They arrived in Kansas as the morning light was still finding itself across the fields.
Bruce looked out the window at the flat open land stretching in every direction, the farmhouse sitting at the end of a dirt road like it had always been there and intended to stay.
"Are you sure he is here?" Bruce said.
"Yes," Daniel said. "Stop being suspicious."
Bruce looked at the farmland again. An alien from another civilization living on a Kansas farm. He had prepared himself for many things this morning. Sohow not this.
Daniel looked out at the fields with sothing quieter in his expression. A house, so land, plants growing at their own pace. He could understand the appeal honestly.
Lois told Bruce to stop the car and they got out and walked toward the house. The dirt road was quiet. Birds sowhere. Wind through the fields.
Before anyone could knock the air moved.
Clark Kent appeared behind them without a sound, the way soone appears when getting there normally was never really necessary.
His eyes went to Lois first. "Lois. I didn't expect you."
Then to Bruce.
Then to Daniel.
His gaze stopped there and didn't move. Behind his eyes the x-ray vision was already running, reading through layers the way it always did automatically, and what it found made him go very still.
Black heart. Black bones. Markings carved through every structure like a language he had never encountered in any country he knew of.
Whatever Daniel was he was not human. Not even close. And Daniel was also looking at man of steel this is definitely Snyder's version.
"Clark," Lois said. "We need to talk."
Clark didn't look away from Daniel.
"I know," he said.
"But before that," Clark said, stepping forward. "What are you? You are definitely not human."
Lois turned and looked at Daniel with the expression of soone who had followed a stranger into a car this morning and was now reconsidering that decision.
"Wait, you're not a human."
She looked at Clark wondering how he knew that.
"When did I say I was human?"
Daniel said. "I said good. But even among non humans there are good guys."
Bruce seed to learn sothing from that and noted it down quietly in his mind.
"But can we talk about that another ti?" Daniel said. "We have an ergency. Earth is in danger from the surviving Kryptonians. Your people Clark."
Clark looked at him.
"No," Clark said. "I don't trust you."
He could see Daniel wasn't human and knowing about Krypton made his motives feel suspicious rather than helpful. Anyone who knew that much about Krypton and showed up unannounced had reasons they weren't showing yet.
The air between them went cold.
"Well," Daniel said. "If my identity makes that suspicious then we can wait. Three days. When the ti limit runs out your people will co down and do what they ca to do and I will just watch."
He turned and walked away from them toward the open field, hands in his coat pockets, looking at the morning sun spreading across the Kansas land.
"Death isn't new to ," he said without turning back. "Whether it's one person or a billion it's all the sa thing in the end."
He stopped and turned his head slightly.
"But are you prepared to watch the Earth burn," he said. "The fields. The cities. The people in them. All of it. Are you prepared to stand there and watch that happen because you didn't trust the right person at the right ti."
The morning was quiet around them.
Lois looked at Daniel's face in profile, the complete absence of urgency in it, the total indifference, and felt sothing cold move through her. He ant it. Every word. Billions of people and he was describing their deaths the way soone describes weather. Not cruel. Just completely unbothered.
That was almost worse than cruelty.
Clark said nothing.
Bruce said nothing.
The sun kept rising over the fields like it didn't know what was coming.
"Then let's talk," Clark said. He needed to deal with this. Might as well hear what this person had to say.
"Good, why don't we go inside and have morning breakfast and talk," said Daniel.
"No, we talk outside," said Clark.
"Suit yourself," Daniel said.
"I'll start from our enemy and what I know about Krypton. The whole planet and the ones currently in space."
Nobody interrupted.
"Krypton was an advanced civilization. Technology, science, dicine, genetics, fields humans won't reach for another century. Even their births were engineered. Every child designed with purpose before they took their first breath."
He paused briefly.
"But their planet was dying. They pulled everything out of the ground until there was nothing left holding it together. General Zod saw it coming and tried to stop it his way. A coup. He failed and they threw him into the Phantom Zone."
Clark's jaw tightened slightly but he said nothing.
"Then Krypton's end ca. Your parents put you in an escape pod and sent you here before the planet tore itself apart. As for Zod and his crew the destruction of Krypton released them from the Phantom Zone and they survived. The scout ship you activated in the Arctic sent a signal out into space and that signal brought them straight here."
He turned and looked at Clark directly.
"And their plan is terraforming Earth into a new Krypton," Daniel said. "Which ans every human on this planet dies."
He let that sit for a mont in the morning air.
"So yes," Daniel said. "That is the thing. We are in a really fucked up place."
Bruce looked at Clark.
Clark looked at the ground.
He had spent his entire life being told this world was his ho. His mother's voice. His father's hands.
Kansas soil and Friday nights and the particular sll of this farm in the morning. Every choice he had ever made had been about protecting it, about fitting into it, about earning the right to belong to it.
And the people who shared his blood were coming to erase it.
"How do we stop them?" Clark said quietly.
Daniel looked at him.
"Now we are having the right conversation," he said.
*****
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