From appearances alone, Joey didn't look like someone imposing—especially with such a young face.
Before he slipped into that almost frenzied state in battle, he looked even more ordinary than Clark Kent.
But sometimes, a person's authority doesn't come from their looks or demeanor—it comes from what they've done.
Captain Atom knew Joey was coercing him, and he also knew that Joey had more than enough power to make those threats reality.
Still, the word 'surrender' was far too grating for a soldier like him to accept.
Wonder Woman tightened her grip on the lasso.
"Surrender. Don't mistake Superman's mercy for weakness."
Before the Lasso of Truth—capable of dispelling all illusions of the mind—there was no such thing as an unbreakable will.
Wonder Woman could have forced Captain Atom to submit using its power, but she held back, ensuring that whatever he said next came from his own will.
"A true soldier never surrenders."
Captain Atom raised his head high. At the same time, Wonder Woman's sword rose with it—but then he spoke the crucial words:
"But I also won't fight for the three thousand people you mentioned."
Joey quickly raised his hand to stop Wonder Woman.
"Let him go, Diana."
What was wrong with the heroes in this world?
Wonder Woman, who should have been a force for peace, was far too eager to kill. Aquaman, who should have been the bridge between land and sea, was hopelessly muddled.
And now Captain Atom—stubborn to the end. If he had hesitated even half a second longer, Wonder Woman might have split him in two.
Still, half a goal achieved was better than none.
Joey looked at the now-freed Captain Atom, trying to extract some useful information.
"Think about where your wife and daughter might be 'protected.' Help me narrow it down, and I can find them faster."
"No. You should be thinking about how to secure your throne as a conqueror in the future."
Captain Atom rejected both Joey's question and his goodwill. Having chosen to compromise, he was now, in many ways, unbound.
"As for them? That was never the problem."
As he had said before, he hadn't acted out of coercion. Retrieving them from some safehouse was never difficult for him.
He knew exactly what that so-called 'protection' meant—but he had still chosen, of his own will, to carry out his duty.
And now, he had abandoned that duty.
That was the nature of compromise. On the one hand, from a pragmatic standpoint, both sides avoided conflict—things seemed resolved. On the other hand, no one got a heroic ending.
Superman became a butcher who threatened genocide, while he himself became a coward who retreated from battle.
If he chose to step back this time, then what about next time? If Superman gained ultimate power and became like those parasites—or worse—would he still have the courage to stand against him?
Captain Atom was not optimistic.
But he had no choice. The overwhelming difference in power forced him to entrust the fate of the world to the morality of one man—and his small group.
"Stop frowning like that, Nathan. I know that look—you always get like this when you overthink moral nonsense."
One of Cyborg's units flew over from the horizon, cutting off his thoughts.
"You can save those moral debates for when you get home and talk them through with Angela. Whether you admit it or not, people like you and me already blur the line between right and wrong."
"I'm sorry for what I—"
Captain Atom looked at Cyborg—now entirely mechanical—and only then fully realized what he had done. He didn't even know how to begin apologizing.
Because, according to his expectations, he should have already died fighting Superman by now.
Cyborg cut him off.
"Actually, I should thank you. You freed me from the limitations of flesh and blood. Go—be with your family."
"In a week, we don't even know if Earth will still exist."
As Captain Atom left, Joey and the others began discussing how to carry out their plan.
Wonder Woman and Aquaman had to be excluded—the political weight of the Amazon queen and the king of Atlantis was simply too great. Move one, and everything would shift.
Force was a means, not an end. And when using force, one had to carefully choose its source.
As for Starfire, her Tamaranean nature made it difficult for her to act ruthlessly. And Shazam—Joey glanced over—was still locked in an evenly matched battle with Black Adam.
As for the Batman from another universe and the newly 'revived' Hawkgirl, Joey could only hope they didn't interfere. Otherwise, he'd have to prepare two more VIP cells in the prison.
After all the calculations, only Cyborg and Joey remained.
"Not just us— but a whole army."
Cyborg gestured to the tens of thousands of robots behind him.
"These units may be a bit fragile against you, but in small-scale engagements against conventional forces, they're practically invincible—and endless."
To be honest, when Cyborg heard Joey mention the number 3,268, his first reaction was rejection.
After all, Cyborg was, at heart, a conservative.
When he first aggregated global data streams, just like Joey, he had already compiled a list of his own.
For both of them, that kind of task was trivial.
In a modern, hyper-connected world—especially one filled with idiots who happily livestream themselves on Facebook or TikTok even while engaging in classified activities—North America held almost no secrets for Cyborg.
If he wanted, he could monitor every person in front of every camera through the network. And clearly, Superman could do the same—without even relying on the internet.
This Kryptonian was, in every sense, a living god among men.
On this planet, who was innocent? Who was guilty? Who deserved judgment, and who deserved mercy?
For Cyborg and Superman, reaching those conclusions was nothing more than a single thread of computation—a single thought.
As for acting on those conclusions, that was even simpler.
This was absolute power.
And the consequences of such absolute power went far beyond thousands of years of human sociological understanding—into a domain Cyborg himself could not fully compute.
That was why he found the number 3,268… somewhat problematic.
It didn't align with the results of his calculations.
It was too conservative.
Unlike Joey, who relied on instantaneous visual assessment, Cyborg could see both the present and the past stored across the entire internet.
Even using the most inefficient ASCII encoding—one byte per character—he had compiled a file exceeding three million bytes.
That meant his list involved hundreds of thousands of individuals.
From the moment Captain Atom destroyed half of his biological body, Cyborg's consciousness had already begun moving freely through cyberspace. Just as he said—he was no longer constrained by that half of flesh and blood.
Superman's vision might pierce the entire planet, but it was still too limited. Eliminating just those three thousand people wouldn't solve anything.
If you've already chosen to step into the abyss, why stop halfway?
Better to cut the problem out at the root than to show mercy early and be dragged into a quagmire later.
So Cyborg projected his list.
"Superman, I'd like to make a small… adjustment to your list."
Joey looked at the projection—so vast that, when fully expanded, it covered half the sky above Gotham. And the number of names—260,000—made his own list seem almost laughably restrained.
Each name at the top of the list was accompanied by detailed crimes and evidence—perfect, from a purely utilitarian standpoint.
But midway through, things started to feel… off.
Many names had no serious crimes at all—at most, minor infractions.
"What are those, Cyborg? Since when do speeding, skipping vehicle inspections, or illegal parking count as unforgivable crimes?"
Cyborg scrolled further down.
Toward the bottom, every individual had a clean record—completely spotless.
"The majority of people on this list are statistically likely to be incited to resist us within the next 120 hours. The average probability exceeds 33.34%."
Caught off guard, Joey reacted almost as if startled, raising his hand to stop Cyborg from scrolling any further.
He already knew he and his allies weren't going to be heroes in the traditional sense—but that didn't mean they had to become executioners.
"Stop, stop! We're building a new order—not this kind of new order!"
At that moment, Joey suddenly realized that the half-mechanical, half-biological body Captain Atom had destroyed earlier might, in a sense, have truly been Cyborg's core.
That half of flesh-and-blood brain wasn't just decoration.
The difference between a cyborg and a purely digital consciousness was now becoming painfully clear.
Without a physical body to temper his logic, Cyborg's fully digital mind was drifting into something… extreme.
"Watch your reasoning, Cyborg. You may not realize it, but your thinking has completely unmoored itself. Human society is emotional and chaotic—not a clean algorithm or a set of executable instructions."
Fortunately, Cyborg understood immediately.
After rapidly calculating the feasibility of his plan without Superman—and comparing their respective power levels—he adjusted course.
"...Acknowledged. Revising operational parameters. I believe I may require certain biological hormones to stabilize my cognition."
Joey's goal had always been precise—to remove the parasites at the top of the tree and preserve the rest.
Cyborg, on the other hand, was ready to cut down the entire tree and replace it with stainless steel—just to make sure no parasites ever returned.
If Cyborg's plan had gone forward, they wouldn't even need to wait for the Kryptonians. Joey and his small group would have ended up at war with the entire world first.
At that moment, Joey found himself recalling the flood of information from his clash with Barbatos—about the Dark Multiverse.
It seemed those revelations were true.
Everything in this world was being dragged toward collapse.
The universe wasn't just a train hurtling toward a cliff—every passenger inside was fighting to reach the driver's cabin just to slam the accelerator even harder.
Fortunately, Joey had arrived in time—standing in the cockpit, one foot on the brake, his fists raised to block anyone trying to force the door open.
Otherwise, this world might have already been reduced to raw material once again by the forge of worlds… or by Barbatos himself.