was told. When they told me, I demanded they showed me the footage of the session. You're my twin, Em, and that was one of the hardest things I had to watch in my life. I couldn't believe I hadn't felt any of it happen to you. We'd spent our lives connected and yet when it mattered most, I didn't feel a thing. There were no words for what I felt and then... then they started talking about starting again. About how they had enough data that they could start anew and contain the reaction from the final session, control it in a way that had eluded them in the moment. Then it was my turn to snap." His tone went flat as his words went on, no emotion to back them. I had no idea why, but it made a shiver run through my body in a fearful way. "I killed them; all of them. Everyone in that facility, dead in the time span it took for that video to restart and play out again. Everyone but Daniel, who was the only other person who understood what I felt. I saved Mom and Dad for last, made sure they knew I was coming for them. Made sure they suffered the way they made us."

Was it wrong that I wanted to know how he did it? Not only how he'd killed everyone there, but how he killed our so called parents. I wanted to know how he made them pay for what should've been the cost of my life. Hell, part of me even wanted to see it. Because if after all those experiments, I was capable of what I am today, who knew what he was capable of.

It was both a thrilling and terrifying thought as I remembered all I stood to lose in that building at the moment.

"I never knew you were still out there, alive," he went on. "I swear if I had, I would've found you and brought you home. But you're stronger now, stronger than death, Emmy. You've proven that more than once, and now that we're together again, you'll never have to prove it again."

"So you killed them all?" I repeated for clarity. My mind was buzzing with processing the facts and planning my next moves. We'd been here for at least ten minutes now and I still had no sign of whether the others had found Jason or not. I could still distantly hear the sounds of fighting and it made my anxiety grow. Dick promised me he'd find a way down to me soon as he could; for him, ten minutes was nine minutes too long. "Our parents, the scientists and guards in that lab..."

"And the so called back up Daniel had back in your apartment that killed you again," Roman confirmed. "Anyone who hurt you is dead."

The words were more annoying than they were comforting. I wanted to inflict my own revenge on these people, but apparently there was no one left. The fuel it added to my anger surprised even me. "So why the hell am I here, Roman? Why make me think you were still with CADMUS?"

"To get you here, with us. Em, you don't remember me or Daniel or our lives before any of this. I wanted my sister back, I wanted the only family I had left, together. I know how stubborn you can be and I knew that if I didn't give you a good enough reason to be here, you wouldn't show. The kid was collateral; I just made you see this place like it was CADMUS so you would think you had a shot at the revenge you deserved. The revenge you had no idea I already doled out for you."

"That's kind of the problem though, isn't it," I replied. "It was my revenge to be had and you took that from me. For someone who claims to know how important it was to me, you didn't even have the consideration to leave some for me."

"I didn't know you were alive!" he shouted, something in him breaking. For the first time in the entire conversation, I saw something deeper in his confessions than he was letting on. He claimed he wanted his family back together, but there was something almost desperate in the way he was pushing so hard. It seemed like he needed me back more than he wanted me. "If it makes you feel any better, that asshole D'amato should be here somewhere. You can kill him for sending those guys out with Daniel, like I wanted to from the start."

"Then why didn't you? You didn't hesitate with anyone else, so why do it with him?"

This time his words were grudging but clearly honest. "I had the unfortunate luck that he has some...connections I needed. But now that you're here, we can find them for ourselves and cut him loose."

"What connections, Roman? What aren't you telling me?"

"I'm telling you everything."

"No, you aren't."

"I am."

"I can tell you're hiding something, so now it's time for you to stop playing dumb!" I lashed out at him, trying to trigger his own anger into telling me his secret. "What is it that you aren't telling me? Is it about me, or you?" He didn't respond, but I saw his hands twitch violently at his sides, showing I was touching close to whatever it was he didn't want me to. "You tell me that you killed everyone at CADMUS because of what they did to me that day, but what did they do to you? What kind of experiments did our parents enlist you in that made mass murder seem like an appealing option to you?"

If I'm being honest, I didn't think he would answer. Or if he did, I didn't think it would one hundred percent be the truth; he was fighting too hard for me to expect that. But when he finally answered me, there was something about it that made me feel like it couldn't be a lie.

"Like I said, I already had my power, my mind manipulation. It sounds a lot harsher than it really is, though. I can change stuff, sure, but only little details and that takes a lot of concentration and will on my end. If I try to do too much of it at once, if I tried to completely remake a memory or something like that, it can damage me both mentally and physically. I only did it once and it was way more trouble than it worth. After our parents basically handed us over, the scientists injected me with whatever they could get their hands on at the time. Turns out, that was mostly alien DNA but none of it was from Superman or Supergirl or any other Super- asshole like that. My test strands came from a random alien that Luthor got his hands on and knew nothing about. They shot me up with so much of the stuff I felt like some kind of drug addict or something. I don't think they really had a specific goal in mind with me; they were just experimenting to see what result they could get."

"And what result was that?" I pushed.

"Expansion of my already present gift. Instead of just manipulating what someone saw, I was able to invade dreams, literally make their brain explode, access recent memories, stuff like that. I should've felt stronger, but I didn't... I still don't. If anything, I feel weaker."

"Why weaker? It's been years since the tests."

"Exactly," he agreed, looking me in the eyes even across the distance still between us. "I think whatever alien genetics they used wasn't meant to exist outside of a native host for very long. While they were performing the experiments, I was fine and the extent of my powers felt limitless. But as time passed afterwards, I started feeling different. I talked to a few genetic specialists and apparently I am incompatible with the alien in question. The samples they used are multiplying overtime in my body and killing off the wrong cells."

I didn't understand the science of it, but even I could tell it didn't sound good for him. I knew he was my brother and I should've felt something like the rage he claimed when I died, but I didn't. I barely felt anything at all except the smallest amount of pity and a massive amount of suspicion. Apparently, we were more less created in a lab of secrets and science; whatever he was getting at would be no different.

"What does that mean?"

Roman opened his mouth to give an answer, but D'amato's voice suddenly boomed over a speaker system somewhere on the high up walls. I looked around, still expecting to see him somehow, not entirely sure if I was disappointed or relieved when I didn't. "It means your dear baby brother is dying," he said. The calm silk of his voice was a different kind of unnerving at this volume than I would've expected. I felt my eyes widen as my head snapped back to look at Roman who looked furious.

So clearly this was true.

"Quite tragic that your lost sibling should be taken away from you nearly as soon as you got him, no?" D'amato went on. "Except that that was his goal all along. Emmy, Maddie, whatever the hell you want to call yourself, there is something you should know about your brother's sudden urge to reunite the family. A little birdie told me that he didn't care very much when you died... until the lab coats told him that you might've been his only chance at a hail mary. It would seem that as his twin, your DNA sequences being closer to each other than anyone else's, your existence in collaboration with the alien DNA they injected you with is the savior he needs. But, as with most things in life, there is a catch."

"Don't listen to him, Emmy, he's lying," Roman said stiffly, his features and mood darkening exponentially. He didn't meet my eyes though, his own seeming far away like he was concentrating on something else.

I suddenly wondered how much of what I thought was happening was real and what wasn't.

"What reason do I have to lie?" D' amato chuckled. "It isn't my life on the line here. It is, however, such a matter for the pair of you."

"Can someone stop talking around the subject and tell me what the fuck any of this means already?" I demanded, a headache growing from behind my eyes. There was too much being said, working its way through my mind, trying to fit together in a way that made sense. In that moment, I'd never felt stupider.

"It means that while you may be able to help save your brother's life, it comes with a cost of it's own. A life for a life; a trade that only one of you can and will live with. And Roman is very much prepared to be that one."

The end is near guys! I'm thinking it's going to be about 5 more chapters until the end of this fic and I honestly don't know how I feel. I love Maddie so much I don't want to say goodbye 😭