1 - Prologue



Superboy





Superboy stood in the hallway of Cadmus, watching Robin work at his computer gauntlet.



The masked boy grinned triumphantly. “I hacked the motion sensors.” He shut off the computer with a flick of the wrist.



“Sweet!” said Kid Flash.



Robin stood up. “Still plenty of them between us and out.”



“But I’ve finally got room to move!” Kid Flash pulled down his goggles and turned toward the door to the stairwell.



At the same time, that familiar voice echoed in Superboy’s mind again. «You must go to the levels below, Brother.»



“Wait!” Superboy exclaimed.



Kid Flash skidded to a stop, nearly hitting the door. “What? Why?”



Superboy hesitated, unsure whether to trust the directions himself. “We need to go down.”



“Uh, hello?” said Kid Flash, his voice speeding up slightly. “Did the fact that we’re trying to escape slip your mind? Down is the last place we want to go!”



“We need to!” Superboy felt his temper slipping.



“We’re listening,” said Aqualad. “But we need to have a plan that will lead us to the surface.”



Superboy envisioned the levels of Cadmus in his mind. He didn’t know the layout of every level, only those he had been to before. The voice wanted him to go to the lowest levels, and Superboy didn’t know what was down there. He balled up his fists in frustration.



«There is an ally,» said that voice, so tantalizingly familiar, Superboy really thought he should know who it was. «One who waits for freedom as you do. He will show you the way.»



It was a leap of faith. Superboy would take it, though—it felt like a good day for those.



“There’s somehing down there,” he said, with renewed confidence. “There’s a way out.”



Kid Flash glanced at Aqualad, who looked at Robin.



Robin shrugged. “His hunches haven’t led us wrong yet.”



“Then we go down,”Aqualad concluded.



That seemed to be enough for Kid Flash. Without another word, he turned and sprinted through the door. Superboy and the others followed.





The stairwell was filled with the sounds of pursuing G-Elves, but they were all searching the levels above. The way to the lowest levels was clear. Superboy caught up to Kid Flash at the bottom of the stairs, the 52nd sublevel. The other boy was tapping his foot impatiently.



“So, where to from here, oh great navigator?”



Superboy ignored him, waiting for Robin and the mysterious voice to give the actual navigation.



Robin and Aqualad arrived via grapple lines a moment later, Robin already looking at a holographic floorplan as he hopped to the ground.



“There’s nothing really down here,” he said doubtfully. “This level is mostly generators and boilers. What are we looking for?”



Superboy didn’t have time to respond before the voice cut in. «You must go further down, Brother.»



“This isn’t the lowest level,” said Superboy.



“That’s imposs—wait,” said Robin, rapidly zooming in on the map. “Ha! They forgot to hide the freight elevator. You’re right, let’s go!”



Kid Flash dashed off ahead again, quickly disappearing into the roughly hewn catacombs. Robin followed more cautiously, and Superboy and Aqualad jogged to catch up. Superboy kept an ear on the faint sounds of searching genomorphs above.



“Be mindful of our exits,” Aqualad cautioned Robin. “We don’t want to be trapped down here.”



“Way ahead of you,” Robin said, waving his hand dismissively.



They met Kid Flash at the elevator. Robin hacked the door, allowing them all to move inside. Unlike the passenger elevators above, the freight elevator was open at the top, a simple reenforced metal platform with railings, large enough to carry a tank or a squad of G-Trolls without difficulty.



“Look, there is another level!” exclaimed Robin, pointing to a small control panel mounted at the side of the elevator. “It’s not in the system at all. Whatever’s down there, they really, really don’t want anyone to know about it.”



“Are we going to set off an alarm if we push that?” said Kid Flash, sounding unusually cautious. “‘Cause I don’t know about you guys, but I do not want to be trapped in a cave with only one entrance.”



Robin nodded. “I can disable it. But there’s a plan B; there are extra ventilation shafts next to this one.”



“I do not like this,” said Aqualad, crossing his arms and looking at Superboy. “Are you certain that this is the best course of action?”



Superboy had to think about that for a moment. Tactically, he didn’t like this situation either, and he wasn’t sure he’d trust the mysterious voice enough to trap himself so far from the sun. But there was something else. An instinct of his own, beckoning from the darkness below. If Superboy trusted anything, he trusted his own instincts. “Yes. I’m sure of it.”



Aqualad sighed. “Then, when you’re ready Robin, take us down.”



“Waiting on you,” said Robin, and pressed the button.





The elevator descended more slowly than Superboy would have liked. It felt, he imagined, like entering the depths of a mine. At the bottom of the shaft, everything was dark and unnaturally silent. Even at the 52nd sublevel of Cadmus, something of the outside world tickled Superboy’s senses, a rumbling of traffic from the city above trickling through the building’s structure. Here, the four of them carefully stepped off the elevator and checked their surroundings, even the rampaging genomorphs in the upper levels could no longer be heard.



The elevator platform had touched down neatly onto another reinforced platform built to recieve it, and from the front of this platform a metal ramp reached down to the rough stone floor. The chamber in front of them was an extension of the elevator shaft. The walls were only about 15 yards apart, and the ceiling about the same distance from the floor. The chamber extended about a hundred yards forward, empty save for some pipes and vents from above and the elevator machinery. At the other end of this enormous tunnel yawned an opening into darkness.



For once, Kid Flash restrained himself and stayed with the group. The four boys stayed close to the walls as they crept forward in the dim orange light, listening at the darkness. Superboy could hear quiet noises from the void ahead, little clanks and gurgles of machinery echoing in a larger space.



They arrived at the end of the tunnel, nothing beyond visible except for glints in the darkness. Then Robin found a large switch.



With a series of loud clacks, banks of spotlights came on, illuminating a huge natural cave. Most of the cave was taken up by an enormous machine. Huge pillars and vats of unknown function, pipes and wires, a control panel in the center, and above it, harshly illuminated by two spotlights, a pod.



Kid Flash whistled.



The boy inside the pod looked about 16, the same age Superboy’s growth had been artificially accelerated to emulate. His features were a mixture of European and Asian, his skin pale, eyes closed. Long hair floated around his head. It was an unnatural, vibrant shade of pink. Two long needles extended from within that hair, above the boy’s ears, all the way to the walls of the pod, where they connected to external machinery. Heavy metal restraints pinned the boy to an upright slab within the pod, two to a limb, one at the waist, and one at the neck.



Superboy felt a little stunned, maybe even betrayed. Who could be powerful enough to require containment measures like this? Was that boy stronger than Superboy, or even Superman himself?



“This is big,” whispered Robin, looking awed.



“This is awesome!” echoed Kid Flash jubilantly. “Who do you think he is? Another clone?” He darted up to the control console under the pod and started looking it over. Robin, Aqualad, and Superboy trailed after him, looking up at the machinery as they passed it. Superboy couldn’t identify it all, but there were generators, hydraulics, and layers of armored blast shields in the mix.



Robin plugged in to the console, whistling as screens of data cycled by. “‘Project Psi.’ This guy is packing some serious powers. Telekinesis, superstrength, flight, and ‘unknown others,’ whatever that means.”



“Maybe he’s a martian!” Kid Flash suggested.



Robin shook his head. “DNA says human. Oh,” he said, raising his eyebrows.



“What?” Kid Flash, Aqualad, and Superboy all said at once. That grated on Superboy’s nerves. He shook it off.



“His DNA is the source code for the genomorphs,” said Robin.



Kid Flash leaned over Robin’s shoulder and looked intently at the data. “Holy crap, you’re right. The genomorphs are 100 percent human!”



“Metahuman,” pointed out Aqualad.



Superboy’s mind reeled. He was a genomorph, too. Did that mean he was only half Kryptonian?



A distant creaking and groaning of metal distracted Superboy from his thoughts. He took a moment to place the sound. The freight elevator!



“We need to let him out,” he said, interrupting Robin and Kid Flash’s conversation.



The three outsiders shared a glance.



“We don’t know what this guy’s going to do,” said Kid Flash. “I mean don’t take it the wrong way—”



“He deserves to be free as much as you do,” Aqualad cut in. “But while you were already released, this ‘Psi’ is unconscious, unpredictable. We cannot afford to be trapped between two hostile forces.”



That was rational, Superboy had to admit, very grudgingly. He didn’t have all night to debate this, though. “They’re on their way down.”



The sidekicks stiffened.



Kid Flash threw his hands in the air. “Oh, great! Now we really do have to climb up the vents! I knew this was a bad plan.”



“He’s on our side,” Superboy insisted. He wasn’t even certain how he knew it. But he did know. If the others wouldn’t do it, he would.



Aqualad sighed. “We don’t have time to argue about this now. We need to leave. As much as I don’t want to, we should call in the League.”



“No way!” Kid Flash protested. “We can finish this ourselves!”



They both looked at Robin, who bit his lip and stayed silent.



The sound of genomorphs chittering in the elevator shaft made up Superboy’s mind. “Out of my way.”



He strode toward the control panel. Kid Flash and Aqualad stepped up on either side to hold him back, but he easily pushed them away. Robin dropped into a fighting stance.



“Wait!” he said, holding out the arm that wasn’t connected to the console. “This isn’t a good plan. We still have time to regroup and come up with a better option!”



“This is the best option,” said Superboy. He grabbed Robin by the cape, even as the smaller boy tried to duck out of the way, lifted him out of the way, and reached past him to push a large red button labeled “RELEASE.”



With a loud droning sound and a series of gurgles, the machines powered down. For a moment there was silence.



“Now you’ve done it,” muttered Kid Flash.



Above Superboy’s head, the pod shattered.