The Death and Life of Superman (62 page)

“Some of us were fooled, taken in by this false Superman, but now the beast has shown his true colors! In my home state of California he has attacked our Cyborg savior and leveled Coast City! He must be shunned! He must be driven back to the hell from whence he came! He must be destroyed!”

On the edge of the plaza, Inspectors Sawyer and Turpin watched closely as the cult leader’s flock cheered him on. Nearly half the assembled cultists had painted their faces in homage to the Cyborg, and they quickly picked up the chant. “Destroy the Visored One! Destroy him!”

Sawyer thumbed the switch on her walkie-talkie. “This doesn’t look good. Stand by and wait for my command to move out.”

A second group of cultists suddenly shoved their way through the crowd; the newcomers wore yellow wraparound sunglasses in imitation of the Kryptonian, and they were less than happy about having their chosen savior painted as the anti-Christ. “Fools! Your ‘savior’ is less than a man . . . less even than a machine! You worship a graven image come to an unholy life!”

A face-painted cultist stepped in front of the leader of the other group, blocking his path. “You
dare
mock our lord? There can be only one answer to such blasphemy! To my side, true believers! Drive out the devil worshipers!” The Cyborg faction presented a united front and began shoving the others across the plaza.

The Kryptonian faction shoved back. “It is
you
who have lost your souls to the devil! We shall be heard! We shall not be moved!”

With the crowd on the verge of a full-fledged riot, Inspector Sawyer radioed her people in the field. “The pot’s boiling over! Do it—
now
!”

Suddenly, a half dozen ‘cultists’ scattered throughout the crowd, threw off their robes to reveal uniforms of the Special Crimes Unit, and quickly stepped between the two factions. Another dozen SCU officers moved in from the edges of the crowd their batons drawn. Within moments, the police had created a physical split between the two groups to complement the theological one.

With emotions still running high on both sides, Margaret Sawyer walked into this great divide with bullhorn in hand. “Listen to me! This is Inspector Sawyer of the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit! I
knew
Superman!”

That got their attention.

“No matter who you believe is Superman, you should be
ashamed
of yourselves! All of you—both factions—have disgraced his memory! This is hallowed ground! It’s no place for a turf war!” The plaza grew eerily still. The only sound was the echo of Sawyer’s amplified voice and the cry of a mourning dove.

“Superman isn’t here to tell you this, so I will: Go home and
calm down!
And then do something
positive
with your beliefs!”

The crowd seemed to take Sawyer’s words to heart. The factions slowly turned away from each other, and the cultists quietly began to drift away.

“Nice work, Inspector.” One of Sawyer’s men popped the visor on his helmet. “That really did the trick!”

“Yeah,
this
time.” Sawyer kept a wary eye on the last few stragglers. “Let’s keep the tear gas ready, just in case.”

25

As Superboy slowly drifted
back to consciousness, he became aware of a dull ache in his head and a strange numbness in his extremities. It was then that he realized he was bound up in a strange metal harness that held him upright, completely enclosing his arms up to the elbows and his legs up to the knees. Several tons of titanium steel made up the harness, and it was emitting a low, annoying electrical hum.

Superboy looked around. “Where the hell am I?” He and his bonds were in the middle of a huge metal chamber, roughly the size and dimension of a gymnasium.

“Ah, I suspected you might soon awake.” The Cyborg stepped into view, ostentatiously flexing the fingers of his reconstructed arm. “You displayed a most impressive resiliency during our little battle, Superboy!”

“That’s Super
man
to you, Mr. Roboto!” The Boy of Steel’s face still ached from his beating, and the pain put him in a singularly foul mood. “If it’s resiliency you wanna see, just let me out of this high-tech erector set, and I’ll take your arm apart for you again!”

Heavy footsteps echoed off the alloy floor, and Mongul loomed over the young hero’s shoulder. “You would do well to watch your tongue, pup!”

“Oh, yeah? And who are
you
supposed to be, beetle-brow . . . the poster child for jaundice? Looks to me like you took too many steroids!”

Mongul took Superboy’s head in one of his huge hands. “I find your lack of respect most distasteful.” He tightened his grip. “Apologize, and perhaps I’ll leave your jaw attached to your face. Perhaps.”

“That’s enough, Mongul!” The Cyborg stepped up beside the alien warlord. “Let go of the boy.”

“He must learn respect.” Mongul squeezed tighter, and Superboy saw stars before his eyes.

“He will. Unhand him.”

Mongul slowly released his grip on the Boy of Steel and backed away, bowing deferentially to the Cyborg. “As you wish, Master.”

“ ‘Master’?!” Superboy shook his aching head, wishing that the world would start making sense again. “You mean Mongoloid here works for you? ’Scuse me, but I walked into the middle of this movie. What’s going on? And where
are
we?”

The Cyborg stepped forward until he and the boy were nearly nose to nose. “What’s going on is the redesigning of this entire planet. It is a grand design that you, my insignificant little clone, are quite powerless to disrupt! As to our location, we are currently situated near the center of what was once Coast City. Show the boy, Mongul.”

The warlord pressed his hand against a control panel, and an entire wall lit up, showing a huge construct. There was something weird looking about the construct; Superboy could tell it was made of metal, but there was an oddly organic look to it. It rose up in clustered sections, as though it were a series of hornet’s nests, constructed by ever-larger hornets. The largest of the “nests” was still being built by some sort of mobile robotic modules. When Superboy saw the exposed structural beams rising up from the center of the construction zone, he finally realized that he was looking at an alien city.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” If the Cyborg had had lips, he would have smirked. “As you can see, we have reconstructed things somewhat. I like to think of it now as
Engine
City!”

Superboy gaped. “You mean you leveled Coast City to build that?!”

“We did.” Mongul’s admission was chillingly matter-of-fact.

“Yes. It’s so nice to finally show my creation off to an audience, even an audience of one.” There was a nasty hint of satisfaction to the Cyborg’s tone. “The outside world still knows nothing of this, of course. They believe what I have told them; they fully believe that the visor-wearing Superman impostor destroyed Coast City and remains at large. The gullible media cheer me on in my pursuit of him. Actually, such pursuit is unnecessary. That fraud is already dead. I personally dealt him a mortal blow, and our bombs did the rest.”

Superboy could not believe what he was hearing. “Why are you doing this?”

“My reasons are my own. Superman knows best.”

“Don’t hand me that! You’re not Superman!”

“Oh, but I am now.” The Cyborg flung his cape back over his shoulder with a melodramatic flourish. “And if you wish to ever reach your maturity, young one, you should accept that and acknowledge me as your master. You really have no other options. There is no escape from Engine City.”

The Cyborg turned and walked away across the chamber. “Come, Mongul. Let us leave our young friend to contemplate his future.”

The warlord switched off the wall screen and fell in behind the Cyborg, striding down a long curving corridor. “My congratulations.” Mongul’s tone remained deferential. “You put the boy in his place most masterfully.”

The Cyborg’s pace did not slacken. “I merely pointed out the facts of his predicament and demonstrated how little he concerns us.”

“Indeed. But there are others who might be cause for concern. What of the other superbeings who reside on this world? What of the self-styled Justice League?”

The Cyborg waved a hand dismissively. “The League and their associates could conceivably present a challenge, were they to learn the truth. But despite their considerable power, they should be as easy to deceive as the authorities.”

“All of them? What of the one called Supergirl?”

“Supergirl? Did you say Supergirl?” The Cyborg’s jaw yawned open, and his laughter echoed down the corridor. “You must be joking, Mongul! Supergirl is held in check by her corporate sponsor! She’s even less of a threat than the boy!”

“Yes, and of course, you were able to deal with the boy easily.” Mongul glanced at the Cyborg’s rebuilt arm and strained to keep a sneer from his lips. “Exactly why
did
you let him live? You showed no such consideration for that visored pretender.”

“Why?” The Cyborg got a distant look in his eye. “The boy has possibilities. He has the malleability of youth, and that wild psychokinetic talent by which he disassembled my arm. I would like to know how that talent functions; I suspect that he himself does not know. Despite the apparent differences of his powers, data I have tapped from the government computer networks indicates that he might actually be a Superman clone, however imperfect. If that is so, he could prove useful—as spare parts, if nothing else.”

The Cyborg paused, stroking his chin. “In retrospect, I regret the atomization of that other ‘Superman.’ His origins remain a mystery. If I had taken him captive, who knows what we might have learned from him?”

The Kryptonian collapsed onto the floor of the Antarctic Fortress, exhausted from his long journey. The robots gathered around him as he rolled onto his back. His cape had been burnt away and his S-shield hung on his chest at a crooked angle. His hair was singed and smoking, his face bruised and swollen, and his nose broken. Only a few jagged pieces remained of his shattered visor, exposing his eyes, which were a blood red.

The robots hesitated. Their master was barely recognizable; it took several seconds for their photocells to register his identity.

“Help . . . me.” He reached out and grabbed hold of the nearest robot. “Take me to the Regeneration Matrix . . . hurry!”

“Yes, sir.” The robots gingerly lifted their master and carried him into the chamber, where the Matrix sat, still laid open like a clamshell.

“No!” The Kryptonian stared blindly as he ran his hands over the jagged seam. “No, it’s open—empty! The power source is gone!” The S-shield fell from his chest as he clutched at his robots. “What has happened here?! Where is the power? What have you done with it? Answer me!”

“Master, please . . .” The voice of the robot was soft and comforting. “The Matrix opened from within. It could no longer contain the power you had placed inside. We had no choice but to follow our prescribed programming.”

“Then I am . . . doomed!” The Kryptonian coughed, then sagged unconscious to the chamber floor.

“Inspector Sawyer!” On the steps outside Metropolis City Hall, Lois Lane waved to the other woman. “I need to talk with you about the latest report from Coast City.”

Sawyer looked up, a trifle perplexed. “Ms. Lane, I hardly think that my promotion to inspector extends my authority across country!”

“I know, but you
are
working with Commissioner Henderson on the investigations of the four new Supermen, and that’s really what this concerns.”

“Okay, what’s the story?”

Lois took a deep breath. “In the last televised report from California, when that Cyborg praised the teen Superman, he said that he wished he’d had as much confidence in his powers when he was Superboy’s age.”

“Yes. So?”

“The real Superman once told me that his powers developed slowly! When he was in his midteens, like Superboy is, he didn’t
have
that level of power!”

“Maybe he was speaking metaphorically.”

Lois frowned. “That’s what they said at the White House
—and
the Pentagon—when we called them. I left Perry White working the phones, trying to get someone in Washington to listen to reason.”