She clung to him with all her strength, her heart pounding wildly. An overwhelming sense of gratitude washed over her, along with a few other emotions, but Superman’s intense expression told her at once that the danger wasn’t over.
The singularity was approaching critical mass, pulsating above the city like a voracious black sun. The Kryptonian prison ship had been crushed into subatomic particles, leaving behind a sucking wound in the fabric of reality.
A deafening roar, like an extra-dimensional tornado, bellowed from the depths of the aperture. Blinding flashes of phantasmal light offered glimpses of a weird, purgatorial realm that was never meant to intersect with ordinary space. It made Lois queasy just looking at it.
Superman flew away from the vortex, pulling against the relentless forces that were trying to suck him back into the Phantom Zone with the other Kryptonians. Spectral colors glowed beneath his skin. His face rippled and distorted alarmingly; Lois could tell he was fighting with all his might to get them both clear of the singularity’s event horizon, before he was lost forever.
She buried her face against the “S” on his chest, squeezing him tightly.
Don’t give up, she urged him silently. The world needs you.
He strained against the pull of the black hole, barely making any headway. Lois feared the Zone would never them go, but then, just as she was on the verge of losing hope, the vortex began to collapse in on itself.
The eldritch glare faded, retreating back into the rift, while the thundering clamor quieted.
Superman gasped in relief as the Zone’s ravenous pull slackened enough for him to break free at last.
No longer tethered, he coasted to a stop high above the city. He rotated in the air so that he and Lois could watch the singularity’s death throes from a position of safety. Cradled in his arms, she watched it diminish to a pinpoint, and then blink out of existence.
Not with a bang, but a whimper, she thought, already composing the story in her head. Or is that too cliché?
The wounded sky rushed back to repair itself.
Smoke and flames wafted up from the war-torn city, as the sun sank toward the horizon.
Was it finally over?
Descending to street level, he gently set her down at the center of a battered intersection, strewn with rubble and trashed vehicles. Relatively few casualties littered the pavement, although she shuddered to imagine what the final body count would be once all those demolished buildings were excavated. She thought of Hardy and Dr. Hamilton and all the heroes who had sacrificed themselves to halt the Black Zero’s attack on Metropolis.
Their stories would not go untold, not if she had anything to say about it.
“Lois—” Superman said, and his voice was hoarse.
She looked up at him. To her dismay, she saw that his face was still suffused with an unearthly radiance, as though the Zone maintained a hold on him. Spectral colors leaked from his skin, the last lingering vestiges of the exotic energies he been exposed to as a child, during his long journey from Krypton. His alien past bled into the present, threatening the future.
For a moment, she feared that she was going to lose him to the Zone after all, but he came through for her once again. With a determined expression, he kept himself rooted to the Earth—and reality.
A warm smile promised that he wasn’t going anywhere.
They kissed amidst the ruins, seizing the moment after all they had been through together. The phantom glow subsided, and a much more earthly warmth enveloped them. Lois savored the kiss, grateful that they had finally made it this far. Thank God he kept saving her life—she would have hated to have missed it.
The sun was still setting when their lips finally came apart.
“You know,” she quipped, “they say it’s all downhill after the first kiss.”
Superman smiled.
“I’m pretty sure that only counts if you’re kissing a human.”
Here’s hoping, she thought.
Nervous survivors began to creep from the ruins, cautiously checking to see if it was safe. Bedraggled civilians, along with police officers and National Guardsmen, eyed the couple curiously. Superman’s colorful attire attracted plenty of attention. One soldier’s eyes bulged.
“Whoa,” he whispered. “It’s Superman.”
Searching the growing crowd for familiar faces, Lois was relieved to spot Perry, Steve, Jenny, and a few other scattered Planet staffers among the survivors. Perry and Lombard helped Jenny clamber over a heap of rubble. The plucky intern was limping, but managed to make her way toward Lois and Superman. She glanced up at the twilight sky, where the Black Zero no longer hung above the city.
“Are they gone?” she asked.
Perry peered at the empty sky, as well.
“I think so,” he said.
Jenny turned her gaze toward Superman and Lois. Blushing slightly, Lois wondered if Perry and the others had seen the kiss, and whether she could keep that part out of the papers.
“He saved us,” Jenny said.
Superman heard what the girl said. He smiled at her, pleased to get such a warm reception. He scanned her discreetly, making certain that her injuries didn’t require immediate attention. To his relief, she appeared to have come through the attack with only a few minor sprains and abrasions.
More survivors emerged from hiding. They milled about, gazing in amazement at the colorful hero and taking pictures with their cell phones. After keeping a low profile for his entire life, his first instinct was to flee all the attention, but instead he lingered among the people like a man with nothing to hide anymore.
He smiled warmly at the bystanders, seeking to put them at ease. It felt odd, but great, as well. Maybe he didn’t have to lurk in the shadows from now on.
Maybe the world was finally ready for Superman.
A tremendous boom wiped the smile from his face and threw the crowd into a panic. The noise came from the demolished building where the Kryptonian scout had crashed.
An armored figure burst from the wreckage.
Zod!
Apparently Zod had been too far away from the Black Zero to be captured by the Phantom Drive, which meant that the war was far from over.
“Everyone get back!” Superman shouted. He spotted injured people in danger of being trampled by the frightened crowd. “Move the others to safety!”
His urgent instructions had the desired effect. Courageous soldiers and civilians scrambled to assist the wounded as the crowd fled in terror. Lois tried to linger, but was dragged away by her friends.
Confident that no one would be left behind, Superman launched himself into the air.
It seemed that he and Zod still had business to settle.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Zod landed in an empty wasteland that had been flattened by the gravity beam. A circle of desolation surrounded him, bordered by the standing ruins of buildings partially sheared away by the column. The carved-up skyscrapers formed a sort of bowl around a blasted region several blocks across. Compressed matter, ground to a fine powder, blew across what had once been a thriving business district.
Superman could only imagine how many lives had been lost while he had been fighting the World Engine on the other side of the world.
Now it was Zod’s turn to be stopped.
The exiled Kryptonian looked up as Superman approached. Wet eyes betrayed his sorrow. He knelt and picked up a handful of dust. He let the gritty powder run through his fingers.