Superman: Dawnbreaker (DC Icons #4)(53)

Clark’s heart dropped, and he had to sit down.

It was a spaceship.

Nearly fifteen feet long and shaped like a teardrop. A geometric hexagon made up the larger end. It came to a sharp point at the other end. A spherical metallic bubble bulged up from the middle. The whole thing sat on low tripod legs. It was almost six feet high at the thickest portion.

Clark rubbed his hands down his face, trying to comprehend what he was seeing.

Why would he have been inside a spaceship?

Who had put him there?

There were so many questions flooding his brain that he could hardly think straight.

His dad let out a long sigh and went on. “It all started when we saw a streak of light in the night sky. At first we didn’t think much of it. Just another meteor. You’ve seen many of them yourself over the years.”

It was true. Working outside at night, Clark had seen a lot of strange things. Lights that danced in random patterns. Meteors. Satellites. Unexplainable shapes on the horizon. But what could any of those things have to do with him?

“Then it grew larger,” Jonathan said. “And brighter. And it was heading directly toward the field just south of the house. I’ll never forget the sound of the impact that night. The way it lit up the sky.”

“The crater outside,” Clark said, making the connection. He knew that part of the farm like the back of his hand. It had always been his safe space. But now…

“We headed over right away,” his dad continued. “Based on the size of the explosion, I figured there’d be a huge boulder in the crater. That happens around these parts sometimes. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to find…this.”

Clark’s dad reached down and hit a switch on the spaceship. Then he cranked open the top half of the metal bubble in the center.

Clark leaned over to peer inside, feeling a strange combination of fear and fascination. There was a soft pad covered in blue-and-red blankets. Despite having sat in a dusty barn for nearly two decades, the blankets were still bright and clean, the colors as vibrant as if the material had been dyed yesterday. A strange-looking control panel ran all along the rim of the opened cockpit.

“You were safely tucked inside here, wrapped in blankets,” Jonathan said. “And you looked like a perfectly normal human baby boy.”

“Except I wasn’t,” Clark said under his breath.

“Well, there’s more to it than that.” His dad pointed at a glass square in the middle of the control panel. “Put your hand in there.”

Clark hesitated.

The square had strange green symbols etched all over the dark surface. Most were entirely foreign, but one of them resembled the letter S.

“Go on, Clark.”

He slowly pressed his hand against the surface of the glass. The panel lit up instantly, and the symbols began to glow—especially the S. A beam of blue light suddenly emerged from the center console, displaying a hologram in the middle of the barn. Clark started to remove his hand, but his dad held it firmly in place, saying, “It’s time.”

The image of a man’s face flickered into being. He appeared to be in his late thirties. He had a chiseled face and dark eyes, and there were silver streaks running through his coarse black hair.

Something about the man felt oddly familiar.

“My name is Jor-El,” he said in a deep voice. “And I am from the planet Krypton.”

The color drained from Clark’s face.

Another…planet?

Jonathan stared at the ground, unmoved. This obviously wasn’t the first time he’d seen the message. And since it required Clark’s hand to activate, he wondered if he’d seen it, too, when he was too young to comprehend it all.

As the hologram continued, it shifted from the face of Jor-El to an image of a bright blue-and-green planet orbiting a distant red star.

“Some time ago,” Jor-El’s voice went on, “we became aware that our planet was doomed to inevitable destruction. My wife, Lara, was pregnant with our first child. You, Kal-El.”

“Who?” Clark swallowed uncomfortably.

“You, Clark,” Jonathan answered. “Your given name was Kal-El.”

“But…that’s impossible.”

“We knew we did not have time to save ourselves,” Jor-El continued, his face reappearing in the hologram. “But we had enough time to construct a spacecraft equipped to carry you to the nearest planet that, we hope, will sustain life from Krypton.”

The man’s mouth moved slightly out of sync with his words, like a poorly dubbed foreign movie. Even in his shock, it occurred to Clark that some strange technology might be translating the words from an alien language into English.

“Because of your genetic and cosmic makeup, Kal-El, we believe you will react to the natural environment differently than the planet’s indigenous beings. What this means for you is hard to say. It is our hope, of course, that it will not render you weak and vulnerable. Regardless, it is a risk we must take. There is no other choice.”

The hologram cut out for several maddening seconds, then reappeared.

“By the time you see this, our home planet of Krypton will long have been destroyed. Gone for hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of solar revolutions. Your mother and I, I’m sorry to say, will also be gone. But you, Kal-El, must carry on in the name of Krypton. Be well, my son. And do your family and planet proud. We love you very much and always will.”