Chapter Summaries

Faora chose to remain loyal to Zod, who launched the Black Zero toward Earth for a surface saturation strike. The ship emerged near Earth and disrupted communications and electronics across the planet, beginning with Wall Street.

• Faora considered killing Zod and taking command, but decided the surviving Kryptonians needed him as their anchor.
• Faora reported that the atmospheric entry angle was calibrated and the World Engine’s first-stage release locks were disengaged.
• Zod ordered the Black Zero’s thrusters overloaded and drove the warship toward Earth.
• The Black Zero emerged from a wormhole near the Earth-Moon gravitational point and entered low Earth orbit, breaching Earth’s magnetosphere.
• At Goldman Sachs, market data froze, communications failed, and electronic displays filled with static as traders realized the outage had reached military communications satellites.

A citywide electromagnetic disruption drove Manhattan residents to Times Square, where Dru-Zod announced that Earth had twenty-four hours to provide Kal-El’s location or face destruction by the World Engine. In the Batcave, Bruce assessed the Black Zero mothership as nearly impossible to intercept while Alfred reported that the Pentagon was preparing an unofficial handover plan.

• Emergency generators failed as a widespread outage disabled computers, communications, and other electronics across Manhattan, sending residents into the streets.
• Crowds gathered in Times Square, where the giant screens displayed Dru-Zod’s message demanding Kal-El’s extradition coordinates within twenty-four standard sidereal hours.
• Dru-Zod warned that the World Engine could reduce Earth to ruins if his deadline passed.
• Bruce analyzed the Black Zero mothership’s specifications and found that conventional missiles had virtually no chance of intercepting it.
• Alfred told Bruce that the Pentagon had raised military readiness and that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were drafting an unofficial handover plan.

Bruce left the Batcave in the repaired Batplane to investigate the silent ship and the threat to humanity. At Kent Farm, armed forces arrived to take John, and Old Joe urged him to flee while preparing to face them himself.

• Bruce ignored Alfred's warning about his broken ribs, put on the Mechanical Batsuit, and launched the Batplane from the Batcave.
• A disguised Department of Defense official analyzed Kal-El's early-stage Parallax contamination and received orders to maintain silence and avoid revealing himself.
• Martha feared that aliens had discovered John, while Old Joe spotted armored vehicles approaching Kent Farm and sent her inside.
• Old Joe called John out of the barn and told him that the armed forces had come to take him.
• John asked what would happen to Old Joe, who insisted the farm was his land and said the soldiers would not harm him if he kept quiet.

John surrendered peacefully to U.S. forces rather than fight them, sparing Old Joe and Martha from seeing him become a killer. He was taken to an interrogation room, where Brigadier General Nathan Walker asked about the Zod fleet and its identification of John as Kal-El.

• John told Old Joe he would stay, then agreed to go with the soldiers surrounding the farm.
• Old Joe protested the military seizure of the farm, but John gently drew him back and stepped forward.
• Soldiers restrained John with heavy tungsten-carbide cuffs and carried him away in an armored vehicle.
• Eight internal security soldiers secured John to a restraint platform in an interrogation room.
• Brigadier General Nathan Walker asked John who the fleet was and why it had called him Kal-El, with seventeen hours left on the fleet’s countdown.

John Kent was interrogated by General Walker, who threatened his adoptive parents and prepared to incapacitate him for transport. As John began to unleash his power, the radiation-shielding doors suddenly opened.

• John told Walker he could deal with the alien threat if Walker let him fly up to it, but Walker refused to release him.
• Walker said the government planned to inject John with a neural inhibitor and transport him in a sealed capsule to Nevada.
• Walker threatened to arrest Jonathan Kent and Martha Kent and place them under federal control unless John cooperated.
• John imagined killing Walker and destroying the bunker, while his strength and heat vision began to build.
• The radiation-shielding doors suddenly slid open just before John could attack.

Deputy Secretary Davis arrived at the military base and ordered General Walker to release John Kent, who then left the base for the Nebraska wilderness. There, John transformed his watch into a nanofiber suit and launched himself toward the sky.

• Davis presented a Supreme Command directive suspending Walker's authority and ordering John Kent's unconditional release.
• Davis disabled Walker with a touch and had a military policeman unlock John's restraints.
• John noticed Davis was a fully mechanized being, warned him about Walker, and walked out of the base.
• John reached the Nebraska wilderness beneath the mothership and activated a Rolex watch that assembled into a dark gray suit.
• John's launch shattered the desert into a crater as he rocketed through the clouds.

John pierced the Black Zero mothership’s armor at extreme speed, forcing the crew to seal the breach and restore the ship’s Kryptonian atmosphere and heavy gravity. The chapter ended as a dark, armored figure emerged from the fog inside the mothership.

• Diana waited above the clouds, watching a powerful figure climb toward the edge of space.
• Bruce evaded John’s approach in the Batplane as John struck the Black Zero mothership and tore a huge hole through its underside.
• The mothership’s crew sealed the breach with heavy lead-steel shutters, containing the damage.
• The crew flooded the compartment with Kryptonian atmosphere and raised its gravity to five times Earth’s.
• A nearly two-meter-tall figure in a black exoskeletal suit emerged from the fog.

Zod’s engineered Kryptonian atmosphere failed to weaken John, who resisted its effects and attacked Zod aboard the mothership. Zod survived John’s powerful blow and called Faora to attack.

• Zod explained how Krypton’s atmosphere and gravity were meant to incapacitate John.
• Zod emerged from the copper-colored mist and demanded that John kneel and help extract the Codex of Life.
• John remained unharmed, dismissed Zod’s threats, and said only Old Joe and Martha could tell him what to do.
• John launched a sudden punch that blasted Zod backward and buckled the mothership’s deck.
• Zod recovered and ordered Faora to attack John.

Faora attacked John with monomolecular blades, but he shattered them, crushed her armor, and slammed her into the deck. As he prepared to finish her, a giant blade struck the floor nearby, and John looked up toward the platform where its wielder stood.

• Faora rushed John with twin blades, but they broke against his neck and the recoil wrecked her arm guards.
• John grabbed Faora by the faceplate, crushed it, and exposed her to the kryptonite gas filling the compartment.
• John mocked Faora, then hurled her into the deck after she broke a bone and bloodied his suit.
• As John raised his foot to stamp down on Faora, a dark-red giant blade slashed toward him and embedded itself in the deck.
• John traced the blade's hilt and leather cord upward to a raised platform.

John fought Zod in the passage, enduring his attacks while his suit repaired itself and he remained unharmed. As Zod charged again, the scene shifted to the western Atlantic, where American forces prepared for battle against several enormous mechanical figures descending from beyond the Kármán line.

• Zod charged John through the mist and struck him with his armored shoulder and giant blade.
• John's nanoparticle suit repaired its cuts, and he countered Zod with blows that damaged the armor but left him uninjured.
• Zod injured his knee and wrist during the fight but ignored the damage and charged John again.
• The American fleet and Iron Rooster Squadron prepared for an incoming threat off Chesapeake Bay.
• Watchtower AWACS reported that several mechanical figures had breached the Kármán line, and the chitin-covered silhouettes appeared in the stratosphere.

Colonel Hall’s squadron attacked two Kryptonian craft, but their gravity weapons overwhelmed the human fighters. As Hall faced death, memories of his grandfather’s story about a god who fought in the First World War surfaced.

• Colonel Hall ordered twelve Raptors to fire twenty-four missiles at the Kryptonian craft, but a gravity field crushed their fuzes and stopped the warheads.
• The Kryptonian craft destroyed two fighters with gravity beams, while Hall struggled to escape the craft pursuing him.
• As the craft charged its weapon, Hall remembered his grandfather describing a bronze-armored woman who fought through the First World War’s trenches.
• Hall’s grandfather told him the woman was a god who entered the suffering human world, and Hall recalled that he had once believed the story.

Diana arrived above the clouds and used the Lasso of Truth and her bracelets to save Colonel Hall and fight the Kryptonian ships. She hurled one assault craft into another as the remaining attackers faced her.

• Colonel Hall gave up hope as a Kryptonian ship targeted his F-22A.
• Diana appeared and used the Lasso of Truth to drag the hovering ship into the clouds.
• Diana rode the lasso through the clouds and thunderstorms as Colonel Hall recognized her as Wonder Woman.
• Kryptonian assault craft attacked Diana with plasma beams, but she deflected them with her bracelets.
• Diana caught an attacking craft with the lasso, swung it like a flail, and hurled it into another ship.

Bruce fought three Kryptonian craft over the harbor, using rigged cranes and the Batplane’s weapons to destroy two despite severe damage and injuries. With his engines disabled by the third craft’s force field and its cannons charging ahead, Bruce was left in grave danger.

• Bruce refused to abandon the evacuation point and led the three Kryptonian craft into the harbor’s crane-lined channel.
• Bruce detonated explosives on two gantry cranes, bringing steel cables and a crane boom down on the first pursuer, then destroyed it with armor-piercing rounds.
• Bruce maneuvered his damaged Batplane past the second craft and shot through its canopy, sending it crashing into the oil tanks.
• Bruce coughed up blood and suffered blurred vision and dizziness as the third warship blocked his path.
• The third warship’s force field scattered the rain and shut down Bruce’s engine thrust while its bow cannons lit up.

Diana rescued Bruce from the doomed warship, shielded the coast from debris when Black Zero exploded, and forced the Batplane into a sea landing. She left Bruce unconscious in the wrecked cockpit as a communicator called for him.

• Bruce failed to eject from the Batplane as the warship's cannon charged at him.
• Diana intercepted the beam with her bracelets, destroyed the warship with the Sword of Hephaestus, and hurled the falling Batplane toward open water.
• Black Zero erupted in orbit, sending flames and wreckage toward the coast, and Diana shielded the area with a golden dome.
• Diana caught the Batplane and guided it into the sea, where it skidded to a stop.
• Diana sensed two powerful forces battling near Black Zero, while Bruce remained unconscious as his communicator called for him.

John fought Zod from the Black Zero down through Earth’s atmosphere, then used him to smash through an evacuated Metropolis skyscraper. Zod emerged from the rubble with his face exposed to Earth’s yellow sunlight, and his mind suddenly crashed.

• John caught Zod’s wrist and struck his face, sending them crashing through the Black Zero and falling toward Earth.
• As they plunged through the atmosphere, John grappled with Zod and reversed their positions before they hit a skyscraper.
• John used Insight to confirm the building had been evacuated and drove Zod headfirst through its floors.
• The damaged skyscraper collapsed inward around them, and Zod punched through the rubble with his faceplate torn away.
• Zod’s exposed face met Earth’s air and yellow sunlight, and his brain suddenly crashed.

Zod endured the yellow sun’s overwhelming effects and resisted the sinister whispers in his mind, then absorbed its energy as his wounds healed and his strength grew. John watched him as a specimen to study, but Zod launched another attack before John could learn more.

• Zod knelt amid the crater as Earth’s yellow sunlight and overwhelming sensory input flooded his body and mind.
• Yellow whispers urged Zod to embrace his power and spread fear, but he used pain and sheer will to suppress them.
• Zod’s dormant cells devoured yellow photons, healing his injuries and increasing his strength.
• John observed Zod and considered him a chance to understand how Kryptonians worked.
• Zod’s hesitation disappeared, and he charged John with a two-fisted blow.

John and Zod fought from the ocean depths through the sky and into Nevada’s desert, where they attacked each other with powerful blows and heat vision. John intensified his beams and began driving Zod’s attack back, leaving their clash unresolved.

• John and Zod traded blows underwater, tearing up the seabed as they fought.
• Zod grabbed John and hurled him through the ocean surface and across the sky into Nevada’s desert.
• Zod attacked John from above with dark-gold heat vision, and John countered with golden-red beams.
• John increased the power of his heat vision and forced Zod’s beams upward.

John fought Zod aboard the Black Zero, but the Parallax entity consumed Zod’s remaining reason and spread fear through the ship. Zod turned eleven surviving Kryptonians into puppets and prepared to sacrifice them for the empire’s revival.

• John drove Zod through the Black Zero’s outer armor and into a deep compartment, where Zod’s body was badly wounded.
• The Parallax entity stirred inside Zod, and Zod embraced fear as a means to restore Krypton’s empire.
• Zod spread yellow fear across the Black Zero and reached the surviving Kryptonians through their minds.
• A young Kryptonian soldier saw an illusion of Krypton and followed a summons from Zod’s ancestor, Dru-Zod I.
• Eleven Kryptonians gathered behind Zod, who shattered their illusions and tightened the threads controlling their minds.

John fought Zod and his Kryptonian soldiers aboard the falling Black Zero, but their battle damaged the ship’s last load-bearing beam and sent it hurtling toward Metropolis. As Zod pinned John down, he sought to fuel his power with the soldiers’ fear of death before the ship crashed.

• Zod created a fear-energy halberd and ordered eleven Kryptonian soldiers to attack John, who disabled them without killing them.
• Zod ambushed John with the halberd, but John melted it with his heat vision; the energy clash broke the Black Zero’s final supporting keel.
• The damaged ship plunged toward Earth at extreme speed, and John realized its impact could devastate Metropolis and kill billions.
• Zod stamped John through the deck and sent the three soldiers still able to move after him, declaring that John would die with New Krypton.
• Zod recognized that his remaining power could not hold John until impact, so he sought the soldiers’ fear of death as fuel.

Zod killed a male technician aboard the damaged Black Zero and fed on the fear his death produced, then turned on a female technician. Faora burst from the wreckage and grabbed Zod just before he reached her.

• Zod pulled two injured technicians from their seats as Black Zero fell toward the planet.
• Zod strangled the male technician, explaining that he needed him to serve the empire’s order.
• Zod absorbed the fear mist from the technician’s corpse, growing larger and more powerful.
• The female technician froze in terror as Zod approached, intending to drain her fear to face Kal-El.
• Faora charged out of the wreckage and grabbed Zod by both arms, shouting for him to stop.