Beneath the tram the spires of Kandor twinkled in reds and purples, the glassy edges smeared by forward motion, like eyes watering at the oncoming apocalypse. Millions of souls, generations upon generation, about their lives with the blind confidence of another dawn oncoming.
Lara pushed herself against the window, perhaps to avoid contact, perhaps with the hope she would pitch headlong, to die hours before those that watched her fall.
Around a bend and sloping down to a station, the tram slid to a stop, walking distance to her destination.
So she walked.
Jor-El, her husband, was where she left him, the Orrery, the machinations of a distant solar system rotating slowly around him. Bent over a data entry port, he paused work for the time it took to greet her. A soft touch, out of character.
How long, she asked.
For a moment he wondered what specific thing they waited on she meant. But it was clear in the pause she meant all of it.
He motioned the craft. Dominating the chamber, an inelegant monster of metal and fiber poked upward toward high arched ceilings. A prototype, function overruling design. To call it a rocket ship perhaps two generations too early. A future that would never come.
The ship is ready. The Brainiac is online and doesn't seem to be throwing any errors.
Lara examined the ship, as she had done hundreds of times before, every day this year and nearly as many last. Before that, the schematics, the plans. The arguments about resources, about the time it would take, about the infinite increasing complexity in making it large enough for three of them, then two, then only one.
Every day since her husband discovered the end of the world.
How much time do we have?
Soon. His fingers made the symbol for an hour or less. Then Jor-El went back to work, those alien digits moving across a large work panel rigged to the craft.
Have you already put him aboard?
He's comfortable.
She moved to a door, exiting the chamber, but keeping the door open. Their living quarters, such as they were these past two years. She pulled open a drawer, dug down into the stack of clothes. Emerged with a neatly folded garment.
Within the craft, her infant son, Kal, stretched out his tiny fingers in anticipation of contact. His eyes, like hers, multiple, insect like, flickered his excitement. Wrapped in blue blankets, yellow trim, the colors that matched the Science Academy robes both his parents wore.
He can't even focus on our faces yet, she said, reaching out so he could grasp her hand. He won't even know what we look like.
He'll be able to see through walls.
He won't remember what we look like, she said softer, pleading.
The holograms are exact representations. He'll always have us.
He won't be able to hold my hand, she said softly, watching her son's fingers play over hers.
Jor-El pulled up a string of data. These biological subroutines are perfect, Lara. This is beautiful work.
He has to blend in with them. He has to be perfect.
He will be.
From nighttime windows, red light crept down the wall, across the ceiling, over the floor. The warmth of the day gone, there was no comfort in it. Like a chill up the spine. Like blood leaving the system. If their blood was red.
Jor-El entered a final wave of data. The craft began to glow softly, rebuking the very sun it sought escape from.
Come say goodbye to your son, Jor.
Jor-El walked her side. He reached in to touch Kal's face, gently, as if he would live long enough to forget what he looked like. As if he would live long enough for the pressure on his finger tips to fade.
Lara folded Kal's arm over his chest and wrapped a corner of the blue blanket over it. Then placed the neatly folded garment on his chest.
Another blanket?
My old prayer robes.
All the strength was leaving her. Rao be with him.
Rao be with us all. Jor-El adjusted the folded red robe, tucking it tightly into the craft's infant-sized cockpit. Unceremoniously, he shut it, locking the child within. Lara ran her hand over the seam, as if her fingers could see through walls, for one last glimpse.
The ceiling opened slowly, the rich, red light shifting the world monochromatic.
Did your brother finish?
Yes. By Zor's calculations, Kara arrives several planetary months before Kal. She'll be able to take care of him, guide him.
Lara laughed lightly. The best a teenager can, you mean.
They stepped back, to the living quarters, eyes on the craft, their bodies folded into each other, arms wrapped. The craft rose, slowly at first. As it cleared the rooftop, it hung, paused, the only star in the ever brightening nighttime sky. Lara imagined he was looking back at her, one last time, and she smiled, like she spotted a friend on a crowded street corner. She started to raise her hand to wave when the inevitability washed over her, thick with the light, and she realized she hadn't taken a breath, for minutes, or hours, or all the years leading up to this last moment in her life, and she exhaled, deflated, anything left unfinished, unsaid, to remain so for eternity.
With a noiseless flash, the craft streaked up, up in the sky, and vanished, never to return.
Jor and Lara-El sat down, on the edge of the bed they had shared most of their adult lives.
Their hands intertwined. They looked ahead, then down. Lara leaned sideways, her cranial ridges nesting in the grooves in Jor's skull.
I wished they had listened, he said, absently, his anger long since faded into acceptance.
She closed her eyes. She brushed the filaments off her face, tucking them behind her ear.
Jor-El smiled. So out of character.
The disk of the sun rose over the horizon, a cruel prank of hope, as it expanded exponentially. The sky faded. From red to orange to white.
The heat wave washed over them and Krypton scattered. All that was and all there would ever be, returned to Rao's embrace.