ISSUE #13 (January 2021)
Written by Emma Woods Featuring: |
"THE ERADICATION MANDATE: PART 4"Krypton…
Years Ago… Kara Zor-El was of the opinion that her mother knew everything. Filled with bountiful knowledge, the perpetually patient Allura Zor-El had an answer for every query spouted from the lips of her little girl, the ten-year-old child darting about the ample space of the museum from one display to the next, her imagination captured by each and every one. Closed to the public for the day, the Matriarch of the House of El and her only child had free reign of the auspicious building and, with infinite indulgence and mild amusement, Allura kept to a stately pace behind her hurrying offspring, forever keeping her cub in sight. “And this one?” Kara exclaimed, pointing to a statue of an alien species that, in many regards, were not dissimilar to Kryptonians. “That is a Graxomite,” Allura explained. “We share healthy relations; they are exceedingly long lived.” “Does that mean they’re old?” her daughter questioned. “They can be, by our standards,” she clarified. “From their perspective, I would be a little girl, and you a baby,” she smiled. “That’s weird,” Kara decided. “It’s different,” Allura corrected. “The Universe is vast and varied, it would be terribly dull if it weren’t.” Giving the notion some thought, Kara nodded, agreeing with her mother’s sentiment. A mere moment later, however, her attention was already elsewhere. She darted off at a sprint, eager to learn of as many wonders as was possible. She came to halt before another statue, a bipedal man with a hard, rigid endoskeleton. “And this one?” Barely noticed, Allura hesitated, “They were Turians.” Kara was reading the polished plaque embedded in the statues base, sounding out the words she didn’t yet recognise as pronounced syllables, “Ex Tinct.” Having done so, she looked to her mother for explanation. “Extinct mean’s that they went away,” Allura illuded. She sighed after a moment, feeling her child deserved a better answer. “It means that there are no-more left. They died.” Eyes wide, Kara could scarcely grasp such a notion, “All of them?” Allura nodded, “I’m afraid so.” Kara looked back to the man represented as a statue, mulling the new reality over, that an entire species could just… go away. “What happened to them?” she asked, unable to imagine an answer. Allura’s attention had turned elsewhere, to a scale model that dominated the centre of the hall they stood in, a replica of a monolithic vessel that had been retired so long ago. It was a stain of Krypton’s history, a monument to their hubris. World Engine. “We did,” was the only answer that Allura would give her young daughter. “We did.” EARTH… NOW… When Supergirl broke the atmosphere, she did so as a near blinding spear of light. Retaining but a single breadth, she decelerated from supersonic speeds upon reaching the Earth’s orbit, turning to face the third planet from this solar systems sun as it spun throughout the cosmos. Shockingly fragile for a celestial body, the blue/green planet rotated on its axis as its oceans roiled and continents churned. Kara Zor-El was the last witness to the death of Krypton, she had been awake when it had happened, her dreams were filled with the nightmares of her planet cracking. Once, the experience had near shattered her sanity. Now, the Girl of Steel would do something about it. With preternatural speed, the Kryptonians vision flickered through every spectrum of light in rapid succession as she blocked out the sounds of a planet dying, witnessing the Earth as no human could ever hope to do so and searching for a singular target. Finding it, with single minded focus, Kara willed herself to plummet back down towards the atmosphere before piercing it like a meteor. With a sonic boom, she angled her trajectory to bring her on course to return to the United States and one of its coastal regions, narrowing her path still further until National City was her clear and obvious target. There, suspended high above the ocean, was precisely what she expected. Still, as the majesty of the flying fortress grew ever larger before her, Supergirl caught a breath in her throat. It was unmistakably Kryptonian, at odds with its human environment and the crude, primitive city scape that now acted as its backdrop. To be confronted by such a startling, real relic of her lost homeworld was… Kara shoved such feelings out of mind even as her heart ached, well aware of what abomination this vessel truly represented. World Engine. Forbidden, dark age technology from Krypton’s distant past that had become a stain on her people’s legacy. There was so little of it left, why did this have to survive? It was vast, almost as large as the city it sped towards, its gargantuan bulk held aloft by miraculous technology and carrying it here from what had been its tomb in the Amazon. From its base, funnelled from its core, poured immeasurable amounts of light, sound and force that, even now, was penetrating their way towards the centre of the Earth, a gravity bomb terraforming an entire world with unnatural swiftness to better suit a species that didn’t live here. To hell with its current inhabitants… For the briefest moment, she considered finding an entrance. Supergirl opted against it, instead hardening her expression as she poured on the speed, breaking the sound barrier as she continued to propel herself through the air. She slammed into the exterior of the flying fortress and smashed her way through the first barrier, a battering ram stampeding her way past one obstruction after the next as though her world was made out of cardboard, walls, floors and ceilings all giving way until she arrived at her destination. With shocking swiftness, she came to an immediate stop, Supergirl dropping down to one knee as she made her dramatic landing, chaos and debris following in her wake. What she found was the heart of the fortress, a vast, domed structure with walls the colour of midnight and covered in shifting, pulsing, violet lettering that were undeniably of an ancient, Kryptonian dialect. Some of it she could read, it was her own families crest that she recognised most of all. “Kara Zor-El,” the only occupant in the room spoke, his voice base, hollow and devoid of the basic humanity it would ape, stood before a now vacant throne, the obsidian man featureless and overbearing in stature. He scarcely moved, his attention almost elsewhere as he bore witness to signatures in the room that only he was aware of, and he indulged the drastic arrival of his guest as though it were not unexpected. “Matriarch of the House of El, the Last Daughter of Krypton.” Supergirl stood tall, well aware that the figure opposite dwarfed her, undaunted in her posture. “And you are?” she enquired. At that, the Faceless King tilted its approximation of a head, the construct stepping forwards as the master of its domain. From deep within its torso, its voice rumbled, the world below them buckling beneath the weight of its ambition. “I am the emissary of a dead world,” the obsidian man explained, raising one hand as if cupping a sphere before mimicking the gesture with the other. “And the progenitor of a new one.” Step after step it advanced, narrowing the distance between itself and Kara, Supergirl unwavering from her position. “I,” it continued, unflinching and unfeeling, “am the will of the House of El. I,” it paused, coming to a stop before the Girl of Steel and staring down, Kara tipping her chin imperiously upwards to stare back. Across the tides of history, two eras of Krypton clashed as, all the while, a world died around them. “Am Origin.” Lena Luthor, Director of the D.E.O, had no patience for acts of futility. As such, as she was shepherded through the oppressive, ever shifting halls of the World Engine by the flanking forms of two faceless Eradicators, she did not offer up resistance. Not physically at least, knowing that she was no match for the Kryptonian constructs, but she would be damned if she granted them even a single, further inch beyond tolerating her imprisonment. At first, she had been alone, but all too soon her lone march had become a caravan of corralled humanity, Lena’s enforced trek through the bowls of the fortress being joined by several other people that had been collected by Origins single minded soldiers. Most were frightened, some defiant, plucked straight from the streets or their homes from every corner of the world and brought here in their hundreds for purposes unknown. They would learn soon enough. Stoic through it all, Director Luthor took in her surroundings as the train of humanity was being broken up into smaller group, lead down branching corridors and into ominously constructed rooms. Soon enough, she saw their shared destinations up close for herself and, with people both shouting and weeping, she saw the pods waiting for them, the very air humming with anxiety. “Propagate,” the Eradicator to her right repeated one of the only two words they seemed to be versed in as it took her by the arm. Without conscious care, the construct deposited Lena into an open capsule and laid her on her back, prepared to hold her in place, the mechanism hissing with ill intent as the lid began to seal. Director Luthor looked up at the Eradicator just as the capsule was about to lock shut, and glared with the promise of recompense. She didn’t know what was about to happen. It didn’t matter, her promise was the same regardless. “You should have killed me.” “I know what you are,” Kara asserted, refusing to back down from the construct that mimicked the form of man, the machine that called itself Origin. “I offer no subterfuge,” the featureless figure replied, turning it’s back on Supergirl and pacing away, its mannerisms unhurried, its tone lacking warmth. “I know who sent you,” Kara reinforced the commanding tone she had often heard uttered by her mother, willing herself to embody the same majesty that had been so effortlessly possessed by her parent. “Ro-El,” she pulled the name from her family’s ancient history, the one who had lost his mind. Origin paused at that, tilting its head in a fashion that was oddly disarming, recalling a time that was long forgotten. It was, at best, fleeting, as if it had never occurred at all. “Patriarch of the House of El,” Origin amended her declaration. “No more,” Supergirl corrected, tipping up her chin up just so, her bearing regal. “Not since a millennia past. I am the Matriarch of the House of El now, you acknowledged it yourself.” “Indeed,” Origin turned away, returning to the tasks that only he could see. “End this,” Kara commanded, shoulders tensing beneath her cloak. “Shut it down” “I cannot,” Origin stated. “You…” “I will not,” he clarified, turning back to face the figurehead of his House, his demeanour passive but his tone unyielding. “Humanity is a lie, this world a squaller. I was sent here to seed a world in the event of Krypton’s fall, and have awoken to find my people gone and the incubator of their rebirth spiralling towards self-inflicted extinction. I will cull this species of its weak, I will drag its survivors into ascension, and from the fragments of this Earth, I will forge us a new one.” Kara was left without words. Supergirl found them for her. Anger flared, the Girl of Steel striding forwards. “You will…” Origin made a subtle motion, so slight it almost went unnoticed, but the effect was nothing short of profound. Kara’s whole world shifted and, with a near silent pulse emitted from the walls and the violet light pulsing blue, the throne room of the World Engine became somewhere else entirely, each and every one of the young woman’s senses bombarded by a vision that she had never again expected to experience. Krypton, whole and real and washing over her in a tidal wave of sensations that hit her with such force that she fell immediately to her knees, robbed of her breath and gasping. Home, it was all around her, the mirage of her lost birth world so utterly complete that it fooled sight, sound, smell taste and touch, reminding her of feelings that had been buried in order to preserve her sanity, and the chasm of aching loss within her torso broke free and wrenched a sob out from her throat. It was overwhelming, this vision of everything that she had lost, a world so rich with life, promise and boundless potential that it filled all else in the cosmos with shame. It was home. Her home. A world that she had watched die… Lost to little more than happenstance of fate. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair… “Of all of them,” Origin’s voice broke through the visage, comforting in this vision of what had once been, of what could be found again. “You will understand, the Last Witness of Krypton.” Kara couldn’t speak, lost in the memories she hadn’t realised that she still possessed with such painful clarity. She had wanted to let go, to move on and bury the past behind her, but if this future could be claimed… If Krypton could be saved… … There was but one atom out of place. Kara blinked, superhuman vision zooming in on the singular, vacant flaw as she raised her hand slowly, allowing the barely noticeable flake to settle upon her palm. It was ash. It was all that remained of someone’s life. Eradication… Kara attuned her senses beyond the vision of the world that had been lost, piercing the veil of the illusion of what could be, and listened to the people who still lived, the inhabitants of an Earth that was being stolen from them. Beyond the imagined bliss of her surroundings, Supergirl could hear them screaming. “Damn you,” Kara’s expression became a scowl, heartbreak boiling into fury as she saw past the lie for what it was, eyes of cool sapphire flashing violent red as she launched herself into the air. “DAMN YOU!!” The Fortress of Solitude… “Damn it!” Chris Kent cursed as he slammed his hand down on a console, giving in to frustration as the mechanism continued to ignore his inputs. With the entire fortress bathing them in the radiation of a red sun, and every system compromised by a counter Kryptonian influence, both Superman and Power Boy were practically under house arrest, unable to leave their unexpected prison and become spectators of the apocalypse. “Chris,” Clark prompted his second son. “I know, I know,” Chris sighed and shook his head. “Language. I’m just frustrated d… arn it.” “I know,” Superman’s mood was sombre, shoulders squared and arms folded as he observed the vast crystalline screens before them. Captives they might be, but the creature known as Origin had insisted the lost children of Krypton under his care bear witness to the rebirth of Krypton. Every fibre in his being demanded that he take action but, if there was one thing he had learned from Batman, it was patience. “This isn’t over,” Clark assured his second son, Power Boy drawing strength from his father’s certainty. “We’ll get our opportunity. The Kents aren’t out of this yet.” World Engine… The sudden, rapid increase in Supergirl’s velocity was so extreme that the very air seemed to crack around her, the floor beneath her feet shattering as she took to the air with a shout upon her lips. The mirage of her Homeworld vanished as quickly as it had appeared, illusion cast aside as Origin stood before her, the construct who bore her House’s crest abruptly the sole totality of her vengeful focus. “ENOUGH!” she cried, rearing back her right fist to strike down the would-be architect of annihilation. Origin didn’t move. The World Engine did. Responding to the sudden violence, the walls themselves sprung to life and ran like water, transmuting into a fluid state and forming into coils. With a whiplash motion, they sprung towards the in-flight Kara and snaked about the teenagers form like snakes ensnaring prey, tightening with shocking swiftness and halting her in her tracks and dragging her to the floor. Supergirl grimaced in frustration, heart pounding in her torso as Origin remained impassive, Kara straining against her bonds as they dragged her backwards. She would not be denied, the young woman flexing as she dug her feet into the ground, the World Engine drawing upon vast amounts of energy to keep her immobile. “Shut it down!” she commanded, even ensnared as she was, refusing to relent. “No,” Origin replied, banal and uninterested before turning his back on her, returning his attention to the remaking of a species. “I will save you, whether you desire it or not.” To Be Continued… |