Barry ran.
Not toward anything. Not away from anything. Just running, pushing himself harder than he'd ever dared, channeling the Speed Force through every cell in his body.
The world around him blurred into incomprehensible streaks of color. Buildings became lines. People became smears. Reality itself struggled to keep up with his velocity.
And with each circuit around the nest, the electricity grew.
It started as sparks—little flickers of blue-white light dancing across his costume. Then it became arcs, jumping from his body to the ground in violent discharges. Then it became a corona, a sphere of raw electrical power that surrounded him completely.
Barry was becoming lightning given human form.
"Can't... hold it... much longer..." he gasped, pushing even faster. The current building around him was reaching critical mass, beyond what his body was designed to safely contain.
If he didn't discharge soon, he'd either explode or phase completely out of reality. Neither option was appealing.
"Cyborg!" Barry shouted, his voice distorted by the Speed Force. "Ready or not, here I come!"
He changed trajectory mid-run, angling directly toward Victor.
Victor saw him coming—a ball of electricity moving faster than thought, growing brighter with each microsecond. His back panel opened automatically, revealing energy absorption ports designed by his father, enhanced by Mother Box technology.
This was it. The moment that would either save Earth or kill them both.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The sound of Barry's approach was thunder given rhythm—each footfall releasing shockwaves that rattled the nest's structure.
Then impact.
Barry collided with Victor, and for an instant, there was silence. Perfect, absolute silence, as if the universe itself held its breath.
Then the transfer began.
Lightning erupted from Barry's body and flooded into Victor's systems. Not as an attack, not as destruction, but as fuel—raw power being channeled from one being to another with the Speed Force acting as conduit.
Victor's eyes exploded with light. Not his normal red optical sensors, but brilliant blue-white electricity that seemed to shine from somewhere deep inside his skull.
Power flooded through his circuits, through his mechanical components, through the Mother Box-derived systems that kept him alive. Every processor, every servo, every synthetic muscle suddenly had access to energy beyond anything they were designed to handle.
And it was glorious.
"Yes!" Victor roared, his voice amplified by electrical discharge. "More! Give me everything you've got!"
Barry did.
The Speed Force electricity poured out in a torrent, and Victor drank it all. His hands, which had been barely holding the Mother Boxes apart, suddenly found new strength.
The cubes resisted, pulling toward each other with almost conscious desire. But Victor pushed back, and this time he had the power to win.
His hands began to separate the Mother Boxes—slowly, inch by agonizing inch, but undeniably making progress.
And his consciousness was pulled back into the construct.
Inside the Mother Box:
Victor found himself back in his parents' living room.
His mother stood there, exactly as before. His father was in the kitchen. The scene was perfect, loving, tempting.
But this time, Victor saw the truth beneath the illusion.
He saw the code running in the background, the computational processes creating this false reality. Saw how the Mother Box had read his memories, his desires, his deepest wishes, and constructed this prison from his own hope.
"Victor?" his mother said, reaching for him. "Sweetheart, you look troubled. Come, sit with me."
Victor's form rippled, shifted. His flesh-and-blood body dissolved, replaced by his true mechanical form—all metal and circuitry, inorganic and artificial.
His mother's expression flickered with confusion. "Victor? What's happening?"
"I'm sorry, Mom," Victor said, and his voice was thick with grief despite coming from synthetic components. "I'm so, so sorry."
His arms transformed, weapon systems deploying. Cannons extended from his shoulders. Energy weapons materialized from his hands. His entire body became an arsenal pointed at the people he loved most in any reality.
"Victor?" His father appeared from the kitchen, alarmed. "Son, what are you—"
"You're not real," Victor said, tears that shouldn't exist streaming down his mechanical face. "You're beautiful and perfect and everything I want you to be. But you're not real."
His mother's eyes widened with something like understanding. "Baby, you don't have to do this. We can be together. We can be a family again."
"No," Victor whispered. "We can't. Because you're not my mother. You're a construct. A trap. The core programming that keeps the Mother Boxes synchronized."
He raised his weapons, targeting systems locking onto both figures.
"I love you," Victor said. "I love you both so much. I always will. But I can't let you stop me from saving everyone else."
His mother smiled—sad but proud. "We know, sweetheart. We've always known you'd choose to help people. That's why we're so proud of you."
Victor's finger tightened on the metaphorical trigger.
"Forgive me."
BOOM!
Artillery fire erupted from every weapon system he possessed. The living room exploded in light and sound, everything consumed by overwhelming force.
His parents—the false constructs wearing their faces—disintegrated instantly. Not violently, not with screams or pain, but simply... dissolving, like smoke in wind.
The last thing Victor saw was his mother's smile, understanding and accepting.
Then the construct collapsed.
Outside:
The three Mother Boxes separated with an audible SNAP.
The connection between them severed completely, synchronization protocols failing, fusion sequence terminated. They floated apart, inert and dormant, just three geometric objects with no more power than ordinary metal cubes.
Above the nest, the sonic boom channel collapsed. The rift between dimensions sealed itself, reality reasserting its boundaries. The glimpse of Apokolips, of Darkseid's approaching army, vanished behind restored barriers.
They'd done it.
Victor collapsed, electrical discharge still sparking across his frame. Barry staggered backward, completely drained, barely conscious. Diana, Arthur, and Clark released the Mother Boxes they'd been holding and simply stood there, breathing hard.
"Is it over?" Arthur asked, voice rough with exhaustion.
"The Mother Boxes are separated," Diana confirmed, checking each one carefully. "The fusion is terminated."
"Thank god," Clark muttered.
But Marcus barely noticed their triumph. His attention remained fixed on the space where the sonic boom channel had been, his enhanced senses still tracking the signature on the other side.
Darkseid.
The brief exchange of power—Marcus' Rhino Charge meeting Darkseid's Omega Beams—had told Marcus everything he needed to know about his potential opponent.
"Strong," Marcus murmured. "Roughly equivalent to my current level. Maybe slightly stronger, maybe slightly weaker. Hard to judge from a single clash."
But there was more to it than simple power comparison.
Marcus could see beyond the physical, into dimensions most beings couldn't perceive. And what he saw when he looked at Darkseid's true nature was... troubling.
"That wasn't the real Darkseid," Marcus said aloud, though he was mostly talking to himself. "That entity on Apokolips is just a projection. A shadow of something larger."
Through the Void's perception, Marcus had glimpsed Darkseid's actual existence. The being inhabited a higher dimension—not just physically larger, but existing on a plane of reality beyond normal space-time.
In that higher state, Darkseid maintained a paradoxical existence: simultaneously unified and divided, singular and plural, one being spread across infinite moments.
Every version of Darkseid in every timeline was both a clone and the original. Kill one manifestation, and you'd only eliminated that particular instance—the higher-dimensional Darkseid would simply edit the moment of death out of his personal timeline and continue existing.
"Unity and division in perfect balance," Marcus breathed, genuinely impressed. "He's made himself effectively unkillable by existing in every moment simultaneously. You can't destroy him because he exists in the past before you attacked him and in the future after you failed."
It was a solution to mortality that Marcus hadn't considered before. Not immortality through regeneration or invulnerability, but immortality through distribution—spreading your existence across time itself so that no single death could eliminate you.
"Worthy of being Darkseid," Marcus said with grudging respect. "The tyrant who rules Apokolips would need to be that clever to survive."
He glanced at where the sonic boom channel had been, already planning.
Darkseid would return. That confrontation was inevitable. And when it came, Marcus needed to be ready—not just to fight, but to fight something that existed partially outside causality.
"Looks like I need to prioritize my own ascension," Marcus muttered. "Can't let Darkseid have all the dimensional advantages."
Below him, the battle continued.
The Mother Boxes were separated, Steppenwolf was dead, the channel to Apokolips was closed. But the Parademon army didn't care about any of that. Their programming was simple: kill, convert, multiply.
They swarmed toward the Justice League with mindless hunger.
Marcus had been content to observe until now, letting his students handle the fight. But watching Parademons attack his godson, his former students, the heroes he'd trained...
That was unacceptable.
Marcus stepped into empty air as if there were solid ground beneath his feet.
Then he stomped.
Rhino Stomp.
The air itself rippled like disturbed water. Shockwaves spread outward in concentric rings, visible distortions in reality that touched everything within a hundred-meter radius.
And where the shockwave passed, time stopped.
Every Parademon in range simply froze mid-motion. Wings outstretched, claws extended, mouths open in silent screams—they became living statues, held perfectly still by disrupted temporal flow.
Not just the Parademons. Debris that had been falling stopped mid-air. Dust hung suspended. Even sound waves froze, creating a pocket of absolute silence.
Marcus had carved out a bubble of stopped time, and only he existed normally within it.
Well, not quite only him.
The Justice League found they could still move, still breathe, still act. Marcus had carefully excluded them from the time-stop effect, allowing them to operate normally while their enemies were paralyzed.
"What...?" Arthur looked around at the frozen Parademons, his expression somewhere between awe and terror. "Did you just stop time?"
"Locally," Marcus confirmed, descending to ground level. "And only for a moment. But it should be long enough."
He gestured casually at the frozen enemies. "Feel free to finish them off. They won't resist."
Diana didn't need to be told twice. Her sword swept through Parademon after Parademon, divine metal cutting through armor and flesh that couldn't defend themselves.
Arthur followed suit, his trident finding targets with brutal efficiency.
Clark used heat vision, sweeping the beam across frozen enemies like a scythe harvesting wheat.
Within seconds, the Parademon force was decimated. By the time Marcus released the time-stop, the survivors found themselves suddenly alone, surrounded by the corpses of their fellows.
They fled, screeching, disappearing into the sky.
Marcus let them go. They were no threat now.
"Time manipulation," Bruce's voice came through the comms, sounding thoughtful. "That's a new one. When did you learn to do that?"
"Recently," Marcus said. "The Rhino armor's stomp ability can disrupt local space-time if properly empowered. Useful trick."
He turned to look at the Justice League—exhausted, battered, but alive and victorious.
"Well done," Marcus said simply. "All of you. You faced an Apokoliptian invasion and won."
"We had help," Diana said, gesturing at Marcus.
"You would have managed without me," Marcus assured her. "Steppenwolf was tough, but not beyond your capabilities working together. I just... expedited things."
Clark landed beside Marcus, holding one of the Mother Boxes carefully. "Speaking of which, what do we do with these? They're too dangerous to leave lying around."
"Let me see them," Marcus requested.
Diana approached first, offering her Mother Box. She handed it to Marcus without hesitation—after all, he'd killed Steppenwolf and saved their lives multiple times today. If anyone earned the right to examine the artifacts, it was him.
Marcus took the cube, and the moment his fingers touched its surface, his arm became shrouded in Void energy. Dark purple-black power seeped into the Mother Box, infiltrating its systems, exploring its structure.
The other two Mother Boxes reacted immediately.
In Victor's hands, his Mother Box began trembling. Not the eager vibration of wanting to merge, but something that looked almost like... fear?
"What the hell?" Victor stared at the shaking cube. "It's never done this before."
In Arthur's hands, the third Mother Box was doing the same thing—shaking, vibrating, almost trying to pull away from Arthur's grip.
"They're afraid," Marcus said with interest. "The Mother Boxes are sentient to some degree, and they recognize a threat when they see one."
"What did you do?" Arthur demanded, fighting to keep his cube from escaping entirely.
"I'm taking a look inside," Marcus explained. "Mother Boxes contain internal dimensional spaces—pocket universes where they store information and run simulations. I just... entered one."
Inside the Mother Box:
Marcus found himself in a space of infinite possibility.
The Mother Box tried to read him, tried to construct a prison from his desires and memories the way it had with Victor. But Marcus' consciousness was too vast, his experiences too varied, his nature too fundamental.
Trying to contain the Void was like trying to hold the ocean in a teacup.
The internal space began to crack under the strain. Reality couldn't handle what Marcus represented, and the Mother Box's programming simply couldn't process something that existed on the same scale as cosmic abstracts.
"Interesting power," Marcus observed as the space shattered around him. "But you're trying to contain something infinite in a finite space. That was never going to work."
Cracks spread through the construct like lightning across glass. The Mother Box's attempt to trap him collapsed completely.
Marcus reached out with Void power and simply... broke the internal space.
Not destroyed—broken. Like opening a door that was never meant to be opened, revealing the mechanical truth behind the mystical interface.
The Mother Box screamed—a sound that existed more in the mind than in reality—and Marcus withdrew, returning to normal space.
"There we go," Marcus said, opening his eyes. "Examined, cataloged, understood."
The Mother Box in his hands was inert now, drained, its internal space fractured. Still functional as a computer, but no longer capable of creating dimensional prisons.
The other two Mother Boxes stopped shaking, sensing that the immediate threat had passed.
"Come on," Marcus said to Victor and Arthur. "Let me see the other two."
They exchanged glances, clearly uncertain. But they'd seen Marcus handle the first Mother Box without destroying it, so eventually they approached.
The Mother Boxes tried to pull away, creating resistance as Victor and Arthur brought them closer to Marcus. It was almost comical—the ancient Apokoliptian artifacts literally trying to flee like frightened animals.
"Easy," Marcus said soothingly, as if talking to spooked horses. "I'm not going to hurt you. I just want a look."
Victor's arms transformed, small thrusters engaging to help push the resistant cube forward. Arthur manipulated nearby water vapor, creating a giant hand that pressed the Mother Box toward Marcus.
"This is surreal," Arthur muttered. "We're fighting to bring them together now, after spending an hour trying to keep them apart."
"Life's funny that way," Clark agreed.
The moment Marcus touched the other two Mother Boxes, they went still—all resistance ceasing instantly, like prey freezing before a predator.
Marcus examined them with enhanced senses, mapping their systems, understanding their functions. The three Mother Boxes were similar but not identical—each one specialized for different tasks while sharing core programming.
Together, they could terraform worlds and create dimensional portals. Separately, they were still formidable supercomputers with capabilities Earth's technology wouldn't match for centuries.
"Fascinating," Marcus murmured. "These are basically quantum computers running on exotic particles, with dimensional anchoring and matter manipulation built in. No wonder Apokolips uses them for terraforming."
He released the Mother Boxes, and they fell still, no longer trying to escape.
"So what do we do with them?" Victor asked. "Keep them? Destroy them?"
"Keep them," Marcus decided. "I need to borrow it."