🚨🚨🚨Read my new story Peter Parker: To Think is To Choose.✅✅✅
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"The truth sleeps under the weight of secrets and when it wakes, it demands to be seen."
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Darkness hummed.
Steel walls sweated condensation; humming lights pulsed like a heartbeat.
Tim Drake, Kaldur'ahm and Wally West moved through the labyrinthine corridors of Cadmus Labs, guided only by flickers of Tim's holographic schematics. The deeper they went, the less the air felt like air — thick and warm, like something alive.
"This place," Wally whispered, "feels like it's breathing."
"Not far from the truth." Tim replied. "These conduits are organic hybrids — part machine, part genome structure. Whatever's down here, it's not just science anymore. It's… cult biology."
Kaldur'ahm's Atlantean marks pulsed faintly. "Then let us cut through this darkness."
They reached the massive door, the one marked only as PROJECT: Kr.
Tim bypassed the lock with a single motion, overriding Cadmus's encryption.
The steel parted with a hiss. Inside was silence and frost — a chamber filled with glowing containment pods.
In the center floated a single capsule — sealed with genetic seals.
Inside, motionless but breathing, was a boy.
He looked sixteen. Barefoot. Strong. Marked with the House of El's insignia on his chest.
"Holy…" Wally breathed. "They made a Superman. A teen Superman."
Tim's voice dropped. "Not made. Cloned."
A monitor flickered alive.
PROJECT KR — SUBJECT STATUS: ACTIVE. GENOMORPHIC COMPLIANCE: ENGAGED.
Then the alarms blared.
The capsule cracked open.
Superboy Awakes
The boy's eyes snapped open — glowing with cold, artificial fury.
He rose, fists clenched, moving like an unleashed weapon.
"Who are you?" Tim demanded.
Superboy didn't answer.
He moved.
Kaldur barely raised his water bearers in time. The impact sent him flying into a wall. Wally zipped between them, disarming, ducking, redirecting — but Superboy's raw power was terrifying. Every punch broke steel. Every step echoed like thunder.
"He's not thinking!" Wally yelled. "He's—"
"Controlled." Tim realized. "By the Genomorphs!"
Behind mirrored glass, Dr. Mark Desmond observed, his smile smug.
"Beautiful, isn't he?" He muttered into his comm. "Our living weapon, our guardian."
At his command, Guardian, Cadmus's armored enforcer, entered the chamber — his eyes blank, his movements stiff. Controlled by the same Genomorph psychic link.
The trio was outnumbered and outmatched.
Until a voice echoed from the shadows of the lab.
"Enough."
It was Dubbilex, the telepathic Genomorph leader — his skin bluish, his red eyes sharp with discontent.
"This is not what we were made for, Desmond. We were meant to guide, not enslave."
Desmond snarled. "You were made to obey!"
He slammed his fist into a console. The psychic surge intensified — Guardian and Superboy both gripped their heads, screaming.
Dubbilex stepped forward, eyes flaring.
"Brothers! Sisters! Free yourselves!"
A shockwave of psionic light rippled through the lab.
The lesser Genomorphs froze — then fell silent, their control links severed.
Superboy collapsed to his knees, gasping. His eyes were his own.
Desmond roared in fury, pulling open a containment vault labeled Project Blockbuster.
"If control won't serve me—then power will."
He uncorked a vial of swirling blue and drank.
His body convulsed, bones shattering, muscles swelling grotesquely as his skin turned slate-gray and veined with light.
Within seconds, the scientist was gone.
In his place stood a monster — BLOCKBUSTER.
The Battle in the Depths
Blockbuster charged — a living avalanche. The shockwave tore through Cadmus's lower levels, shattering pods and igniting conduits.
Tim's grappling line snagged a support beam as debris rained. "Keep him off balance!" He shouted.
Superboy met Blockbuster head-on — the clash shaking the chamber like an earthquake. Every blow echoed through the lab, seismic and brutal. Sparks showered from the walls as containment pods burst open.
Wally zipped across the battlefield, using his speed to distract, landing small blows and stealing Blockbuster's balance.
Kaldur struck from the flanks, each strike surging with electrical bursts that scorched the mutated skin.
But the creature only grew angrier.
"He's regenerating!" Kaldur warned.
Superboy gritted his teeth, blood on his lip. "Then we hit harder."
Tim scanned the surroundings, calculating.
"Wally! Run the floor's power grid at full current. Kaldur, redirect your lightning into the water conduits. Superboy—lead him here!"
Superboy nodded once. The trio moved like they'd trained together for years — instinctive, precise, flawless.
Blockbuster followed Superboy's taunts, smashing toward the conduits.
Wally sparked the system, Kaldur unleashed the trident's storm, and Superboy drove his fist into Blockbuster's chest — detonating the overload.
The explosion of light and steam rocked the entire sublevel.
When the dust cleared, Blockbuster lay unconscious — alive, but broken.
The trio stood, scorched and shaking, but victorious.
Superboy looked at them — his expression blank, confused. "Why… did you help me?"
"Because that's what heroes do." Tim said simply.
The Arrival of the League
The floor above shattered.
Through it descended the Justice League — Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Martian Manhunter, Red Tornado and Green Lantern. Their presence filled the room like gods descending from Olympus.
Batman's gaze swept the wreckage. "You three. Explain."
Tim stepped forward, steady. "We found a living clone. He was being used. We stopped it."
Superman's eyes locked on Superboy — and in that moment, the boy's face softened.
He stepped forward, cautious, almost hopeful.
"You're—" his voice cracked, "you're me."
Superman's jaw tightened.
He took a step back. The air between them went cold.
"I didn't ask for this." Superboy said. "I didn't even choose to be."
Superman didn't answer. He turned away, silent.
The rejection hit harder than any blow.
Superboy's shoulders tensed — but Tim, Kaldur and Wally stepped closer, forming a quiet line beside him.
Batman's gaze met King's distant awareness — the faint hum of something beyond the horizon, watching through unseen eyes.
He felt it like a pulse in his chest.
King knows, he thought grimly. And he's letting it happen.
Far Away — Gotham
At that very moment, in Quinn & Ink, King lifted his head from the newspaper.
For the first time in days, he smiled faintly — the kind of smile that predicted storms.
"The next generation has arrived." He murmured.
And the King Engine purred beneath the world, unseen but awake.
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