Greg Cox - Man of Steel

A female Kryptonian, whom Faora addressed as Car-Vex, fitted Lois with a respirator helmet. It was a trifle claustrophobic, but at least she could breathe more easily.

“Are you all right?” Superman asked.

“I’m okay.” She didn’t want to let on how scared she was.

An inner doorway slid open at the other end of the airlock. Wasting no time, Faora and her underlings marched them into the heart of the ship, which proved to be a very bleak and gloomy environment. Unlike the futuristic white corridors she had envisioned, the Kryptonian vessel was a warren of cramped, claustrophobic tunnels and catacombs, dimly lit, cold, and drafty. The spooky alien milieu gave her goosebumps, and not just because of the uncomfortably low temperature.

Alcatraz was cozy by comparison.

A sickly green bioluminescence provided barely enough light for her to see anything. Shivering, Lois kept her hand closed tightly on the object Superman had passed her.

She knew it had to be important. She just didn’t know why.

The doorway opened onto a cavernous, multistory chamber lined with elevated catwalks. Rows of empty cryostasis compartments lined one wall of the chamber, giving it the feel of a futuristic alien cell block. A handful of Kryptonian soldiers waited for them on a platform overlooking the ground floor of the chamber. It was clear at a glance who was the man in charge.

He stood at the forefront of the assemblage, gazing down at the visitors like a dictator addressing his subjects from a palace balcony. His stern, saturnine features lacked the warmth and gentle nobility of Jor-El, although his shrewd eyes appeared equally intelligent. He was tall and fit, but his deeply lined face looked as if it had been through the wars. Cropped brown hair was graying at the temples. His black and silver uniform, made of the same durable Kryptonian fabric as Superman’s own suit, was adorned with stripes and medals befitting his rank. A long black cloak hung from his shoulders.

“Kal-El,” he said. “You have no idea how long we’ve been searching for you.”

I’ll bet, Superman thought. “I take it you’re Zod?”

“General Zod,” Faora snarled. “Our commander. Show some respect, dog.”

“It’s all right, Faora,” Zod said calmly. He descended a flight of stairs to join them on the lower level. “We can forgive Kal any lapses in decorum. He’s a stranger to our ways.”

Superman remained suspicious. Zod’s graciousness seemed at odds with the way he had bullied Earth in order to get his way. So he kept a close eye on Zod, even as he began to feel oddly dizzy, and then disoriented. His eyes watered. His head felt foggy all of a sudden. He blinked in confusion.

“Please,” Zod insisted, “this moment should be cause for celebration, not conflict.”

Superman tottered unsteadily. His head was swimming. His eyes burned. Nausea twisted his stomach. He gasped for breath.

“—feel strange… weak…”

The chamber seemed to spin around him. He stumbled forward, then dropped to his knees before Zod. A groan escaped his lips.

Lois rushed to his side.

“What’s happening to him?” she asked anxiously, looking up at their captors.

“His body is rejecting our ship’s atmospherics.” Zod gazed down at Superman, who felt sicker than he had ever felt before. “You spent a lifetime adapting to Earth’s ecology, Kal. But you never adapted to ours.”

Superman struggled to overcome this unexpected weakness. His head throbbed painfully. His limbs felt like rubber. His vision blurred. Sudden chills alternated with feverish hot flashes, while pressure built within his ears. He heard Lois calling out from what sounded like miles away.

“Help him!” she demanded.

“I can’t,” Zod replied. “Whatever’s happening to him has to run its course.”

Superman coughed hoarsely, spraying blood onto the deck of the ship. His face was cold and clammy. A cold sweat drenched him beneath his skinsuit. He could barely keep his head up. He fought to stay conscious, for Lois’s sake, even as darkness encroached on his vision.

Clark opened his eyes. To his surprise, he was no longer aboard the Black Zero. Instead he glimpsed a clear blue sky beyond the front porch of his childhood home back in Smallville. He sat up and looked around. Everything was just as he remembered it—the barn, the silo, the cornfields. His old swing still hung from a tree branch in the front yard.

The farmhouse was good as new, not at all as rundown as the last time he’d seen it. The warm spring air smelled of freshly cut grass and fertilizer. Laundry hung on a clothesline.

“Hello, Kal.”

He turned around to see Zod standing behind him.

“Or do you prefer Clark?” he continued. “That’s the name they gave you, isn’t it?”

Clark jumped to his feet. He took a closer look at his surroundings, noticing again how out-of-date they were. His eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“You can access my memories?”

“To an extent,” Zod admitted. “Apparently, your unconscious decided these surroundings might put you at ease.”

But Clark wasn’t feeling at ease. “Where’s Lois?”

“She’s safe,” Zod said. “I’ll take you to her soon enough. But I thought you might like some answers first.”

That might have sounded reasonable, if not for the evidence of history. So far Zod had given Clark little reason to trust him.

“Why don’t you start with why you gave Earth an ultimatum?” he suggested.

“We didn’t have time for diplomacy,” Zod said. “The survival of our race depended on finding you.”

Clark didn’t understand.

“I was told I was the only survivor.”

“And yet I’m standing here today because of your father’s ingenuity.”

Jor-El? Clark was caught off-guard. “You knew him?”

Zod nodded solemnly. A note of what sounded like genuine sorrow entered his voice.

“We were friends—until our beliefs drove a wedge between us. I was Krypton’s military leader. My officers and I attempted a coup. We were sentenced to the Phantom Zone, a subspace dimension that exists alongside our own. Your father had developed a projector capable opening a gateway into the Zone. And since capital punishment was deemed inhumane on Krypton,” Zod said with a bitter edge, “we were shunted into the Zone aboard this prison barge. Our bodies were kept in somatic fugue while our minds were supposedly ‘reconditioned.’”

He chuckled bitterly.

“But the destruction of our world damaged the projector and a handful of us were awoken prematurely…”

“System Failure” messages pulsed across display orbs in the cryostasis containment chamber, where the Kryptonian prisoners served out their sentences in a honeycomb of individual cells. One of the cells folded down from its niche, releasing the prisoner inside. Mobility returned to his body as the preservative gel wore off. His face twitched as he fought his way up from endless dreaming.

His fists clenched.

Zod awoke violently, sitting up straight inside the hold of the Black Zero. His plain black skinsuit clung to his reanimated body. He glanced around in confusion, surprised to find himself alert once again. He had never expected to wake from cryosleep.

What’s happened? Why have I been freed?

As his vision came into focus, the first thing he was saw was Faora, standing before him. Tears streaked her ivory cheeks. That alone was almost enough to make Zod think he was still dreaming. He had never seen Faora cry before. He hadn’t thought her capable of it.