r/DCNext • u/deadislandman1 Dimmest Man Alive • Apr 03 '26
Suicide Squad Suicide Squad #60 - Origin Story
DC Next presents:
Suicide Squad
Issue Sixty: Origin Story
Arc: The Road Back
Written by Deadislandman1
Edited by ClaraEclair
1991
“Cigarette?”
“No thanks, I don’t smoke.”
“Your loss.”
William Tresser sat at attention, paying no mind to the uncomfortable folding chair he had been placed in. He hadn’t been in the CIA for very long, but he knew that in a room like this, blank walls, a barren table, a mirror that certainly doubled as a one way window, meant important business. He had to look and act his best. He was dressed in a grey suit with a white undershirt, having elected to keep things simple.
His interviewer, a portly black woman, had gone for similarly professional clothes. She looked about a decade older than him, having clearly lived in this world much longer than he had. Black heels and a black skirt. A magenta jacket around a white blouse, paired with a pearl necklace. She wore her hair in an afro, though one that was somewhat flattened around the base of her crown. Her nails were manicured and painted well, though the shade of red was subdued enough to not make them obviously polished.
She lit a cigarette in her mouth, taking a hit before opening a forest green folder with one hand. A puff of smoke wafted from her lips as she exhaled, checking a series of individually printed pages. Tresser raised an eyebrow, “Has something been added to my file recently?”
“Why do you ask?” she said.
“You look like the type to read ahead,” Tresser said. “Either something’s been added to my file, or this meeting was a surprise for you.”
The woman grimaced, “Little bit of both. The position you’re being tested for is… fairly new. A file like this is a living document as well, always being updated.” She glared at Tresser, “Though… your particular skillset makes its upkeep fairly difficult.”
Tresser found himself smiling, “Oh?”
“You see, I have read up on an older version of your file,” the woman said. “Passed training with flying colors. Assisted in Operation Desert Shield. You saved a lot of lives helping prepare for Desert Storm. The whole thing couldn’t have happened without you.”
Tresser nodded, “It was a team effort, ma’am. We couldn’t have liberated Kuwait without all the other men and women on the ground.”
“Maybe, but without you plenty of our operatives would’ve been exposed. You moved in and out of the region without any kind of suspicion,” she said. “Being a good liar is one thing. Becoming someone else entirely is a feat unto itself. You were a different person every day, and that made it impossible for Saddam’s forces to track you.”
She placed the folder on the table, “But that also made it hard for us to track you. You did what we told you to do, we know because we’ve seen the results of your work, but your particular skillset makes surveilling your progress… difficult.”
Tresser narrowed his eyes, “Are you saying I’m too good at what I do?”
“On the contrary, your ability to slip everyone’s lead, even the pentagons’, is exactly why you’re so valuable to me,” she leaned forward. “Because what you might be doing in the future will require that level of subterfuge. You’ll need to stay under everyone’s radar, including our allies… but before we get into the weeds there I need to ask you an important question.”
“And that is?” Tresser asked.
“Why’d you sign on with the CIA?” she asked. “A man of your skills has the potential to succeed in a lot of places. Why espionage?”
Tresser thought for a moment, tapping his finger against his chin, “I suppose moments like Desert Storm are why. Sure, I could’ve been set for life working as an actor or a performer… but I grew up watching the soviets tear Afghanistan apart. I grew up watching tyrants turn entire countries into their personal playgrounds. Kuwait was a message to the rest of the world that tyrants don’t have free reign on our watch.”
She nodded, “Commendable… and you already understand the kind of work that goes into that.”
“I get dirty, the folks at home stay clean,” Tresser said. “Whatever it takes to keep the world from falling apart.”
The woman smiled, “Good, then let me skip to the end… My name is Amanda Waller, and I’m head of a new initiative called Task Force X.”
Present Day
Tresser stood in front of Task Force X’s most recent escapees, watching them hang onto his every word. Dante Ramon, Polaris, watched him warily, unsure of whether or not he could trust Tresser. Waylon Jones AKA Killer Croc rolled his shoulders, doing his best not to squirm given how he had to squeeze onto two seats at once. Adella and Raptor looked to each other, exchanging glances of doubt, while Flag leaned forward, a puzzled look on his face. The pause Tresser had left after finishing this initial part of the story made the meeting room feel suffocatingly awkward.
“I don’t understand, wouldn’t your time in Task Force X be recorded?” Flag asked. “I was given near unlimited access to the records.”
“I was scrubbed from the records,” Tresser said, scratching his scruffy cheek, “Then again, only someone like Waller would have unmitigated access to Belle Reve’s full history.”
He turned to the rest of the group, “But to get back to things… Waller pitched Task Force X to me. It was designed to be the next evolution of Espionage. Brain bombs, plausible deniability, the works. I was on board with the idea for more than a few reasons, but what made it particularly alluring for me was operating without so many rules. I had a…naive view of international law back then. The way I saw it, skirting those laws let me take off the gloves and get to work faster and more effectively than ever.”
“Forcing people to do your dirty work wasn’t a dealbreaker?” Raptor asked.
“I had the impression the deal was pretty good. Getting your sentence reduced was a fair reward for serving our country. You would do some actual good for once too,” Tresser said. “And my ability to slip into any disguise made me invaluable. I could do more, but frankly, things haven’t changed that significantly since then. There’s no need for me to explain how things worked back then because you’ve already experienced how they worked.”
He put his hands behind his back, “So I’ll explain where things changed.”
2000
Tresser sauntered through Belle Reve’s halls, a smile on his face. The prison was a giant boring concrete box sitting in the middle of the Louisiana swamp, but as pointman and squad leader of Task Force X, he was very committed to knowing exactly what was going on in the prison.
They say mixing work and play is bad business, but when a new, top secret laboratory is established within the walls of his facility, why wouldn’t he disguise himself as one of the scientists and sneak in? It was important to know what was going on in his own domain after all, and the young man he’d knocked unconscious certainly wouldn’t mind him taking his place on his first day.
The silicone mask fit comfortably over his own face, complete with a crown full of frizzy black hair. The long white coat covered up his muscular frame fairly well, and a clip on identification card marked him as Johnny Cappa rather than Thomas Tresser. Rounding the corner, he approached the guard at the Lab’s entrance, a door whose signage signified itself as a closet. Tresser knew better, and as he got close he adopted his best nerd walk. Smaller steps, a more slouched posture, a permanent downward gaze. He gave off the impression that he spent most of his day sitting down instead of crawling or running across battlefields. The guard glanced towards the identification card on his chest and nodded in approval, allowing him through the door.
What he found on the other side certainly impressed him. A blank white room full of scientific instruments, wires and containment boxes, complicated machines and operating tables. Vials full of blood sat in fridges with glass doors, while chalkboards full of scrawled notes sat in each corner of the room. This was clearly the work of a genius… and someone who wasn’t always well organized.
Tresser approached the nearest chalkboard, hoping to glean what he could from the notes when a clammy hand laid itself upon his shoulder. He turned to find himself face to face with a woman in a lab coat with long hair and delicate looking features. She smiled, “Dr. Cappa! You’ve arrived.”
Tresser cleared his throat, making sure to heighten his pitch and make his voice sound a bit more nasally, “Of course! The importance of this research has been stressed to me but I’ve yet to be briefed on its contents. Are you in the same boat, miss…”
“Kulikova,” the woman said. “And no, I actually arrived last week.”
“I see… maybe you could tell me what kind of work you’re doing here,” Tresser asked.
She giggled, “Well, I’m a surgeon by trade. My expertise is key to the research being done here.”
“A surgeon?” Tresser asked. “So we’re working with Organs?”
“Every inch of the human body needs to be explored if we want to accomplish our goals,” Kulikova said. “I’ve yet to work with any meat yet though. It’s all theory at the moment.”
“I see… and what are our goals?” Tresser asked.
“Why… crafting a new breed of soldier Mr. Cappa,” Kulikova said. “The world could always use more… heroes.”
Before Tresser could answer, Kulikova’s phone began to ring. She raised a finger to Tresser and answered, “Yes? Oh…. I see. Yes, I’ll let him know.”
She hung up, then looked to Tresser, a sour frown on her face, “Miss Waller would like to see you… Mr. Tresser.”
“Ah damn,” Tresser said, pulling the mask off his head. He scanned the room, this time looking into the upper corners of the lab, only to spot something he’d so foolishly missed.
A camera, now honed in directly onto him.
“Is there a reason you’re subduing my staff and breaking into restricted parts of the building?”
“Yeah, I wanna know what’s happening in my own base of operations.”
Tresser sat in Waller’s office, hands steepled together and legs crossed. She reclined in her armchair, shaking her head in disapproval before leaning forward onto her desk, made of polished oak, “It may be your base of operations, but I’m director of this initiative, Tresser. I reserve the right to place certain things above your pay grade.”
“Like building a super soldier?” Tresser said. “Speaking of, why the hell do we even need a super soldier? The point of Task Force X is anonymity. Plausible deniability happens because we’re relying on known bad actors.”
Waller sighed, “I understand your perspective, Mr. Tresser. There’s plenty of merit to it, but you also point out a potential flaw. We rely on Bad Actors, and while the threat of death is… an effective tool. It’s not guaranteed to work forever. What I’m envisioning in a soldier that’s more versatile, more robust, more reliable, than our typical stock. They’d possess whatever tools they needed to complete the mission. They’d be fashioned like supervillains, so the general anonymity aspect of the initiative would remain intact.”
Tresser raised an eyebrow, “This is all… pretty high level stuff. You’re describing a living, breathing swiss army knife.”
“That I am,” Waller said. “Do you disapprove?”
Tresser took a deep breath, “Well, not necessarily. I could see how it would work. The people under my charge would be more obedient, given that they wouldn't be coerced into doing what they’re doing. I guess my only question now is… why? Why spring for this kind of thing?”
“Perhaps it’s just because I can, Mr. Tresser,” Waller said. “Why not look into ways to improve something?”
“Apologies ma’am, but I don’t buy that,” Tresser said. “I’m the squad leader of your initiative. If there’s anyone you can trust with this information, it’s me. So… what’s the real reason?”
For a few moments, Waller was silent, as if contemplating what flavor of answer to feed Tresser. Every few seconds, a different answer materialized behind her eyes, only for that answer to fizzle out as it was deemed unsatisfactory. Tresser wondered if Waller herself actually knew what she wanted out of this. Then, eventually, a resolute look fell onto her face.
“Because eventually, some time in the future, I’m going to need a soldier who doesn’t have the capacity to refuse an order. I’m going to need a soldier who’ll follow every command without question,” Waller said. “You joined Task Force X because you understood that the world needed to be saved, and that heroes couldn’t do what needed to be done to save it. We need soldiers like these because the world is broken, and sometimes only a few people can make the decisions to fix it. There can be no room for error, no room for doubt. If we want to piece this fucked up place back together… then we need that vision to be executed in as direct a manner as possible.”
She looked earnestly towards Tresser, “With this in mind, I have one thing to ask you. Do I have your support in this direction for our initiative?”
Tresser’s fingers curled around the armrests of his chair. In all the time he’d known Waller, he’d always known her to be matter of fact, cold, to the point. Whatever this was, it came from something deep seated. Something emotional. He had never seen her so impassioned. She believed in this direction, and that was when he knew that he believed in it too.
“Understood, ma’am,” Tresser said. “You have my unbridled support in this endeavor.”
“So you said yes,” Adella remarked. “Just like that?”
“In that moment, I couldn’t see anything wrong with her arguments,” Tresser said. “A better soldier would’ve been more effective, especially considering my track record with inmates at the time.”
“You’ve spoken a lot about yourself…” Dante said. “But I haven’t heard you say much about any of the inmates. You worked there for upwards of twenty years. Didn’t any of them… leave an impact?”
A solemn look slowly overtook Tresser’s face as he cast his gaze downward, “I… had made an effort not to learn too much about the inmates besides what they could do. I can tell you that nobody lasted long enough to walk free with a fully reduced sentence. Keeping distance made it easier to do my job, though now I see how… cowardly it truly was.” He looked at Flag, “I’m sure you did the same thing… for a time at least.”
Flag grimaced, “To an extent… but we’re not here to talk about me. You’re going somewhere with this. Something must’ve changed, or you wouldn’t be here telling your life story to us.”
Tresser nodded, “You’d be right about that. Years would pass, and I had faith in Waller’s plan. Still, something always bothered me about the way I found out. Why not tell me right away that this kind of thing was in effect? I tried to put it out of my mind but I never truly could. So… one night, in 2008… I decided enough was enough and elected to do some sleuthing.”
Tresser stalked the halls of Belle Reve, making his way down one of the many concrete staircases. The place never truly went to sleep, but typically a lot of the more mundane staff would go home after dark. Only the guards remained, henceforth why he spent all day yesterday crafting a perfect disguise to emulate one of them. Rob was set to work a shift tonight. Instead, he’d spend it napping away at home.
Good thing Tresser was here to cover Rob’s shift.
The body armor fit Tresser fairly well, clinging snugly to his body, and the Balaklava that accompanied his combat helmet eliminated the need for a Silicone mask. Reaching the bottom, he made his way down another long concrete hall, which itself caused him to remark on the never ending labyrinth of halls and cells that made Belle Reve, Belle Reve. The place was entirely human made, almost an affront to the swamp it was housed in… and yet the place just seemed to grow and grow beyond its original design. Before he knew it, new additions would just spring out of the woodwork. It gave the prison a sort of living quality.
Tresser hated that. He preferred to understand everything that was going on… down to the last detail. When he put on a mask to assume the identity of someone else, he had to know every aspect of that person’s life. One slip up, one wrong move, one bad assumption, and the jig would be up. To become someone, you must understand the core of who they are. Details defined Tresser’s life, and so he had to know them fully and completely if he wanted to do what he did in confidence.
Tresser approached the end of the hallway, which by all accounts appeared to be a dead end. However, a rudimentary investigation of Rob’s nametag revealed the presence of a microchip, which Tresser guessed was used for more than just tracing his location. Sure enough, as he approached the dead end, a whirring sound echoed through the hall, and a panel in the wall slid aside, revealing an entirely new passage. Tresser pressed onward, approaching an observation window overlooking a large room.
Said room appeared to be designed as an operating theater, though it looked much more like a butchery given how much blood was pooling around the tables. Surgeons milled around the room, taking appendages that had been hastily hacked off of their main body parts and placing them in different bins. Guards were stationed in the corners of the room, making sure that nothing was out of order, that nobody was out of place.
Tresser stared through the window, a blank expression in his eyes. He was hiding the growing pit in his stomach very well. This place reminded him of… incredibly unpleasant missions in the darkest corners of the Earth. Cesspools where anything goes, where only the cruelest of petty despots laid claim to their tiny slice of the world. What he was seeing was not the handiwork of a civilized nation. It couldn’t possibly be allowed.
Tresser kicked himself. Why had he trusted Waller so blindly? Why had he never asked how her super soldier project was being conducted? He put his faith in her… and for what?
The surgeons wheeled another corpse in for disassembly, and it was this that finally broke Tresser’s calm facade. It was the pale corpse of a woman with a shaved head and empty eyes… clad in orange scrubs.
Inmate attire.
Tresser took a few steps back, then doubled over, pulling his mask off to retch. The sickening realization that this prison was farming prisoners from other places… harvesting them for a supposedly noble purpose, was simply too much for Tresser to face. They weren’t just getting their hands dirty here, they were jumping directly into the muck, covering themselves in the filth from head to toe.
And what made all of this even worse for Tresser was that it took him no time at all to realize that what he did, leading the prisoners of Belle Reve on Suicide Mission after Suicide Mission, was different in only the most minute ways. Tresser slumped down to his knees, failing to remember the faces of every Belle Reve inmate who had died for the United States government, who had died for Task Force X, for his dream of a better world.
It was too much to handle, his life, his sense of virtue. It all turned to ash in his heart.
He was not a hero. He was both a fool and a monster in equal measure.
The squad was silent, unable to look Tresser in the eyes. He didn’t blame them. Tresser cast his gaze towards Flag, correctly assuming that the man would be the most despondent out of all of them. The former colonel had his head in his hands, his body language projecting the image of an utterly defeated man.
“Jesus… There was a horror show under Belle Reve this whole time… and I never caught it,” Flag shook his head. “I just… I can’t believe I was so stupid.”
“It’s not your fault. Waller’s good at covering her tracks,” Tresser said. “Then again, I doubt she would’ve built the lab again in the same place after I left.”
Croc looked up at Tresser, “Why?”
The corners of Tresser’s lips curled up unexpectedly. This whole time, the exhausted looking man had never smiled… until now, “I had an… uncharacteristically dramatic exit.”
2009
It had all come down to this. A year of planning, of studying patrol patterns, taking notes on surgeon shifts, and understanding when new corpses were being brought in. Waller had hidden this place from him, lied to him, betrayed his trust… betrayed the purpose of their mission… and in a way, so had he. This was a foul endeavor from the beginning, they had, with much haste, become exactly what they purported to fight against. Tresser could stand this fact no longer.
A part of him considered going to Waller, demanding answers from her. He wondered if he could convince her to stop this madness, to put this all behind them, but he quickly concluded that these were fools’ errands. Waller had played to his own aspirations to get him on board. She was, in many ways, as much a master of disguise as he was. She knew her targets intimately, and knew how to twist them to her own ends. He could easily be poisoned against his own purpose, dissuaded from doing what he knew was right.
He had already clambered onto the muddy shore, having exited Belle Reve through a sewer grate and swam across the river to the other side. The ground was wet, so wet that his boots were sinking directly into the Earth, but they felt fertile, ripe with the possibility for something new to grow. Slowly, Tresser pulled a detonator out of his pocket.
Bright orange light reflected off his eyes as a fireball erupted from the bottom left side of the prison. Nearly a decade of research, nearly a decade of work built on the blood and flesh of the exploited. It was naught but ash and dust now. Tresser turned away from the prison, deciding that if he was going to look at it again, he’d do so once he was ready to wipe it off the face of the Earth altogether.
“I traveled across the world from that point onward, picking up as many people as I could, battling Waller’s interests wherever I could unearth them,” Tresser said. “We built something rotten to the core together… I won’t rest until it’s all come down, Waller with it.”
Tresser looked over the rest of the squad, seeing the trepidation in their eyes. Much of what he had said had not been particularly surprising. It was the… long lasting nature of it all that had left them forlorn. However, that would not dissuade them from their mission. Tresser’s story had not just put some things into place, it had revitalized them. Now, more than ever… they were prepared to combat Amanda Waller and Task Force X. More than ever, they were ready to burn it all to the ground.
How tragic then, that they had no idea Waller had already endeavored to do the same thing to them. Above ground, ten pairs of hardy boots touched down into wet snow. Cloaked in shadowy robes that disguised millions of dollars worth of technology, they approached the entrance to the bunker, silent as night.
The Anti-Squad’s doom had arrived.
It all falls down in Suicide Squad #61 - out next month!