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10 HOURS LATER
NARITA, JAPAN
Drake Lance
We arrive in Tokyo and as we walk around the airport I spot a TV playing the news. Silver follows me from behind and I stop as I stare at the TV looking at a bird’s eye view from a helicopter of my city. CNN reports the story internationally and it breaks my heart as I continue to watch the footage of my city in complete chaos.
“He did exactly what he said he was going to do.” Silver Siren says with a flat tone with no emotion whatsoever. I look at the bridges burning, as they’re destroyed. The ports are filled with what seems like mercenaries controlling what comes in and what comes out of Star City. There’s no hope for my city.
“We have been provided with special footage from one of our journalist in Star City, this may not be suited for the normal audience.” Anderson Cooper, the anchorman speaks as he’s in fear. The footage begins to show and it is an audio and video of Joe Wilson in the Deathstroke suit without his mask on.
Joe stands on top of a car in front of Iron Heights prison with his mercenaries surrounding him. He looks around clenching his jaw with pride and ego. “We are taking Star City from the corrupt! The wretched! The oppressors of generations who have kept you down with myths of opportunity! And we are giving it back to you, the people. Star City is yours. None shall interfere, no Green Arrow and no Black Canary!” Joe says as he has my people wrapped around his finger. “Do as you please. But start by storming Iron Heights, and freeing the oppressed!” The footage manages to capture a tank blowing up the entrance of the prison and all the thugs running in. “Step forward those who’d serve, for an army will be raised! The powerful will be ripped from their decorated lairs, and cast out into the cold world that we know and endure!” He says as he’s talking to the 60% of Star City’s lower class. “Spoils will be enjoyed! Blood will be shed! The police will survive as they learn to serve TRUE Justice.” He speaks about my father and he’s not safe, no one is safe. My father like all of us Lance kids are survivors, but at his age, I have no idea. “This great city will endure, Star City will survive!” His speech finishes and the footage cuts off.
Anderson Cooper manages to show other footage of riots happening on avenues with luxury stores being destroyed and robbed. Big corporate buildings being broken into and burnt down. My city is in complete chaos and there is absolutely nothing that I can do. I don’t know where to start. As more footage shows on the news, I notice something in the background of one of the videos and it looks awfully familiar. The Q-Core. The footage shows the Q-core being stored into a truck and the camera person doesn’t notice what it is, but neither would anyone.
“That’s why he needed Oliver’s fingerprints.” I say in shock and Silver looks at me confused as he didn’t see it. “He’s going to detonate the Q-core.” I tell him and Silver gives me no emotion neither empathy at all, he doesn’t know how to react.
“So what now? We go find his daddy and tell him to pick him up?” Silver mocks me as we walk away from the TV and head to the train station. “We just saw Joe recruit almost the entire city, and the entire prison on TV. We are outnumbered, by… I don’t know… A lot.”
“Slade should have some way to stop him, maybe some connections to help me take Joe down.” I say determined and I won’t give up, not when my home is being taken over by a mad man. “That asshole isn’t getting away with this.” We both find our train and get on as we head into the city.
We sit comfortably in the chairs together and it gets silent as Silver reads a newspaper in Japanese. I watch him read the newspaper as he seems interested and I can’t help but become curious as to how he can read.
“I can feel you starring, and I want you to stop.” Silver says annoyed and then closes the newspaper and stares directly at me. Never in a million years did I think to myself, that I’d ever meet my doppelgänger. Meeting Laurel’s wasn’t fun, she was manipulative and most of all nothing like her. That Laurel had told me that my doppelgänger, Silver Siren was killed but yet, he is here.
“How did you end up here?” I say taking out a piece of gum from my pocket and throwing it into my mouth. Silver sits comfortably in his chair relaxing himself and crosses his legs.
“I escaped the tower, took a job that would give me what I wanted, then it didn’t and now I’m here with you.” He says literally and that’s not what I meant. I look at Silver tilting my head not wanting to play along with his humor. I want his story, to know everything about him. I want to know what makes him and I different. “How funny. No one has ever asked me that.” He throws the newspaper off his lap and onto the chair next to him.
“Well we have some time to waste.” I say starring out the window seeing the buildings and wires pass by me as the train moves. I then look back at him and he scoffs.
“So where do I start? Last year when I tried to kill you?” Silver says wanting a serious answer with a clever and charming smile.
“How about the beginning.”
________________
25 YEARS BEFORE
EARTH-2
Silver’s Narration
Of course nothing is the same on this Earth as it is on mine Canary. 25 Years ago, there was a slight problem with my birth… You see… On my Earth like your father, Quentin was a cop… but a corrupt beat down cop who got too invested in the criminal life. Quentin crossed paths with the wrong guys, an Italian mafia. When they heard about my birth, they threatened Quentin and Dinah to give me to them so that I would adopt their ways in order for Quentin to pay. Of course that didn’t go as planned.
On the night of my birth, Quentin had taken me from the hospital and bribed the hospital to write a death certificate for a child without a name. The story goes that Quentin left me at the docks, and knowing the season that we were born in, nature was not so nice to me.
I had been at the docks for hours until a man who would become my father figure found me. His name was Dimitri Romanov. If it weren’t for him, someone would’ve found a frozen baby. He took care of me, and took me back to his home country, Russia where I was raised.
While you were being raised with your sisters and running around a manor with a wealthy corrupt family, Dimitri who was a high ranking Soviet Union soldier had recruited me into a school at the age of 4. The Black Wolf.
The Black Wolf was an experiment-program that would train and test artificial meta-genes on 10 orphans. Super soldiers trained to seduce, manipulate, infiltrate and assassinate to bring down an entire nation overnight. To use their bodies to get what they want. Become whoever the mission needed me to be. I was the top of my class.
At 10 years old, we were given our first mission. I remember it so clearly. It was our first kill.
STARLING CITY
I stood inside an empty apartment with one of the mentors from the program to watch and observe. I was given the objective to assassinate someone with no background as to who they were, or if they were even a threat to the Soviet Union.
I had watched this older man for the entire week, even infiltrating his family’s home to find out a schedule of where he would be. I had found out about a birthday of a girl named Laurel on the kitchen calendar and that he’d be home then. It was the only predictable way to get him in one spot! To watch him with my mentor.
The mission didn’t specify how I would kill him, it just mattered that we did. I remember unpacking a sniper out of its case and assembling it and its stand on the window, hiding behind a curtain. I had knocked out one of the men that my target had problems with, and purchased all the weapon items under his card and name. It was the perfect set up.
I watched my target walk out of the house across from the apartment and I had the perfect shot and angle. I looked out the scope and aimed at the head until I saw two younger girls, a blonde and brunette, running out complaining in English to my target, their father.
I remember noticing something odd about them. How one of them resembled me almost. It was a quick thought. I aimed again at the head of my target and took the shot. I watched the body of the man fall on the concrete sidewalk and I remember feeling nothing.
“Как вы себя чувствуете 10? / How do you feel 10?” My mentor calls me and I get off the sniper packing it up, wanting to leave before the American law enforcement had arrived and blocked out the exits.
“Сильно, как наша советская родина. / Strong like our Soviet motherland.” I respond as my mentor awards me with a simple cold smile.
Silver: We all came back to Moscow from our missions and I remember being handed the folder of who our targets where. For many of us it was our parents who had been alive all this time. Many of us grew up not knowing where we came from, The Black Wolf was all that we knew. We were told what truly happened to us and how they found us. We were told that because we were abandoned by our families, that The Soviet Union will never abandon us. That we are so much more with The Soviet Union than what we would’ve became with our families, and we were.
Drake: Damn… What about your cry? How’d you get that?
Silver: For years scientist would test on us, manipulate our genes, inject black matter into us until we showed some sign of the meta disease. Scientist specifically engineered each one of the meta disease for us and I was given this. I am the true siren.
Drake: Cute scar. Not my kinda look, but you rock it.
Silver: All 10 of us graduated and the program was shut down due to insufficient funding from the State. We all became the State’s property and went our own ways. I found work as a KGB agent and became Stalin’s dirty right hand. If Stalin needed someone taken cared of, I’d do it.
It all crashed when the war ended, and the Soviet Union collapsed. Stalin had been assassinated and I escaped in time. Many of us in the Soviet Union weren’t so lucky. I’m a survivor.
I took on a new name for myself, and worked in the underworld of Central City, and with my special skills and talents I was unstoppable. That’s where I was hired by none other than Black Siren. She didn’t know who I was, but I did.
She had taken me out of the underworld life and took me onto something bigger with her boss Zoom. Zoom was filled with envy and rage for speedsters and wanted as much power as he could get. When we arrived to Earth-1 assigned to kill The Flash on your Earth, I doubted my alliance with Zoom. His intentions were not in my interest. Black Siren wanted me to stay with her as she said we’d be gods but it seemed like suicide.
Zoom had found out about my doubt in his plan and where my loyalty was. He had found out about my past somehow and exposed me to Black Siren. I killed her father, our father, and she wanted revenge. She killed me, and I was very dead.
Drake: So that’s why she thinks you’re still dead.
Silver: And it’ll stay like that… Ra’s found me thinking it was you and dipped me into his Lazarus soup and brought me back to life. When I woke up, I didn’t know who I was and Ra’s had figured out that I wasn’t you. He attempted to take advantage of my mind and brainwash me. After a couple of days of heavy migraines from the rush of memories flooding into my mind, I remember who I was and took my allegiance with Ra’s as his intentions were the same as Stalin’s. Ra’s like Stalin believed in peace through violence, It’s all I’ve ever known.
Years later, I’d come to meet your boyfriend at the time be reborn and completely brainwashed to assassinate you.
_____________
TOKYO, JAPAN
Drake Lance
“Does that satisfy you?” Silver says and I begin to understand who he is. The damage and pain he’s been through is so much more than mine. I don’t blame him for being the survivor he is.
The train begins to slow down and stops at the platform and makes a soft bell noise. “Just on time.” He says with a smile and gets up with his rolling bag. I get up with him and follow him out as we step out into the crowded platform together, disappearing into the crowd.
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