Dazed, Apocalypse came to in a dark space.
However far he walked, no way out came. After a stretch of time he couldn't measure, a faint light caught him and drew him toward it.
His eyes snapped open inside a cultivation tank in the real world.
He took in his surroundings: a strange glass tank, an unfamiliar liquid, threads of pure energy running into his body.
As he woke, an instrument began a steady beeping. The tank's cover lifted on its own. Apocalypse sat up, body stiff. Tubes ringed him.
He pulled the tubes free. The room had white walls, and clothes lay out ready. He dressed quickly.
"Welcome back, Mr. En Sabah Nur." Ernst walked in smiling.
"It's a mouthful, so I'll just call you Apocalypse."
Apocalypse went taut. He'd seen Ernst only briefly, but he remembered the face, and he remembered, with care, that this was the man who'd taken his body apart like it was nothing, the kind of skill that rode on terrible strength.
"No need for all that wariness, Mr. Apocalypse. I mean you no harm, or I wouldn't have brought you back. Why not test the new body? In theory, it shaped itself to your soul; it should fit you perfectly."
Apocalypse, the memory of his own death still close, felt the new vessel.
Nothing like the old worn-out one, vitality ran through a far younger body, and his abilities had sharpened well past where they'd been.
He reached for his power, and it failed. Bewilderment crossed his face.
"Your ability hasn't gone anywhere. I've simply masked it with a technique. It comes back the moment you leave here," Ernst assured him.
He went on, even. "I'm a researcher, obsessed with the truth. Call me Dr. Ernst. Once, you ruled the world. Now you're a king without a throne, and you have two choices. For all your old brilliance, victory carries its privileges, and the choosing is yours."
"What two choices?"
There was nothing condescending in Apocalypse's tone now. He'd registered Ernst's strength and granted him an equal's weight.
Strength, in the end, was the ground on which everything else stood.
That recognition pleased Ernst. He held up a finger and laid out the first.
"One, you take a dignified death, and I give you the highest funeral rites. Though, given what it cost to bring you back, I'll need to run some experiments on the body. I trust you understand."
"The second one. Now." Apocalypse's teeth ground.
He refused the first outright.
Ernst offered the second.
"You buy your freedom. Not with gold or silver or jewels, with knowledge, or some use to me. We can adjust the terms, since you're no longer the king of the world and likely don't have the resources. Serve me fifty years, then walk free."
Apocalypse decided fast. Fifty years was an age to others.
To a being as long-lived as him, it was nothing. In his place, anyone would take the second.
"Fifty years, then. But a question. Even if I agree, will you trust me? You're not afraid I'll come to regret it? That I'll promise, then try to run?"
"I keep my word. And I trust you won't regret it. I'll have a guarantor witness the contract. Break it, either of us, and the consequences are severe," Ernst said.
On the surface, he was saying he didn't trust Apocalypse at all.
Underneath, the reassurances were deliberate, calculated to lower the man's guard. What Ernst wanted, in the end, was that ferocious combat ability.
If Apocalypse ever slipped the leash, Ernst meant to point him at the real monsters: Thanos and Darkseid.
Apocalypse agreed at once. He had his own reasons.
A guarantor's strength was beside the point; the guarantee was a piece of theater, and he swallowed it for now.
Once freed, his restored strength would rewrite the whole arrangement. Regret the deal or not, he'd be able to walk clear of any consequence.
Soon after the agreement, Ernst moved him through a spatial portal to a place called the Devil's Cabin.
Beyond Chris, the cabin's keeper, a teenage girl drew Apocalypse's eye. Ernst gave her a nod, and her whole bearing changed, an otherworldly air settling over her.
Old as he was, Apocalypse felt it, the girl held the whole world in her eyes, bound to the Earth in a way nothing else was.
Her energy ran tenfold past his own, with room yet to climb. He named her in his mind, the Earth goddess, Gaia, and the recognition rocked him.
She watched his bewilderment. Nothing had been said aloud, but the mother goddess of the Earth could feel his presence, and that was enough.
Cautious, Apocalypse didn't dare overstep.
Ernst laughed inwardly. Whatever ran through Apocalypse's head, parading a heavily veiled Gaia in front of him would keep him in line.
Once the contract was signed, his room to voice any objection would be thin.
So Apocalypse had little choice but to write his name across the dragon-parchment contract.
A strange binding force took shape and threaded into the minds of both men.
By its terms, any breach would call down a joint strike from Apocalypse, Ernst, and Gaia together, a consequence to give even Ernst pause.
What Apocalypse didn't know was that the fair-looking contract leaned Ernst's way.
The signature put Ernst at ease. Various treasures could break a contract, but the higher the tier, the harder it got, and his, inscribed on dragon skin, sat among the highest there were.
As far as he knew, only the Reality Gem in his own possession could undo it, and there was no chance on earth he'd spend it to free Apocalypse.
Apocalypse counted as one of Ernst's own faction now.
Ernst led him down into Skull Island's underground laboratory and drew twenty tubes of mutant blood from a single storage box. He set the tubes in front of Apocalypse and began.
"I know you have a way of taking over bodies to acquire their abilities. The way I see it, your method is too primitive."
"Mutant powers come from genes. My research found that mutants and ordinary people share ninety-nine point nine nine percent of their genes; the difference is a thousandth of a percent."
"Others call it a genetic mutation. I think those mutated segments are better called rule fragments. Your soul reached the ruling stage, and yet, for whatever reason, your rules are mostly blank, a book with a few pages written and the rest left empty."
"Now you fill in the blank pages. The rule fragments in this mutant blood carry the information. Using my method, you copy those rules and that information into your soul."
Brushing past any objection Apocalypse might raise, Ernst made a small cut in his hand and injected the first tube.
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