Rescue

Although Jay hated the guy in front of him for colluding with aliens and betraying his own kind, the urgency to confirm if his father was in this cell outweighed everything else. He symbolically broke the guy's leg to prevent him from running off, leaving him howling in the lab as he rushed into the dark cell.

"Dad? Are you here?"

"Jay? Is that you?"

A response came from a dark corner of the room. Mr. Reynolds was there, leaning weakly against the wall. At least he was still in human form – Jay let out a sigh of relief. He had been worried all along about what would happen if Mr. Reynolds had also been transformed into a monster with fangs and claws. Now, it seemed he had one less problem to worry about.

Mr. Reynolds was overjoyed to see Jay. He mustered his strength and sat up against the wall, his shackles clinking. Jay felt a pang in his heart seeing his father look like he had aged a decade overnight. He softly said, "Wait a moment," and casually ripped off his father's shackles, helping him to his feet.

Kara quickly freed the others from their shackles as she asked, "Can everyone still walk? We can get you out of here."

The crowd responded to her sporadically, and pairs of eyes that looked on the verge of death rekindled with the hope of survival. Jay felt a bit ashamed; the joy of finally finding his father had made him momentarily forget the other hostages. In fact, when he jumped into the temporal passage, all he thought about was rescuing his father, not being a hero and saving more victims. Perhaps if Kara hadn't followed, this would have been his final choice.

Jay asked Mr. Reynolds to wait a moment and then joined Kara in freeing the others from their shackles. As they emerged from the cells, Kevin Morgan was still lying on the ground, crying out in pain while clutching his broken leg.

Jay grabbed him and slammed him against the lab wall, making stars burst before his eyes. Before Jay could even ask, Kevin hastily said, "Stop, stop! I'll tell you everything."

Jay had countless questions for the guy, but he didn't have much time, so he asked the most important one: "How do we get out of here?"

"Go to the end of that passage, turn left, and you'll see a hangar," Kevin said, tears and snot streaming down his face. "Pick a vehicle, and you can fly out in it."

"How do we get back to Earth?"

"The way you came," he said. "There are three stable portals from Warworld to Earth. I only know about the one at the junkyard – we usually throw captives from Earth through that gate into the junkyard. Warworld has specialized personnel to receive them there. They'll select the ones they like and bring them back here; those they don't want are directly fed to Trako, the junkyard's cleaner."

"So, we have to go back the way we came," Jay said, tossing him aside. He turned to leave. "Thanks for the advice."

"Wait a minute!" Seeing them about to leave, Kevin rolled over despite the intense pain and crawled towards them with effort. "Don't leave me behind! Take me with you! Mongor will kill me!"

"Mongor?" Jay frowned. "So, he is indeed in charge of 'Warworld'?"

Mongor, a famous alien dictator in the DC Universe, a cosmic tyrant, the ruler of Warworld, and quite powerful himself. Generally, he was an enemy of Superman and Green Lantern, and he had clashed with the Justice League multiple times. If Jay were to list the villains he least wanted to provoke in the DC Universe right now, Mongor's name would definitely be on it.

But no matter what, he had definitely made an enemy of this dictator now.

Jay glanced at the man struggling to move on the ground with disgust and said coldly, "Then I wish you good luck."

After that, he ignored the wails and howls of the pathetic figure behind him and led the hostages away from the lab.

Such a long procession swaggering through the command tower – if this didn't attract attention, it could only mean everyone in the tower was asleep. After Jay and Kara swiftly dealt with two patrolling guards, a piercing alarm instantly echoed throughout the entire building. The control center quickly sealed off all areas of the tower, and a large number of guards were dispatched to the dangerous zones, but none of it had any effect. Every group of guards was taken down by Jay and Kara within ten seconds, and every heavily reinforced door, as thick as armor, was pried open with their bare hands. Nothing could stop them from rushing into the hangar.

A group of people swaggered into the hangar, and all sorts of novel alien vehicles caught their eyes. There were flying, ground-running, and water-swimming ones, seemingly everything. Unfortunately, this seemed to bring them another new problem.

"Uh, does anyone here know how to fly a plane?" Jay asked the crowd without much hope.

"This way," Kara quickly led everyone to a small, silver vehicle. She skillfully activated the switch and opened the rear hatch. The vehicle was no more than two meters long, but it was slender, and they could barely squeeze everyone in. Although it had two pairs of wings, its shape was more like a flying sports car than a plane.

Jay watched Kara squeeze into the cockpit, nimbly activate the control panel, and grip the joystick, saying with delight, "You know how to fly this?"

"Sort of," Kara said. "This model is a common vehicle in many composite cities across the universe. My dad taught me how to fly it once when I was on vacation. Can you open the hangar exit door for me?"

"...Once?" Jay suddenly felt a little uneasy again, but he still followed instructions and tore open the sealed door, revealing a gap just wide enough for the ship to rush out. Kara's statement sounded like her dad taught her to drive around a parking lot once – who knew how long ago that was, and now she was about to drive on the road.

"Once," Kara took a deep breath. Seeing Jay back in the cabin, she shouted, "But at least I remember how to get it moving. Everyone hold on tight!"

The moment she finished speaking, the tail of the silver vehicle spewed out dazzling blue flames. The powerful thrusters instantly gave it immense kinetic energy, and it roared out with its passengers. Kara steered the ship towards the gap Jay had torn in the door and shot out. The silver spacecraft was like a bird breaking free from its cage, soaring into the blue sky before plunging downwards.

Kara gritted her teeth and pulled back on the joystick. The ship successfully stabilized before making a close contact with the ground, skimming just above the heads of the alien pedestrians on the street. "It seems a bit overweight. But I think it can make it to the destination."

She raised the ship's height slightly, but the hull immediately gave a heavy shudder, as if it had suffered a violent impact, and sank a few more feet. The bottom of the ship scraped across the semicircular roof of a building, tearing a deep gash in it.

Six spherical flying objects were chasing their ship at extremely high speeds, with an alien soldier from Warworld in each cockpit. Each spherical ship had a small-caliber cannon at both ends, and pale blue laser beams rained down.

"Uh, bad news," Jay said, looking out from the rear glass of the ship. "We have company, and they look much faster than us."