Superman: Dawnbreaker (DC Icons #4)(72)

The boom that followed seconds later pressed stomachs to the earth and rattled teeth. The crowd peered up at a massive bloom of fire. They watched it roll across the blue sky, sending waves of intense heat in every direction.

Martha fell to her knees, shrieking.

Jonathan held her tight as they both scanned the horizon for any sign of what they had known was their son.

Others began to speculate about what they were seeing….

Had a plane just exploded in midair?

A man in a strange blue-and-red suit came tumbling out of the fireball in the sky. He spun aimlessly, cape fluttering in the wind. The crowd gasped as he fell. After several horrifying seconds, he crash-landed on a grassy field just beyond the library.

The crowd held its collective breath and moved as one toward the field. But there was no way a human could have survived such a fall.

Many looked away.

Parents held back their children.

When the dust finally cleared, the figure in the blue suit and red cape rose up out of the crater and staggered several paces before collapsing to his knees. He stared at the stunned crowd, his face hidden behind layers of scorched black soot.

Seemingly unsure of what to say or do.

Or even who he was.

Jonathan and Martha ran to the edge of the circle of onlookers that had formed around the field. Martha sagged in relief and held out her hand, stopping only when Jonathan squeezed her shoulder.

A helicopter buzzed just overhead. Few in the crowd even noticed it.

But the man in the red-and-blue suit did.

He followed the chopper’s arcing flight with his gaze until it passed over the square. Then he took off running at a tremendous speed and leapt back into the sky, eliciting a chorus of gasps from the small crowd.

He thrust a fist out in front of him and flew after the forward-leaning chopper.

Kyle, Tommy, and Paul, just arriving at the scene, craned their necks and watched his impossible flight in awe.





Clark knew exactly where the helicopter was headed.

He was thinking bigger than Smallville now. If the bomb had only been a diversion, it meant that Corey and Dr. Wesley wanted the entire community—most importantly, the police and rescue crews—to be focused on the downtown. This would free up the pair to do something on a grand scale back at the Jones farm. Clark still didn’t know what they were up to, but if they were willing to blow up a mass of innocent people, it had to be something truly horrific.

As he ripped through the air toward the farm, keeping his distance from the chopper, he couldn’t get the exploding bomb out of his mind. His whole body still trembled from the massive blast. His head rang like a bell.

He couldn’t remember being on fire or falling out of the sky. But what mattered was that he was still alive. And when he’d stepped out of the crater and found everyone in his Smallville community staring at him in silent amazement, he understood himself on a deeper level. These special powers he possessed—they weren’t for his own amusement or vanity. They were for the service of others. Even people who might shun him if they knew what he actually was.

He recalled the quote his father had once told him: “To whom much is given, of him will much be required.”

But he’d also realized something else. His regular clothes had completely burned up in the sky, and his glasses had fallen off, leaving him dressed only in the indestructible suit his mom had made. Yet nobody had recognized him. It was as if all they could see was the S symbol, keeping his secret secure.

As Clark drew closer to the helicopter, he craned to see who was inside. Other than the pilot sitting up front, there were two men in black fatigues in back. Next to them, he now saw, were Corey and Dr. Wesley. When they spotted him, they moved closer to the window and stared in shock, mouths agape. Not because they recognized him as Clark. No, they were merely stunned to see someone flying alongside their helicopter, aiming to take them down.

Dr. Wesley summoned one of the guards, who opened the hatch in the side door and began firing with an assault rifle. Most of the bullets missed wildly, but a few pinged off Clark’s shoulders and back, each leaving a brief, deep burning sensation. But Clark wasn’t as worried about that now. He knew if he avoided the mysterious green substance that Dr. Wesley had been carrying, nothing would slow him down.

Then something else grabbed his attention.

Below he saw people in some kind of organized formation in the clearing with the strange white markings. Men with weapons stood on each spray-painted line. They all had shaved heads and wore matching brown uniforms as they marched in straight lines, like they were doing some kind of military training exercise. Several men in business suits watched from the sidelines.

Clark thought of the man in brown who’d attacked his teammates with a knife, and he thought of the guards who’d chased him and Bryan and Lex through the lab—the men who weren’t “fully trained yet.” Wesco was attempting to turn the men Clark had seen shackled to their chairs into some kind of enslaved army.

But why?

Who were they going to fight?

Clark put his head down and flew faster. When he drew near the descending helicopter, he finally saw who the pilot was.

Bryan.

His heart dropped.

Had Bryan been a part of the Wesco team from the beginning? Had their entire friendship been a con?

Clark zipped underneath the helicopter’s broad belly and grabbed on to the landing skids. He remembered the last time he’d been in such a position, that day on his farm when he’d been trying to save Bryan and Corey and Dr. Wesley.