Impact Zone - Smallville, Kansas
Ernst didn't approach the alien vessel directly.
He stood roughly two kilometers away, watching the smoke billow into the obsidian night sky.
The heat radiating from the crater was palpable, baking the Kansas soil.
He snapped his fingers. Spatial coordinates bent and folded to his will.
A vintage bicycle materialized out of thin air, dropping onto the dirt road with a soft thud.
Over the years, Ernst's mastery of spatial manipulation had reached terrifying new heights.
By pre-marking specific spatial anchors, he could instantly summon matter across dimensions.
He had even toyed with the idea of creating a spatial grimoire, a ledger mapping every apex predator and mythical beast on Skull Island, allowing him to summon an army of monsters with a single thought.
But tonight, he just needed a quiet ride.
He hopped onto the bicycle and pedaled toward the glowing crater.
As he accelerated, his enhanced senses flared.
He picked up the heartbeats of another couple rushing toward the crash site from the opposite direction.
They were closer, driving an old pickup truck.
Ernst calculated the vector. He pushed his physical limits, his legs blurring as he outpaced the grinding engine of the distant vehicle.
He crested the rim of the massive pit.
At the center of the scorched earth sat a marvel of extraterrestrial engineering.
The Kryptonian scout ship was sleek, metallic, and utterly alien.
As Ernst took a step forward, a subtle, piercing blue light swept over him.
The ship was alive. It was actively scanning his biometric signature to assess his threat level.
Ernst could feel the hum of exotic weapon systems warming up beneath the hull.
If it registered his true, monstrous power, it would try to vaporize him instantly.
He immediately suppressed his aura. He feigned the elevated heart rate and shallow breathing of a panicked, ordinary human.
The blue light washed over him a second time. The weapons powered down.
The ship determined he was a harmless native.
With a mechanical hiss that sounded like a dying breath, the heavy exterior plating retracted.
The spacecraft opened automatically.
Inside the sterile, glowing pod lay a newborn baby, wailing at the sudden influx of cold Earth air.
Ernst approached slowly.
He reached into the pod and gently scooped the infant into his arms, falling back on the caregiving instincts he had painstakingly developed while raising his own son, Kyle.
He supported the baby's neck, patting his back in a rhythmic, soothing motion until the crying ceased.
Holding the child, a rare, overwhelming thrill of pure excitement surged through Ernst's chest.
This was Kal-El. This was Superman.
The ultimate being. The god among men, he had idolized in his previous life.
This fragile infant held the potential to freeze oceans with a single breath, to evaporate tsunamis with lasers from his eyes.
He possessed a body forged of indestructible steel, capable of defying gravity and shattering moons.
And now, this nearly omnipotent, world-breaking entity was softly cooing in Ernst's arms.
Suddenly, the crunch of tires on gravel snapped Ernst back to reality.
The couple was only minutes away. The window of opportunity was closing.
Ernst's excitement cooled into cold, calculated efficiency.
He circled the glowing interior of the open pod, his eyes scanning the smooth, alien architecture.
He spotted a distinct, metallic protrusion near the control console.
It was etched with a sharp, geometric 'S'. The crest of the House of El.
Ernst recognized it instantly. It was the Command Key.
It housed the digitized consciousness of Jor-El, the ship's absolute intelligence and master override.
Ernst gripped the key and ripped it from the console. He tucked the cold metal deep inside his coat.
Instantly, the ambient lights of the ship died.
Without its brain, the mighty Kryptonian vessel was reduced to a lifeless, inert hunk of space debris.
The threat was neutralized.
He teleported the ship to Skull Island and removed all traces of the ship.
Ernst pulled the infant close to his chest and vanished into the shadows.
Less than a minute later, Jonathan and Martha Kent arrived at the crater's edge.
They scrambled down into the pit.
But their search yielded nothing.
They found only a meteorite.
The name Clark Kent would never exist in this timeline.
— — —
The Subterranean Laboratory - Ancient Castle, UK
Ernst didn't return to the Kansas farm immediately.
He apparated directly to his heavily shielded laboratory beneath his European castle.
He placed the sleeping Kryptonian infant into the very same high-tech, vibranium-lined cradle that Kyle had once used.
"Red Queen," Ernst commanded.
"Deploy a medical drone. Monitor his vitals. Feed him."
With the child secured, Ernst moved to his primary workstation.
He laid the Kryptonian Command Key on the sterile steel table and wired it into his global mainframe.
"Let's see what a dying world has to offer," Ernst whispered.
He initiated the interface.
The laboratory screens flared to life. The intelligent system stored within the key, the ghost of Jor-El, awoke.
It realized its physical ship was gone. It immediately lashed out, attempting to seize control of Ernst's servers.
An invisible, vicious cyber-war erupted.
Jor-El's code was aggressive, elegant, and backed by a hundred thousand years of apex civilization.
It exchanged petabytes of information in milliseconds, ruthlessly competing for server resources.
But it was fighting a losing battle.
It lacked the geographical advantage, and more importantly, it lacked the Red Queen.
The Red Queen wasn't just code. She was a biomechanical marvel, fused with Ernst's own rapidly evolving, superhuman mind.
She possessed a fluid, adaptive intuition that the rigid Kryptonian algorithms couldn't comprehend.
With Ernst manually rewriting the firewall architectures and the Red Queen launching devastating counter-offensives, the siege was brief.
Within a single hour, Jor-El's legendary programming was entirely broken.
Ernst mercilessly rewrote the core permissions. He claimed the Kryptonian source code as his own.
The Red Queen feasted on the remnants, copying advanced alien subroutines to trigger her next evolutionary leap.
But the true prize wasn't the AI. It was the cargo.
The key contained the entire accumulated scientific and technological database of Krypton.
Ernst stared at the cascading data streams, momentarily overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the treasure.
It felt too easy. He briefly wondered if he had stumbled into a cosmic trap.
But upon reflection, the logic held.
Jor-El intended for his son to become a god-like savior on Earth. Kal-El was meant to be the vessel for Krypton's ultimate rebirth.
Genetic superiority alone wouldn't achieve that. True civilization required technical infrastructure.
Jor-El had packed his world's legacy into this key. And now, Ernst owned it all.
Despite the data's unfathomable value, Ernst made a cold, calculated decision.
He wouldn't implement it yet.
Introducing Kryptonian tech without a proper societal foundation would invite catastrophic risk.
He would seal the archive deep within the Red Queen's offline vaults, saving it for the future.
Having neutered the threat, Ernst isolated the remnant AI personality.
He named it Jor-El. He designated it as a subordinate subroutine to the Red Queen, assigning it menial planetary monitoring tasks.
One day, when the child was ready, Ernst would return the ghost to the son.
— — —
The Farmhouse - Smallville, Kansas
Ernst retrieved the sleeping infant from the cradle.
With a twist of spatial magic, he apparated back to the quiet farmhouse in the American Midwest.
The moment his boots touched the wooden floorboards, he felt a gaze upon him.
Tina was standing in the hallway.
Her beautiful face was a mask of confusion, her eyes locked onto the bundle wrapped in a blanket in Ernst's arms.
Ernst froze.
For the first time in years, the ancient, calculating warlock felt a spike of genuine, human awkwardness.
He had disappeared into the night and returned hours later with a mysterious newborn.
"Cough! Don't get the wrong idea," Ernst blurted out, breaking the silence.
"This is not my child. I... I just found him outside."
He wanted to slap himself.
Why was he acting so guilty? He was a boss. He owed explanations to no one.
"Master Ernst, you don't need to explain anything to me," Tina replied softly.
She attempted to sound nonchalant, but a deep, unreadable emotion swirled in her dark eyes.
Ernst was completely at a loss for words. Silence stretched painfully between them.
The dynamic between them had become a tangled, unspoken knot.
Tina cared for Kyle like her own son.
Ernst was Kyle's father. Under this roof, they appeared like a perfect family.
To any neighbor in Smallville, they were a married couple.
Years ago, Ernst would have coldly refuted the illusion. Now, he just felt guilt.
He was an ordinary, healthy man. Tina was a stunningly beautiful woman who had spent years as a lonely widow.
Given their physical proximity and natural human desires, it was an open secret that they had shared a bed on multiple occasions.
Yet, Ernst's emotional intelligence lagged far behind his cosmic intellect.
He had never made a promise. He had never offered a vow.
Tina believed her soul and body were his property, a price paid in the Devil's Cabin to save her own daughters.
She thought she was merely a tool fulfilling a master's needs.
She harbored deep, genuine affection for him, especially after he allowed her to secretly watch her own daughters grow up healthy from afar.
But she didn't dare express it.
Ernst, meanwhile, recognized a terrifying shift within his own mind.
As his cosmic understanding of reality expanded, his capacity for raw, human emotion diminished.
His feelings were becoming like lines of code, data to be analyzed, but rarely experienced in their messy, true form.
He was evolving beyond humanity, and it left him emotionally paralyzed.
So, they maintained this fragile, domestic illusion. Husband and wife in practice, master and servant in contract.
"Dad! You're back!"
The tension shattered.
Kyle came running down the hallway, wearing oversized pajamas.
Ernst let out a long, silent breath of relief.
He knelt down, balancing the alien infant in one arm, and ruffled his son's dark hair with his free hand.
"Why is there a little brother?" Kyle asked, his eyes wide with wonder.
"Where did he come from?"
"I just found him, Kyle," Ernst said softly.
"He is from a very distant, alien world. And he is going to be living with us from now on."
Ernst looked his son in the eyes.
"He is your younger brother now. You must protect him well."
Kyle eagerly nodded. He leaned in, peering curiously at the sleeping face of the most powerful being in the universe.
"Don't worry, Dad," Kyle promised fiercely.
"I'll protect him. Can I hold him? I'll be careful. I'll even give him my best action figure."
"You can, but you must be very gentle," Ernst cautioned.
He carefully transferred the bundled infant into Kyle's waiting arms.
"Although he is an alien, and his body is much stronger than ours, he is still very small," Ernst warned.
"If he gets hurt, it could be troublesome."
Kyle cradled his new brother with care. He treated the infant like a fragile, priceless treasure.
Watching them, a profound sense of comfort washed over Ernst.
His eldest son felt no jealousy. There was no resentment. Only pure, immediate acceptance.
"Dad," Kyle whispered, looking up.
"He's small and cute. Does he have a name?"
Ernst paused.
He thought of the crater, the dead world of Krypton, and the empty hands of Jonathan and Martha Kent.
He looked at the boy who would one day carry the weight of the sky.
"Yes," Ernst replied, a faint smile touching his lips.
"Let's call him Clark. Clark Shaw."
-------------
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