Cyborg: MVP

Cyborg: MVP

• We start at Star Labs in Keystone City with Silas Stone working on analyzing the Father Box given to Star Labs after Superman’s encounter with Kalibak. His wife and fellow brilliant scientist, Elinore Stone, walks into the lab. He wonders where she was but she is not talking to him. She’s mad that he obviously didn’t remember because he wasn’t there at their son, Victor’s playoff football game. He makes an excuse that their work here is much more important and could change the world but she can’t believe he would say it’s more important than their son. She tells him they won by the way, conference champions all thanks to superstar running back Vic Stone making the final carry. She reminds him that he is only a junior in high school and division one scouts are already talking to him. Silas scoffs and says too bad none of those D1 schools have a descent robotics PHD program for him to do something that really matters. Elinore calls her husband ridiculous and says she hopes her son is off somewhere having fun. 

• Cut to a fast-moving sports car zooming down the road and we hear a “Boo-yah!” Cyborg is driving his car with a few of his football friends celebrating their amazing victory. He is driving fast, obviously projecting his anger from his dad missing the game. He is going so fast in fact, his friends are getting nervous and asking him to slow down. Eventually, a highway patrol officer catches wind of them and tries to pull them over but Vic’s overconfidence thinks he can lose them. They go on a high-speed car chase with Vic speeding and taking tough turns, all the while his manly football friends are freaking out like scared children in the back. Suddenly, a lost dog runs out into the front of the road and instead of hitting it, Vic does his best to swerve and save it. In doing so, he smacks into a median barrier. The cop is then able to catch up to them and seems to recognize Vic Stone as a local football star. The cop says he wishes he could take it easy on him but he won’t. This accident could’ve been a lot worse and he’s lucky he didn’t kill himself or his friends. The cop says his son looks up to their team and will hate to tell him they all got arrested. Vic vouches for his friends and said it was all his own fault. Vic puts his head down as he’s placed in the back of the squad car and watches the little dog scamper away through the window.

• Back at Star Labs, Silas and Elinore are consulting with Niles Caulder. They explain everything they’ve already discovered about the box and how it seems like the most advanced AI they have ever witnessed, able to carry out almost any technological function they can ask it to. However, the teleportation feature Superman describes seems to have been damaged and rendered dysfunctional during their battle. Niles proposes the idea that this mechanical box possesses properties that drive him to believe it almost may even be alive. Silas says that idea is preposterous but Niles tells him never to underestimate what is possible in this wide world we live. Silas knows the kinds of things Niles has encountered that might seem “preposterous.” Their conversation is cut short as the head of Star Labs, Emil Hamilton, enters the lab and informs Elinore that she has an important call. Her husband opens his mouth before Elinore has time to reply, “Sir, what on Earth could be more important than this?” Hamilton replies, “Your son, Victor. He’s in jail.” 

• Niles takes the opportunity to say, “And that is my cue to go. Elinore, please tell your promising young man that I say hello, and that I am truly sorry for whatever his father is going to do to him.” Niles rolls his wheelchair out of the room with a very tongue-in-cheek smile.” Silas tells Elinore to go then and take care of her boy. Elinore can’t take it this time and loses it on her husband. She says that no, he is going to pick him up this time and he’d better not be a dick about it. How about he’s actually there for his son for once in his life? Silas tries to get out of it but Elinore sneers at him, “Oh, do you not trust me to do any work without your guiding hand in the room?” Silas denies this and says he knows she is the most intelligent and capable woman on Earth, that’s why he married her. Elinore says that if he wants to keep it that way, he’s going to go pick up their son right now. Silas sheepishly obliges, grabbing his coat and exits through the steel security doors. 

• Silas picks Victor up at the police station and is cold, not saying a word to him. Vic yells at his father trying to get him to talk and give him a punishment but his father slams on the brakes and scolds him saying that he won’t. Victor is too smart for simple consequences. Silas thinks he needs to apply himself to something meaningful that will make a difference, not play grab ass with a bunch of low-level jocks. Silas continues by saying he has now cost him even more valuable time in the lab so he can sit and talk with his mother all he wants at the lab while he does something of actual importance. They walk into the lab and Elinore talks to Victor outside the steel security doors while Silas works alone inside. 

• Hard cut to a lush green environment with animalistic rabbit-sounding chirps and a man in a labcoat backing up slowly as a massive creature emerges from the green roaring. Pan out and we see that this whole setting is actually just taking place inside a hampster cage sitting on Ryan Choi’s laboratory desk. Ryan Choi is the former protege of Ray Palmer, the Atom, who continued and built upon the brilliant doctor’s work in subatomic radius manipulation (shrinking things). He picked up exactly where he believes Ray Palmer left off after he mysteriously vanished almost two decades ago He then injects the hampster with some experimental diabetes medication before enlarging outside of the cage again. Doctor Choi feels pleased with his work and playfully pets the hampster saying, “ya know, you’re a lot less intimidating from this scale, little Chubby Chubberson.” His self-congratulations is cut short when he hears a strange noise from behind him in the lab. A larger chittering noise is heard in the darkness before a wrench falls to the floor. Ryan Choi approaches curiously as he says in baby talk, “and which of my favorite little specimens has gotten out of their cage? Hopefully no one with an infectious disease to--” his speech is cut off by a large lumbering winged creature that looks half insect half reptile with what appears to be metal fused to its body. A Parademon, drone of Darkseid, sent here in search of something. The creature’s small chirps turn into a vicious blood-curdling roar, spreading its arms and knocking over shelves. Ryan instinctively shrinks to avoid this monster’s gaze. Ryan runs across the floor, up the wrecked shelves and onto his main desk as the creature tears through the lab and towards the exit. Ryan slams down Star Lab’s emergency lock-down, just after the creature made it to the halls.

• Sirens begin to blare across the facility and any open doors slam shut. Any steel security doors becoming nearly impenetrable. Victor and Elinore peer through the bulletproof glass into Silas’s lab, worry filling their eyes. Victor asks what’s going on and his mom says she doesn’t know and comforts him. The Parademon loose in the halls then turns the corner and faces Vic and Elinore. The beast stands still for a moment, head tilting as if honing on something. It is the Apokaliptan technology that calls out to it. Silas watches through the window repeating, “no no no no no.” The Parademon then spreads its locus-like wings and flies towards the pair. Vic instinctively gets in front of his mother to protect her. What followed was a brutal scene, flesh town and ripped from muscle, bone gnashed and pulverized, and blood painting the very window that a father and husband witnessed the horror through. The creature banged on the steel security door, trying to get in but unable. The monster unable to make a dent, flew off down the hallway once more to find another approach. 

• For the first time in his life, Silas’s emotions have him on edge, almost unable to string together a coherent thought. Somehow through the cloud of terror and uncertainty, he has an idea. Silas trips his way over to the Father Box. He holds it, looking into its electronic glow as if hoping and worshiping its potential power. He tells Father Box to open the laboratory doors, and miraculously, it does so. The steel doors split and what lays before him brings him to tears. Blood spirits from his wife’s body with every fading heartbeat. His son’s disfigured face calls out almost inaudibly, “d a a a d d d d…” before he loses consciousness. There is no saving both of them, even if they were in the most ground-breaking hospital in the nation. Silas kneels besides his wife, his old knees slashing into the pool of blood. He brings the Father Box to her chest with hope and hesitation in his eyes, hoping it can do something, anything. But with every last morsel of strength she can muster, Elinore weakly grips her husband’s wrist to stop her. Silas doesn’t understand but Elinore weakly tells him, “no, not me. If there is any chance this can work you must save our son. No matter how much you invent, the greatest thing you have ever created is right in front of you.” Silas shakes his head and sobs as he glances at what’s left of his son. In her last dying breath, Elinore dribbles out, “he.. he was my very purpose.” Silas feels the grip of his wife’s hand release from his wrist. She is gone. Silas cried out in agony. However, Silas’s pain abruptly turns to direction. There is no time to lose if by some miracle Silas can save his son. He crawls over to his blacked-out son and places the Father Box on Victor’s chest. He orders the machine, “save my son.” And something… begins to happen. 

• Victor’s body convulsed violently as the Father Box pulsed against his shattered chest, its alien mechanisms whirring and shifting, burrowing into flesh, into bone, into the very essence of what made him human. The gaping wounds across his body didn’t close in a natural way—skin didn’t stitch itself back together. Instead, his torn flesh was devoured, consumed by nanites. Raw other-worldly machinery, slithered like living things, replacing muscle with cables, arteries with conduits of liquid metal. His exposed ribs shifted, reshaped into reinforced plating. His face twitched as jagged steel surged from the wound, stretching across the skeletal side like the grasping fingers of an unrelenting hand. What was left of his missing eye rolled back in its socket replaced by an unnatural glow. The smell of scorched flesh and rust filled the lab as Victor’s breathing hitched, sharp, ragged. 

• Silas staggered back, his breath shallow as he took in what lay before him. His son, his son, lay still, no longer the young man he had raised, no longer just flesh and bone. He was something new. Something made. Victor didn’t wake. He remained locked in stillness. Silas’s worry grew as he still saw no biological sign of life, until at last. Approximately every one and a half seconds, a nostril flared. His son lives. With his new form unmoving on the medical table, Silas wires and connects him to monitors—machines that struggle to make sense of him. His pulse was erratic, not quite human. 

• Three days pass, and still, Victor has not awoken. Silas never left the lab, a shrine to his wife began to pile next to his workbench as he organizes her funeral services. Suddenly, a sharp, electric hum filled Victor’s ears. It wasn’t a sound so much as a sensation, something deep in his skull, vibrating against his thoughts. His eyes snapped open—at least, one eye. The other... he couldn't feel. Couldn’t blink. Couldn’t breathe? His vision fractured, layers of data flickering in and out of focus. Strange symbols, targeting reticles, diagnostics that made no sense. The world around him shifted in ways it never had before. Heat signatures, depth analysis, scanning processes that activated against his will. Panic surged in his chest, but even that felt wrong. Too controlled. Too calculated. He sat up too fast, and his body didn’t move the way it should. Heavy. Foreign. His arms groaned with mechanical whirring, servos adjusting as he caught his reflection in the dark screen of a monitor. The face staring back wasn’t his own, metal. exposed wiring, A single glowing red eye. Half of him was gone—replaced. Taken.

• Victor’s voice cracked, "What—” a distortion running through it like a failing radio. "What did you do to me?!" Silas was standing by the medical table, dark circles under his eyes. His son’s voice sent a shudder through him, but he held firm. “Victor… you were dying.” Victor’s metal fingers flexed, segmented and unnatural. He stumbled forward, knocking over a tray of instruments that clattered violently to the floor. “No,” he rasped, his hands shaking. “No, no, no—” His words broke apart, a glitch in his vocal patterns. Silas swallowed. "I saved you." "Saved me?" Victor’s head snapped toward him, “This isn’t me! What the hell did you do to me?! What did you—" His gaze darted to the room, searching for something real, something familiar—and then he noticed the empty table beside him, the bloodstained sheets. His stomach sank. "Mom?" 

• Silas closed his eyes for a moment, exhaling sharply through his nose before forcing himself to look Victor in the eye. “She didn’t make it.” The words hit like a hammer to the chest. His mother. Dead? "Why didn’t you save her?" Silas’s jaw tightened, "Because of you." The words cut through the static in Victor’s brain like a blade. Silas continued with little to no hesitation. “If you hadn’t been out being reckless, if you weren’t so damn selfish, you wouldn’t have been here in the first place. There was only one machine like this known to mankind and your mother wouldn’t let me use it on her! She wouldn’t have—” Silas stopped himself, but the damage was done. Victor’s expression twisted, hurt eclipsing the horror. His father’s words echoed, bouncing off the hollow parts of him that used to be real. That used to feel. Then, rage.

• But the rage has no time to fester within, from when out of nowhere, the gate of a laboratory exhaust vent flew off its hinges and a low chattering noise was felt echoing through the room. That thing, that creature has returned, drawn back by the complete integration of a human life. Victor stammers, “What the hell is that thing?” With disbelieve, Silas says, "You don't remember? That's what did this to you, that's what took away your mom." Victor felt something primal tighten in his chest—grief, anger, fear, all colliding at once. The creature let out a shrieking howl and lunged. Victor barely had time to react before his body moved on its own. His systems took over, his newly integrated reflexes sending him sidestepping just as the beast’s talons swiped where his head had been a second ago. The table behind him split in half under the force of the attack. The Parademon pivoted, wings spreading wide as it snarled, its chittering growing more erratic. It came again trying to get a hold of Victor, this time faster. Victor gritted his teeth and swung, metal colliding with flesh and cybernetic plating alike. The impact sent the beast stumbling, but Victor barely registered it. His own strength shocked him. His body was calculating, analyzing attack patterns, predicting movement. Data flooded his vision, tactics, options, kill-ratios—his brain was no longer fighting alone. The Parademon sprung forward again. Victor’s right arm jerked upward a mechanical whine whirred as his forearm morphed. Metal plating unfolded, reconfiguring in an instant, locking into something new. The realization barely had time to register before it fired. A cannon-like blast of some sort of energy erupted from his arm, striking the creature point-blank. Victor stared at the motionless creature, his heart pounding, if he even had a heart anymore. His arm whirred as the cannon shrank back into his limb seamlessly. 

• His father looked at him, bewildered, horrified, amazed. “Victor,” he began but his son cut him off. “You know what, dad? Fuck you.” The two stared at each other for a moment that seemed like an eternity. Silent. The two said nothing more, as Cyborg came crashing down onto his knees and began to cry.

• In a post-credit scene. We see Doctor Emil Hamilton anxiously sitting in an empty boardroom. Just himself and an imposing voice that says, “You know in light of recent circumstances, you should be glad you aren’t arrested for negligence, let alone fired for gross incompetence.” Hamilton pleads, “I know, I know sir.” The voice cuts him off, “Please, allow me to finish. The board of directors has even floated around the idea of cutting all funding to this branch of the facilities altogether.” “Oh God, no.” Hamilton begs. The voice interrupts again with annoyance in his voice, “I said let me finish, Emil. You see, you are a very lucky man because I do not see it that way. As a matter of fact, I see you as a man who wishes to make amends, and I know you have the brilliant biological know-how to do that for me. I’ve actually decided to increase your funding!” Hamilton can’t believe what he just heard. “You’re not serious,” Doctor Hamilton questions. The powerful figure walks out of the dark shadow present in the conference room, his bald head catching the light, “my friend, when it comes to business, I am always serious. And you are going to love the name I’ve workshopped for your new little secret project.” Lex Luther proudly gestures with his hands, “Cadmus.”