Krypton - 250,000 Years Ago
Bertron stared out his laboratory window as the Kryptonian sky turned dark maroon, as it always did every evening as night fell. In the distance, to his left, a volcano pitched yellow lava and smoke through the air. To the right, he could see the campfires of the itinerant native Kryptonian humanoids that lived on this fearsome planet. He quietly marveled at how he had been able to survive here for the last 40 years.
His race, from a distant planet called Aswol, was dying. Genetic maladies had multiplied, leaving them with atrophied bodies that didn't reflect their highly advanced technology. With a sound, young body, Bertron had been selected to be among a group of Aswolite scientists sent out to different solar systems in an attempt to collect and incorporate alien genetic materials that could be used to breed new generations of Aswolites.
Bertron had been particularly proud to be selected to work on Krypton. Krypton had long been known as one of the most dangerous planets in this sector of the galaxy. Orbiting a red dwarf star known as Rao, it had incredible biodiversity, which had given him much hope for his mission.
He had landed his spacecraft atop a rocky knoll that overlooked a large plain. It was inaccessible to most of the planet's predators, and made for easy re-supply from the Aswolite cargo ships that would come twice a year to give him needed provisions (although Bertron had quickly developed a taste for the meat of the zuurt, a large herbivore that roamed the plains in sizable herds). A small reactor gave him the power to run his laboratory and keep his meager living quarters in condition. Although Bertron was by nature a solitary soul, he did look forward to the return of the cargo ships, and was pleased when the transmission came through informing him that the next re-stocking run would arrive tomorrow. It was apparent from what the crewmembers on the cargo ships were telling him that Bertron had made the most progress of any of his fellow scientists.
Bertron's first few months on the planet were devoted to collecting specimens. Two forms of life on Krypton's surface quickly came to his attention once he arrived. The native humanoids were much larger and stronger than Bertron and other Aswolites. Meanwhile, he also discovered a fearsome predator known as a torquat. A formidable killer, the torquat ran quickly on its four legs, had large purple claws that it used to kill and dismember its prey, and featured bony protrusions on its back and head that protected it from other creatures.
It took him nearly a year after collecting a sufficient quantity of specimens to produce a fully developed first attempt at a new Aswolite featuring genetic materials from the native humanoids and a torquat and incubate it to a point where he could take it into the Kryptonian wilds to see how it would fare. The young child was, alas, quickly killed by a swarm of stantor bees, whose venom was lethal within seconds.
Pangs of sadness nearly overwhelmed Bertron as he collected the remains of the child off the rocky ground. It was then, though, that Bertron has his idea. Krypton was the perfect place to do more than to just save a dying race. He could build a perfect, indestructible form of life. Mix those physical characteristics with the intelligence of the Aswolites, and they would be poised to make Aswol the center of the universe.
Over the decades that followed, Bertron repeated his experiments over and over and over again. Each time the child was killed, Bertron would seek to genetically engineer around the way his child had been killed the time before. Bertron had also found a way to genetically implant the memories of the previous iterations into the new child. This had sped up the development process significantly, as each child was now aware of the poisonous tentacle flowers and knew about the eels that lurked in the nearby river.
Soon, the sting of a stantor bee had no effect on the child. Later, the skin of a flame beast would have no impact. Then, the child became strong enough to overpower an owlor, and to fight off the spores of the blood morel. The pain Bertron felt at each death – and there had been thousands over the years – evolved into a grim determination to accomplish his goal.
But, to accomplish all of these things, the child had – by necessity - become less and less Aswolite. It still retained the grey skin of Bertron and his race, but the body had grown to be that of a large Kryptonian humanoid – standing some seven feet tall – and had taken on many of the exterior qualities of the torquat. Its head, shoulders, and back were covered in bony spikes, while the fingers were tipped with sharp purple claws. To say that the child ran would not be entirely correct, either. It bounded from place to place, crouching and leaping like a torquat separating a zuurt from the rest of the herd.
This had all come at a cost, though. Bertron was disappointed to see that as the generations advanced, the intellect of the child was seemingly becoming less and less advanced and more primitive. It was a concern, but one that Bertron would address in future iterations. Survival times increased from minutes to hours to days to weeks, and Bertron was careful to monitor his child, taking a small one passenger pod out over the plain at night to find it.
Over five months had passed since he had released his last child onto the Kryptonian plain. He was pleased and challenged by the fact that it was growing increasingly difficult to find the child. That meant it was becoming a savvier hunter. Singlehandedly, it had cleared the plain of almost every native predator and much of the prey. Its speed and strength had grown substantially since release, as evidenced a couple of weeks ago, when Bertron watched as it took down an entire herd of 27 zuurt on its own. 27 zurrt at one time! Bertron was most pleased.
Only a few remaining bands of the humanoids remained, and they survived only by remaining on the move almost constantly. His scans had also shown that the child was evolving on its own now, without Bertron's help.
An amazing development, Bertron thought to himself as he loaded his equipment into the craft, preparing for tonight's journey. He had to get one last progress report before the cargo ship arrived tomorrow.
A few moments later, Bertron pressed the button that opened the pod door and initiated the craft's engine. As he began to ease the craft out, though, he was surprised to see his child leap in front of his path. Quickly, he cut the engine and the ship glided to a halt just inches from the creature. From behind the windscreen, Bertron was face-to-face with his masterpiece. And he beamed with pride.
Until, that is, the creature's fist exploded through the windscreen and closed around Bertron's neck. Slowly, it dragged Bertron out of the pod, staring him down the whole way.
The realization came to Bertron too late. Genetic memories, he thought. My child remembers all the previous deaths. And it remembers who left him to die each time.
"My child!" Bertron pleaded for his life. "I have made you the most powerful creature in the universe!"
The creature eyed his creator and paused. For just a moment, anyway. And with a slight flex of the wrist, Bertron's head was separated from the rest of his body. It fell to the ground with a dusty thump, eyes looking straight back up at what it had wrought.
As the cargo shuttle touched down with a solid thump near Bertron's lab, Cassik was concerned. There were no signs of life visible. He would have expected Bertron – if it were just a transmitter problem that had caused him not to answer the calls of the orbiting cargo ship for the last three hours – to come out and meet him. More unusual was the fact that the pod door was open. Bertron wasn't known to take that sort of risk on a planet as dangerous as Krypton.
Leaving his navigator Zaxis in the shuttle, he moved quickly across the rocky knoll, and ducked inside the open pod door. No sign of the pod anywhere. No sign of Bertron. He fingered his energy weapon attached to his belt.
Ducking down the hallway, Cassik moved with speed to Bertron's living quarters. Empty. Must be in the lab, he thought. Hopefully.
Bursting in to the lab, Cassik found it quiet and uninhabited. No signs of Bertron at all. Which is why he was so surprised when he felt the claws enter his back. Looking down, he saw them come out his chest before he lost consciousness.
The creature knew where it was going next. It was time to leave Krypton. Bounding down the hall and through the open pod door, it was attacking the shuttle before Zaxis fully understood what was happening. A blast from his energy weapon slowed the creature down, enabling Zaxis to initiate the launch sequence. As the ship began to lift off, the creature reached up and caught the shuttle's wings and held it down from launching. Exhaust and flames from the rockets were discharging all over the creature to no effect.
Stumbling out of the lab, a severely wounded Cassik saw the scene unfolding on the knoll, and took the only action he could. Pulling out his energy weapon, he focused his last bit of life force and aimed it at the reactor. Squeezing the trigger, he, Zaxis, and the creature were consumed in a gigantic fireball.
Being an Aswolite cargo ship captain was usually not a particularly exciting job, one filled with routine and schedule, which meant that this was already not a normal day for Captain Felwaq. But after the gigantic explosion on the planet's surface, it was his responsibility to see what happened.
And what he saw shocked him. The only thing left on the rocky knoll was the body of the creature. Everything else had been vaporized.
Felwaq believed he recognized the creature based on reviewing Bertron's previously submitted research reports. Was it dead? Their scans were inconclusive – it was almost as if the creature was undetectable.
But anything that remained intact through such an explosion could not be good, Felwaq thought. So he decided quickly what to do. The crew fashioned metal binders and wrapped the creature's arms and legs with them. They placed the creature inside one of their burial pods and blasted it into space – on a course for a solar system with a yellow sun opposite of the direction where they were headed.