Members of the action team bid farewell to their families and loved ones. Three aircraft, full of determination and carrying everyone's hopes, roared into the tunnel. It looked incredibly heroic—especially when passing through the lower strata of Metropolis and the tabletop above. The surroundings were pitch-black, like plunging headfirst into hell. Within the deep tunnel lurked many bizarre, faintly glowing creatures.
Thea piloted the lead aircraft. The flashing light at her tail guided the two planes behind her.
Afraid the group might panic, all three hundred people had been briefed in advance: anything they saw along the way posed no threat. This was just a hole drilled through a table, not the gates of hell. Those creatures were parasites and microorganisms—terrifying only because they themselves had become small.
"Hey… are you scared?" a bodyguard asked the soldier beside him.
The soldier was terrified too, his teeth chattering—but could he admit it? If people later talked about how some captain had been scared into wetting himself by a table, how would he ever live that down?
"Not scared!" the soldier said through clenched teeth.
In truth, most of the people aboard the three planes were scared stiff. But the atmosphere was strange—no one had the courage to admit fear. Through mutual questions and encouragement, ten minutes later they finally passed through what they would later jokingly call the Gate of Darkness—actually nothing more than a piece of wooden tabletop.
The planes shook slightly. This was because the air composition inside the spaceship differed from that inside the glass dome. Fortunately, all three planes had been modified and tested in advance. An hour later, they successfully landed.
Everyone disembarked wearing spacesuits. Thea first arranged for several hackers to begin intercepting the ship's signals.
The anti-atomization device was pushed out of the aircraft.
"Who goes first?" Thea asked.
Everyone exchanged glances. Seeing no one respond, Thea knew they still didn't trust a technology that existed only in movies. "Then I'll go first."
Worried she might step on them after enlarging, Thea ran far away alone, then shouted, "Begin!"
Diggle aimed the probe at her and pressed the button. An orange-yellow, nearly transparent beam struck Thea.
Before the three hundred people's eyes, Thea instantly grew larger—until everyone had to crane their necks and could see no higher than her calves. Only then did they know the device had worked.
"Leave one hundred people to guard the machine and the tunnel. Two hundred begin anti-atomization and come with me to seize the ship." The crowd hurried to undergo the ray treatment as Thea scanned her surroundings.
Brainiac had collected many things. This was merely one of its countless ships. More than twenty bottles contained major cities from several intelligent civilizations near the Milky Way. In some, signs of life activity could still be seen; others were already utterly silent.
"Can these… all be freed?" The one asking, pointing at the glass bottles, was Lex Luthor. He was the only non-combatant besides Thea willing to come down.
Everyone's spacesuits had communicators. After a brief pause, Thea replied, "Maybe."
Leaving Luthor alone to ponder the glass domes, Thea began assigning tasks.
She couldn't say she had already scouted the ship and knew there was only one enemy. Necessary search procedures still had to be followed.
The ship wasn't small. Fifty soldiers were dispatched to cover all corridors.
The remaining one hundred and fifty prepared their weapons and waited for further orders.
Gravity inside the ship was lower than Earth's, but it wasn't a vacuum. After brief adaptation, everyone could engage in combat.
"Commander, I spotted a green, tracked robot at the K2 corridor entrance. It's mobile—seems to be an enemy." The corridors had all been named by Thea. The reporting soldier wasn't entirely sure and spoke cautiously.
Thea ordered him to continue tracking and hold position. After half an hour, with no enemy sightings in the other forty-nine corridors, she judged the act had gone on long enough and led the main force to the K2 corridor.
This world had already witnessed Superman's battle with Zod, so ordinary people were far more accepting of aliens. Still, seeing the owner of this ship for the first time was shocking.
Is this an alien… or a robot? The thought crossed many minds.
Heavy tracks provided its mobility. Its body was covered in cables and mechanical joints, shaped like a giant insect. Countless mechanical arms and data cables extended from its torso. Its head was an inverted triangle, with two eyes emitting infrared beams as they scanned the surroundings.
"It's spotted us! Attack!" Thea knew immediately something was wrong. These soldiers knew too little about high-tech weaponry. With a quick glance, Thea identified four or five types of detection beams—the enemy had discovered the tracking long ago and was clearly waiting for them to walk into the trap.
A sentient AI was far too troublesome.
Thea didn't join the fight immediately. She contacted the hackers first. "Any signals getting out?"
"Reporting, Commander—we've intercepted fourteen signals… fifteen now." The dozen hackers had clearly suffered plenty under military custody; their unruly edges had been worn down.
"Keep intercepting. Tell me when you can't hold anymore." Thea said nothing else. If they failed, she had no backup. She couldn't risk deploying Gideon. For now, they could only rely on simulated signals and manual interception.
Facing an unknown alien enemy—and wary of damaging the ship—everyone present except Thea and Luthor carried rifles. Over a hundred M4A1s opened fire simultaneously. Amid the roaring muzzle flashes, the robot calmly activated an energy shield. Bullets splashed against it in rippling waves before vanishing.
"Use grenades!" Thea ordered.
More than ten soldiers with grenade launchers aimed and fired.
The rifle grenades struck the shield. This time, the explosions wreathed the robot in crackling electric sparks—it was clear the shield was under heavy strain.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Humans feared damaging the ship; the robot had no such concern. Fire flared beneath its tracks as four rockets launched toward the crowd. At the same time, its mechanical hands transformed rapidly. In a blur of motion, two arms morphed into cannon barrels as thick as a child's arm, firing two dark-blue laser beams.
"Diggle, freeze gun!" Freeze guns were extremely difficult to manufacture. Thea had only made three. Moira and Felicity—both lacking offensive power—had one each. Diggle, as her bodyguard, carried the third. As long as it wasn't used often, the radiation wouldn't be excessive.
Returning to the battlefield, Diggle was exhilarated, filled with a sense of mission. His tall frame rolled forward, then sideways, steadily closing the distance to the robot.
As the soldiers on the other side drew the robot's attention, he suddenly leapt out, squeezed the trigger all the way down, and unleashed the freezing blast straight ahead.