For more than an hour the massive world engine has sat silent. Two small Kryptonian ships have been circling it and Nam-Ek has decided to position himself on the engine itself. They are there to guard it against any interference and have been patiently, for the most part, waiting for it to activate. The world engine suddenly shifts and heaves, awakening from its quiet, and the waters around its embedded legs begin to churn and bubble.
Clark streaks along the ionosphere, his senses filtering through masses of radio-chatter on shortwave bands as he listens in on communications between the fighter jets circling an area ranging between five and twenty miles away from the engine.
'She's woken up, boys and girls.'
'Let's try not to get too trigger happy.'
'Blue Boy is on his way.'
He smiles a little at that one: 'Blue Boy'.
For a second he looks up into space and observes LexCorp, Queen, Stagg, and Wayne Industries' satellites begin to reposition themselves – each one given over to the military forces gathered below in order to monitor and help coordinate the multi-national efforts against the Kryptonians.
Above Metropolis, over the island of New Troy, the Black Zero descends, its shadow growing bigger and bigger. People in the streets, many hurrying and adhering to the calls to evacuate, look up into the sky, awed and afraid. People in buildings are standing at the windows in order to see, and many are waiting their turn to evacuate. Television screens throughout the city are tuned into news channels showing the huge skyscraper-sized ship and none are showing the evacuation. All have agreed not to.
On the outskirts of the island, at Clinton Bridge, Mortimer Bridge, Queensland Bridge and so on, thousands of people are walking to safety. Flitting between the buildings are just over half a dozen huge platforms, each one carried by a Kryptonian. Every ten or so minutes the platforms are transported from the various parks throughout the city to the drop-off points by the bridges.
The city is eerie in the absence of the noise of the usual traffic, and eerier still with the tromp-tromp of the people walking through its streets. Buses line the streets, with some of them returning from the drop-off points in order to collect more passengers. The effort is organised, the earlier panic caused by the announcement of the evacuation now quelled. Of course, there are still people talking - that's human nature. Jokes are being told, and reassurances given. There is fear and uncertainty, but there's also confidence and hope. Metropolis is a city of around eleven million people. Right now, however, the focus is on New Troy and its population of around two million. On an ordinary work day the influx of workers and tourists would have more than doubled that, but this hasn't been an ordinary day and many had been advised not to come to work. It's a blessing and a curse as there is uncertainty as how many people are actually on the island. The current estimate, based on data cobbled together from the MTA and traffic services, is that there are now one million three hundred seventy-two thousand eight hundred and twelve people, and decreasing.
The world engine shifts and rises, and the waters churn and boil and freeze. The gravity anomaly resulting from the world engine's initial impact is somehow utilised by the machine, and globules of water and bits of earth rise and merge and then, without warning, slam into the ground. All around the small island huge waves 'ripple' out. The machine shifts again and repeats the process...a fraction harder.
A wide beam of heat tears through the sky and hits the machine. The organic metal glows and the machine whines and seems to sigh. Black storm clouds begin to form above it and beneath it, a kilometre or so above the ground, a huge outlet opens and a white energy crackles. The beam of heat moves across the surface of the machine and the machine begins to hum. The vibrations from the humming shake the loose stones and boulders surrounding it, and the smaller ones explode and fill the air with a thick dust.
The two Kryptonian ships zero-in on the heat beam, approaching on either side of it, and they streak through the air towards its origin. Purple and blue blasts of energy sear the air, striking nothing. The heat beam stops and disappears and Clark attacks one of the ships, grabbing a dragonfly-looking wing and pulling the ship off course. He lets go and attacks the other ship with a blast of ice-breath, freezing its two left wings and forcing the pilot into a dive.
The world engine suddenly 'slumps' and a blast of white energy fires out of the outlet underneath it, pulverising the earth below. The storm clouds begin to emit bolts of lightning, ionizing the air and the dust surrounding the machine grows thicker.
Nam-Ek leaps through the air, his fists outstretched in order to slam into Clark, but Clark sees him, grabs his right arm and spins him in the air. Round and round they spin and Nam-Ek tries to grab at Clark's hands with his free hand, and then roars when Clark lets him go and sends him flying into the machine. The impact shunts the huge machine and one of the legs rises up out of the ground. The air suddenly shifts and Clark clutches his head in pain as the world engine emits a frequency that hurts him and thickens the air all around it.
Clark coughs and struggles to breathe, and then begins to fall. The machine fires a series of gravity pulses and Clark and the two ships, along with masses of rock, dust, and water, rise and fall with each pulse. The sky darkens even more, and the dense dust blots out the early morning sun.
Miles away, analysts on the surrounding warships respond to the incoming data streams and feed information to their superiors. Deep in the waters, submarines observe the effects on the seabed and marine life, sitting silently as all sorts of sea creatures rush past them. The crack created by the world engine's initial impact shifts and heaves, and the moving earth pushes the water around it to move, too.
On the Black Zero, Jax-Ur looks out over the city of Metropolis and watches as the 'insects' scurry away. He raises his gloved hand and holds it out over the city.
'When I destroyed Wegthor you hunted me down like a criminal. You couldn't see the beauty of the resulting change in Krypton's waters. You stopped me from doing what had to be done.' He looks back at the still frozen hologram. 'You cannot stop this.'
He closes his fist and an energy beam as wide as a city block bursts out of the bottom of the Black Zero and slams into the ground. Cars and trucks, benches and stalls, and anything else in the immediate area rise up into the air and then fall as if being pushed hard into the ground. The concrete and asphalt heaves and windows explode.
The immediate area, in a five block radius, is empty, vacated by the Kryptonians before the ship had descended. The people in the buildings in the surrounding area, though, begin to scream as the floors shake and windows crack. Some rush to the exits, others fall to their knees, and others still try to make their own exits.
'And now, as I did on Wegthor I will do here and use one of your own creations against you.' He twists his clenched fist and the energies of the Phantom Drive begin to be fed into the beam. The beam changes from a white to one with a purplish hue, and the air groans and hums as the Black Zero seems to pulse. The beam fades and the air is silent save for the sounds of alarms and fires and groaning metal and falling glass and concrete. Jax-Ur smiles and opens his hand wide, and a massive beam as wide and round as the bottom of the Black Zero drives into the ground, and all around it buildings seem to give up and fall.
Underground, the lights in the silent metro stations flicker and the tunnels shudder and collapse. Silent and abandoned service trains suddenly rise up off the tracks before slamming back down, sparking and cracking. Thick cables connected to various generators tear and send streaks of electricity along the tracks and up the walls.
A homeless man screams in terror and pain and the ceiling nearby falls in, and Nadira lands in the rubble. She holds out her hand and says, 'Come with me if you want to live.' She smiles and adds, 'All of you.' Behind the homeless man is his family and dozens of other homeless people, and they cling to each other in terror.
Clark lands heavily on the small island. The air is now so thick that his cape barely flutters. He stands upright and tries to breathe. Nam-Ek lands in front of him, his visor filtering the air and his movements unimpeded. He rolls his shoulders and stalks towards Clark, rubbing the sharp edges of his armoured fists together. To either side of them are the crashed Kryptonian ships. Lor-Em clambers out of his and shoulders a large gun.
Massive waves churn the waters once more. The warships and aircraft carriers struggle against them, and the last of the fighter jets takes off.
Underwater, three nuclear submarines prepare their warheads, targeting the island and the world engine.
On the island we saw before, hundreds of women are gathered at the foot of an immense temple. On the white stairs stands a tall woman with dark hair. A small crown sits on her head and a red cape is draped over her shoulders and over her left arm.
An auburn-haired woman steps up, her eyes full of rage, and says: 'Man's World is attacking us!'
'No,' says the woman with the crown, 'Man's World is being attacked. My sisters, what we are seeing is something which may need our intervention.'
'But the Gate, my Queen,' interrupts a stern-looking woman dressed in armour, her helmet held against her hip. 'We cannot abandon it.'
'And we will not, but we must be ready to help Man's World if this invading force should look to succeed.'
'Mother,' says the young woman we saw earlier calming the horses, 'we have been protecting this world from the creatures of the Gate for centuries and we vowed to the goddesses to never reveal ourselves.'
'I think even they did not envision something like this happening, my daughter. I pray we do not have to take action and that the Great Barrier holds, but it would be foolish of me, of us all, to not be prepared.'
The large man we saw earlier swimming with and racing against dolphins floats in the Atlantic, his fingers are pressed into his temples as he focuses. We see him mouth the words 'help them'.
The Kryptonians in Metropolis are beginning to tire as they desperately continue the evacuation and try to shore up various buildings. On the streets the once calm evacuees are now running in terror as the pulses from the Black Zero destabilise the infrastructure around them. Each pulse is like a mini earthquake, and the explosions of the cars and trucks being crushed all around them only adds to the terror.
Faora flies at the Black Zero only to slam into a previously invisible but now purple (at the point of impact) forcefield. She hovers in the air for a moment and then smiles and disappears in a burst of speed.
The three Kryptonians lie at Clark's feet and he falls to his knees and coughs blood. The world engine pulses again and the wave of gravity pushes Clark into the ground.
The submarines are floundering as the waters batter against them. Alarms are blaring, warning of impending hull breaches. Armed missiles with nuclear warheads sit in their onboard silos and a catastrophe seems almost certain.
Huge tentacles suddenly wrap around each submarine, stabilising them against the raging water. On board, each captain takes advantage of the reprieve and issues instructions to fire the missiles.
High in the sky, dozens of fighter jets storm the area around the island firing missiles and chancing with various kinds of ammunition. The missiles from the jets keep getting repelled and some of them, somehow, blink out of existence. The pulses from the world engine wreck havoc with the jets' systems forcing them out of the control. Two spin into each other, their pilots ejecting just in time.
The huge missiles from the submarines tear through the air, rising and then turning. The jets pull back and out of the way of the missiles and, down on the ground, Clark struggles to get up, his eyes on the two parachuting pilots.
Metallic tentacles suddenly spring out around the engine, lashing out at anything approaching it.
The submarine-missiles approach the world engine, thundering through the sky, and then seem to slow down. Their thrusters are firing but instead of striking their target the missiles seem to stop as if something is pushing against them or pulling them back.
Then one of them explodes and starts a chain reaction.
Steve Trevor fires two missiles and pulls up in order to avoid the attacking tentacles. He swears as a gravity pulse emitted by the world engine repels the missiles, sending them spinning back at him. Alarms go off in the cockpit and he struggles to control the plane, and then there is the loudest explosion he has ever heard and then silence as he can no longer hear anything. As he struggles with his flight stick he chances a look out of the window and his eyes widen as he sees a white globe of energy expanding. He swears again as the spinning missiles are vaporised by the expanding energy.
On the island of women they watch anxiously as the sky beyond their barrier lights up. Massive waves crash against it, the barrier buffering and filtering the impacts and keeping the waters around the island relatively still. Missiles suddenly appear in the sky, some spinning, and explode against the barrier, and the barrier flickers. The young woman rises into the air, a short sword in her right hand, and the Queen says, 'Hold, Diana. Patience.'
Clark stands upright, the ground beneath him liquefied by the intense gravity. He grits his teeth and begins to float. The energy from the nuclear warheads sizzles around him and his eyes scan through the electromagnetic spectrum and he sees that the world engine is absorbing the energies and using them to do its work. He turns his head and sees that the downed pilots are safe in the water miles away. He struggles to fly and so walks, instead, on liquid earth.
Flying towards Metropolis is a fleet of fighter jets and a C-17. Among the occupants onboard the C-17 are Lois and Hamilton – sitting in the cargo hold – and Hardy – piloting the ship. Lois holds up the command key and says to Hamilton that 'Jor-El said that he made this usable by me. As soon as the world engine is disabled and they use their Phantom Drive, then I can insert this into this ship and activate the modifications we made back at the base.'
The launch-bay opens and wild winds rush through the C-17. Faora enters and rushes to Lois and says, 'They have activated it. It is almost time.'
Clark forces his way into the beam, fighting against the push of gravity and the molecular destabilisation. He looks up and uses his vision to filter the light from the beam and find the point deep within the machine that he needs to destroy in order to stop the destruction. His feet sink into the liquid earth and he resists the urge to let go and give it up. Slowly, he rises up and hovers, and then he closes his eyes and he remembers:
He remembers Jonathan taking him by the hand and leading through the school gates on his first day.
He remembers Jonathan looking uncomfortable as he watches Lana hug him in the playground.
He remembers his fifteenth birthday when he blew the cake all over his parents and some of his classmates.
He remembers attaching a cape to his dog and running with him through the fields, arms wide as if flying.
He remembers stepping in front of a bully and staring him down.
He remembers the bullied boy thanking him.
He remembers his first article and the look of pride in his parents' eyes when he showed it to them.
He remembers the casket at Jonathan's funeral.
He remembers Zod stalking towards his mother and seeing her fear and defiance.
He remembers the 'vision' Zod showed him and the thousands upon thousands of skulls.
He remembers and he flies, up, up and into the world engine.
The explosion of the world engine sends shockwaves across the region. Caught up in the battering effects, Steve Trevor and his jet disappear.
Huge tentacles wrap around the floundering warships and aircraft carriers, and while dozens of people fall into the water, the ships remain intact as the ocean heaves and storms.
In the sky, pilots eject from their aircraft, chancing their parachutes over further struggling against their no longer operating jets. Defunct missiles spin and collide into each other, and mounds of rock and massive globules of air and water fall.
In Metropolis, the Black Zero suddenly stops firing its beam, and tonnes of debris fall from the sky.
Jax-Ur curses and, in a rage, rushes at the immobilised hologram. He tries to punch it but his hand goes through both the shield and hologram and he falls to the floor.
'Always! Always in the way! No more. NO MORE!' he shouts as he scrambles up and storms out of the control room. The two Kryptonians who had been with him quickly follow.
'Loathe as I am to engage physically, Jor-El and his misbegotten son have left us with no choice.'
Twenty miles away from the island of women, the barrier shimmers against the missiles blinking into existence. A hole appears and a missile streaks through. Steve Trevor's jet pops into the area like a spinning top skipping through the air. It twists and slips through the hole just as it closes.
'Go, Diana!' orders the Queen, and the young women flies at the plane as it bursts into flame.
'Hera, help me!' she cries, catching the plane and slowing its fall.
Clark wakes up, the sky is clearing and the rising sun shines down on ruined island. The waters are still chaotic but there is nothing feeding them and making them rise like before. He's dazed and confused but he closes his eyes again for a moment and listens:
'Metropolis is in ruins!'
'...Kryptonians are still evacuating...'
'...we've got a huge wave coming in!'
'There could be thousands trapped or dead.'
He pushes himself up, stumbles, falls and then digs his fingers into the ground. He takes a couple of breaths and then heaves. The ground cracks and Clark yells in anguish.
'We are ready,' says Faora, and she gestures for the co-pilot to leave.
Hardy nods and checks the readings. 'The ship has to be within range of their drive. I'm taking her in,' he says, and he pushes on the throttle. ''A good death is its own reward', right?'
'There is no need for you to die today, Colonel.' She smiles, grabs him, rushes to the open hold, kisses his forehead, and then throws him out of the plane.
The plane shakes violently as a beam of heat tears through it and Faora falls, too.
Jax-Ur and the two other Kryptonians are attacking the fighter jets and the C-17, and the members of the Sword of Rao fly in to counter them. The C-17 is on fire but still intact as Car-Vex had tackled Jax-Ur before he could cut through it completely with his heat vision. The two Kryptonians struggle in the air and slam into a tall office building. There is a 'boom' as Jax-Ur is knocked out of the building by Car-Vex, and another boom as she flies out after him. The top floors of the building begin to collapse in on themselves.
'Form a perimeter!' shouts Faora. 'Contain them!'
Three Kryptonians fly back and form a perimeter of around twenty-five blocks. In the streets beyond the perimeter thousands of Metropolitans are fleeing.
Faora swoops down and catches the C-17, and she then guides it towards the Black Zero as Nadira and the others tackle Jax-Ur and his two cronies.
From out of nowhere a huge mound of earth careens into one of Jax-Ur's team members and sends him, and it, slamming into the side of the Black Zero.
'And the Sword of Rao will slice through deception and its wielder will return Hope to the people,' whispers Faora, as she watches the scene playing out in front of her. Fighter jets fire tank-piercing rounds, kinetic energy projectors, and explosives, layering their attack and forcing Jax-Ur and the others back towards the Black Zero as the inexperienced fliers find themselves overwhelmed.
The massive scout ship bursts through the cloud bank and the pilots engage in evasive manoeuvres. Zod smiles and pushes a button...and nothing happens. He pushes the button again and, again, nothing happens.
'Ship, fire on those aircraft!' he shouts out, standing in anger.
'Negative. Weapons system inaccessible by current user.'
'I am General Zod. I am Krypton's military commander and I have command of this ship. I order you to fire.'
'Negative. You are authorised to fly this ship for the safety of the Genesis Chamber.'
Something catches Zod's attention at the observation window:
'General? Would you care to step outside?'