FIVE YEARS AGO IN METROPOLIS
It was dark—an oppressive dark that felt less like the absence of light and more like a presence in itself. The air was dry. Too dry. Each breath scraped down his throat, raw and punishing, as though the world had been emptied of mercy along with its moisture. Even breathing felt like a mistake here.
It had always been like this. Or perhaps always was the only word his mind could cling to. Time did not move so much as it stagnated, pooling around him in an endless, suffocating stillness. There was no sound, no wind—only the quiet certainty that something was waiting.
Then light pierced the void.
Lex jerked his head upward, reflex sharp despite the heaviness in his limbs. For a fleeting, almost foolish moment, he expected the sun. Or the sterile hum of fluorescent lights. Anything familiar. Anything sane.
Instead, the sky was torn open.
Something vast loomed above him, glowing not with warmth but with saturation—as if the heavens themselves were wounded and refusing to clot. The light pulsed, thick and slow, staining the darkness rather than banishing it.
Blood Moon.
The words surfaced unbidden, heavy with meaning he did not yet understand. The sight set his pulse racing, not with fear alone, but with recognition. As though some part of him had seen this before. As though the sky was bleeding for him—or because of him.
Lex crouched in the cold, well-like place. The stone pressed close on all sides—narrow, unyielding, and unmistakably suffocating. The air carried the same dead dryness, stale and ancient, as though it had been sealed away from time itself. Every breath felt borrowed. Every exhale vanished too quickly.
He did not remember entering this place. Only that he had always been here.
Then—light.
Not above him. Behind him.
It struck his back first, warm and startling, a blade of illumination cutting through the dark. This was not the bleeding glow of the Blood Moon. This was real light—the kind that promised exit, not omen.
Before he could turn fully, a hand reached out toward him.
Slender. Steady.
Behind it stood the silhouette of a woman, her features erased by the brilliance behind her, her outline softened as though time itself refused to define her. Lex did not hesitate. He reached back instinctively, fingers closing around hers as if he had been waiting for this moment his entire life.
She pulled him free.
The darkness loosened its grip, stone giving way to air, suffocation replaced by breath. Later—much later—Lex would recognize the truth of it: the well had never been a place at all. It was his life. Narrowed by legacy. Choked by expectation. Lived entirely beneath his father's shadow.
And she had been the first thing to pull him out of it.
He met her in a cave near the Luthor Mansion, where the earth split open like a secret that wanted to be told. She called herself Genesis—a traveler from the year 2023. She did not arrive with spectacle or thunder. No machines. No flashes of light. Only certainty.
She was beautiful in an untimely way, as though she belonged to no era at all. Her face carried a softness that felt almost angelic, her voice calm and resonant, like it had already heard every possible ending and chosen kindness anyway. Lex found himself drawn to her with terrifying ease.
He saw her often after that.
Each meeting in the cave became a quiet education. Genesis spoke of the future as though it were a living thing—cities threaded with light, knowledge traveling faster than sound, machines that learned, diseases erased, wars prevented before they began. She spoke of progress with reverence, not arrogance.
To Lex, it sounded like freedom.
Everything was perfect—too perfect—until one night he asked about his own future.
It was meant as a joke. A careless curiosity.
Genesis fell silent.
For the first time, her eyes did not soften. They sharpened.
She told him the truth.
That he would shape the world. That power would gather around him like gravity. That he would control systems, people, destinies. And that the cost would be unbearable.
He would lose everyone he loved.
Including her.
Lex rejected it immediately. He told her he adored her—fully, desperately, without strategy or caution. He confessed that she was the first person who had ever seen him, not the heir, not the shadow of Lionel Luthor. Genesis, to his relief and horror, admitted she loved him too.
And so Lex searched for escape.
The only way out he could imagine was to sever the leash that bound him to his father—to step beyond the timeline that had already decided who he would become. He proposed the impossible: leaving with her. Traveling to the future. Starting over.
Genesis refused.
Not because she did not want him—but because she understood the rules of time.
She explained that time travel was not movement—it was displacement. The future could send observers backward because the past was already written, already stabilized. Visitors from the future were anomalies, yes—but contained ones. Their presence did not create new matter or information. They only redistributed what already existed.
But the future could not accept the past.
A person from an earlier time carried too much entropy—too many unresolved probabilities. Their existence in the future would introduce contradictions the timeline could not reconcile. History would attempt to correct itself violently. Systems would fail. Events would collapse. Entire chains of causality would unravel.
In short, the future could visit the past.
But it could not absorb it.
If Lex crossed forward, the timeline would fracture around him. The world Genesis came from would not survive the paradox of his presence.
And so she stayed where she was not meant to be.
And so she stayed where she was not meant to be.
With him.
For love.
For time.
For as long as time would allow—which proved to be terrifyingly brief.
Lionel found her.
He seized Genesis in the very cave where Lex had secretly built her a sanctuary—soft lights, warmth, a fragile imitation of safety carved into stone. She was taken without ceremony, without explanation. One moment she was there; the next, she was gone, leaving behind only the echo of her voice and the hollow where trust had once lived.
Lex learned the truth hours later.
He went to Metropolis himself, fury lending him clarity, resolve hardening every step. He would take her back. He would tear her from Lionel's grasp if he had to. But Lionel did not resist him.
Instead, he told Lex the truth.
Genesis was not from the future... she never had been.
She was a spy—embedded by Morgan Edge, Lionel's former childhood friend turned rival. Her assignment was simple and grotesque: observe Lex, document the changes in his physiology after meteorite exposure, determine how he survived when others did not.
Lionel admitted—almost casually—that he and Edge had once shared an interest in meteorite-infected subjects. That partnership ended the moment Lionel refused to allow Lex to be mentally examined, despite his accelerated intellect. Edge wanted answers. So he sent Genesis.
Lex did not believe a word of it.
His father had dismantled every meaningful relationship in his life. Sabotage was Lionel's native language. Lies were his inheritance. So Lionel offered him proof.
Lex would hear it from Genesis herself.
The interrogation room sat deep beneath LuthorCorp, sterile and windowless, lit with unforgiving white. Genesis was seated on the other side of the glass, unaware she was being watched. Lex stood in the observation chamber, invisible to her, every breath shallow, every heartbeat loud.
When she spoke, Lex's chest tightened.
This woman was not the one from the cave.
She was sharp-edged, dismissive. She smoked with deliberate provocation, exhaling directly into the investigator's face, her voice cool and unburdened by affection. She lied effortlessly. Manipulated casually. There was no softness in her eyes. No hesitation.
Something inside Lex fractured—not loudly, not cleanly—but irrevocably.
The Genesis he loved dissolved in front of him, replaced by a stranger wearing her face.
When it was over, Lex turned to Lionel and calmly requested custody.
Lionel agreed. He mistook Lex's composure for immaturity, his restraint for denial. He allowed Lex to take Genesis to his private laboratory—on the condition that the experiments would prove her claims false, publicly and conclusively.
Genesis screamed his name when she saw where he had brought her.
"Lex! I told you—I told you everything was a lie!"
Her voice echoed uselessly in the chamber. She was restrained to a narrow bed, metal braces encasing her like ribs, wires threaded into her scalp and temples, feeding rows of monitors. Scientists moved with clinical detachment, instruments humming softly.
Lex stood above her. He eerily calm.
"No, Gen," he said gently, brushing his thumb along her cheek. "You're only saying this because my father told you to." His smile was soft, almost fond. "You wouldn't lie to me."
He gestured to the monitors.
"These will show me the truth. Once I see it myself, we'll leave. We'll live in the future."
Fear finally broke through her composure.
"You're sick," Genesis whispered, voice shaking. "Please… don't do this."
Lex only smiled and kissed her forehead before he stepped back.
He nodded to the scientists and the apparatus activated.
Electricity surged through her skull. Her body convulsed as the machines tore memories from her mind, flooding the screens with images. Lex barely breathed as the truth unfolded—Genesis accepting the job from Morgan Edge. Surveillance reports. Conversations carefully staged in the cave. And then, the final blow: Morgan ordering her to drug Lex and deliver him to a hidden laboratory.
Genesis agreed without hesitation. She had been meant to poison him that very night.
Lex stood frozen as realization crushed down on him. He did not hear the scientists shouting. Did not notice the alarms. By the time he tore his gaze from the monitors, Genesis's body had gone still.
She was dead.
Electrocuted by the truth he had demanded.
In that silence, something fundamental shifted within Lex Luthor. Love did not die that night. It curdled. And in its place, something had took root—something that would one day reshape the world, exactly as Genesis had warned.
.
.
.
.
Lex gasped, eyes flying open. Air tore into his lungs as if he had been drowning, sweat slicking his forehead—his scalp, his neck, his entire body. The room felt too small, too quiet, as though it had been holding its breath along with him.
He groaned and pushed himself upright, elbows braced against his knees, fingers pressing hard into his temples.
"That dream again," he muttered.
It had been haunting him ever since Lucinda told him what she was a time traveler from 2023. The coincidence was grotesque.
At first, he dismissed her claim outright. He had learned—painfully—not to trust such declarations. Yet the longer he watched her, the more the details refused to unravel. She slipped too easily into concepts that should not exist yet. She reacted to technology as though it were behind her, not ahead.
Unlike Genesis, Lucinda wore no angelic mask. Her face lived in a permanent state of mild offense, brows perpetually knitted as if existence itself had personally wronged her. Her voice—small but weaponized—crackled with the intensity of a kettle two seconds away from screaming, impatient, unyielding, and far too loud for everyone's safety.
Lex turned toward the vintage grandfather clock standing sentinel in the corner of the room. The second hand crept forward with merciless patience.
5:00 a.m.
He abandoned the idea of early errands. His mind was already exhausted; his body had no interest in pretending otherwise.
Instead, he rose and headed for the kitchen.
The mansion was unnaturally quiet. No clatter of pans. No comforting chaos. Molly, Jess, and Lucinda were nowhere in sight. That alone was odd—Molly, in particular, treated mornings like a sacred ritual. By 5:30, breakfast should have already been underway.
Lex opened the refrigerator and retrieved a bottle of milk. He poured it into a clear glass, the sound echoing faintly in the stillness, and took a long drink—half-chugging, half-thinking.
That was when the double doors burst open and a shriek tore through the kitchen.
"AY ANAK KA NG NANAY MO!"
For a split second, they simply stared at each other. Milk dripped down Lex's chin, and Lucinda watched it with intense focus, as though sheer willpower might make both the milk and Lex vanish if she glared hard enough.
"You can't just wake up and start cursing at people, Lucy," Lex said calmly, setting the glass on the counter.
Milk soaked the front of his sweater.
Lucinda grimaced, yanked a roll of tissue from the drawer, and marched over. Without warning, she wiped at his chin, his neck, and then—rather aggressively—his sweater.
Lex froze, blinking down at her in open surprise. He simply watched as she fussed, the height difference making it painfully clear how small she was. Small enough that, if he tried hard enough, he could probably estimate the size of her brain just by the dimensions of her skull.
"I wasn't cursing at you, Alexander Joseph," she said primly. "I was simply… improvising my reactions."
Lex blinked.
With that level of reasoning, he concluded Lucinda was absolutely unqualified to spy on anyone. She wasn't subtle—she was a liability with confidence.
Once she finished blotting his sweater, Lucinda casually tossed the used tissue toward the trash can. Mid-throw, she mimicked a basketball player shooting a three-pointer.
"Score!" she clapped when the tissue landed perfectly inside.
Lex blinked again. Then he turned to her—who was now staring back at him as if this were all perfectly normal behavior at five in the morning.
"What brings you here this early?" she asked cheerfully. "Hungry? I'm sorry, but I only know how to cook… hotdogs… and eggs." She smiled. "Which do you want?"
Lex glanced at her hands, briefly remembering that in 2023 she was, in fact, a wealthy woman. Her aggressive cleaning technique supported that theory.
He then looked at the stove—and immediately envisioned several arson-related possibilities. He shook his head at once.
"No," Lex said firmly. "I'd rather wait for Molly."
He paused, then added, "We'll go out after breakfast, so you may get ready if you want."
"You'd eat breakfast here?" Lucinda raised an eyebrow, genuinely shocked.
"Why not?" he replied easily.
He returned the milk bottle to the fridge, rinsed his glass, and placed it neatly on the drainer.
Lucinda watched him the entire time.
When he turned back, he caught her still staring.
"Is something wrong?" Lex asked.
"Nothing," Lucinda tilted her head slightly. "I just feel like something's been bothering you lately. I couldn't tell if it's because of the renovation costs… or… something to do with your father."
Lex's brows twitched. He hadn't expected her to voice it, and somehow, hearing it out loud hit harder than he anticipated.
Lucinda immediately raised both hands, as if warding off a sudden storm. "I—I don't mean to pry. I—" She blinked, pivoting slightly. "I better get ready."
She was about to open one of the doors when Lex called her.
"Lucy."
She turned almost instantly. "Yes?"
"You're on my side, right?" he asked firmly.
Lucinda's smile was soft but certain. "I told you, Lex. I'll choose you over anybody…" She hesitated, lips thinning slightly. "Over everybody."
Lex's jaw clenched, lips tightening. He didn't ask why. He didn't need to. The moment Lucinda fully stepped out of the kitchen, Lex had decided to put his trust.