"You're a natural," said Crk—he'd insisted I call him that, just Crk, not Superman.

  We were soaring now over what seemed to be the deepest parts of Antarctica. Cold. Freezingly cold. Where the wind howled fierce with the very voice of the cold. Little belonged in this freeze, little would survive here.

  "I had to work at it," he said, fshing me a grin. "Flying took me a few tries to really get it down. Learning to let go of the fear, to just—"

  With a sudden brace, he kicked against the very air, igniting a shockwave that smmed into me like a blunt force, knocking me off bance. I struggled to level myself, feeling the frigid air slice past as I stabilized, just in time to see him become a shrinking figure ahead, rocketing forward like a shot.

  Watching him fly was striking. There was nothing smooth or weightless about his movement. He hurled himself forward with raw power, splitting through the air by sheer force alone, carving a path through air resistance like a battering ram. All a result of his superpowered physicality.

  My own method of flight was different. With but a thought, my field enveloped me wholely in its protective embrace. Exerting on me its ability to completely ignore the ws of physics. Especially something as pesky as gravity.

  BOOM!! I shot forward, cleaving through the air effortlessly with an ease that made me feel more missile than human. Effortlessly piercing through air resistance and viscosity.

  For every inch I closed, though, he seemed to widen the gap by a mile, going faster and faster until—abruptly—he dropped.

  One moment, he was soaring high above a gcier-carved canyon; the next, he folded himself into a dive, plummeting straight into the shadowed chasm below.

  I reached the canyon's edge just in time to see him level off inches above the frozen floor before continuing into its depths, weaving.

  Without hesitation, I followed.

  Letting my field dissolve, I embraced freefall, leaving nothing between me and the ground but icy air and gravity's grip.

  Plunging straight down, headfirst into the yonic looking chasm.

  The drop was headlong, a reckless plunge into the canyon. The wind screamed past my ears as I streamlined my form, tightening my body into a sharp descent while the cold bit as hard as it could, as the air howled, and for a breathless moment, it was all speed, weightlessness, and raw exhiration.

  My fight with Desmond had let me realize just how malleable this 5th limb I seemed to possess was. How it could shift, take shape. With a flex of intent, I molded it now, the field unfurling behind me, into a pair of invisible wings on my back.

  They stretched wide, catching the rushing air, not as mere projections but as true extensions of my body, sensitive and alive. I could feel each shift of the wind against them, each updraft and slipstream. They tilted, adjusting with the instinctive grace of a bird, curving inward as I neared the floor. Just before impact, I fred them open in one powerful burst.

  I rose, skimming mere inches above the canyon floor, my wings rippling with the updrafts as I shot forward, chasing after Crk in this frozen byrinth.

  The canyon walls pressed in, narrowing into jagged, ice-slicked cliffs that stretched high above us. The light barely reached the frozen floor, casting the entire chasm in a dim, blue-gray glow. The wings curved with every turn, banking sharply in perfect synchronicity, the tips grazing the frosted rock with barely an inch to spare.

  Navigating the turns with barely enough space to spare as I tightened my body and poured on the speed. Every fp had the wings beat in a rhythm that felt instinctive, natural. Each downward stroke, pulling me closer with every beat until I was just behind him, a shadow in his wake. Crk gnced back, his eyes catching mine, a grin spreading across his face before he shot forward with renewed speed.

  I didn't intend to let him keep ahead however, my wings fred, catching an updraft to match his pace. The gap closed until we were side by side, threading through the icy byrinth together, neck and neck, the wind roaring in our ears as the walls streaked by in a blur of white and blue.

  The scant sunlight that managed to seep through fractured as it was, danced across the ice in hues of cobalt and sapphire, turning the chasm into something otherworldly. Each beam split against the walls, bending and refracting, scattering light into ribbons that arced and faded, painting everything in surreal, shifting blues. It felt as if we'd fallen into the heart of some forgotten, frozen cathedral.

  It was…beautiful.

  Crk didn't let me linger on the beauty of it for long. It was clear now—this wasn't just a flight; this was an unspoken race, and he was winning.

  Not by much, but by enough to make me feel the sting of it. I could see it in the way he moved, the easy command over each turn, each twist. He knew this frozen byrinth well, the angles of every rock and bend. His movements were practiced, natural. I could feel him challenging me without a word, daring me to keep up.

  For all my strength, he was older, and he had trained with these powers in ways I hadn't yet even touched. There was no escaping it. He had decades under a yellow sun, had learned to fly by will alone, while I was still learning to catch the air with my own strange wings.

  But I wasn't about to let him pull away. Pride gripped me, maybe foolish, maybe stubborn, but I felt it tighten with every inch of distance he gained.

  I continued forward riding the icy wind in pursuit of Crk, my wings carving a path through the frozen air like bdes.

  The narrow walls of the canyon blurred past in streaks of cobalt and silver as I poured on more speed, matching Crk's every twist and turn.

  He gnced over his shoulder, a grin spreading across his face as he saw me closing the gap.

  He banked sharply to the left, threading through a narrow fissure in the gcier, and I followed without hesitation, wings snapping open at the st second to pull me into the turn.

  Ahead of us, the canyon walls pulled back, giving way to a sprawling sheet of gcial ice that bridged the canyon floor—a frozen river sealed under tons of solid ice. And at the end of it, a vast gcier rose in our path, a wall of frozen blue-white blocking our path forward. Crk didn't even flinch; he just kept his pace steady, charging straight for the block of ice without slowing.

  I shortened the reach of my wings, pulling them in close to conserve every scrap of speed. The wings shifted, pulling into taut, coiled springs at my feet, pure force ready to burst the second I released. I focused, feeling them tighten, contracting with impossible energy as the gcier loomed closer.

  This reduction in reach let Crk pull ahead again, a streak of motion in the frozen byrinth. His wake kicked up a spray of ice and water beneath him, the impact tearing into the river below as he shot toward the gcier with that unstoppable speed.

  Still, I wasn't about to let him win this easily. I held my position, my wings compressed to a single point. And then, just as his hand reached out to make contact with the ice—

  I let go.

  The springs unleashed with a bst of force that shot me forward, driving me right to his side, neck to neck.

  BOOM!!

  The moment we hit, the gcier shattered, fracturing under the impact of two Kryptonians tearing through it like it was nothing. Ice cracked and exploded around us, jagged shards cascading in slow arcs, splintering in every direction.

  For a heartbeat, the light caught us, fractured through the spray of ice as we burst forward, neck and neck, side by side while the gcier disintegrated behind us.

  "Amazing, isn't it?"

  Crk's voice broke the silence, light and teasing, carrying over the sound of the colpsing gcier. "You're smiling," he called, a ugh coloring his words, a teasing warmth that felt…good.

  I raised a hand to my cheek, fingers grazing over a smile that I hadn't even realized was there, a trace of something unguarded.

  Crk slowed, arcing wide to fall in beside me, his grin infectious. "I was beginning to think you couldn't," he said, voice tinged with genuine surprise. It wasn't teasing, not this time. He was just… pleased.

  For a moment, I was too. Then, with a breath, I forced myself to refocus, the vast ndscape beneath us demanding as much attention as I could muster. The ice, the beauty of it all, the eerie silence—how had no one ever discovered this pce?

  Crk seemed to read the question on my face, that familiar half-smile still lingering as he gestured toward the canyon behind stretching endlessly beneath. "I have my ways," he said with a glint in his eye. "This area's been locked down with some of the best Kryptonian tech. You're looking at freeze generators—Kelex's work, actually—that stabilize the temperature, keep the pce in a perpetual state of deep freeze. Any bit of ice that breaks or melts…

  He trailed off, as if on cue—and that's when I saw them. Tiny machines, no bigger than my thumb, began to emerge from the fractures in the ice. Hundreds of them. They drifted up into the air, floating like dust motes caught in the first light of morning as they weaved their way through the broken shards of ice we had left behind.

  Each one gleamed with the silver shimmer of alien craftsmanship, their bodies marked with the House of El's symbol etched in micro-relief across their surfaces.

  "The ice regenerates almost instantly," he said, as if this was the simplest thing in the world. "The bots make sure of it. Kelex designed them to patrol the area, scanning for damage. Anything that cracks or melts gets rebuilt in seconds."

  Even as he spoke, the machines began to weave their strange magic. They spread out in synchronized clusters, hovering over the shattered ice and spraying beams of pale blue light. The rays rippled across the surface, not like sers but something softer—more like light made tangible, as more ice began forming as if being coaxed back into shape. The gcier began to reform, seamless and perfect, as if it had never been touched at all.

  "Freeze generators?" I echoed, intrigued despite myself.

  "And hard-light cloaking fields," he added, a slight shrug as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Keeps satellites blind, and every submersible within a mile reads nothing but open water. Took some doing," he admitted, gncing my way, "but between Kelex's design specs and a few calls to some friends… it works."

  For a moment, he let the silence settle between us, watching as the st of the gcier knit itself back together under the robots' care. There was something in his expression—a quiet satisfaction, the kind that came from building something meaningful in a way that words could never quite capture

  Arms folded, cape fluttering gently in the wind, he looked around, his expression shifting to something almost nostalgic as he took it all in. "I figured it was worth the effort. To keep the st pieces of Krypton's legacy safe. A legacy that has now increased by one more."

  I tilted my head, narrowing my eyes as I stared at him, testing the words on my tongue. "Don't you mean two more?"

  Crk's expression twisted, something ugly and reluctant taking hold for a fraction of a second, before he schooled it into that perfect, composed face. But it was there—something sharp under the surface. He knew exactly what I meant.

  "You're talking about Superboy."

  "Yes." My voice was steady, but it wasn't a question. "You haven't said anything about him even once. Why?"

  Crk's jaw worked, and for a moment, he looked like he wanted to swallow the question whole and spit out nothing. But I waited—because I knew. And now he knew that I knew.

  "Superboy is… different." He spoke slowly, as if choosing each word felt like dragging it up from the depths. "I... that is… Luthor—" He exhaled sharply, frustrated, maybe at himself, maybe at me for bringing it up. "I never believed he'd be able to. I didn't think anyone could…"

  "And?" I pushed, folding my arms across my chest. "He's here now, isn't he? Just like I am. So what does that matter?"

  Crk shook his head, his lips pressed into a thin line. "You don't understand."

  I met his gaze, my own steady. His blue eyes—the kind of bright, piercing blue that made you think of an open sky untouched by storm clouds—bore down into mine. And yet, there was something underneath all that intensity now, something startling.

  It wasn't anger. It was smaller. Messier. And in a strange way... human.

  "Pride?" The word slipped out before I could stop myself, a sharp, incredulous ugh hitching at the back of it. "Is that it? You don't like Superboy because of pride?"

  Crk's expression shifted in an instant, and then—before I could react—he was standing right in front of me. A single step bringing him from there to here. The space between us closed in the span of a heartbeat, his body radiating anger like a silent hum in the air. His eyes were glowing at the edges, veins of molten red threading through the ice-blue irises, promising heat.

  "Don't you dare," he said, his voice low and dangerous, "say that like you know the kind of man Luthor is. The kind of things he has done. The lengths he'd go to bring me down to his level."

  His fists clenched at his sides, his breath controlled but deliberate, like every word was chained to something he was barely keeping leashed.

  "Creating a clone of me was one thing. Insane. Inhumane. But exactly the kind of thing I expect from him. But mixing our DNA together? Some twisted half-breed, a combination of me and him?" His face twisted, and I saw the barest flicker of something raw pass through him. "That's sick. And I'm allowed to feel vioted. I'm justified, even!"

  I didn't flinch under his words, not even when the heat in his gaze pressed closer, not even when I could feel the tension in him humming just beneath the surface, like he was one wrong word away from snapping. I let the silence stretch between us until it felt brittle.

  "Perhaps," I said quietly, "but have you even met him?"

  Crk's mouth opened, then shut, like he was trying to form an answer but none would fit. His eyes stopped glowing and he eased off.

  "I don't need to," he said at st, but it wasn't as solid as his earlier words. It felt like a crack beneath the surface. "He's been checked for the codex. His is incomplete. Corrupted." He shook his head, anger flickering again, directed at some invisible figure far beyond us. "There's too much foreign DNA. It's tainted—useless. He's not—"

  He stopped himself, like saying it out loud would make it real. "You're the full-blooded Kryptonian. My clone. You." His gaze pinned me with a strange kind of gravity, and I could tell this was the closest he would come to something like admission. "I won't py into whatever twisted game Luthor has pnned. I've had enough of that."

  I could feel the frustration bubbling under my skin, the disbelief at the way he was trying to frame this, like it was some equation that only made sense in his head.

  "So you're just going to abandon him?" I asked, my voice sharp, cutting. "Leave him on his own?"

  Something shifted in his expression—faint, almost imperceptible. But it was there. Guilt. It passed through his face like the brief shadow of a storm cloud across an otherwise clear sky.

  "Batman will take care of him," Crk said, and it sounded both like an excuse and a resignation.

  They said never meet your heroes.

  I never really thought about Superboy beyond what I had seen at Cadmus, beyond what I knew from before. A lesser clone. A diluted imitation. Something between prototype and mistake. I was stronger, faster, better. I won't lie—I bought into it. There was a certain comfort in seeing him that way, as if it drew a line between us. As if being better than him made me more real. But now, standing here, watching Superman—the one we were all imitations of—refuse to even acknowledge Superboy, something colder settled in my gut. It was one thing to be second-rate. It was another to be disregarded altogether. Avoided by the very person you were modeled after.

  The original.

  The one conditioning had trained us to idolize. To aspire to be. And to repce, should the need arise. It was more than admiration—it was doctrine. A script written into our bones: become what Superman is, or make room for someone else who will.

  And yet, in this moment, with all that mythology crumbling between us, I looked at him—really looked at him—and what I saw wasn't a symbol. It wasn't an icon.

  I saw a man.

  A man, standing there with all his contradictions spilling out like cracks in his perfect image. Pride, guilt, anger—wrapped so tight around him he didn't know which one to let go of. His cape, that stupid bright red banner of hope, barely shifting in the still air between us. It was the way he carried himself, shoulders tight, fists curling and uncurling at his sides like he was trying not to shatter something invisible. Not the perfect being we were conditioned to mimic, but a man. A vulnerable fwed man.

  Not a god.

  "I didn't ask for this," he said, and it sounded like both a confession and an admission. "I didn't ask to be cloned. I didn't ask for any of it."

  "Neither did we." My voice was sharper than I intended, and I could feel the anger rising up, simmering just beneath my skin. "But we didn't get a choice, did we?

  I breathed out slowly, trying to shove down the knot curling tight in my chest. Superboy. Lesser, he may be. That's what we were told, and maybe I believed it—hell, maybe I still do. He's incomplete, a half-measure. A genetic compromise. Not quite Kryptonian, not quite human, just a stitched-together patchwork of Luthor's hubris and Superman's unwillingness to see it coming. But he was my blood.

  And to me, that meant everything.

  ___________________________________________

  Hello everyone, it’s another weekend. And you know by now that another weekend means another update! So Khanadiety is here with a brand-new chapter for you to sink your teeth into. As the story deepens, I can't wait to hear your thoughts, so be sure to let me know what you think after reading.

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  Khanadiety