Joseph ignored Superman, who hovered silently in the night sky, ready to intervene in the altercation with Luthor, as he bolted toward his ho in Gotham.
What he had seen in Luthor's mind shocked him to the very core. It couldn't be true. It shouldn't be true.
He slipped through his balcony window under the cover of darkness and entered his mother's old room.
He had always kept the room clean but never searched through her belongings. Avoidance had been his way of coping—keeping her things untouched was easier than reopening old wounds. He had accepted, or at least told himself he had accepted, that his mother was gone and hopefully in a better place.
Going through her possessions, especially sothing as personal as her books or journals, had always felt unbearable. It would be a painful reminder of her absence, a raw wound he wasn't ready to face. He hadn't wanted to risk breaking down in front of Kori when he'd last packed her belongings away.
But tonight was different. Tonight, he was ready to face both his grief and the truth.
Joseph walked to the closet, where he had once packed her belongings into boxes while Kori had been living with him.
He ripped one open but still handled the contents with reverence, gently lifting them into the air with his anti-gravity field. Her clothes, her jewelry, her books—all floated before him like fragnts of her life suspended in ti.
The jewelry caught his eye first. He had always known his mother wasn't a native-born Arican and lacked official docunts. As a child, he had assud her jewelry were heirlooms from whatever tribe she had co from in Africa. Back in the early 2000s, he hadn't had Nova's ability to reverse image search, and his local library had been useless for tracing their origin. It had been almost impossible for him to identify them.
His mother had never liked talking about her past, no matter how much he pressed. The only family she had ever ntioned was her grandmother, long since dead.
Now, with more knowledge at his disposal, Joseph studied the jewelry and recognized them imdiately. A gold ukesh and a gold linen belt, resembling Rasses' Girdle—artifacts likely originating from Egypt.
Then there were the books. A couple of cookbooks. A handful of children's books from his youth. A few nonfiction titles. And one journal.
//The journal has a goatskin cover with papyrus sheets,// Nova intoned in his mind.
Joseph carefully floated the book toward himself and flipped open the first page with his telekinesis. He rembered seeing his mother write in it during rare monts of peace. He had always wondered what language it was.
Now he understood. It was a mixture of ancient Greek and old Arabic. He was sharp enough to decipher it, even without Nova's assistance.
The first line revealed his mother had lied to him all his life. Even her na was a lie. Here, she introduced herself as Hope Taya, not Mary Bell.
The journal chronicled her early life in a place called Bana-Mighdall, a city-state in Egypt hidden for millennia, escaping detection from the Amazons of Themyscira.
According to her writings, the Amazons of Bana-Mighdall were a splinter faction that broke away from Themyscira more than three thousand years ago. After the destruction of the Themysciran city by Herakles' armies, a group led by Hippolyta's sister, Antiope, renounced the Olympian gods. Fueled by vengeance, they beca nomadic marauders, determined never again to be deceived or conquered by n.
They fought alongside the Trojans against the Greeks during the Trojan War, then wandered for generations until they finally settled in Egypt's deserts. There, they built a city of mosques and temples and nad it Bana-Mighdall, "The Temple of Won," in their hybrid tongue.
They appealed to Egypt's goddesses for sanctuary, and their city was shrouded by a magical, perpetual sandstorm. Having abandoned the blessings granted by the Greek goddesses including immortality, they propagated their race by kidnapping n from nearby cities. Male captives were kept in breeding stables like livestock, summoned only when needed. Male infants were executed, while female children were raised in the increasingly violent, warlike culture of Bana-Mighdall.
Over ti, they beca master weaponsmiths, trading arms with the outside world. Though feared as rcenaries, their craftsmanship was too valuable for warring nations to resist. Even as the Industrial Revolution reshaped warfare, they adapted, creating firearms of unmatched quality. By the twenty-first century, most in the Arab world regarded them only as legend—though a desperate few still sought them out, paying devastatingly high prices for their services.
Luthor could afford such a price.
He had sohow contacted the tribe, employing them as bodyguards during LexCorp's most vulnerable years. In those early days of rapid growth, enemies had been everywhere. Assassins, corporate rivals, and political adversaries had all made attempts on Luthor's life. The Amazons of Bana-Mighdall had crushed every one of them.
Among them, one stood out. Hope. Luthor had been impressed with her skill, loyalty, and cunning. Eventually, she beca his personal bodyguard.
When LexCorp stabilized and the Amazons' contract ended, Hope made her choice. She remained in man's world, weary of war and violence, drawn to sothing different. And then, inevitably, one thing led to another. She and Lex slept together.
Joseph's hands trembled as he stared at the journal. mories of Lex's face surfaced unbidden, and now he saw the similarities with chilling clarity. The sa defined jawline. The sa angular cheekbones. The sa sharp features.
He recalled noticing that he looked similar to Lex Luthor when he went bald after saving a child from a burning building.
His mother had never spoken a word about his father. Not a na. Not a hint. Not even when he had begged her through tears as a boy. At first, he had resented her silence. Over ti, that resentnt shifted toward the phantom man he assud had abandoned them.
He had grown up with questions gnawing at him. Why did he leave? Was it my fault? What kind of man was he? Why am I different? Those questions had haunted him almost as much as the LexCorp nanite nightmares that plagued his sleep.
He had envied other children, the ones with fathers who stood beside them. Like any fatherless child, he had secretly longed for the missing presence—for strength, for guidance, for soone to look up to. Tʜe source of this ᴄontent ɪs novｅlfire
Now he finally had his answer. The man responsible for both his deepest wounds and his darkest nightmares was one and the sa.
Lex Luthor. His father.
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