Antarctica - Day 17
The search had become a grueling rhythm of teleportation, scanning, and disappointment. But Ernst didn't stop.
He knew the ship was here.
On the seventeenth day, the scanner spiked.
"Stop," Ernst ordered, staring at the readout.
He looked up at a massive glacial cliff face.
To the naked eye, it was just a wall of ice.
But to his enhanced mind, he could feel the resonance of hyper-alloy buried deep within.
"Ten meters down," Ernst pointed.
"It's huge."
"Finally," Azazel sighed, packing up the gear.
"Shall I dig?"
"No," Ernst said, walking to the ice wall.
"I'll handle it. I need to test my output."
He placed both hands on the ice.
Energy Conversion: Invert.
Usually, he absorbed energy.
Now, he reversed the flow.
He drew ambient thermal energy from the air, concentrated it, and pushed it into the ice as pure heat.
HISS.
Steam exploded from the wall.
The glacier didn't just melt; it evaporated.
Water cascaded down, but Ernst held it back with a telekinetic barrier, carving a tunnel straight into the mountain.
Ten minutes later, metal gleamed in the darkness.
It wasn't rusted iron or steel.
It was a black, liquid-like biomechanical alloy that absorbed the light.
And there, etched into the blast door, was a symbol.
A diamond shape with an S-curve inside.
The House of El. Hope.
"Incredible," Ernst breathed.
"The Scout Ship."
Azazel stared at the symbol.
"What is that? A serpent?"
"It's an invitation," Ernst smiled.
The Interior
The airlock hissed open at Ernst's touch, recognizing the unique bio-signature he had engineered for himself.
They stepped into a cathedral of alien engineering.
The air was stale, smelling of ozone and ancient dust.
The architecture was organic, like the ribcage of a leviathan.
"Stay close," Ernst warned.
"The crew is dead, but the security systems don't sleep."
As they reached the bridge, a hum filled the air.
A floating service droid, a Kel-Or unit, detached from the ceiling.
It looked like a metallic squid with floating tentacles. Its optical sensor glowed red.
INTRUDER ALERT.
The droid lunged, its tentacles whipping out to crush them.
"Shield!" Ernst barked.
Azazel reacted instantly, throwing up a spatial barrier.
The droid slammed into the invisible wall, its tentacles flailing.
"Hold it there," Ernst ordered.
He walked past the struggling droid to the Command Chair.
It was a interface cradle made of programmable matter.
Ernst sat down. The chair molded to his body.
"Time to jailbreak this system."
He sliced his palm with a scalpel.
He didn't use a Command Key; he was the key.
He pressed his bleeding hand onto the interface panel.
Bio-Hack Initiated.
He pushed his consciousness into the ship's mainframe.
He used his enhanced brain to rewrite the security protocols in real-time, injecting his own genetic code as the root administrator.
He stripped the existing AI, the rigid Kryptonian logic, and replaced it with a learning algorithm based on his own neural pathways.
"Wake up," Ernst whispered.
The ship shuddered.
The red lights turned amber, then settled into a calm white.
The service droid stopped struggling and floated peacefully.
A hologram manifested in the center of the room.
It wasn't the floating head of Jor-El.
It was a construct Ernst had designed in his mind: a young girl in a red dress.
The Red Queen.
"System Online," the girl said, her voice crisp and British.
"Awaiting orders, Creator."
"She... she talks," Azazel gasped, lowering his guard.
"She thinks," Ernst corrected.
"She is an extension of my own mind. An external hard drive for my consciousness."
Ernst looked at the hologram.
"Red Queen. Report status."
"Hull integrity at 40%," the AI replied.
"Life support failing in Sectors 3 and 4. The Genesis Chamber is offline but repairable. Phantom Drive is non-functional."
"And the crew?"
"Deceased. The ship impacted 18,000 years ago during the Expansion Era. One survivor is unaccounted for. The stasis pod is open."
Ernst narrowed his eyes. One survivor.
In the prequel comics, it was Kara Zor-El, Supergirl.
But in this timeline, who knew? Maybe she died in the ice.
Maybe she became the ancestor of the Atlanteans or the Amazons.
"Why did they crash?" Ernst asked.
"Navigational error caused by solar flare interference," the Red Queen recited.
"Lies," Ernst muttered.
"A civilization that mastered space travel doesn't crash because of a solar flare. Krypton was sabotaged. They were kept on their planet to die."
He stood up. "We will solve that mystery later. For now, Red Queen, initiate the Uplink."
"Uplink?" Azazel asked.
"I am syncing my brain with the ship's core,"
Ernst explained. "I'm offloading my excess cognitive data. The ship will process the logic, leaving me free to feel emotion. It's the only way to stop the CPH4 from turning me into a robot."
He leaned back in the chair.
"Do it."
A beam of light connected his temple to the ship's mainframe.
The pressure in his head vanished.
The cold, robotic logic receded, replaced by the warmth of human feeling.
He took a deep breath, feeling joy, ambition, and triumph for the first time in months.
"It works," Ernst laughed.
"I have the mind of a god and the heart of a man."
He looked at the hologram.
"Red Queen, prep the Genesis Chamber. We have a lot of work to do."
--------
Red Queen is part of Ernst.
He is offloading excess processing power to her.
So as to not eliminate his emotions like Lucy.
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