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 He took a closer look at his surroundings, noticing again how out-of-date they were.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.
“Krypton’s gone,” she said.
He had no reason to doubt her, but he clambered from his cell and staggered toward the nearest viewport to see for himself. His heart sank as he beheld nothing but a desolate debris field—strewn with planetary rubble— where Krypton had once been. Flecks of iridescent green glinted amidst the drifting asteroids, which were all that was left of the world that Zod has sworn to protect.
Jor-El had been right all along.
“We were adrift… destined to float amidst the ruins of our planet until we starved.” Zod’s voice caught in his throat. He looked away for a moment, overcome by the memory. The illusory Kansas farmhouse was very different from the Kryptonian prison barge that had escaped from the Phantom Zone.
Clark figured there had to be more to the story.
“How did you find your way to Earth?” he asked.
“We took a shortcut,” Zod said, “just like you did. We managed to retrofit the Phantom projector into a hyperdrive. Your father made a similar modification to the ship that brought you here.”
Zod and his officers stood upon the dark cavernous bridge of the Black Zero. No longer a prison, the ship had become an ark, carrying the last survivors of Krypton, save for one other.
The mood was tense. Having only recently escaped the Phantom Zone, the soldiers were understandably nervous about activating the projector again. Zod understood their concerns, but saw no other option. There was nothing left for them here, orbiting the wreckage of their lost world. None of Rao’s other satellites could be made habitable, even if they had access to World Engines, which they did not.
If the Kryptonian race was to have a future, it would have to be forged elsewhere, around another star.
Faora and the others took their places in the acceleration couches. Zod signaled Commander Gor— one of the other reanimates—to activate the phantom drive. The man slid a command key into an active port.
All at once, the universe vanished from the viewport, to be replaced by a maelstrom of unnatural lights that didn’t belong to any spectrum Zod knew. The colors hurt his eyes, and he heard some of his weaker soldiers react in fear, but he refused to look away, gazing steadily into the Zone.
A moment of turbulence shook the ship, and Zod’s stomach turned over, before the Black Zero completed the transition and exited into normal space. In theory, they could use the phantom drive to cross countless light-years in a fraction of the time it would take otherwise. The entire galaxy was now open to them.
And so the instrument of their damnation became their salvation.
But the galaxy proved a cold and unwelcoming place. Years passed as they traversed the cosmos, looking for a new home—and perhaps the treasure Jor-El had stolen from them. In desperation, they sought out the old colonial outposts, searching for signs of life.
One such outpost was located on an icy planet of frozen black sand and windswept wastes. It looked unpromising from orbit, after the Black Zero materialized above it, returning to normal space, but Zod insisted on leading an expedition to the surface in the hope that some remnant of the lost colony had survived.
Located at the outer rim of its solar system, treacherously far from a cooling white dwarf, the planet was too cold to support life under ordinary circumstances. Endless night and icy winter reigned over the barren world. Its harsh environment required Zod and the others to don protective hardsuits as they trekked across the frozen black desert.
He caught a reflection of his face in the visor of Faora’s helmet, and was shocked at how much their bleak odyssey had aged him. His hair was going gray at the temples, while his face was more worn and drawn than he remembered.
Howling winds had carved rocky outcroppings into jagged, twisted formations. A midnight sun—small and faint in the sky—provided only the dimmest glimmers of light. Zod and the landing party needed to rely on searchlights to explore the ruins.
All they found was death. The skeletons of long-dead colonists littered the crumbling structures, which were being eaten away by the relentless winds. Cut off from Krypton after space exploration became a discarded luxury, the abandoned outpost had withered and died, perhaps even before Krypton had. Zod and his followers found no long-lost brothers and sisters.
They were still alone.
Yet the expedition still yielded some benefits. Work crews from the Black Zero salvaged everything they could from the dead outpost—armor, weapons, even a massive World Engine only somewhat smaller than the Black Zero. The towering mechanism had apparently been left idle after the colonists lost hope, but Zod dreamed of a day when it might finally fulfill its intended purpose on a far more suitable planet.