In the Pacific, the World Engine was ripping the ocean apart. The gravity field had dragged the water back for miles, exposing the seabed as it cracked under pressure, while columns of water rose and slammed down again and again.
Daniel dropped from orbit like a black streak, death energy wrapped tight around him, heading straight for the core.
The engine reacted before he touched down.
Constructs launched out in all directions, fast and dense, closing every approach.
Daniel drew the scythe and cut into the first wave mid-descent, the blade tearing through them without slowing. He hit the surface hard, cracking the outer shell, one hand locking him in place.
The next wave was already on him.
He cut through several, pivoted, cleared another angle—but one slipped through and slammed into his chest, forcing him back across the hull.
He stopped at the edge and looked down.
The construct was still on him. The particles were eating into his coat.
He glanced at the damage.
Then at the construct.
And hit it hard enough to scatter it across the exposed ocean floor.
"Now time to go all out," Daniel said.
The Mark of Nexus on his left hand reacted, the space around him folding inward, layers of compressed reality forming a barrier as the nano particle claws came at him from every direction, each one built to break down whatever it touched.
They hit the folded space and stopped.
Then the clock marking in the Mark activated.
Time slowed around him, not stopped, just thick, the nano constructs moving through air that had become something closer to water, and Daniel walked through them swinging the Scythe, each arc breaking three four five constructs at once, the black energy of the blade dispersing the nano technology on contact.
He reached the World Engine's beam and drove the Scythe directly into it.
The force hit him like a planet.
He flew back across the Pacific, skipping across the air like a stone across water, leaving a trail of dispersed death energy behind him before he stopped himself and hung there above the exposed ocean floor.
He wiped blood from his mouth.
"Fuck," Daniel said, looking at the World Engine still running below him. "Gravity hurts like a bitch."
No wonder Superman struggled to stop this thing. He had come down here thinking it would be straightforward and the World Engine had just reminded him that straightforward was not a category it operated in.
This was a whole different level.
He looked at his hand. The Mark of Nexus was still reacting, the clock marking pulsing steadily.
Daniel swept his hand, and the scythe vanished. He raised that same hand, and death energy poured out in black pillars, climbing into the sky above the Pacific as the temperature dropped hard enough to frost the exposed seabed in seconds.
A storm formed almost instantly, not natural, not anything close to weather, the sky darkening as the energy spread through the clouds and kept going. The ocean around the World Engine froze solid.
Then the spears took shape.
Massive. Each one the size of a mountain, formed from condensed black energy, rotating slowly as they hung above the Engine, blotting out what little light remained.
The Engine answered.
Thousands of constructs launched, filling the space between Daniel and the target, forming a dense barrier.
Daniel looked at them.
Then at the spears above.
He lowered his hand.
Every spear dropped at once.
The first few were torn apart on contact, the constructs burning through them, but the next punched through and struck the hull. The impact rolled across the Pacific like thunder.
Another hit.
Then another.
Cracks began to spread across the World Engine.
The seventh spear sheared one of the legs clean off.
The World Engine lurched, the beam stuttering for the first time since it had come online as the gravity field fractured in sections. Water rushed back in from every direction, slamming over the exposed seabed and swallowing it whole.
The beam fired once more, weak and unfocused—then died.
The Engine held for a few seconds on what remained, metal straining, the entire structure groaning under weight it could no longer carry.
Then it gave out.
It hit the ocean and disappeared beneath it, the impact throwing up a massive surge that rolled outward across the Pacific, something every seismic station on the planet would register. The structure sank fast, dragged into the deep with no resistance left.
Daniel remained where he was, watching the water settle over it.
Above him, the storm began to break apart, the black energy pulling back into him as the temperature normalized and the sky cleared.
He wiped the blood from his mouth again.
"Kryptonian technology," he said, looking down at the calming surface, "is really a bitch."
He let out a breath, shaking his head slightly. "No wonder these guys wiped themselves out. When even something like this exists, I don't want to imagine what their actual weapons looked like."
"Good thing most of them were too busy being proud to run when their planet was falling apart," Daniel added, dry. "If they'd used their brains instead of their ego, they'd be running the universe right now."
*****
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