“Don’t bother, Kent—coffee’s cold.”

 I look over my shoulder at the copy editor, quickly retreating down the hall from the break room. “Thanks Janice,” I call after her, but she’s already out of earshot. Briefly, I think I should just make a fresh pot, but instead, I back further into the break room. I don’t hear anyone approaching, either, so I lower my glasses and my blue eyes turn bright red. 

Within seconds, steam begins to rise from the pot as I warm up the coffee with my heat vision. I smile and raise my glasses up again just as someone else walks into the break room. 

“Afternoon,” he says to me, pouring himself a cup. 

“Good afternoon,” I say back, sipping the coffee. As I leave the room, I hear his voice, "ahh, fresh coffee," and it puts a smile on my face. Being a superpowered alien definitely has its advantages.

There’s some commotion and people start running past me. “Move out of the way, Kent!” one of them shouts. With the crowd dissipated, I walk over to the scene myself, finding people pressed up against the windows of the Planet. 

“Hurry it up, Jimmy!” 

I recognize the voice as Lois’ and look to see her waiting impatiently as Jimmy digs through his desk, searching for something. “I know it’s here somewhere… dammit, I just bought that memory card, too…” he says. 

“What’s going on?” I ask, approaching the pair. 

“Some monster is on a rampage outside,” says Lois. She looks at the crowd by the window, then at Jimmy rummaging through his desk and she motions for me to go out there. I nod and move away from the newsroom. Moving to the fire exit, I remove my glasses and race up the stairs, taking off my suit and dress shirt. 

By the time I reach the roof, Superman flies out, streaking towards the streets below. I see what the monster is—hard to miss, in fact. A large, hulking creature with chalk-white skin, mangy hair and a torn suit. 

“Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday!” he screams out, lifting a car over his head and hurling it towards a crowd of people. 

I fly after it, pushing myself as hard as I can and I catch the car before it strikes anyone, carefully setting it down. Looking at Grundy, I ask him, “what’s this about?” 

“POISON!” cries Grundy in response and he jumps towards me, barreling into me and driving me into the ground. He begins stomping on my head, burying me further into the pavement. 

I grab his foot and push up, throwing him back. Standing from the small crater he made with my body, I dust off the rubble and fly after him, delivering punch after punch. 

Grundy takes the first few hits but then grabs both of my fists and begins to squeeze. It hurts and he’s strong, but there’s something different about him this time. I’ve faced Grundy in the past and I remember him being stronger than this. 

Once again, my eyes turn bright red and Grundy’s face bursts into flame. He releases his grip on my hands as he screams, frantically trying to put out the fire. Tearing free a hydrant, he extinguishes the flames in the torrent of water that erupts. 

I don’t like doing things like that. But Grundy is one of my enemies I know can stand up to that kind of punishment. He grabs a lamp post and pulls it from the ground, swinging it like a bat. 

“BORN ON A MONDAY!” he screams again. Like a mantra. I grab the lamp post and there’s a brief tug of war as we both try and pull it away from the other. Instead, it breaks in two and he hurls it like a javelin. I leap to the side, grabbing it as it flies past, then I swing both posts at Grundy simultaneously, smashing him against the side of a building. 

It’s then that I notice something strange about Grundy. His suit, usually strained against the size of his massive frame, now appears to be loose-fitting. Grundy himself is beginning to grow thinner and thinner, until he looks up at me with tears in his eyes. 

“Help… please help…” he tells me. 

“Grundy…? What…?” 

Before I can ask the question, “What’s happening to you,” Grundy begins to disintegrate, leaving behind nothing more than a pile of dust and a white crystal that clatters against the pavement. Bending down, I pick it up and examine it. 

“Kryptonite…” I say. More of the kryptonite Bruce developed. Except like the silver kryptonite, for some reason this seems to have no effect on me. 

White kryptonite. 

When Clark told me about what happened to Grundy, I immediately began to research what the possibility would be. Once he arrives in the Batcave, kryptonite in hand, a theory begins to form in my head. 

“Sorry I’m late,” he says. 

“Another bank robbery?” 

“No, kitten stuck in a tree.” 

A slight smile cracks the corner of my lip. That’s Clark all over—no job is too insignificant for him to get involved with. Just as long as he can help. An admirable quality, but not always conducive to schedule adherence. 

“Do you have any theories yet?” he asks, handing me the white kryptonite. 

“I looked up the properties that created each different type of kryptonite and that information, plus what you told me about Grundy, seems to point that the white kryptonite is deadly to vegetation and plant life.” 

“And also harmless to me,” he says. 

“Precisely,” I respond. “So far, we’ve been pretty lucky in tracking down these pieces.” 

“If this is used to kill plant life, why would Grundy carry it around?  Why carry something that can destroy you?” 

“Perhaps as a way to end his streak of resurrections.” 

“Who might that be?” 

“Try again, work backwards,” I tell him. The thing about a lot of the metahumans around is that they frequently have no desire in doing the legwork. Some of them are the most awful detectives I’ve ever encountered and it’s a miracle they’ve stayed around this long. 

Clark, of course, isn’t one of those. But there are some things I’m just better at than he is. This is one of those things. 

“Look at this.” I bring up a news article from a few days earlier. Clark looks over my shoulder and reads it out loud. 

“’Young hikers die under mysterious circumstances,’” he says. “What does this have to do with anything?” 

“The article says they were found in a clearing where the ground was completely arid and devoid of any growth. It was just in one area, contained in a perfect circle, that there was no vegetation.” 

“The white kryptonite was there.” 

“The hikers stumbled upon the white kryptonite. Whomever killed them took the kryptonite and then planted it on Grundy to kill him.”

At the site of the hikers’ murders, I touch down. The ground which was dry and arid at first now seemed softer and little green buds began poking out. With the kryptonite gone, the effects were beginning to wear out. 

I focus in on the ground, hoping to find some trace or clue left behind. My telescopic vision kicks in, enhancing what I can see. But I can’t find anything… except an odd spectrum. 

This strange spectrum is contained within one streak. Only my vision is able to pick it up and it’s also a spectrum I’ve seen before. 

“Batman, are you there?” I ask. 

“Did you find anything?” 

“I think so. There’s an energy spectrum here, the kind emitted by a weapon used by the Metropolis SCU. Developed by STAR Labs.”

 

 

With that information, I start running background checks on everyone in Metropolis’ Special Crimes Unit as well as everyone employed by STAR Labs. I run a trace on backgrounds and genealogies, using “GOLD, CYRUS” as the keywords for ancestry. 

Only one match. 

“I found our target,” I tell Clark. 

“Who?” 

“Let me handle that,” I tell him.

---

Chrissie Cavendish left STAR Labs late that night, walking through the dimly-lit parking garage. She fumbled through her purse, trying to find her keys on the approach to her car. Once she found them, she tried to slide the key into the door lock, but found it had some sort of gun-like substance on it. 

“Good evening, Dr. Cavendish.” 

She turned around in shock. Now in front of her was a figure clouded in the shadows, a heavy black cloak concealing his body. Two points jutted from the top of his head and the only thing she could make out in the sea of black that he seemed to be composed of were two white slits where his eyes should be, completely bare and without emotion. 

“You must have thought you were pretty clever, Doctor,” said the Batman. “Using a weapon stolen from STAR Labs meant no gun registration and, as far as you knew, no way to trace it back to you. What you didn’t count on was the spectrum the weapon leaves behind after its fired, a spectrum that lasts for a few days. It’s the gun’s signature, identifying it as one of a kind, unique to STAR Labs. With the connection to Grundy, it was simply a matter of researching genealogies to find the correct match.”

The Batman slowly approached her. 

“Cyrus Gold, the murdered man who became Solomon Grundy,” he said. “He was your ancestor.” 

“I just wanted to end his pain,” said Dr. Cavendish, looking down. “Is that so wrong? He doesn’t deserve to be tortured like that, to have to constantly come back to life as a monster, again and again. Is what I did so wrong?” 

“No,” said the Batman. “I understand wanting to end Gold’s suffering and I might even condone it. But let me ask you this, Doctor…” 

He approached her even closer, towering over her slim frame and staring directly into her eyes. His voice was deep, like gravel when he spoke. 

“Were you ending the pain of those hikers as well?” 

Dr. Cavendish looked down in defeat and closed her eyes. She heard a metal clink and felt something cold and hard on her wrists. Looking down, she saw a pair of bat-shaped handcuffs binding her hands together. 

---

Elsewhere, in a swamp miles from Metropolis, a large, white hand slowly rose from the muck and grime. The hand gripped the soft ground, pulling himself free and rising up. 

“Solomon Grundy…” he said. “Born on a Monday…”