The Fortress of Solitude stood at the roof of the world, a cathedral of crystalline spires piercing the Arctic sky. Kryptonian architecture defied terrestrial physics—structures that should have collapsed under their own weight instead reached toward the stars with geometric precision, their surfaces drinking in starlight and aurora alike.
Clark Kent had never hated this place before.
Tonight, he did.
He ran through corridors that recognized his biosignature, doors dissolving into archways at his approach, lights brightening to guide his path. The Fortress had been his sanctuary for years. A connection to a homeworld he had never known. A place where he could be Kal-El instead of Clark, could explore his heritage without the weight of human expectations.
Now it felt like a mausoleum.
Ethan's body lay cradled in his arms, lighter than it should have been. Blood had soaked through the Superman suit, drying to a rust-brown crust that Clark could feel with every step. His brother's heartbeat fluttered against his chest—weak. A bird's wings beating against a cage that was slowly closing.
"Kelex."
The robotic attendant materialized from an adjacent corridor, its spherical form built with Kryptonian technology that outstripped anything humanity had ever conceived.
"Kal-El. I detect a human biosignature in critical condition. Medical bay preparation is recommended."
"Already moving. Prep the Medical Matrix. Full life support. Cellular regeneration suite. Everything."
"Acknowledged. However, I must note that the Medical Matrix was designed for Kryptonian physiology. Human cellular structures may respond unpredictably to—"
"I don't care." Clark's voice cracked on the last word. "He's dying. Human hospitals couldn't stabilize him. Their machines kept... the readings made no sense. His heart would stop and restart. Brain activity spiking into patterns the doctors couldn't even categorize. One of them told me he should already be dead three times over."
He rounded the final corner. The Medical Bay stretched before him, all gleaming crystal surfaces and holographic displays. At its center, the Medical Matrix waited—a pod of translucent material that seemed to flow like liquid mercury frozen mid-ripple. Conduits of pale light ran through its surface, pulsing with energy that had once sustained Kryptonians during interstellar voyages lasting decades.
"Prep complete," Kelex announced. "Initiating bioscan upon patient placement."
Clark lowered Ethan into the Matrix with hands that could crush diamonds but now trembled like leaves in a storm. The pod's surface parted to receive his brother, then sealed over him with a soft luminescence. Immediately, holographic displays erupted above the Matrix—vital signs, cellular readouts, neurological patterns, all rendered in Kryptonian script that Clark had taught himself to read years ago.
Most of it was red. Warning colors. Danger indicators.
"Primary assessment complete," Kelex intoned. "Subject exhibits multiple traumatic injuries consistent with high-velocity impact. Skull fracture across the right parietal bone. Seven rib fractures, three with pulmonary involvement. Splenic rupture. Hepatic laceration. Spinal contusion at T4-T7. Estimated survival probability under human medical care: two point three percent."
Clark closed his eyes. The numbers hit like kryptonite.
"Can the Matrix save him?"
"The Medical Matrix is initiating cellular stabilization protocols. Life functions are being maintained through artificial means. However..."
"However what?"
"I am detecting anomalies in the subject's cellular structure that do not correlate with established human biology."
Clark's eyes snapped open. "What kind of anomalies?"
The holographic display shifted, zooming in on a microscopic view of Ethan's blood cells. They looked normal at first glance—red and white cells drifting through plasma, platelets clustering around wound sites. But as Clark watched, he noticed something wrong.
The cells were moving too deliberately.
Not the random Brownian motion of biological matter. These cells were organizing. Forming patterns. Structures that almost resembled symbols before dissolving and reforming into new configurations.
"Unknown," Kelex admitted. "The cellular behavior does not match any pathology in my medical database. It is not consistent with Kryptonian physiology, human mutation, or any catalogued form of metahuman expression. Additionally, spectral analysis detects trace energy signatures that fall outside established classifications."
"Magic?"
"Negative. The signature does not correlate with mystical energy patterns recorded from encounters with Doctor Fate, Zatanna Zatara, or other magic-wielding entities. It is also inconsistent with Speed Force residue, emotional spectrum radiation, or divine emanations."
"Then what is it?"
"Unknown," Kelex repeated. "The energy signature appears to operate on principles that are not represented in any Kryptonian scientific archive. I recommend further analysis, but current priority should be maintaining patient stability."
Clark stared at his brother's face through the Matrix's translucent surface which was now filled with healing fluid. Ethan looked peaceful. Almost sleeping. The blood had been cleaned away by the pod's internal systems, and the wounds were slowly knitting closed under the ministrations of technology designed for a dead civilization.
But those cells kept moving in patterns that made no sense.
Instrument error, Clark told himself. The Matrix wasn't built for humans. It's misreading something. That's all.
He couldn't afford to process another crisis. Not now. Not with Ethan's life still hanging by a thread.
"Keep him stable," he ordered. "Continuous monitoring. Alert me immediately if anything changes."
"Acknowledged."
Clark turned away from the Matrix. Toward the Fortress's communication array. Toward the call he had been dreading since the moment he pulled Ethan from that wreckage.
His parents deserved to know.
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Martha Kent's voice broke on her son's name.
"Ethan? Clark, what do you mean there was an accident? Where is he? Is he—"
"He's alive, Ma." Clark gripped the communication crystal hard enough that hairline fractures spiderwebbed across its surface. "He's hurt bad, but he's alive. I've got him in the Fortress. The medical systems here are keeping him stable."
Silence on the other end. Then Jonathan's voice, rough and steady in the way that strong men become steady when the alternative is collapse.
"What happened?"
"I don't know yet. I found his truck wrecked off Route 7. Something hit him, but I couldn't find what. No other vehicle. No debris. Pa, the road was empty for miles. There was nothing there that could have caused that kind of damage."
Another silence. Clark could hear his mother crying softly in the background. The sound carved through him worse than any blade.
"I'm going back to investigate," he continued. "I'm bringing the League. We'll find whoever did this. Whatever did this. I promise."
Jonathan's exhale crackled through the connection. "We're coming up there."
"Pa, the Fortress is in the Arctic. The cold alone—"
"I don't care if it's on the goddamn moon, Clark. That's my boy in there. We're coming."
Clark closed his eyes. He remembered being seventeen, lifting the tractor for the first time without meaning to, terrified that his parents would look at him differently. Jonathan had just nodded, put a hand on his shoulder, and said "We'll figure it out together, son."
That same steadiness now. That same unmovable certainty. Even facing the impossible, Jonathan Kent refused to bend.
"I'll send transport," Clark said quietly. "A pod from the ship. It'll bring you here safely."
"How long?"
"Four hours. Maybe less."
"We'll be ready." A pause. Then, softer: "Find out what happened, Clark. And when you do..."
The sentence didn't need finishing. Jonathan Kent had never been a violent man. Had raised both his sons to seek peaceful solutions, to believe in the fundamental goodness of people.
But some things transcended belief.
"I will," Clark said. "I promise."
The connection terminated. Clark stood alone in the Fortress's communication chamber, surrounded by the whispers of dead Krypton, listening to the silence of his brother's struggle in the room behind him.
Seven miles east of Smallville, the wreckage of Ethan Kent's truck sat alone in a darkened field.
Night had claimed Kansas completely. The moon hung overhead like a pale witness, casting silver light across wheat fields that stretched to every horizon. Wind moved through the crops in waves, creating the illusion of a vast vegetative ocean breathing slowly under the stars.
Nothing else moved.
For hours, the scene remained frozen. Emergency responders had never arrived—Clark had taken Ethan before anyone else could reach the site. No police tape marked the perimeter. No forensic teams combed through the debris. Just twisted metal and shattered glass surrounded by indifferent agriculture.
The blood began to stir at 11:47 PM.
It started small. A single droplet that had soaked into the soil trembled, then lifted. Not evaporating—rising. Defying gravity with the same casual impossibility that characterized so much of this universe's strangeness.
Then another droplet. And another.
Across the crash site, every biological remnant of Ethan Kent began to wake.
Flecks of skin embedded in the twisted metal of the driver's side door peeled free. A tooth fragment that had been knocked loose during impact rolled across the dashboard without any visible force propelling it. Blood that had painted the wheat stalks for yards in every direction reversed its splatter patterns, flowing upward and inward like time-lapse footage of a wound healing in reverse.
The movement was subtle at first. Easy to miss unless one was watching for it specifically. But as minutes passed, the pace accelerated.
Tissue fragments crawled across broken glass. Bone splinters vibrated against metal surfaces before launching themselves toward a central point. Blood droplets formed streams, then rivers, then a converging tide of crimson that defied every law of physics that human science had ever articulated.
All of it pulled toward the center of the wreckage. Toward an invisible point that exerted gravitational force on biology alone.
The wheat continued to sway in the wind. The metal remained still. Only the organic matter moved—drawn by something that distinguished between life with perfect precision.
At 11:52 PM, the gray light came.
It didn't arrive from any direction. It simply manifested—a luminescence that existed in spectrums beyond human perception, casting illumination that felt more like fog given visible form. Shadows fell in wrong directions, sometimes multiple shadows from a single object, each pointing toward a different point on the compass.
The light was old. Ancient in a way that transcended mere age. Looking at it—if anyone had been present to look—would have conveyed a sense of depths. Of vast spaces that existed somewhere beyond the visible glow. Of doors standing open onto corridors that wound through realities stacked atop realities, each one stranger than the last.
Within this gray luminescence, the biological matter completed its convergence.
A mass of blood and tissue and bone fragments floated at the crash site's center, roughly spherical, slowly rotating. It contained every biological trace Ethan Kent had left at the scene of his accident—every cell, every molecule, every microscopic remnant of the body that had been broken here hours before.
Then the parts that comvered together begain to melt till only pure biological matter was all that was left and after that they started to multiply rapidly and formed portions
One portion burned red-gold, flames licking across its surface without consuming it. It rose higher than its siblings, straining toward the sky, before vanishing in a burst of light that left afterimages shaped like a sun.
One portion turned black. Not dark—black. An absence so complete that it seemed to drink in the gray luminescence around it. It sank into its own shadow and disappeared, leaving behind a cold spot in the air that would linger for days.
One portion shimmered like a reflection on disturbed water. Its surface showed images—faces, places, possibilities—flickering too fast to comprehend before it folded in on itself and ceased to exist, leaving behind the faint scent of libraries and old paper.
One portion crackled with energy that looked like lightning but moved too slowly, too deliberately. It stretched into a line, then a point, then nothing—accelerating into a future that hadn't arrived yet.
One portion grew branches. Roots. Leaves that sprouted and withered in seconds. It burrowed into the earth and was gone, leaving behind a single perfect flower that would bloom in this spot for exactly one year before dying.
The divisions continued. Twenty-two portions, twenty-two departures, each one vanishing through a different method, a different door, a different impossible pathway out of this reality.
Some burned. Some froze. Some simply ceased, folding into geometries that three-dimensional space couldn't contain. One laughed as it went—a sound like bells and screaming that echoed for a fraction of a second before cutting off completely.
The last portion lingered.
It floated alone in the gray light, smaller than its siblings, seemingly uncertain. The luminescence around it intensified, swirling with patterns that almost resembled language—symbols and sigils and grammatical structures that predated human cognition.
Then it too vanished.
The gray light folded in on itself and was gone.
Silence reclaimed the crash site.
Where there had been blood and viscera scattered across yards of Kansas farmland, there was now nothing. The wreckage remained—twisted metal, shattered glass, torn upholstery—but every biological trace had been collected, divided, and distributed to destinations that existed beyond the reach of any map.
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Superman landed at the crash site at 12:15 AM.
He had pushed himself faster than necessary, driven by a need to do something. Ethan was stable in the Matrix—Kelex would alert him if that changed—but stability wasn't recovery. Wasn't answers. Wasn't justice for whatever had done this.
Clark needed evidence. A trail to follow. Something to hunt.
He found nothing.
His enhanced vision swept across the scene in multiple spectrums—visible light, infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray. He catalogued the wreckage his head. Noted the impact points. Calculated the force vectors. Reconstructed the sequence of events that had transformed his brother's truck from vehicle to sculpture. [A/N: Yes, Superman is smart and dangerously so to the point take everything about his powers away from him and just keep that Super brain of his and he could still rank in Top 10 of whatever Genius list you can think of]
But the blood was gone.
Clark froze mid-analysis. His eyes narrowed. He looked again, this time at the microscopic level, examining every surface for biological traces.
Nothing. Not a single cell. Not a dried flake of blood. Not a hair follicle or skin fragment or any of the countless organic markers that violent accidents always left behind.
The absence screamed wrongness.
Ethan had been bleeding heavily when Clark pulled him from the wreckage. The wounds were severe enough that significant biological matter should have remained at the scene. Blood soaking into soil. Tissue fragments embedded in metal edges. The physics of trauma demanded it.
Instead, the crash site was sterile. As if someone had scrubbed it so clewn that exceeded any cleaning technology Clark was aware of. As if Ethan Kent's body had never been present at all.
"This is wrong," Clark murmured. "This is very wrong."
He tapped the communicator in his ear.
"Batman. I need you in Kansas."
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Bruce Wayne arrived twenty-three minutes later, which meant he had already been en route when Clark called.
The Batwing touched down two hundred yards from the crash site, its stealth systems rendering it nearly invisible against the night sky. Batman emerged with a case of equipment that probably cost more than most hospitals' entire forensic departments, his cape billowing behind him as he strode toward the wreckage.
He said nothing at first. Simply began working.
Clark watched his friend deploy sensors, collect samples, run spectral analyses.
Ten minutes passed.
"You're not going to like this," Batman finally said.
"I already don't like it."
"Then you're going to like it less." Bruce straightened, a scanning device in his hand displaying data that Clark couldn't or rather doesn't want to interpret. "There's no biological trace evidence anywhere at this site. None. The probability of that occurring naturally after an accident of this severity is functionally zero."
"Someone cleaned up."
"More than cleaned up. They erased it. At the molecular level." Bruce's jaw tightened beneath the cowl. "I'm detecting residual energy signatures, but they don't match anything in my databases. It's beyond anything I've encountered before."
"Kelex said the same thing. About Ethan's cellular structure. There were anomalies it couldn't classify."
Batman turned sharply. "What kind of anomalies?"
"His cells were... moving. Organizing themselves into patterns. Symbols, almost. The readings didn't make any sense."
Behind the cowl, Bruce's eyes narrowed. Clark knew that expression. It meant Bruce was already building theories, constructing frameworks, preparing contingencies for scenarios that hadn't fully materialized yet.
"I'm calling Diana," Batman said. "And J'onn. We need perspectives beyond the scientific."
Clark nodded. He had expected this. Had dreaded it, in a way—involving the League meant admitting that this situation exceeded his ability to handle alone. But pride had no place here. Not when Ethan's life hung in the balance.
"Barry too. If there's a trail, he can find it faster than anyone."
"Already messaged him." Bruce returned to his analysis, but his voice softened slightly. "We'll figure this out, Clark. Your brother is going to be fine."
The words were uncharacteristically gentle coming from Batman. Clark recognized them for what they were—comfort offered by a man who rarely offered comfort, from one orphan to another.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. Thank me when we catch whoever did this."
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Question: What do you think the Cells that were observed were trying to do?
Your answer: