Suicide Squad: The Genesis Sanction

Issue 3

Punch hovered above the dunes. He was pretending not to notice Jewelee sitting uncomfortably, talking animatedly to Harley. Sand flew in his wake. Red sand. Tan sand. Black sand. Beige sand. Grains of sand. And him.

It was all the same.

Lawton stared at the corpses. Not seeing them. Seeing past them.

They were all the same.

Digger watched Lawton, uncharacteristically warily. They'd both changed over the years. He'd thought the last time had been the big one. But no. The men that they were?

They were all the same.

Harley knew she was talking to a brick wall. But she knew better than Jewelee. So she had to try.

They were all the same.

Jewelee didn't care what the hell Harley had to say. What any of them had to say about who she'd chosen.

They were all the same.

The Crimson Centipede watched the fickle mortals bicker and squabble and doubt and smirked to himself.

They were all the same.

Tresser and Turner both watched their charges. The Squad. The same bitter, horrified mantra ran through their heads:

They were all the same.

Briscoe scratched his ass and put Sheba down.

——

"I know what the hell I'm doing, Simon," Waller muttered, rubbing her eyes. "I do."

LaGrieve watched her silently. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"But," she sighed - there it was - "what I know I'm doing is the issue."

LaGrieve didn't ask her what it was she was doing. She wouldn't tell him, and that was fine. He could work around that. Which is why he had the job.

"Do you want me to make you feel better about this? Or just talk through it?"
"I don't give a damn," she snarled. Just listen, then. LaGrieve could do that. With the best of them. He was the best of them. "I don't - I don't -"

She looked up at the screen of the control room. Of the pulses of the sleeping Squad.

"I may well be choosing my life over theirs," she said, covering her mouth with a hand. "This isn't for a greater good. This is self-preservation. At a cost," Waller continued, muffled. What was visible of her face was stony. "Smith is already dead. But he was a lobotomized zealot and the only damn reason I kept him around was to take a bullet meant for Lawton or Harkness or Turner," she continued, justifying things to herself, not to LaGrieve anymore.

This didn't perturb LaGrieve. It had become commonplace.

"This is something entirely distinct," she explained, "I know who they're facing and I know what they're facing. I'm putting them against it. I'm -" she bit her lip, making a voice in her throat, frustrated at her inability to both vaguely and coherently explain the situation. "It's like that goddamned Nicaragua mission all over again. The one only Flag made it out of. God. Flag."

"They're more uninformed than usual, you mean," LaGrieve clucked quietly.

"Yeah," Waller breathed. "You could say that."

"Do you think they need to be?"
"I think...tt. I think. Turner and Tresser can't know. This is not any kind of a betrayal. But this would alter terms for them. For the better and for the worse."
"You're speaking in tongues," LaGrieve interjected politely.

Waller stared off, as if in a haze for a second, before shaking her head and rolling her shoulders back.

"Well?" she sighed, a grating edge to her voice. "Hit me with it. What's the assessment? Where's this coming from? My kids? My dearly departed? What would Freud say?"