Here's the thing about Kryptonian DNA: it's not just complex; it's encrypted.
Luther had spent months staring at the sequences, and he'd come to a terrifying conclusion. The genome had a "self-destruct" feature. It was a biological firewall. If you tried to tamper with it, if you tried to clone it without the proper keys, the DNA didn't just fail—it mutated aggressively.
It created Doomsday.
"It's brilliant, actually," Luther muttered, pacing around his underground lab. "The Ancient Kryptonians didn't just worry about their enemies stealing their tech; they worried about enemies stealing their bodies. So they put a booby trap in the blood."
If you hack the code wrong, you don't get a Superman. You get a gray, bone-spurred, mindless engine of destruction that evolves to kill whatever is hurting it.
For anyone else, this would be a nightmare scenario. For Luther? It was the goal.
"I don't want the madness," he told the empty room. "But that adaptive evolution? That durability? I need that."
A regular Kryptonian is tough. But a Kryptonian with the Doomsday adaptation? That's an entity that can tank a blast from Galactus and come back immune to cosmic energy five minutes later.
He needed that upgrade. Because he knew the Marvel Universe wasn't static. Thanos was out there collecting shiny rocks. The Celestials were judging worlds. Being "Superman level" was just the entry fee for the high-stakes table.
Luther walked over to his main console. The lab was filled with equipment that didn't officially exist. Thanks to his "loyal" friends in the Pentagon (General Sweet and his hypnotized colleagues), Luther had acquired black-budget hardware that made S.H.I.E.L.D.'s tech look like Fisher-Price toys.
He even had blueprints from World War II—Hydra designs, Stark Sr.'s rejected patents, theoretical physics papers that were classified "Top Secret" before the ink was dry.
"It's still slow," Luther complained, running a hand through his hair. "If I had a Kryptonian Genesis Chamber or a scout ship, I could skip the 'Hello World' phase. Instead, I'm trying to code a god with a hammer and chisel."
He sat down at the terminal.
"Megatron," Luther called out.
"Yes, Boss?"
The voice was cool, synthetic, and polite. Luther had named his AI "Megatron" because if you're going to build a machine intelligence, you might as well have a sense of humor about the potential robot uprising.
"Status report on the culture tanks. Batch 404."
"Scanning," Megatron replied. "All ten thousand samples are reacting within standard parameters. Cellular stability is 100%. No deviations detected."
Luther slammed his fist on the desk. The steel dented.
"Failures. All of them."
"Boss," Megatron interjected, "stability is usually considered a success in genetic engineering."
"Not for me," Luther snapped. "I'm looking for the crash. I need the anomaly. I need the cell that refuses to die and starts eating the others. If they're stable, they're just normal Kryptonian cells. Useless."
He rubbed his temples. "Incinerate them. Burn the whole batch. Sanitize the tanks and start over with the mutagenic radiation turned up by 5%."
"Complying. Purging samples."
Luther watched the monitors as the tanks were flushed with plasma fire. He didn't care about the waste. He had infinite money and infinite time.
He stood up and walked to the center of the room, standing directly under the solar focuser.
The golden light washed over him, and he sighed. The frustration evaporated. The solar energy flooded his mitochondria, repairing the microscopic wear and tear of stress.
And then… he felt it.
It wasn't a sound. It wasn't a physical touch. It was a… pull.
It felt like a new muscle had suddenly appeared in his brain, or a new limb he had forgotten he had. It was an itch located somewhere behind reality.
Luther froze.
"What is that?"
He focused on the sensation. It felt like space itself was folding around him, waiting for a command.
"A new power?"
He frowned. This wasn't in the brochure. He had flight, strength, speed, heat vision, x-ray vision, microscopic vision, telescopic vision, freeze breath, super hearing… he thought he had the full set.
But this universe was different. The physics were different. Maybe Kryptonian physiology reacted differently to the Marvel cosmos?
"It feels like… teleportation."
His eyes widened.
Teleportation?
"Wait," Luther thought, his mind racing. "What kind? Are we talking Nightcrawler 'bamf' teleportation? Or are we talking H'el?"
In the comics, the Super-Kryptonian known as H'el could manipulate matter and space, teleporting across light years, and even—if he pushed it—through time.
Luther swallowed hard. "If I have time travel, that's a game changer. That's a 'break the universe' level ability."
Or maybe it was dimensional? Could he jump back to the DC Universe? Could he jump to the MCU films vs the Comics?
The uncertainty gnawed at him. He hated variables he couldn't control. But the curiosity… the curiosity was a physical ache.
"I have to know," Luther whispered. "I can't just sit here with a button and not press it."
He began to prep.
He didn't need armor for protection—his skin was tougher than Vibranium. But he needed a battery. If he jumped somewhere without a yellow sun—like the Negative Zone or deep space—he needed a reserve.
He fabricated a sleek, black bodysuit woven with photovoltaic cells, designed to store excess solar radiation and feed it back into his pores if the ambient light dropped.
"Okay," Luther said, standing in the middle of the empty training hangar. He looked like a god of war in the sleek black suit.
"Megatron, start recording. If I vanish and don't come back within 24 hours… well, you're free to conquer the internet."
"Understood, Boss. Good luck."
Luther took a deep breath. He focused on that "itch" in his mind. He grabbed the fabric of space with his mind and pulled.
"Teleport!"
He expected a whoosh. Maybe a flash of light.
Instead, reality put him in a blender.
It was instantaneous agony. It felt like his entire body was being shoved through the eye of a needle. The space wasn't just folding; it was grinding. The pressure was absolute.
His Biological Field—the aura that protected him from nukes—shattered like glass. His Steel Body—capable of tanking planetary impacts—folded like wet paper.
He didn't just move through space; space moved through him.
SPLAT.
The sound was wet and heavy.
In a grassy clearing, miles away from the Emperor Tower, the air shimmered violently.
And then, a pile of biological slurry dropped out of the sky and hit the dirt.
It was a gruesome heap of minced meat, bone fragments, and black fabric. It didn't look like a human. It didn't look like anything that had ever been alive. It was just a puddle of organic matter steaming in the grass.
Silence fell over the clearing.
For a long moment, there was nothing but the sound of the wind in the trees and the wet settling of the gore.
Then, the clouds parted.
A beam of bright, warm, yellow sunlight cut through the canopy and struck the pile of remains.
Sizzle.
The meat began to bubble.
It wasn't decomposing; it was reorganizing. Cells that should have been dead began to vibrate. DNA sequences that had been shredded began to stitch themselves back together with frantic, impossible speed.
Steam rose from the pile.
Crack. Snap.
Suddenly, from the center of the bloody mess, a hand shot up.
It was stripped of flesh, gleaming white bone dripping with red sludge. But as the sunlight hit it, muscles began to weave themselves over the phalanges in real-time. Tendons snapped into place. Skin knit itself over the raw meat.
The skeletal hand clenched into a fist.
Luther was back. And he had learned a very valuable, very painful lesson about physics.
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