Everything that Adam said
about the Els,
about who we are,
who we're meant to be,
he believed I could save the universe.
Through fire, we are reborn.
I couldn't even save him.
It's chaos out there.
The whole city's gonna descend into anarchy.
Who's gonna fill this sudden power vacuum?
Dru-Zod.
I don't think he's come back to save Krypton.
I think he's come back to rule it.
House of Zod, House of El,
you're my son.
Doomsday is already far beyond your reach.
I just never thought that you'd help them do it.
We will take the creature to your city.
And risk the lives of everyone in Kandor?
You have sealed Krypton's fate!
Please don't do this.
You're gonna have to make a choice.
Get away from me!
Black Zero will shatter the guilds,
strip the ranked of their power,
and we will return Kandor to its people.
The product of your union:
Cor-Vex.
We have a child. I believe in you.
Brainiac is taking power from the generator
that powers the city's protective dome.
He's already here.
We have to go.
How will you defeat an alien conqueror?
Krypton.
Your world is mine.
Yes, I think it's time.
Brainiac! He's here!
We'll never find Seg in all this.
Try his comms again.
Seg! Come in!
Seg!
There!
What do we do?
I don't know.
With that dome down, we're not gonna last for long.
Neither will they.
We've got to find some sort of way to get people indoors.
Figure out how to...
What happened?
The Voice, he... he was in pieces, then he...
All of the sudden, the dome just came down,
and Brainiac was there.
Wait, where's Jayna?
She went off somewhere in the catacombs.
What did you do to her?
I didn't do anything to her.
It's true.
He didn't.
Look, if you're here to try and force me
to tell you where Doomsday is, then you're wasting your time.
The Cythonnites double-crossed me; they hid it somewhere.
That's not why we're here.
We need you to take us to the Fortress.
We're gonna bring back your grandfather.
We are not alone in the universe!
Krypton is vulnerable!
And praying to him won't be enough to save it.
Val of House El,
for rebelling against the lawful authority of the state,
you leave me no choice but to find you guilty of sedition.
You are hereby sentenced to death!
Remember, Seg,
keep believing in a better tomorrow.
Grandpa!
I love you!
No!
No! Grandpa!
Grandpa!
Where did he go?
Into the Phantom Zone,
a dimension that exists
outside the normal space-time continuum.
How do you know that?
Because I was trapped in there with him.
You mean you were sentenced for leading a coup.
Yes.
Because the Council that convicted me
was as corrupt as the one that condemned Val-El.
That doesn't make sense.
If Val went into the Phantom Zone 14 cycles ago,
and you were thrown in there at some point in the future,
how did you two even meet?
Once inside the Phantom Zone,
time and space have no meaning.
Val told me that with her father and the Voice of Rao
believing that he was dead,
it gave him opportunity to seek out Brainiac,
observe the way the creature operated
in order to help Krypton prepare its defenses.
Then why didn't he come back?
Because he didn't have this.
It was his only way out.
So you stole it?
You betrayed him.
Only one of us could get out with this.
So, yes,
I betrayed him,
but not his mission.
Who better to stop Brainiac, hmm?
A frail old man
or a general?
Such a mission required a Zod,
not an El.
Turned out I was both.
With Doomsday lost, we need more than just strength.
We will need your grandfather's
unsurpassed intellect.
I believe Val-El is our last, best hope.
You left my grandfather stranded in that place
with no way out, but now that we need him,
you suddenly have a way to free him.
If you hadn't kept this place a secret from me,
I could've done it anytime,
if there had been a need.
I assume you can activate it.
So what's the catch?
Someone has to go in and get him.
I'll go.
You would get lost in there forever.
I know my way around. I'll find him.
Or now that you've failed to stop Brainiac,
this is your means of escape.
No one who's ever been in there
would consider going back an escape.
How long will it take to find him?
For me,
maybe hours, days, a few weeks.
For you,
nearly instantaneous.
Engaging the Phantom Projector.
Grandfather, it's me.
It's Seg.
You think I wouldn't recognize my own grandson?
The whole time I was trapped in there,
I was never far away.
I figured out how to access the past,
the present, even the future.
I caught glimpses of you growing up.
You were a beacon of light
in that infinite darkness.
And I am proud of the man you have become.
And you.
We will settle our differences
once we've defeated Brainiac.
Grandfather, he's here.
We're hoping you know a way to stop him.
I'm afraid your hopes are misplaced.
There is no way to stop Brainiac.
It's the end of days, isn't it?
It's the beginning of Day Zero.
People of Kandor,
do not fear.
I am here to save you.
Today is the beginning
of your eternal life.
You must have foreseen
some means of saving Kandor.
No.
In fact, Brainiac has already set his sights on Cygnus 4019,
the next world he plans to add to his collection.
For all the futures you witnessed,
did you ever see one
in which you would escape the Phantom Zone?
No...
So then we can change things.
No, you can't.
From inside the Phantom Zone,
I have seen a multitude of possible futures.
And they all end the same way:
with Brainiac's victory.
I assure you,
Kandor will be taken.
And anyone still there...
will be trapped in there with Doomsday.
We have to evacuate the city.
Why? So the survivors can live long enough
to watch Krypton explode beneath their feet?
Once the city is gone,
the destabilization of the planet's core
makes the destruction of Krypton inevitable.
- Eventually, maybe. - Definitely!
Okay, fine, definitely, but at least we can get
as many people out of the city before then.
We'll deal with the immediate problem
then we can figure out how to save Krypton.
You know what future's not gonna happen?
One where I give up without a fight.
I'm going back to Kandor
and I'm going to take the fight to Brainiac,
whatever the outcome.
No, you're not.
I don't need your permission.
But you do need that skimmer.
Please, Lyta, you have to understand
why that's too much of a risk,
A risk I'm willing to take.
No, you wouldn't.
Not if you knew the truth of what it means
to be a part of Brainiac's collection.
What do you mean?
The Collector of Worlds offers eternal life.
He claims magnanimity,
seeing himself as a conservationist of sorts.
But what that really means is that
in order to perfectly preserve his cities,
those inside remain rooted to the spot,
immobilized,
brains functioning,
fully cognizant.
He likes to study their psyches
for curiosity's sake.
And that is how they remain:
trapped in paralysis,
unchanged,
for all eternity.
We'll contact the other city states.
We'll get them to send
as many transports as they possibly can.
Yes.
I'm sure they'll waste no time flying
towards that giant skull floating in the sky.
I'm not giving up.
I'm not either.
You know there are other ways into Kandor.
The Cythonnites have a tunnel that runs
from the Outlands into the city.
You gonna tell me where it is?
No.
I'm gonna show you.
Why would you risk going back into Kandor?
Do you want to come or not?
Doomsday could still be the answer.
We find the Cythonnites who took him,
and we force them to tell us where they hid it.
Of the many futures I have seen,
the one in which Doomsday is used against Brainiac
is, by far, the worst.
Then you lied to me.
You promised me there would always be a better tomorrow.
And as hard as it was,
I believed you.
Mom and Dad, they believed you.
They gave their lives for your better tomorrow.
Those were the empty words of an naive old man.
The only tomorrows I have seen
are unimaginably worse,
as your friends will soon discover.
Where'd they go?
My mother was never one to back down from a fight.
I'm getting the hell out of here.
You don't have to tell me twice. Rao can piss off.
I'm getting on the next skimmer out of here.
What's happening?
What are your orders?
You tell us.
Or find some high-ranking officer, if there's any left,
and ask them.
All I know is, I'm out of here.
I'll pretend I didn't hear that.
Commander Gar,
you and Commander Bok get your pilots ready to fly.
We need to mount a counterstrike
while we still can.
Commander Bok fled the city this morning.
And if you were smart, you'd do the same.
Right?
Yes.
You want to flee.
Want to give up,
surrender,
ask for mercy.
We are the tip of the spear
that protects Kandor City!
We do not give up,
we do not surrender,
and we do not ask for mercy.
Nor do we give it.
Grab as many supplies
and weapons as you can carry.
Brainiac is taking the city.
Looks like we don't have much time.
And we don't have a way out either.
Reports say skimmers trying to leave from the guilds
are destroyed as soon as they reach the city's border.
Then we leave by foot,
take our chances crossing the Outlands.
Head for Kryptonopolis.
We'll never make it.
No, not all of us.
But there's a chance some of us will.
We have to,
because we're taking the Codex with us.
You would risk your life for that? Why?
Without the Codex, there is no point evacuating.
It's the only way our people live on.
Then let's move.
Oracle, I need you to release my child, Cor-Vex.
Have the cryo-creche's life support function ready
for immediate transportation.
Please confirm your identity.
Identity confirmed.
Your request is being processed.
Please stand by.
You had best hurry up if you value
whatever programming has you believing
in your own sentience.
Congratulations, your request has been fast-tracked.
A Medusoid has been dispatched
for immediate delivery.
That's more like it.
Lyta, come in.
Can you hear me?
Nyssa, do you read me?
Nyssa!
Look, we find Lyta and Nyssa,
then we start getting people out through this tunnel.
We'll save as many as we can.
Or we do a deal with Brainiac and get him to spare the city.
In exchange for what?
Brainiac plunders the universe
for one thing: knowledge.
We have something he could never get his hands on.
Knowledge of the future.
- We offer him Val. - What?
He has seen not just one future,
but many possible futures.
Surely Brainiac would spare Kandor in exchange for that.
No.
Never.
You're not willing to sacrifice the life of one man
to save millions?
What if one of those millions of lives was your own, hmm?
The reason it took so long for me
to figure out that you were my father,
was that my mother never told me very much about you.
She was too grief-stricken.
All she ever said was that you were lost
in the bottling of Kandor.
Nyssa-Vex.
Seems somebody helped herself to a little going-away present.
Don't take another step closer.
Or what?
No. You will not harm him.
I just want to get my child to safety.
How long did you stand by your father's side?
Scheming and plotting,
as you both set about creating
the city that Kandor has become.
And now, as it faces its reckoning, you want to flee?
You're right.
For too many cycles, I helped my father
divide our people.
And I'm prepared to pay the price for that.
But my child is innocent.
Please, give him the chance to be free.
Free?
There's nothing free about our society or anyone in it.
Even the life of that gestating fetus
has already been predetermined.
His name is Cor-Vex.
You think the Genesis Chamber decides who we are,
but we can be more,
if we choose.
You still have no idea about the society
you helped your father create,
and your true place within it.
Wraith Wing will approach the Force Dome Generator
in a Needle-Fly formation.
This will keep him busy while Teklon Wing
hit it with ESD bombs.
The pulse should give us at least eight seconds.
That's when we detonate the charges Tantho Squad
will set on the support struts.
And we bring the whole platform down on top of him.
Any questions?
This alien menace may have conquered thousands
of worlds before ours,
but his reign of terror ends on Krypton,
for he has never encountered the Sagitari.
May Rao's grace be your shield.
And light the way to victory!
Everyone head down to Section Nine, lower level,
there's a passage that'll take you to safety. Go!
Keep moving, come on, keep moving!
Keep moving. Come on!
Keep moving. Stay together.
Wraith Wing, do you copy?
Teklon Wing, come in.
Zaral Wing, come in.
We did the right thing.
Did we?
How many men and women did we just condemn to death?
Yesterday,
it was punishable by death
to even acknowledge the possibility
of an alien presence.
How were we supposed to know how to defend against one?
If your mother were here,
she would have given the exact same order.
You know why she isn't here?
Because I failed her.
Like I failed everybody else.
What do you mean?
Do you know the reason why she led the coup
against the Voice of Rao?
To save me.
Even though it went against everything she believed in,
she chose me, and when I had a choice to save her...
Lyta, come in!
Seg, where are you?
I'm in the Rankless,
we're trying to get people out, and that includes you.
Seg, I'm sorry. I did what I thought was...
Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
I'm glad that you're alive.
There's a lot of Sagitari who aren't.
I... I sent them to their deaths.
And you saved countless lives.
In keeping Brainiac distracted,
we've been able to get people out of the city undetected.
Okay.
Okay, I'll, um...
I'll dispatch the remaining Sagitari units
to help the stragglers through the tunnels,
and I will meet you back at the Fortress.
I'm counting on it.
Is Nyssa with you?
No.
Where is she?
We don't have time for this.
Take the Codex.
Meet me at the rendezvous point.
I will be there.
Be careful.
Do you remember where you were
the day your mother died?
What?
Do you remember how she died?
Why are you asking me this?
It was a skimmer accident.
She was on her way to Bokos and got caught in the blizzard.
And died out there.
All alone.
Except she wasn't alone.
You were in that skimmer too.
At least, your original self was.
That's impossible.
Oracle, passcode:
Hantha, Flame-bird, Rokan, Oregus,
2-9-7-1-8.
Initiate Vara Protocol.
What is this?
Who are they?
When that skimmer crashed,
your mother died instantly.
As for your predecessor,
broken spine,
fractured skull,
countless internal injuries,
but just enough neural activity
for consciousness fusion.
No.
You're lying.
My childhood,
I remember it.
My sisters, I remember us playing.
I remember us fighting. I remember my father...
Implants.
Part of your somatic reconditioning.
This can't be real.
I can promise you it is.
Because I created it inadvertently.
My work was supposed to cure disease,
end suffering,
extend life.
But that wasn't enough for the elite Houses.
They wanted immortality.
And your father allowed them to manipulate
my Codex technology
so that when a body was used up,
it could be cast away like an empty shell.
Its consciousness transferred
into a clone.
My whole life has been a lie.
Yes.
Yes, it has been.
But it doesn't have to be anymore.
Come on! Keep going! Keep going!
Nyssa! Nyssa, are you there? Keep going!
Nyssa-Vex, have you seen Nyssa-Vex?
Come on, come on, keep going.
Lyta's heading back to the Fortress.
Good.
Make sure she's safe.
Where are you going?
I'm going to save Krypton!
I will not let you trade Val to Brainiac.
I don't think you can stop me.
Val is your flesh and blood too.
You would sacrifice him to that thing?
And you would sacrifice everyone else?
You don't even know if he'd take the deal!
He might just kill you.
Is that what you're really afraid of,
father?
I didn't think so.
If Brainiac gets hold of Val,
imagine what he could do with that information.
Imagine how many more worlds he could conquer!
The entire universe will pay the price for this.
If he spares Krypton,
so be it.
Intriguing.
While the others attempt to flee in terror,
you come here willingly
and unarmed.
When you've existed as long as I have,
there are so few surprises left in the universe.
Then I have another for you.
I have come to offer you something.
In exchange for sparing this city and this planet,
there is a man,
he has found a way to glimpse the future.
I can give him to you.
It amuses me
how often desperation
inspires creativity.
You will do anything to ensure your survival,
say anything.
Your Sentries have already identified your next target:
Cygnus 4019.
You must be celebrating at the prospect
of adding that lethal technology to your collection.
And you would trust me to abide by the terms of the deal
when I could simply
take the information
and your city.
I imagine for a 12th level intellect,
you would find that dishonorable.
Can the same be said of you?
Your offer is sincere.
You can have the universe,
as long as I have Krypton!
For such a selfish species,
the lengths you'll go to protect that which you love
are... extraordinary.
Please, Grandpa, we don't have much time.
We've got to get you out of here.
Once Brainiac knows my existence,
there will be no hiding.
But we have to try!
There is only one way to prevent him
from gaining the knowledge I possess,
- and that is my death. - No!
I watched you die once before,
and I'm not gonna do that again.
It's the only way!
It's not! We can send you back into the Phantom Zone!
I assure you, death will be a far kinder fate.
I just got you back.
I know.
And I know how much pain I've caused you,
but I'm going to have to do it again,
because if Brainiac finds me,
the entire universe will suffer Kandor's fate.
This way!
Dev, we need to hurry.
Dev...
We need to h...
We can jump in a skimmer.
It'll give us time to figure out our next move.
I'm afraid it's too late for that.
Don't take another step.
It's okay.
I'll do it.
I will!
I don't believe you.
You had as much chance of convincing me
you would kill your own grandfather
as convincing me that what I see here...
Is anything more than a hologram.
Oh, I wasn't trying to convince you of anything.
I just needed your big, green, 12th intellect ass
up on that platform.
No! No! No!
Hang on!
I've got you!
Seg!
Start believing in a better tomorrow again!
Seg!
Val, you can't!
I will not condemn my grandson
to that place of suffering!
But you risk bringing Brainiac back with him!
No!
No! Stop!
My father's sacrifice
will never be forgotten.
The future of our city,
and indeed, our entire planet,
is now assured.
Brainiac is no more!
We are safe!
We have faced the greatest existential threat imaginable.
And we have prevailed!
We will never find ourselves
in a position of such vulnerability again.
Today marks the beginning
of a new era.
The Rankless will now be given purpose
and conscripted into our Sagitari.
Our military might
will never again be questioned.
Kandor will no longer need to fear
the scourge of terrorism.
There will be no insurgency,
no uprising,
for we all share a common goal,
to unite Krypton!
Today, we look to the stars
as we rebuild.
Our planet will be the jewel
in the crown of an intergalactic empire.
We will seek out civilizations
beyond our system.
And we will conquer them!
If they submit peacefully,
they will fall under my protection
and shall never know fear again!
But if they do not,
then like the recalcitrant leaders
of Krypton's other city states we see before us,
eventually, they will all
kneel before Zod!