Clark Kent is seated in the front row, almost directly in my line of sight. I wonder for a moment how he arranged that, then dismiss the thought as unimportant. I glance around him to find his wife – the woman who should have been Mrs. Lex Luthor – but I don’t see her. Perhaps she couldn’t get credentials, perhaps the state wouldn’t allow more than one representative of the Daily Planet, or – and I flatter myself, of course – she couldn’t bear to see me die, to lose me forever.
Warden Castle is droning on about justice or some such drivel. Justice! Were there any real justice in this world, I would be ruling it. All the people, not just those of Metropolis, would have to look up to see me. As I boasted to Kent and the woman whom I still love on the night I met them, I deserve to be the highest—
Wait a moment.
On the night of his first appearance – the night he issued his challenge to me – Superman told me that if I wanted to see him to look up. And as I think back on it now, he was all but throwing my own words back into my face. How could he know what I said—
No. That is impossible. There must be another explanation.
Of course. Lois must have told him. She had to have bragged on me to him during that flight from the EPRAD shuttle launch to the Daily Planet and told him what I said. He must have taken it personally, the over-muscled micro-brained alien.
I look at Kent, the model of mid-western blandness. His face usually seems to wear either a smile that hints that he knows a secret none of the rest of us know, or an expression of firm determination to accomplish something he deems important.
Except for now.
Right now, he looks almost predatory.
He must be anticipating my demise and my permanent absence from his wife’s life. He still fears that she will come to her senses, terminate her relationship with him, and return to my side where she belongs. And it is well that he does worry, for I have no doubt that, given sufficient time, Lois Lane would one day be Lois Lane Luthor. This is Clark Kent’s fear, his nemesis, his nightmare, and I deeply regret that it will end in a few moments.
So why is he staring at me with such intensity?
The speaker inside my chamber draws my attention. Castle has just informed the small group that I have no last words to share, as if I would grant them the satisfaction of hearing them. He also says that all legal appeals have been exhausted, and that despite multiple protests from anti-capital punishment groups, the execution will proceed as planned.
Then he turns to me and stares at me through the window. “May God have mercy on your soul, Alexander Luthor,” he intones.
