A Future Sooner than Tomorrow

The Future Burns

The inside of the room isn't anything like Kal expected it to look on first impression. It's the same clean white as the majority of Luthor's buildings are but something about it just feels off.

When everyone steps into the room, closing the door behind them, the feeling only increases. It's nothing like Kal's ever seen in a LexCo building. There's counters protruding out of the back wall, hollow rectangles underneath containing gurneys of varying sizes. Most are standard, the type you'd find in the back of an ambulance, but there's a couple of scuffed ones off to the size that are larger, wider. Then there's a couple small ones, varying from a length of three feet long to the biggest of the small ones, five feet.

There are cupboards along the joint between wall and ceiling, large ones with small keyholes, the type sometimes seen on modern windows (the type of windows that Clark's apartment building are currently being fitted with, he thinks). Absentmindedly, he scans them with his x-Ray vision, finding them full of first-aid supplies.

There's a variety of bandages in several shapes, the long sterile cotton strips that Kal forgets the name of, the ones you tape on yourself, as well as bottles in different stages of use.

"Is this a medical wing?" Flash asks incredulously. "Why would Luthor need-"

"The door over to the right is the one we'll be going through, right, Kon?" Robin's voice is loud. Kon blinks as though coming out of a stupor.

"Yeah, it is..." Kon steps in front of the door, this one is standard, the type Kal's Luthor has. "Only a lock pick is needed for these. All these rooms are identical until we get out of this hall."

"Why bother with conjoining doors?" Lantern asks.

Hawkgirl nods beside him. "Or why not just knock the walls in between down and just have one front door?"

Robin kneels in front of the door, slotting a hook and what looks like a crooked needle into the keyhole.

Kon doesn't say anything.

The door clicks open, and Nightwing and Red Hood (seemingly having decided to flank the group) herd them all forward.

Kal isn't sure what he had been expecting when Kon had said identical. He had known the rooms would be similar but not truly identical, he supposes.

The layout of the room is the same. Same size, same amount of cabinets, same strange hollowed out desks. Nothing odd, really, having multiple of the same room isn't unheard of, especially in a company building.

What is odd is that even the gurneys are equal in number and type. Not only that but they're in the same exact position. If it weren't for the three doors (front and the two conjoining), Kal might've thought it was the same room. He says as much to the group.

"Yeah, I spent a while thinking these were all the same room. Turns out they just have designated places for just about everything," Kon says.

Kal doesn't bother x-rating the cabinets. He doesn't care about how used or untouched Luthor's medical supplies are.

Green Lantern elbows Flash somewhere behind Kal. Neither of them talk but Kal feels the light scuffle behind him and hears the impact acutely.
He tunes in to them for a second, hearing their regular breathing and the shift of material but nothing else. Kal tunes out.

The next couple rooms pass in silence. Everyone glances at the back walls of each room, as though expecting to catch something out. Kal half expects someone to cry out, "aha! There are too many gurneys in that nook!" Nobody does.

He half wishes they would, just to break the silence that has fallen. Something about these specific set of rooms has a sense of unease building in the air. At some point, they all fell into the same routine.