Super-hearing would not miss a single word.
But Superman's eyes still narrowed, scarlet through and through.
"What did you say?"
He clenched his teeth hard, suppressing his fury.
"Ian Kent. Son of Kal-El. Son of Lois Lane and Clark Kent." Ian did not know whether he could awaken memories from his father's other timeline.
Idealist Superman should have been able to do that—yet things did not develop as Ian had imagined. Superman did not awaken the multidimensional memories he should have had.
The man's red eyes fixed on Ian, red light flickering in his pupils.
"How dare you!!" His fists clenched, his knuckles cracking. His breathing grew rapid, his chest heaving violently beneath the black battle suit.
"You're playing me!"
Superman's voice squeezed out of his throat, hoarse and low, as if something inside it had shattered.
"I'm not."
Superman's body began to glow. It was not golden light, not the light of Heat Vision, but something darker, heavier, like magma surging up from the depths of the earth's core.
Dark red.
His black battle suit fluttered in that glow, and his red cape was lifted by the blast of air, snapping behind him. The ground split beneath his feet, cracks spreading in every direction, broken stones rolling from the edges and falling into the dark depths. The clouds in the sky were torn open by that force.
Revealing the dark red firmament behind them.
"She only had two sons. Jonathan and Jordan, who died young. I've lived in this world for so many years, and we never had a third son."
Superman's voice echoed across the wasteland, shaking the distant ruins. "Where did you come from? Another universe? Another timeline?"
That was an answer Superman did not want to know.
Superman's fist smashed toward him. That punch carried dark