Clark carried Jude through the Speed Force. They moved at a speed that made conversation theoretically inadvisable, yet practically unavoidable.
The mechanics differed from the standard method. Barry had used a particle-collision approach to send Eobard Thawne home—a stable spatial wormhole built from the kinetic energy, designed to hold for a one-way trip. Under normal conditions, sufficient speed alone opened the barrier. The Speed Force responded to velocity; crossing the threshold forced it open.
Non-speed users reaching faster-than-light speeds entered the Time Stream instead, a related but fundamentally separate structure. Clark was an exception because Jude was with him. After the Intermediate Energy Affinity reward, Jude qualified as a speed user. An unusual one—a battery rather than a generator. But the classification held, and the Speed Force accepted it.
"Why are you not the one flying?" Clark asked. Golden light moved in long arcs around them. "Shouldn't the speed be coming from you?"
"No, and here's why," Jude said. "The Speed Force I'm carrying came from the Flash in another universe. What you saw me pull from the storage containers on the street is stored energy. It isn't native to me. Every second I use it, it depletes. The faster we move, the faster it burns."
"Your flight speed is at minimum comparable to Barry's current level," he continued. "Possibly faster. To break through the spacetime continuum and enter the Speed Force domain, you only need a small threshold of Speed Force energy to establish the connection. Your own kinetic capacity carries the rest. If I did this independently, running on my own legs..." He paused. "It wouldn't be close."
Clark processed this. "So the reserves aren't sufficient for two attempts. If we need to travel through the timeline of this universe, we have one run."
"Exactly. Which is why you're flying."
"Understood." Clark faced forward.
System: Global corridor established.
Connection complete.
Transit in progress.
Destination reached: The Boys Universe.
World Corridor 2 under construction... complete.
Warning: Multiverse-level gaze detected.
Source identified: World-Devouring Dragon—Barbatos.
Source identified: Creator Goddess—Perpetua.
The cold arrived before Jude finished reading. It wasn't temperature. It was an immense attention, sweeping the transit space. Pure malice, carrying an absolute appetite for destruction. It examined the transit universe, found no DC signature, registered zero interest, and withdrew. Invading a non-DC universe held no strategic value and risked interference from higher-dimensional creators.
The second gaze unnerved Jude more. He had felt Barbatos. Perpetua's attention, however, was imperceptible. Without the system prompt, he would never have known she looked. She operated at a level where her noticing was invisible.
That is a problem for a much later version of myself.
System: Gaze withdrawn.
Current environment: safe.
Jude exhaled. Half the plan was done. The corridor to the Dark Multiverse was built.
System: You and Clark are now inside the Speed Force.
Note: you have one opportunity to enter this universe's timeline and exchange matter or information. Please choose carefully.
The projection of the Dark Multiverse universe assembled before them.
"Clark." Jude turned to him. "We're inside the Speed Force right now. This universe's past, present, and future will be visible to us. All of it at once." He remembered Eobard Thawne's explanation to Barry. "Focus your mind. We need to find the point where it began—the moment you heard that voice. Find it, and then we look for where we can act."
Jude kept his voice steady. "I know what you're about to say. Whatever is inside this universe is powerful, and you want to help them directly. But that entity won't move against them unprovoked, not at this stage. Every action we take inside this timeline costs us interaction points we can't recover. The less we do now, the more time the people inside have. We're not here to win this today." He held Clark's gaze. "We're here to buy them time. Make one precise cut, and leave."
Clark was quiet. Then, he nodded.
The timeline opened.
Dark.
Silent.
These were two of the only three things left in this universe.
The third was a woman.
She stood in the silence wearing a jet-black Kryptonian suit. A Superman cape hung from her shoulders in shreds. The S symbol on her chest remained intact and vivid red. Blood fell from the symbol, and from her eyes, dropping in slow, measured increments onto the figure in her arms.
She held the body of Superman.
The darkness surrounded her. She was crying. Her tears were blood. Her expression had passed through grief and settled into something cold and absolute. She opened her eyes.
Nothing remained in them. No grief. No warmth. No trace of the reporter who believed in people and screamed his name from a rooftop to protect him.
Only killing intent. A need for revenge, purified by loss into something entirely removed from human feeling.
This was Lois Lane. This was what the Death of Superman universe had made of her, and what she had chosen to become after it unmade everything else.
The goddess of vengeance stood in the silence and bled.