The funny thing about dying is that you get a lot of time to think about the things you never did.
At least, that's what David Reyes discovered as he lay pinned beneath three tons of twisted metal and shattered concrete, his blood pooling beneath him in an ever-expanding crimson lake that reflected the emergency lights of the collapsed parking garage above.
Thirty-four years old, he thought dimly, his vision swimming. Thirty-four years old, and I never even made it to San Diego Comic-Con.
It was a stupid thing to think about while dying. There were probably more important considerations—his mother, who would get the call in a few hours; his apartment full of memorabilia that his sister would have to sort through; the half-finished novel on his laptop about a superhero who actually inspired people instead of brooding on rooftops. But David had always been a little ridiculous, and he supposed death wasn't going to change that.
The earthquake had come without warning, as earthquakes do. One moment he'd been walking to his car after a late shift at the hospital—he was a physical therapist, specializing in helping accident victims regain their mobility, a job he'd chosen specifically because it let him help people in small but meaningful ways—and the next moment the world had become a screaming, grinding chaos of dust and debris.
He'd managed to push a woman and her daughter out of the way. He remembered that much clearly. The mother had been struggling with a stroller, and the ceiling had started to come down, and David hadn't even thought about it. He'd just moved, shoving them toward the exit ramp hard enough to send them sprawling to safety.
The concrete pillar had caught him across the back a half-second later.
Now here he was, listening to the distant sounds of rescue sirens, knowing with the calm certainty of a medical professional that they wouldn't reach him in time. His spine was almost certainly severed. The internal bleeding was catastrophic. He could feel his body growing cold from the extremities inward, like someone was slowly turning off lights in a house.
At least they got out, he thought. The mom and the kid. At least I did that much.
His eyes drifted to his left hand, where his fingers were still weakly curled around his phone. The screen was cracked but still glowing, frozen on the image he'd been looking at just before the earthquake hit—his lockscreen, which displayed the iconic image of Superman lifting a car over his head, cape billowing behind him, that famous reassuring smile on his face.
Superman.
God, he'd loved Superman.
Not in the way some fans loved characters, with obsessive collection habits and heated online arguments about power scaling. David had loved Superman the way a drowning man loves the concept of shore—desperately, achingly, with his whole heart. Because Superman represented everything David believed the world needed and everything he tried, in his own small way, to embody.
Hope. Compassion. The simple, revolutionary idea that power should be used to help people rather than control them.
David had grown up in a rough neighborhood in Metropolis—the kind of place where hope was in short supply and cynicism was a survival mechanism. His father had left when he was six. His mother had worked three jobs to keep food on the table. The other kids had taught him early that the world was cruel and that kindness was weakness.
But then he'd found a battered, water-damaged comic book in a dumpster behind his apartment building. Action Comics #775—"What's So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?"
He'd read it seventeen times that first week.
The story was about Superman facing off against a team of brutal antiheroes called the Elite, who believed that the only way to fight evil was to become more vicious than the villains. They'd mocked Superman's old-fashioned values. They'd called him naive, outdated, a relic of a more innocent time.
And Superman had proven them wrong. Not by becoming like them, not by abandoning his principles, but by demonstrating that there was strength in compassion. That hope wasn't weakness—it was the hardest, bravest thing anyone could hold onto in a world determined to beat it out of you.
That comic book had changed David's life.
He'd started standing up for the smaller kids at school, even when it got him beaten up. He'd volunteered at homeless shelters through high school. He'd chosen a career in healthcare specifically because he wanted to spend his life helping people recover from their worst moments. He'd donated to charities, pulled over to help strangers with flat tires, and once spent an entire night sitting with an elderly neighbor who was afraid to die alone.
None of it was heroic. None of it would ever make the news. He couldn't fly or lift buildings or shoot lasers from his eyes.
But he'd tried. God, he'd tried to live up to that symbol. To be the kind of person who made the world a little bit brighter just by being in it.
Some Superman I turned out to be, he thought bitterly, his vision starting to tunnel. Couldn't even save myself.
But even as the thought formed, another part of him—the part that had read that comic seventeen times, the part that had chosen hope every single day for twenty-eight years—rejected it.
No. I saved them. The mother and child. That counts. That has to count for something.
His breathing was becoming shallow now. The cold had reached his chest, and he knew he only had moments left.
I wish I could have done more, he thought, and the regret was a physical ache worse than any of his injuries. I wish I could have been something more. Not for glory, not for recognition, but just... to help more people. To show more people that hope isn't foolish. That kindness isn't weakness.
I wish I could have been someone who mattered.
His eyes fixed on the image of Superman, that familiar red cape, that confident smile.
I wish I could have been like you.
The lights went out.
And then, impossibly, they came back on.
David's first thought was that the afterlife had much better lighting than he'd expected.
His second thought was considerably more alarming: Why am I standing up?
He shouldn't be standing. He definitely remembered dying—he was a medical professional, for God's sake, he knew what catastrophic organ failure felt like—but here he was, apparently vertical and not in any pain whatsoever.
More than not in pain. He felt good. Better than good. He felt like he'd just slept for a week, eaten a perfect meal, and run a marathon without any of the negative consequences. His body hummed with energy, with power, in a way that was completely foreign to his experience.
And speaking of his body...
David looked down at himself.
Then he looked again, because surely his eyes were malfunctioning.
He was enormous.
Not just tall—though he was definitely much taller than his previous five-foot-ten—but massive in a way that suggested his skeleton had been replaced with steel girders and his muscles with hydraulic pistons. His chest was a barrel of pure muscle beneath a skintight white costume. His arms were thicker than his waist had been in his old body. His hands looked like they could crush bowling balls.
And there was a red emblem on his chest. A stylized red symbol that looked almost like...
Oh God, David thought.
Oh God oh God oh God.
He knew this body. He knew this costume. He knew that emblem.
He'd binged the entire show in a single weekend when it came out. He'd read the comics. He'd discussed the character's moral complexity with friends and strangers online.
Omni-Man. Nolan Grayson. The Viltrumite who had pretended to be Earth's greatest hero while secretly preparing to conquer it for his empire. The man who had murdered his teammates, brutalized his own son, and caused untold devastation in his mission to subjugate humanity.
David was somehow in the body of one of the most terrifying villains in comic book history.
"This is fine," he said out loud, and his voice came out as a deep, rumbling bass that made his old voice sound like a piccolo. "This is totally fine. I'm definitely not having a complete mental breakdown."
He took a deep breath—his lungs seemed to have approximately ten times their previous capacity—and tried to assess the situation rationally.
Okay. So he had died. That had definitely happened; he remembered it vividly. And now he was apparently alive again, in a different body, in what appeared to be...
He looked around for the first time.
He was standing in what looked like a relatively normal living room, decorated with expensive but tasteful furniture and an impressive collection of what appeared to be historical artifacts. Through large windows, he could see a cityscape that looked familiar—skyscrapers, elevated highways, a river cutting through the urban landscape.
And there, in the distance, dominating the skyline, was a massive tower shaped like a T.
David's heart—assuming Viltrumites had hearts—skipped a beat.
That was Titans Tower. He recognized it from countless comics and animated series. Which meant this city was probably Jump City. Which meant he was in the DC Universe.
Not the Invincible universe. Not the world where Omni-Man had committed his atrocities. This was DC. This was the universe of the Justice League, of the Teen Titans, of...
Of Superman.
The thought struck him with such force that he actually staggered. If this was the DC universe, then Superman existed. The actual, genuine, real Superman. The hero David had spent his entire life trying to emulate. If he could find Superman, maybe he could explain what had happened, maybe—
A newspaper caught his eye, sitting on a coffee table nearby. He picked it up, marveling briefly at how the paper felt like tissue between his now-massive fingers, and looked at the headline.
JUSTICE LEAGUE FOILS DARKSEID INVASION; WONDER WOMAN CALLS FOR GLOBAL UNITY
Okay. So the Justice League existed. That was good. That was very good. He scanned the article, looking for the name he needed to see, the confirmation that his hero was real and present and—
His eyes stopped on a paragraph midway through.
"The League's heavy hitters—Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, and Green Lantern—bore the brunt of the assault on Apokolips's advance forces, while Flash evacuated threatened civilians at superspeed. Notably absent was any Kryptonian presence; as readers are aware, no survivors of the destroyed planet Krypton have ever been documented on Earth or anywhere else in the known galaxy."
David read the paragraph three times.
No survivors.
No Kryptonian presence.
No Superman.
In this universe, the rocket from Krypton had never landed in Kansas. Jonathan and Martha Kent had never found a baby in a cornfield. Clark Kent had never grown up to become the symbol of hope that had defined David's entire worldview.
Superman didn't exist.
Superman didn't exist.
The newspaper crumpled in his hand—he'd accidentally crushed it—and David felt something crack in his chest that had nothing to do with his new Viltrumite physiology.
He sank down onto the expensive couch—which creaked alarmingly under his weight—and put his head in his hands.
All his life, he'd drawn strength from the idea of Superman. Even when times were hardest, even when hope seemed foolish, he'd reminded himself that somewhere, in some form, that ideal existed. That humanity was capable of producing something so purely good, so unambiguously heroic.
And now he was in a world where that ideal had never manifested.
A world that had never known the Man of Steel.
No, he thought suddenly, fiercely. No.
He stood up from the couch with such force that he actually left dents in the hardwood floor.
If this world doesn't have Superman, then this world needs someone to fill that gap. This world needs hope. This world needs someone to show them that power can be used for good, that strength doesn't have to mean domination, that kindness isn't weakness.
He looked down at his new body—at the massive muscles, the indestructible frame, the sheer power that he could feel humming through every fiber of his being.
Omni-Man had been a villain. In the story David knew, Nolan Grayson had used this body to commit unspeakable atrocities in the name of a genocidal empire. He had been a conqueror, a murderer, a monster wearing a hero's mask.
But David wasn't Nolan Grayson.
David was a physical therapist from Metropolis who had spent his whole life trying to live up to an ideal. He was a man who had died pushing strangers out of the way of falling debris. He was someone who had read Action Comics #775 seventeen times in a single week and never stopped believing in its message.
And now he had the power to actually do something about it.
I'm going to be Superman, David thought, and for the first time since waking up, he felt something like hope kindle in his chest. I'm going to be what this world needs. I'm going to show them that a person with this much power can choose to help instead of hurt, to protect instead of destroy.
I'm going to be the hero Omni-Man should have been.
It was a ridiculous thought. He had no idea how he'd gotten here, no idea if there were other Viltrumites in this universe, no idea how the Justice League would react to an alien powerhouse suddenly appearing and claiming to be friendly. He didn't know how to fly. He didn't know the limits of his strength. He didn't know anything about being a superhero beyond what he'd learned from consuming decades of comic books and movies and TV shows.
But he knew what Superman would do.
He would help people.
So that's what David was going to do.
The first step, he decided, was figuring out what resources he had available.
A thorough search of what he'd started thinking of as "his" apartment revealed several useful things. First, there was extensive documentation—ID cards, bank statements, property records—all identifying the owner of this residence as "Nolan Grayson," a bestselling author who had apparently written a series of travel books based on his "extensive journeys around the world." The books had titles like Hidden Wonders of the Amazon and Forgotten Kingdoms of Central Asia, and judging by the royalty statements David found in a desk drawer, they sold quite well.
Clever cover story, David thought. It explained why "Nolan" might have detailed knowledge of obscure locations around the world—useful for a Viltrumite who had presumably traveled the galaxy—while providing a legitimate income source and a reason for occasional extended absences.
Second, there was a hidden room behind a bookcase (because of course there was) that contained what David could only describe as a superhero lair. There was a sophisticated computer system, several backup costumes, a collection of alien-looking technology, and a wall covered in newspaper clippings.
David approached the clippings with growing fascination.
They were all about him. Or rather, about Omni-Man.
OMNI-MAN SAVES CRUISE SHIP FROM TSUNAMI
MYSTERIOUS HERO STOPS NUCLEAR MELTDOWN
OMNI-MAN: WHO IS THE WORLD'S MIGHTIEST HERO?
JUSTICE LEAGUE EXTENDS INVITATION TO RECLUSIVE POWERHOUSE
The dates ranged across several years, and the stories painted a picture of a hero who had been operating for at least half a decade—long enough to establish a reputation, but never joining the Justice League, never forming close connections with other heroes, always remaining somewhat apart.
That makes sense, David thought. If the original Nolan was a Viltrumite agent, he would have avoided getting too close to other heroes. Wouldn't want them discovering his true nature.
The most recent clipping was from six months ago. After that, nothing.
Had something happened to the original Nolan? Had he completed some mission? Had David somehow replaced him, or was this an alternate universe where events had unfolded differently?
There were too many questions and not enough answers. But David was nothing if not pragmatic. He could figure out the metaphysics later. Right now, he had more immediate concerns.
Like learning how to fly.
The good news was that Viltrumite flight was apparently instinctive. David spent about ten minutes in the hidden room concentrating very hard on "going up" before something clicked in his mind—like remembering how to ride a bicycle—and he suddenly found himself hovering three feet off the ground.
The bad news was that control was considerably less instinctive.
His first attempt to fly forward sent him crashing through the bookcase, through the wall of the apartment, and approximately half a mile across the city before he managed to stop himself. He spent a terrified moment hovering in mid-air over what appeared to be a busy intersection, watching tiny cars swerve and pedestrians point up at him, before the sheer reality of the situation hit him.
He was flying.
He was actually flying.
He laughed—a booming, joyful sound that startled a flock of pigeons on a nearby rooftop—and threw his arms out wide, rising higher into the sky.
This was incredible. The city spread out beneath him like a model, the buildings shrinking to toy-size as he climbed. The wind rushed past him—he could feel it, but it didn't impede him in the slightest—and the sun was warm on his face. He could see for miles in every direction, his new eyes apparently capable of much greater visual acuity than his old ones.
I'm flying, he thought giddily. I'm actually flying. This is the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me.
Even dying wasn't this cool.
He practiced for the next several hours, learning to control his speed and direction, discovering that he could accelerate fast enough to break the sound barrier without any real effort, finding out the hard way that stopping was harder than going (he left several new craters in an unpopulated desert before getting the hang of it).
By the time the sun began to set, David felt reasonably confident in his basic aerial capabilities. He could fly in a straight line without crashing into anything. He could turn without spinning out of control. He could hover in place for extended periods.
He was, he decided, ready to try being a hero.
Jump City was, according to the research David had done via the very sophisticated computer in his hidden lair, a major metropolitan area on the West Coast that served as the home base for the Teen Titans. It had a higher-than-average rate of supervillain activity, which made sense given the presence of the young heroes—criminals tended to congregate where there was opportunity, and attacking the Titans' home turf was apparently seen as a status symbol among a certain type of villain.
The city also, apparently, had excellent response protocols for superhuman incidents. David watched from high above as what appeared to be a minor bank robbery unfolded in the financial district, admiring how smoothly the police set up perimeters and evacuated civilians while waiting for superhuman backup to arrive.
The backup, in this case, appeared to be a single figure flying in from the direction of Titans Tower—a girl, David realized as she got closer, with orange skin, purple armor, and glowing green eyes.
Starfire.
His heart did a complicated little flutter. Starfire was one of his favorite DC heroes—kind, powerful, and possessed of a optimistic outlook that reminded him of Superman himself in many ways. She was also, he realized with a start, real now. An actual person, not a character on a page or screen.
He watched as she confronted the bank robbers, her hands glowing with brilliant green energy. The criminals—apparently just normal humans with guns—surrendered almost immediately, and David couldn't blame them. Even from several hundred feet up, the power radiating off the Tamaranean princess was intimidating.
She doesn't need my help, David realized. None of these heroes do. This world has the Justice League, the Titans, countless other heroes. They've been handling things perfectly well without Superman.
So what do I actually contribute?
It was a troubling thought. In the comics he'd read, Superman's importance wasn't just about power—it was about the symbol he represented. He was the first public superhero, the one who showed the world what heroism could look like. He set the standard that other heroes aspired to.
But this world already had that. Wonder Woman seemed to fill a similar role, based on the news coverage David had seen. She was beloved, respected, and served as the public face of the Justice League.
Maybe I'm not needed, David thought. Maybe this world is doing fine without me.
But even as the thought formed, he heard something.
His new ears were remarkably sensitive—he'd discovered he could hear conversations happening blocks away if he concentrated—and what they picked up now made his blood run cold.
A child screaming.
Not the playful screaming of children having fun, but the high, terrified wail of a child in genuine danger.
David didn't think. He just moved.
The world blurred around him as he accelerated, following the sound through the maze of city streets. His new eyes picked out details at impossible speeds—a car swerving, a dog barking, a couple kissing outside a restaurant—but he barely registered any of it. All his focus was on that scream.
He found its source in a grimy alley in what was clearly a less prosperous part of the city. A young girl—maybe seven or eight years old—was pressed against a wall, sobbing, while three teenagers loomed over her. One of them had a knife.
It wasn't a supervillain attack. It wasn't cosmic stakes or world-ending threats. It was just ordinary, everyday cruelty—the kind that happened in cities everywhere, the kind that rarely made the news, the kind that Superman would have stopped without hesitation.
David landed between the teenagers and the child with enough force to crack the concrete.
The teenagers stumbled backward, their faces going pale. David understood why—he must have looked terrifying, this enormous figure in white descending from the sky like an avenging angel.
"What," he said, and his voice came out calm and steady despite the anger burning in his chest, "is going on here?"
"We weren't—" one of the teenagers started, but his companion—the one with the knife—was apparently stupider or braver than his friends.
"Mind your own business, freak!" the kid snarled, actually brandishing the knife at David. "This doesn't concern you!"
David looked at the knife. It was maybe six inches long, serrated edge, probably designed for camping or hunting. Against a normal person, it would be a deadly weapon.
Against his Viltrumite skin, it would be about as threatening as a butter knife.
"I'm going to give you one chance," David said, still calm, still controlled. "Drop the knife. Walk away. Never bother this child again."
"Or what?" The teenager sneered. "You gonna—"
He lunged, slashing at David's chest.
The knife shattered on contact.
David didn't flinch. He simply reached out—carefully, so carefully, because he was still learning the limits of his strength—and took hold of the teenager's wrist. Not hard enough to break anything. Just hard enough to make it clear that the situation had fundamentally changed.
"I'm not going to hurt you," David said, and meant it. "I don't hurt people. Even people like you. But if I ever—ever—hear about you threatening anyone again, I will find you. And I will make sure you face justice for your actions."
He released the teenager's wrist and stepped back.
"Now go. All three of you. Go home and think very carefully about who you want to be."
They ran.
David watched them go, then turned to the little girl, who was still pressed against the wall, staring up at him with enormous eyes.
He knelt down, trying to make himself less intimidating despite his size. "Hey there," he said gently. "Are you okay? Did they hurt you?"
The girl shook her head slowly. "They... they wanted my backpack. Mom says it's for school."
"That was very brave of you," David said. "But it's okay now. They're gone. Can you tell me where you live? I'll take you home."
"Are you a superhero?"
The question caught him off guard. He thought about it for a moment.
"I'm trying to be," he said finally. "I'm trying very hard to be."
The girl studied him with the terrifying perceptiveness of children. "You're not wearing a mask."
"No. I'm not."
"All the superheroes on TV wear masks."
"Not all of them," David said. "Some heroes don't hide who they are. They want people to see them, to know that they're just... people. People who want to help."
The girl seemed to consider this. "What's your name?"
David hesitated. He couldn't use "Omni-Man"—that name would carry the wrong associations, the wrong implications. It spoke of dominance, of power over others. He needed something else, something that reflected who he wanted to be rather than what his body had been designed for.
"I don't have one yet," he admitted. "I'm new at this."
"You should pick a good one," the girl advised seriously. "A name that makes people feel safe."
Out of the mouths of babes, David thought.
"Thank you," he said. "That's very good advice. Now, where do you live?"
He flew the girl home—slowly, gently, letting her grip his arm and squeal with delight as they soared over the city. Her mother nearly had a heart attack when they landed on the apartment building's roof, but after David explained what had happened and the girl confirmed it, she burst into tears and thanked him more times than he could count.
"Thank you," she kept saying. "Thank you, thank you. Those boys—they're in a gang, they've been terrorizing the neighborhood for months—the police can't do anything—thank you—"
"I'm going to keep an eye on this neighborhood," David promised. "If they come back, I'll know."
He could do that, he realized. With his superhuman senses, he could patrol wide areas of the city, listening for screams, watching for violence. He could be everywhere at once, or close to it.
It wasn't stopping alien invasions or defeating cosmic threats. It was smaller than that, more personal.
But it mattered.
He stayed in the neighborhood for another three hours, drifting quietly above the rooftops, listening and watching. He stopped a mugging, a car theft, and what appeared to be a domestic violence incident (that one was tricky—he ended up flying the abuser to the nearest police station and dropping him off with a detailed account of the situation). Each time, he was careful to avoid excessive force, to speak calmly and clearly, to give people chances to make the right choice before he intervened physically.
It was exhausting in a way that had nothing to do with physical fatigue. Every interaction required him to think carefully about his actions, to consider the implications of his power, to resist the temptation to simply impose his will on situations.
This, he realized, was what Superman dealt with every day. The constant awareness that you could solve any problem with force, combined with the determination to find better solutions whenever possible.
Maybe that's why this world needs someone like me, David thought as he flew slowly back toward his apartment. Not because they lack power, but because they need someone to show them how to use power responsibly. Someone who looks like a weapon but chooses to be a shield.
Someone who could conquer but chooses to protect.
He landed on the balcony of his apartment—thankfully, no one seemed to have noticed the massive hole in the wall from his earlier flight-learning incident—and stepped inside.
Then he stopped.
There was someone sitting on his couch.
She was dressed in civilian clothes—jeans and a jacket—but David recognized her immediately. He'd spent enough time reading comics to know that distinctive black hair, those piercing blue eyes, that regal bearing.
Wonder Woman.
Diana Prince.
Princess of Themyscira, champion of the Amazons, and one of the most powerful beings on the planet.
And she was sitting on his couch, looking at him with an expression that was equal parts curiosity and wariness.
"Nolan Grayson," she said, her voice rich and commanding. "Or should I say, Omni-Man. We need to talk."
David felt his heart—his Viltrumite heart—skip a beat.
Well, he thought. This is either going to go very well or very badly.
Let's hope I can make a good first impression.