Superman didn't waste time.
After extracting Pete Ross from Calverton, he didn't risk a return to any standard government facility. Most were already swarmed—oceans of protestors spilling across courtyards and streets like a human flood.
Instead, he diverted to a black site.
Off-grid. Shielded. Anonymous by design.
Pete said nothing during the flight. He didn't need to. The silence between them was a living thing. Thick, judgmental, and impossible to outrun at high altitude.
Meanwhile, across the nation, the League worked quickly. The scattered hostages—officials once untouchable—were plucked from alleys, abandoned fields, even back rooms of shuttered stores. Most of them shaken. Some bruised. All of them drowning in the weight of their exposed sins.
And while the heroes scrambled to salvage what pieces they could, elsewhere—
Arias arrived.
The corridor opened into a control room, just as austere as the hall they'd come through. Bare metallic walls, dull light panels, and consoles arranged in harsh angles.
No design flourishes. No comforts. Just the cold efficiency of a laboratory meant to exist unseen.
Ahead of them stood a wall—thick, reinforced. Lines of containment tech ran through it. Heavy lead composites layered with electromagnetic diffusers. Tethered into solar dampeners stolen from deep black research projects—the kind designed to starve supercells of light at a molecular level.
It wasn't pretty.
It wasn't meant to be.
Dr. October's heels clicked softly against the floor as she entered behind Arias, hands placed behind her back, posture controlled.
Arias, however, was already focused.
His gaze fell immediately on the centerpiece beyond the reinforced barrier—the pod.
Inside it, submerged in a thick, bubbling red suspension fluid, floated the figure of Galatea.
Her form, while obscured by the heavy liquid and the distortion of the tank's surface, was unmistakable.
She was tall for a woman—measuring approximately 191 centimeters in height. Her frame carried the kind of muscle mass sculpted not for aesthetics, but for perfect, devastating function.
Broad shoulders balanced against wide, powerful hips, the curve of her figure both alluring and utterly intimidating.
If not for the distortion of the pod, her body would have been almost a sight to behold—like staring at a weapon disguised as flesh.
The pod itself was minimalistic. A simple control pad lined the base, regulating temperature, nutrient infusion, and the gravitational fields used to prevent cellular drift during acceleration.
There were no windows for visitors. No gallery for scientists to marvel.
Only the project, suspended in red oblivion.
Dr. October stepped forward and sighed quietly.
"Ever since you aided the process with your genetic material," she began, voice clinical but strained, "I noticed an acceleration in her growth. Far past the expected parameters the original sample would have allowed."
Arias tilted his head slightly but said nothing, letting her continue.
"It's as if her Kryptonian DNA—already potent—is being challenged. Your sample didn't just integrate. It grows. Competes." She paused, choosing her words carefully. "The result is a near-constant cycle of damage and self-repair. At rates that—frankly—shouldn't be possible."
Her gaze drifted to the pod, studying the slow, steady ripples across the liquid surface.
"At this rate," she continued, "I can't predict the outcome. She may continue to grow. Or she may rupture at a genetic level. I don't know."
She clasped her hands tighter behind her back.
"Surgical observation is out of the question. Her tissues reject intrusion faster than Kryptonian-based kryptonite tools can pierce. Even internal samples—mouth, eyes—are resistant. All we managed were saliva samples."
She turned slightly toward Arias, frowning.
"It's like trying to poke a hole in promethium with a toothpick."
Arias smiled faintly.
The doctor didn't return it.
"I hope you understand why I'm concerned now," she said, voice lowered.
Arias stepped closer to the reinforced window. His reflection flickered faintly over the glass, layered with the outline of the being inside. His voice was soft, almost amused.
"There's no need for concern, Doctor."
And somehow, hearing him say it only made the room feel smaller.
Arias didn't move.
Didn't even glance at Dr. October.
His smirk widened—an almost imperceptible shift—as he kept his focus on the pod. On her.
Because unlike the brilliant but hopelessly limited woman beside him, he wasn't seeing cell division or genetic conflict through the lens of human science.
No.
Arias was seeing it layered across constructs she couldn't even name—webworks of cause and effect stitched through dimensions beyond linear comprehension.
Where she saw conflicting DNA chains, he saw war.
Not in the biological sense, but at the root of being itself—at the level where existence decided what deserved to live.
Kryptonian DNA, mighty under yellow suns, was clawing to assert dominance, fueled by artificial solar floods in the chamber. But it wasn't a fair fight. Not even close.
Because the strand Arias had woven into Galatea wasn't mortal.
It wasn't even biological anymore in the conventional sense.
His DNA carried the core principle of survival itself. A coded mandate that had nothing to do with evolution or adaptation.
Its sole command: Persist. Thrive. Consume back to the source.
Unlike the Kryptonian template, whose strength was circumstantial—dependent on outside energy—Arias's influence was a contagion of pure being. Dormant for now, latent until touched again by its originator. Waiting. Patient. Eternal.
Where Dr. October saw an unpredictable anomaly, Arias saw inevitability.
Finally, he turned.
Slow. Controlled.
"Thank you for your work on this project, Doctor," he said, voice smooth. "You may leave now."
The words landed sharper than intended. Dr. October blinked once, caught visibly off guard.
But she was smart enough not to protest.
Everyone else might still debate whether Arias Markovic was a global threat, a savior, or something worse.
She already knew.
She nodded briskly, keeping her tone neutral. "It was my pleasure."
Inwardly, though, a single, dark thought flickered through her mind as she exited, 'The world will never be the same after today.'
The door slid shut behind her with a soft hiss.
Arias barely noticed.
He let out a breath—half a chuckle—and muttered, "I suppose I should intervene... lest she remain perpetually locked in a scramble with my DNA."
There was no ceremony. No gesture.
No flash of light or rippling of the air.
Arias's will moved not through the physical plane—not through the third, or the fourth, or even the brittle scaffolding of the fifth.
No.
His decision to unify Galatea's being occurred past the Eleventh Dimension, past even the speculative architecture of the Twelfth.
It folded itself into the root of existence itself—Infinity.
The true birthplace of all things.
The wellspring of reality's first mistake and final hope.
It happened without fanfare.
And almost immediately—chaos.
**BZZZZZZT!**
The control panel blared a deafening alarm, red emergency lights slicing through the dimness of the control room.
A harsh robotic voice rang out from the system:
"Warning. Solar energy reserves critically depleted. Immediate power loss detected. Repeat—solar array compromised."
A second alarm shrieked.
"Radiation output exceeding critical levels. Evacuate immediately."
Arias didn't flinch.
Beyond the reinforced leaded glass, the pod that had housed Galatea's body like a sacred relic was disintegrating.
Solar energy—once a steady, nourishing stream—was now being devoured in violent, rapid bursts.
It wasn't light anymore.
It was raw, uncontrolled flare, warping and twisting around her like tendrils of a sun trying desperately to survive its own death.
The chamber panels ruptured under the strain, metal creaking and fracturing as impossible amounts of radiation tried to find somewhere, anywhere to go.
Galatea's body floated motionless amidst the destruction.
But her eyes—
Her eyes drank the solar inferno like bottomless vortexes.
Light didn't reflect off her.
It sank into her.
Her skin—once pale and embryonic—now had a faint, unnatural hue, like molten marble cooling in a dying forge.
The bubbling liquid boiled away. The containment field buckled.
Only she remained—hovering effortlessly, arms slack, her short hair trailing upward like strands of captured lightning.
Arias stood watching.
Hands calmly clasped behind his back.
Face illuminated by the collapse of science.
And he smiled.