Lois Lane had hesitated before knocking on the door. Of all the people she’d intended to speak with, she’d chosen this one for last. Of them all, this woman perhaps knew the most about Clark, maybe even more than Lois herself did. After all, Lana Lang had been Clark’s high-school girlfriend, and the very first person he’d ever revealed his secret too.

Lois did knock on the door, and shortly after it was opened by Lana. Her last name wasn’t Lang anymore. It had changed to Ross after she’d married Pete, another high-school friend of Clark’s. Lois didn’t know if he knew or not.

“Lois, hi,” greeted Lana, mildly surprised at who had come to call on her. She didn’t say anything else right away, not being sure exactly what she should say. “Um, would you like to come in?”

“Yes, thank you,” Lois replied. As she passed through the doorway, Lana smelled a hint of alcohol from Lois, and was again surprised. In all the years she’d known Lois, Lana had never taken the woman as a drinker.

“Sorry the place is such a mess,” Lana said as she closed the door. “But, well, I wasn’t expecting company.”

“I’d meant to call ahead,” Lois said apologetically. “If this is a bad time, I’m sorry.”

Looking at the living room just off the hall, Lois realized that she and Lana had different definitions of the word mess. To her eyes, the room looked very well made up, with just some papers on the coffee table. Lana rushed past Lois to collect these papers - newspaper clippings and coupons, Lois saw - and placed them into an open table drawer before closing it.

“No, it’s not a bad time. It’s just…unexpected is all I mean. Did you come with Clark?”

“No.” Lois immediately regretted the clipped tone in which she’d spoken. Of course Lana would ask about Clark. Why on earth would Lois come to see her alone? “Actually, that’s part of the reason why I’m here. I’m sure you haven’t heard - I doubt Clark’s even told his parents - the thing is that Clark left me. It’s even more than that. Clark served me with divorce papers.”

There was a crash. Lana had been holding a small glass dish with candies inside, which she had been going to offer Lois. It fell from her hands, shattering against the floor.

“Oh, oh I’m so sorry.” Lois rushed over and bent down to pick up the larger pieces of glass. “I hadn’t meant to just come out and say everything like that.”

“It’s okay. I’ll get a broom to sweep the rest of this up.” Lana went into the kitchen and had soon returned with a broom, dustpan, and small wastebasket. She placed the wastebasket on the floor, and Lois dropped most of the glass into it. Lana swept up the candies and dumped them into the wastebasket as well. “Small pieces could have gotten into a few wrappers. I’d rather not risk it. Okay, that should do until I vacuum. We’ll just avoid this little space. Please, take a seat.”

Lois stepped around the area where the dish had fallen and settled into the couch while Lana returned to the kitchen. She fidgeted, nervous, wondering why she’d come here. Talking with Wonder Woman had been difficult, and Mrs. Allen had made her feel particularly unwelcome. Lana was neither of them, however. She’d been Clark’s first love. Looking around the living room, and how neat and well made it was, Lois had the distinct impression that Lana was a wife. Not like Lois or Iris were, but a real homemaker, like Martha Kent.

Lana came out of the kitchen carrying a tray with two small pots of coffee, a smaller pot of cream, a dish of sugar cubes and two empty cups. She set it on the coffee table. “How do you take your coffee? I’ve got both regular and decaffeinated. You look like…like you need some coffee.”

That was a polite way of saying to a person that she’d had too much to drink, Lois thought. “Regular is fine. I take it with some cream. Please, let me.”

“I’m fine now,” Lana said as she poured the cup. For herself she poured a regular cup with a spoonful of sugar. “It was something of a shock, I admit. Why would Clark…I mean, I’d thought things were so good between the two of you.”

“They were. I think they still are.” Lois took a long sip. “Clark didn’t give any reason. On the papers he cited irreconcilable differences as the cause. He quit the Daily Planet too, just vanished. Since then I’ve only seen him as Superman, and all he did was apologize.”

“He owes you more than that,” Lana remarked. “For putting you through something like this, Clark should-”

“Superman wasn’t apologizing for that. Not exactly, anyway. Lana, you know how it must look. Sometimes I forget myself around Superman. If they weren’t the same person, how do you think Clark would react?”

Lana pursed her lips. “Pete has been like that, about Clark. Oh, he knows there isn’t anything more, that it’s all in the past, but still he can’t help it. He’s even joked that living up to Clark is like Clark living up to Superman, so yes, I understand what you’re saying Lois. Of course Clark wouldn’t say anything. Nobody would expect him too. Everybody would think it, and in a situation like that no man would just admit to feeling…inadequate, I guess the word would be. He wouldn’t admit to feeling inadequate in his wife’s eyes.”

“The problem is that we know it can’t be that reason,” Lois said. “But I think it might be worse. Clark did all this shortly after he’d had a meeting with Luthor.”

Lana’s hands tightened on her coffee cup. Lois saw a spark of hatred in the woman’s eyes, and understood.

“One of my theories is that, somehow, Luthor found out who Clark is, and he’s using the information to blackmail Clark. Or he tried to, at least. The same day Clark left, he turned in that story about Luthor’s daughter.”

“I’d read it.” Lois had seen the headline in one of the clippings Lana had removed from the coffee table. “I used to feel sorry for that little girl, but now I can’t help but think, ‘she has that monster’s blood inside of her.’ It’s horrible, I know, judging a child just by who their parents are.”

“I’ve had the same thoughts,” Lois said. “Anyway, that’s what I think. Luthor revealed what he knew, and made his demands. Maybe this is what he wanted, and Clark sent out the story as an act of defiance. Or maybe this is all Clark’s idea, a way of taking away any leverage Luthor might have.”

But Lana shook her head. “No, I think this is what Luthor wanted. Lois, Clark’s now been cut off from us. You, me, the newspaper, and most likely his parents too. Have you spoken to them?

Lois shook her head.

“Luthor is making Clark strip away his humanity. A man like that, he has a very clear idea of how people should act. Somebody like Superman, an alien with so much power, him being so human and compassionate must just infuriate Luthor. So now he’s forced Superman to strip it away.” Then Lana smiled. “You understand what Clark did, right? Luthor took away Clark’s private life, so Clark has tarnished Luthor’s public image. All he can have now is whatever his daughter will think of him. Clark’s showing Luthor just how important family can be.”

Lois could see, but was sad that she hadn’t before that moment. But yes, it was so much like Clark. Luthor was alone now, reminded of just how empty his life was and of how much that little girl could fill the void.

“As much as I enjoy seeing Luthor in pain, I’m afraid it’s not much consolation,” Lois replied. “Clark’s gone. There’s only Superman, and there’s no telling when he’ll lose touch completely. He won’t let anybody near him, Lana. I’ve thought of throwing myself off a building; make him come to me…”

Lois didn’t have the heart to finish the sentence. The thought that Clark would just swoop in to save her, then set her on the ground and fly away without saying a word, it was too painful to bear. Lana understood, however, and she leaned forward to place her hand on Lois’.

“Try as he might, Lois, he can’t ignore us. If we talk, he’ll hear us. He’ll hear you. Trust me, Lois. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that Clark Kent loves you.”

“Bitch,” snarled Clark Kent.

Blood trickled from Lois Lane’s broken nose. Clark Kent stood over her, his fist raised in preparation for another blow. Just a few seconds ago, the award-winning journalist for the Daily Planet had stumbled across the disreputable gossip hound for the Daily Star tabloid aboard the space-plane Constitution. When Lois had started to call out, Clark Kent had struck her.

“I’ve been waiting years to get the scoop on you.” Looking the attractive reporter over, Clark Kent curled back his lips. “Heh. Been waiting years for something else too.” Slowly, the sleazy tabloid reporter lowered his other hand towards his belt.

It was below the belt that Lois Lane aimed her foot, and struck Kent square between the legs. He stepped back, bent over and groaning. Still shaking from the punch, Ms. Lane rolled over and began to crawl towards the door. But Kent pitched forward to tackle her, pressing Lois against the floor.

“You’re going to pay for that,” muttered Clark in a slightly high-pitched voice.

Suddenly, the cargo room was rocked with tremendous force. Crates toppled over, though not on either reporter. Another jolt was sent through the room, and presumably the entire ship, this one with sufficient force to knock Kent off his would-be victim. Lois tried to take advantage and make another attempt for the door, but a third jolt sent her careening into the wall.

Clark Kent managed to stand up onto his feet. Above his head, the hull of the ship exploded inward with a great explosion of rushing air and debris. The entire room seemed to spin, but somehow Clark Kent remained rooted to his spot. Lois Lane, however, tumbled abound the room, knocked unconscious by the numerous collisions.

A meteor shower had appeared from nowhere to strike the space shuttle before it could even begin to penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere. Medium to large-sized rocks pelted the hull, with a number even punching through. It was one such meteor rock, made from a glowing green ore, that struck and became imbedded into the small of Clark Kent’s back!

Depressurized and crippled from the onslaught of meteor rocks, the space shuttle Constitution crashed back down towards the city of Metropolis, of which it was passing over at just that instant. Fortunately, a nuclear attack drill was taking place in the city that day. The citizens of Metropolis all huddled comfortably in underground bunkers, unaware that meteorites crashing down on their city, with the massive space shuttle looming ever closer.

Concrete and metal flew through the air. Buildings shook from the force of impact, as the Constitution tore a gash through the city of Metropolis. Eventually, the rumbling giant of metal and plastic came to a halt, pressed against a LexCorp tower that tilted precariously on the verge of toppling. The verge was crossed, as the tallest building in Metropolis fell down on the Constitution and three city blocks.

For the longest seconds in the history of mankind, there was a still silence over the scene of devastation. Then, movement occurred from amidst the rubble, where the remains of the flattened space shuttle rested. Imperceptible at first, the movement became more pronounced, more forceful. Like a crack of thunder, debris flew upward into the air, and then he was there.

Higher and higher he floated above the scarred cityscape, a dark god surveying his handiwork. From his shoulders and down his back a red cape draped, on the back of it an upside-down diamond with the red letter ‘U’ inside it. This symbol was also on his chest, the only other color difference on a blue body suit that fit him like a second skin, and left only his neck and head exposed. The first mark was under the symbol, the green glow of kryptonite jutting out from where his belly button should be.

Eyes that glowed red from the heat of a million suns gazed out at a new world to ravage. Krypton had been destroyed by his hand, and his genius had devised a means to live on in the remnants of its corpse. It had taken seconds for the weak human’s mind and body to be rewritten, reborn into the perfect Kryptonian body of Kal-El.

Ultraman had come to Earth.

“Aaahhhh!”

The feelings had been unbearable. Superman clenched both his eyes shut, tried to block them out. It’d been so real, and that was the most frightening thing of all. He’d wanted to…to…do those things to Lois. God, all that destruction, and he had only been thinking of how to top it. Such an awful thing to do, imagining how to make the next catastrophe worse than the last.

It was with relief that Superman looked down and saw that he was in the familiar red and blue costume his mother had made all those years ago. The red ‘S’ in a red triangle on his chest, with the symbol yellow on the back of the red cape. A blue bodysuit, but with the hands bare and broken by red trunks and boots and a yellow belt.

“That was a very interesting experience. Yes, it felt real to me, too.”

Superman opened his eyes, turned to look at the man whose voice he recognized. Yes, it was the Professor, and he’d just read Superman’s mind. That was impossible. Superman had read all the government files on the Absolute, knew how to protect himself from all their abilities.

“Those files you read weren’t real,” the Professor said with a knowing smile. “I/We/He manufactured them. I/We/He manufactured everything, even ourselves. Stop trying to think.”

The force of a truck crashed into Superman’s mind. Blood started to rush out of his nose.

“He said that I should just kill you quickly,” the Professor explained. “But that would be a waste of your considerable resources. Inside your mind, I saw the potential for true greatness, and it would be illogical for me to not attempt at turning you to my/our/his cause.”

The pressure on Superman’s brain lessened considerably. “Wha…who are you?”

The Professor sighed. “I/We are fabricated life forms, designed specifically to fool your senses. I/We/He were each designed to contain a piece of him/myself/ourselves, with the exception of Nanite, whom I/we/he knew that you would break down and rebuild. Can you guess my/our/his identity, Kryptonian? Allow yourself a moment’s thought.”

The pressure was gone, and Superman was allowed free thought again. The first thing he did was run through his mind the lyrics to “It’s a Small World After All.” Then he ran at the Professor and picked him up by the throat.

“Uhhh. What…what is that you’re…blocking me with?”

“Something a Martian taught me,” Superman told the Professor. “You just told me that you’re artificial life. So I will have no problem with burning away your higher brain functions if you don’t tell me everything I want to know. Where is Brainiac?”

There was a hoarse laugh from the Professor. “Simpleton, we are all Brainiac, once the proper events trigger our sleeper programming. All it took was one of us waking up, and two did. As we speak, the other is setting my/our/his plans into motion. The world as you know it is gone, Kryptonian.”

It started small, with theme parks, campuses, any large public gathering that enjoyed steady attendance. From these epicenters, the virus spread outward to encompass the surrounding city or township. In thousands of places at once, the cities came to life.

One such city was Metropolis, where millions flocked every day just for a glimpse at Superman. On that particular day, the city started to watch them. It was one of the tourists who noticed this first, as his camera was trained upwards in front of the Daily Planet building. It was common knowledge that Superman was often seen near there. This tourist had passed his camera across the top to the building, to view the globe that was the Daily Planet logo. He’d lowered the camera, stunned, unsure of what he’d just seen. Then he’d raised the camera again, and gasped in amazement as a pair of bronze eyes blinked.

Soon, other changes occurred, things that were more difficult to miss. The shifting of the LexCorp Towers, for one. The two buildings that were one turned end-over-end, so that what had been the rooftops stood on the ground while the foundation was high up in the air. The second skyscraper then pushed away from the first skyscraper, until it rested at the very edge of the building. It was at that moment that people realized the LexCorp towers resembled a pair of legs.

The other occurrence that people couldn’t help but notice was the rearrangement of the city’s elevated track system. These tracks represented the circulatory system of Metropolis, with the millions of commuters who rode the trains every day being its oxygen-rich blood. One such track ran close to the Daily Planet building about mid-way up, almost touching it. Because of the noise and vibrations that wracked a number of floors on that side of the building, it was a very undesirable place to work, and so was home to the newspaper’s hard archives. As two trains were crossing each other while passing the Daily Planet, they both suddenly turned off of the tracks. Parallel to one another, the two trains turned perpendicular to the elevated track and each collided with the Daily Planet. The people inside the cars were trapped, as the trains they were in fused together with the building and the track. The force of this fusion literally pulled the track from its support, until the track was actually touching the building. Some distance away in each direction, the tracks splintered apart and bent in towards the Daily Planet, so that it appeared as though the building had sprouted a pair of arms. This was not very hard to imagine for those who had already figured out that the building had gained a head in the giant globe.

Spindly arms of metal pressed down against the paved streets. Eventually brick and mortar gave way, and the Daily Planet building broke free of its foundation. By this time the legs that were the LexCorp Towers had crossed the short distance, and bent down to greet foundation with foundation.

This was how three members of the Absolute came face-to-face with a giant humanoid amalgamation of the two most famous buildings in Metropolis. Ra and Peregrine flew at it from two directions, while Curfew ran on the street towards it. Every time a section of pavement or chunks of buildings shifted and morphed in her direction, they aged millions of years into dust upon contact with Curfew’s localized tachyon fields.

“We know who’s behind this!” Curfew shouted. Her voice was picked up easily by the enhanced hearing of Ra and Peregrine. “He last registered here before the spit hit the fan! Every city on the planet is getting messed up right now! It started here, so let’s tear this entire crazed city down if that’s what it takes!”

As he passed over the Daily Planet, Ra concentrated his gravity powers inside of the globe head. It collapsed in on itself, essentially shrinking down to the size of a golf ball. On the whole ineffective, the living merged buildings swatted Ra with a track arm. Peregrine went the low route, flying into the Daily Planet building itself.

“I can smell you Infrastructure!” she screamed. “Surrender now and I’ll eat your heart first! Otherwise I’ll start with the kidneys.” Indiscriminately Peregrine crashed through three floors before she saw Infrastructure stoically facing her down. Seated between them were a wall of people confined to their desks, among them Jimmy Olsen and Perry White. “You know me better than that,” Peregrine snarled as she flew at the civilians. “Millions will die unless you go first.”

Faster than a speeding bullet, Superman was there, intercepting Peregrine and dragging her out of the building. Down he swooped towards Curfew, and with her also in tow flew back upwards to stop Ra from escaping Earth’s atmosphere. With all three he stopped and hovered in mid-air.

“That wasn’t Infrastructure,” he told Peregrine before she could protest. “I’d scanned him on my way here, and that was only an empty shell. He’s already starting to merge with the planet itself, and can generate facsimiles anywhere he wants. Think about it. That movie monster cliché doesn’t serve any purpose except to draw attention. They’re appearing in every major city where heroes operate, and those who aren’t fighting them are busy trying to evacuate trapped civilians.”

“Then where is he really?” asked Ra. “Let’s find Infrastructure and cut him o-argh!”

With Peregrine and Curfew following close behind, Ra clutched his head and screamed in pain. Superman watched the three sadly, unaffected by whatever had struck them.

“Nanite is running pieces of herself through your heads, excising the same virus that had infected Infrastructure and the Professor,” he told them. Even through the pain, they heard and understood. “Brainiac is behind this. He’d infiltrated those black ops government programs and implanted slivers of his consciousness into all of you, set to activate under specific conditions. Atomic died before his could activate, and Nanite is clean because Brainiac had predicted what I would do with her. Just relax and let the deprogramming go through, then try to save as many lives as you can without losing anybody. I’ll stop Infrastructure.”

Like a rocket Superman was gone, already halfway around before the last of his words had reached the ears of the Absolute. They had all been lies, every word he’d said. The origins of the Absolute were all lies created by Brainiac, but Superman had validated them anyway.

As he flew, Superman searched with his senses. His eyes could see on all spectrums; his ears could hear on all frequencies. More, Superman could see vibrations made in the air by sound, and hear the shapes that sound bounced off of. There was nowhere that anybody could hide from Superman, let alone a man who was physically connected to civilization itself.

And where else would he be but the birthplace of civilization, Superman thought to himself as he neared the sub-continent region known as the Middle East. Connecting three major continents, this region had been home to virtually every ancient civilization. Furthermore, a number of revolutionary ideas had been conceived there, and Superman had recently learned the power of ideas.

In the city of Baghdad, where the eyes of the world were fixed on a constant basis, Superman saw Infrastructure. From the man’s body, Superman perceived signals of every spectrum on every wavelength, representing Infrastructure’s major lifelines to all major population groups. At Superman’s approach, Infrastructure turned to gaze towards him, and those signals shifted.

An onslaught of all frequencies generated by man struck at Superman. News reports, popular music, reality programming and Internet invaded his senses all at the same time, and Superman was nearly overwhelmed by the sudden information feed. Deep in the background of all this background noise, the voice of Infrastructure whispered into Superman’s ear.

“When you met with us the second time, you told us to help individuals. The Professor was connected to the minds of all thinking organisms of this planet, and I am connected to all that those organisms have created. We see pains you could not conceive of, ad infinitum. This is how we were created, and the trigger was our own realization of how to help individuals. For the Professor and myself, there were no individuals. We perceive the fractured whole, and the only way to help them all is to bring the whole together. The organisms of the world will unite or die!”

Stricken by the overload of information, Superman crashed to the street, at Infrastructure’s feet. The God of Civilization stared down at the rural farm boy in the same way that a nuclear physicist would notice a grain of dust.

“You stand for truth, justice, and freedom. In my new world order, everybody would know everything about everyone at every time, making the lie impossible. To commit a crime against one would be to commit a crime against oneself, eradicating the concept of crime and thus making justice unnecessary. Freedom, unfortunately, is a concept suited to individual thought, and so runs contrary to unity. Two out of three isn’t bad.”

Slowly, arduously, Superman raised his head to meet Infrastructure’s gaze. Blood was trickling from his ears. The tears that poured down Superman’s face were tinted red. All around them, the city of Baghdad was morphing into a singular, sterile thing.

“No individuality means a loss of creativity,” gasped Superman. “Civilization was built on individual drive and creative urge. Infrastructure, you’re following the parameters of Brainiac’s culturally dead home world. Fight it. You have access to all the best anti-virus software and secret hacker pranks.”

“He/I/We had already accounted for every contingence,” Infrastructure replied, coldly logical. “This body was perfectly engineered to deal with you on every level, Kryptonian. He/I/We am as strong as the advanced information environment around him/me/us. In Washington D.C. you were just barely his/my/our superior. With the whole of the world feeding him/me/us, you could be physically overpowered even were you not currently inca-”

It took willpower in unheard of amounts for Superman to force his nervous system into activity through the deluge of frequencies. He was successful only because the desired act was so small, only a slight nudge of force. With that slight nudge, Superman took off.

At twice the speed of sound Superman flew up and forward to tackle Infrastructure. Those arms of steel muscle wrapped themselves around arms and chest to clasp behind the back. While doing this act Superman did not slow down, but instead increased his speed, continuing upward now with his passenger captive. Faster than a speeding bullet to approach the speed of light Superman flew up, up and away.

At such speeds, a multitude of things occur. Air is pushed aside with tremendous force. Electromagnetic energy blurs across molecules. Friction in the air generates tremendous heat. Gravity itself warps in the wake of a fifth force. And in the wake of such phenomena, electronic signals and sonic frequencies are rendered inert.

Infrastructure screamed silently as his lifeline to the information network was ripped away. Up towards the atmosphere went Superman, at well past escape velocity. Heat seared his skin, but for Infrastructure it was even worse. Without his information, he had no power. The heat and friction and sonic force and electromagnetism wracked the rapidly weakening body. Eventually, unwilling to cope with the sudden agony, Infrastructure’s brain simply shut down, and with it went Brainiac.

While Superman had been flying, he’d also been peering into Infrastructure’s brain, observing chemical reactions and synaptic output. When he saw these activities cease, Superman immediately stopped. He and Infrastructure were twenty feet off the ground. Half a second later, Superman heard Infrastructure’s scream.

What Superman also heard were the fading signals relaying the immediate aftermath of Infrastructure’s forcible removal from the network of civilizations. The world was relieved to be fractured again, its citizens thankful to once again be of their own minds, safely nestled within their private little lies. Superman heard this final sigh of freedom before the signals faded into nothingness. Once again free to focus his senses and ignore what lay around him, Superman too was alone.

The three of them waited for Superman in his Fortress of Solitude. He arrived with Infrastructure in his arms. They all could tell he was still alive. None of them was entirely sure how they felt about that.

“The Professor is recovering,” Peregrine told Superman when he’d landed. “Nanite is watching over him, in her physical form in case he wakes up unchanged.”

“We’ve been passing the time by watching news reports,” Curfew went on. “I can’t think of how it could be possible, but it is. Nobody died as a result of his actions.” She nodded her head at the unconscious Infrastructure.

“That’s good to hear,” answered Superman. “It’s one thing he won’t have to feel guilty about it.” He shimmered in the air briefly, and when he was again in focus it was without Infrastructure. “Nanite’s debugging him now. I’m going off to help rebuild. You should all stay here. When I return, we need to talk.”

It wasn’t until nearly five hours that Superman returned. He saw that all traces of Nanite were missing from the Fortress of Solitude’s systems. She was entirely in her physical robotic form, waiting with the rest of the Absolute. Both the Professor and Infrastructure appeared in normal spirits, as though possession by an alien consciousness occurred every day. Superman noted that none of them knew the actual truth.

Superman landed facing them, but a distance away. He had to choose his words carefully.

“From the time I first decided to place you all on probation, I’ve tried to teach you all how to be heroes. Or, to be more accurate, my definition of heroes. I understand how many people find my ways of thinking to be outdated, and I’m the last man to claim that my opinions matter more than anybody else’s. In this time we’ve spent together, I have come to understand that none of you will ever be my definition of a hero.”

“There’s a reason for that,” Curfew cut in. “Nanite discovered the information while she was debugging us. We aren’t real.”

Briefly, Superman shifted his eyes at the ground before he looked up and met the Absolute’s eyes. “That’s not true.”

“We were created by an alien psychotic in the image of what he wanted you to become,” Infrastructure stated. “You were to distrust the current establishment, so our origins were written to be the results of malevolent government programs that didn’t really exist. You were to give in to those dark urges inside of you, so our characterizations involved bad language and killing without compunction. You were meant to go against everything you stood for, so in our designs he included a desire to change the world through any means necessary. He knew that you would try to redeem us, so our purpose was to infect you.”

“Even though we know the truth,” Ra continued, “it doesn’t change anything about us. I would have destroyed a small charter plane to prevent it from crashing into a large commercial jet. The only reason I didn’t was because some kid with magnetic powers diverted its course just in time.”

“We aren’t a part of this bright and shiny world,” said the Professor. “No matter how hard we try, everybody would see us as scary villains running a protection racket by claiming to be heroes.”

“That’s why we’re leaving,” finished Nanite. “We’ve detected a dimension outside of space that leads into other universes. In a sea of infinity, there should be a place where we could belong.”

Superman looked at their faces, listened to their words. Everything they said was sincere and true. “Then I suppose there’s nothing else to say, except good bye. And good luck.”

Behind the Absolute, a portal opened in a spiral pattern, red in color. One by one, they turned and stepped into the breach. Curfew was last, and she paused to turn and speak one last time to Superman.

“That you would take us in to begin with, it shows how close he was to succeeding. Hey, you notice I haven’t cursed once this entire time?” Without waiting for a response, she turned and followed the others. The breach spiraled shut.