"A devastating blow?" Superman's eyebrow twitched.
"Yes. And our garrisons across the world—the elite forces encircling human resistance strongholds—are suffering devastating losses too."
Just then, a side door to the hall opened.
Glorious Godfrey, Darkseid's propaganda minister on Earth, strode in.
He held a data pad, his expression grim.
"Son of Krypton, you need to see this."
Godfrey tossed the data pad into the air, and a hologram unfolded in the center of the hall.
"This footage was extracted from the visual nerves of Parademons on the front lines."
In the footage, a red-and-blue figure hovered above an enormous fire pit, the Stars and Stripes Cape billowing behind him in the heat.
"Who is that?" an Apokolips general cried.
The man on the screen moved.
Nothing elaborate. His eyes simply lit up.
Two crimson beams of Heat Vision sliced through the World Forge Factory's protective shell like swords of judgment and detonated its energy core.
Boom!
The explosion swallowed the screen.
The footage changed again.
This time, it showed a prisoner-of-war camp, where countless Parademons swarmed toward the man like locusts.
A contemptuous smile played on his lips as he tore through their ranks. He flew with both grace and ferocity, every punch bursting through a cloud of compressed air.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Parademons exploded one after another in midair.
The image finally froze on the blond man hovering in the air, a Parademon's head dangling from his hand.
"This man... has the same powers as you. The same Heat Vision. Even the way he flies is remarkably similar."
Godfrey stared at Superman, suspicion in his voice.
"Lord Darkseid asked me to ask you..."
"Are you hiding a fellow Kryptonian from us?"
The golden eagle on the man's chest and that Stars and Stripes Cape were certainly nothing he remembered