Just as Los had expected.
Half a minute later.
The turbulence didn’t ease.
It got worse, more violent, spiraling out of control.
Homelander and Queen Maeve came hurrying back out of the cockpit.
Homelander looked exactly the same as before, his smile still flawless, still saying something reassuring about the situation being handled.
Only Queen Maeve had changed.
Her face had gone white, a flicker of panic in her eyes as she argued with Homelander in a low, urgent voice.
It had come to this.
Los knew exactly what was about to happen.
Homelander was going to abandon the plane.
Queen Maeve was no Wonder Woman, and she had no chance of talking him out of it.
Homelander would never allow a rescue failure to tarnish his image.
So what now?
Even with the hoodie reinforced, Los knew he couldn’t survive a fall from ten thousand meters.
And even if he somehow lived, Homelander would come after him afterward, not just to manage the story, but because that was the kind of person Homelander was.
Homelander was a far more dangerous threat than any hijacker.
Los was still running through options, mind grinding hard, when a low, forceful voice broke through.
“Hand your body over to me and I’ll get you out of here.”
Not from beside him.
From inside him, from somewhere deep in his chest, or maybe his soul.
The noise around him faded.
The hundred-odd passengers, Homelander and Queen Maeve’s argument: all of it went quiet, then still.
Time seemed to stop.
The world became absolutely silent.
Los closed his eyes.
His awareness lifted free of the failing aircraft and settled into a small, enclosed space filled with a dim, mysterious red glow.
It felt like the edge of the universe.
The end of the line for something living.
No other light.
No gaps.
No sound.
In the depths of that quiet red glow, a single figure sat slumped in a corner, a tall man in a blue metallic suit, his hair loose and disheveled.
He had been powerfully built once.
Even now, with his body wasted and gaunt, the underlying frame still filled the battered, scarred lead armor he wore.
His skin had gone dry and dull, all life gone from it.
His eyes carried the weight of something long dead.
But his chest still bore the golden S-shaped crest, and even in death he gave off a pressure that didn’t invite challenge.
“Superman?”
Los stared, genuinely thrown.
That was unmistakably the Kryptonian crest.
But this Superman looked nothing like any version he had in his head.
In every DC universe, Superman was the protagonist, the ceiling of power.
That was non-negotiable.
But the man in front of him looked like a prisoner who had reached the end of his sentence and the end of his life alone in a lightless cell.
“Get my power and those things out there won’t even register.”
The dead Superman raised his jaw, sharp-edged and hard-lined, cheekbones framed by faint cold metal plating.
Through the loose strands of his hair, a pair of proud, imperious eyes looked out.
Even after years caged under red sun radiation.
Even dying alone in here.
His voice held nothing but contempt for Homelander.
The absolute weight of someone who had always been on top.
Los remembered who this was.
It was Superman, yes.
But Injustice Superman.
A Superman who had discarded every moral line in the name of absolute justice.
Who built the Regime.
Who tried to rule the entire world by force.
He had almost pulled it off.
He fell at the very end.
If Los could get Injustice Superman’s power, then yes, Homelander was nothing.
Not in raw Kryptonian strength, and certainly not in the willingness to do whatever it took.
He was still working through that thought when a block of knowledge transferred itself into his mind without warning, fully formed, as if it had always been there.
It was a specific ability belonging to Superman, a special power called [Bio-Force Field]: the ability to perfectly manage the force behind every physical interaction with the outside world.
Just like that, he had it?
Los instinctively moved closer to the dead Injustice Superman, wanting more.
Then another voice stopped him, low and rough, coming from behind.
“Friendly reminder: don’t go any further, kid.”
Someone else was here?
Los turned around, and what he saw was more disorienting than finding Injustice Superman had been.
He was standing in the ruins of a city after a catastrophic battle.
Broken walls and collapsed buildings in every direction.
The sky was still burning.
The ground was devastated in every direction.
The Sky and earth had become a furnace, blood and ash drifting through the air.
The shattered remains of New York.
And on a section of collapsed wall, backlit by the last of the setting sun, an older man lay in red armor.
Half his body was charred.
The armor and the flesh beneath it had fused together past the point where you could tell them apart.
The gold gauntlet on his right hand had nearly become part of the wreckage of the arm it covered.
The energy core in his chest had gone dark.
His eyes were exhausted and distant.
Los’s brain stalled for a second.
Iron Man.
Was this actually Iron Man?
The hero who gave his life in the MCU’s Endgame.
The world’s richest man.
Tony Stark.
Iron Man and Injustice Superman.
How were these two in the same place?
Los looked at the dead Iron Man, then back at the dead Injustice Superman, and something clicked.
No.
They weren’t together.
It was his own existence that had drawn these two souls, dead in separate comics universes, into the same space and held them there.
They were souls, but apparently ones he could talk to.
Los asked carefully.
“Mr.
Stark, what did you mean just now?”
“Something I figured out very early on,” the dead Iron Man said, with a slight pull at the corner of his mouth.
“Free always costs the most.
Anything money can solve, I’m happy to overpay for.” He paused.
“Hand your body over to him, sure, he’ll get you out.
But then what?”
This wasn’t Gotham.
He didn’t need riddles.
Los frowned.
He turned back to the dead Injustice Superman and asked directly.
“If I hand my body over to you and you get me out, will I still be me afterward?”
Injustice Superman didn’t answer.
He simply watched Los with calm, level eyes, as if to say the trade was still worth it.
Los had his answer.
He had no doubt that borrowing Injustice Superman’s full power could get him off the plane with ease, probably putting him above Homelander entirely.
But afterward, he might be fully consumed by that power.
Nothing of himself left.
This was Injustice Superman.
Not a god among men.
A dictator of the world.
A solitary king of the universe with no one left to answer to.
In plain terms: a Kryptonian force with Superman’s power and absolutely nothing he wouldn’t do to get what he wanted.
Los realized he’d been far too careless about how he was handling these souls.
Even dead, they had been at the apex of their respective comics universes.
Their intelligence and capability didn’t die with them.
“Mr.
Stark.”
Los turned back, intending to thank him.
But before he could say anything, another thought arrived uninvited.
Injustice Superman couldn’t be trusted.
He had ruled a world by force, and that much was obvious.
But did that make Tony Stark trustworthy?
If these souls could only reach the real world through him, what was stopping either of them from having their own agenda?
The man in front of him had an IQ of 270.
The dead Iron Man seemed to read the hesitation on Los’s face.
He appeared to figure out exactly what Los was thinking, and instead of being offended, he looked almost approving.
“Good.
You’re a lot sharper than Peter.
Don’t trust any soul, and that includes me.”
He paused, then continued.
“The way out of this situation is already in your hands.
If you make it out on your own, maybe we’ll have something real to talk about down the line.”
The next instant, a complete body of specialized knowledge transferred itself into Los’s mind: aircraft structural engineering and applied force mechanics.
Precise and comprehensive.
“A little extra,” Iron Man said, easy as breathing.
“Call it a welcome gift.”
Los’s awareness snapped back to the failing Boeing.
Time started moving again.
Ten thousand meters up, the plane was on the edge of losing control entirely.
Oxygen masks had already dropped from every overhead compartment.
Los ran through it fast.
New ability: [Bio-Force Field].
New knowledge: aircraft structural engineering, applied force mechanics.
Typical Stark, sitting on a mountain of money and all he sends is textbooks.
What happened to a suit of anti-Homelander armor?
Los looked down at his hands.
Something was already taking shape in his mind, a way through.
He unclipped his seatbelt and started toward Homelander.