Deep beneath the Nevada desert, in a chamber chilled to sub-zero temperatures, Cecil Stedman stood before a massive obsidian cylinder. It pulsated with a violet light—a frequency stolen from the Khaos dimension.
"We've been preparing this since Omni-Man's betrayal," Cecil muttered, his reflection ghostly in the dark stone. "Mark just gave us the green light to use it."
"Sir, the Solaris armor is stabilizing," a scientist reported. "But the catalyst is unstable. We need the target to stay in one place."
Cecil turned to a shadowed corner where Eve sat, her wrists bound in power-dampening cuffs. Her eyes were red from weeping.
"You can save him, Eve," Cecil whispered, cold and pragmatic. "Or you can watch him disintegrate. Your choice."
Eve's voice broke. "I... I'll talk to him. Just don't kill him."
Miles away, in a derelict cabin hidden in the snowy peaks of British Columbia, Mark sat in the dark. He wasn't hiding. He was waiting.
He looked at his hands—hands that once saved kittens from trees, now stained with the metaphorical blood of a fallen hero.
Flashback:
He remembered his father looking down from the sky. "We are not them, Mark. We are more."
Then, his mother's voice. "No matter how strong you get, stay human."
Mark let out a jagged laugh. "Sorry, Mom. Humanity didn't want a human. They wanted a god they could chain."
The temperature dropped forty degrees in a second. Mark's Viltrumite cells hummed—a biological alarm. The GDA satellites hadn't just tracked his thermal signature; they were locked onto the unique electromagnetic frequency of his heart.
BOOM.
The cabin roof was sheared off by a beam of violet light. Mark flew upward, hovering in the freezing air. Below him stood a figure forged from dark matter. Project S: The Solaris. It was a suit of armor that looked like a void in the shape of a man.
"Target identified," a mechanical voice boomed. "Mark Grayson. Entity: Planetary Threat."
Mark felt his energy being sucked toward the armor like water down a drain. As the Solaris raised a glowing hand, the sky began to tear, revealing the swirling madness of the Khaos dimension.
Suddenly, a pink shield flickered into existence between them. Eve landed beside the armor, her face pale.
"Mark, stop!" she cried, looking at the army of GDA drones rising behind her. "If you fight this... you'll become exactly what they want you to be. There's no coming back from this!"
Mark looked at her, then at the soldiers, then at the void in the sky. He didn't lower his fists.
"I'm already gone, Eve," Mark whispered, his eyes glowing with a terrifying blue light. "Now... let's see what your 'God-Slayer' can actually do."