SUPERMAN: THE PARANOID KRYPTONIAN - BOOK 1

The fluorescent lights hummed at 9,847 hertz—a frequency specifically calculated to irritate my enhanced hearing without being classified as torture. I’d counted every oscillation for the past seventy-three days, six hours, and nineteen minutes. Time meant nothing in the observation cell, but counting kept me sane. Or perhaps it proved I’d already lost my sanity years ago.

The reinforced glass was six inches thick, layered with lead and an experimental polymer derived from meteoric fragments. My vision could penetrate most materials—concrete, steel, flesh—but not this. They’d made sure of that. The walls were white, sterile, empty except for the restraint chair bolted to the center of the floor. Silver-gray metal, cold even through the thin cotton of my facility jumpsuit, with manacles designed specifically for wrists that could crush diamonds.

I no longer thought of myself as anything but Specimen S-01. The scientists had stripped away every other identity years ago, and names were for people. I wasn’t people. I was a thing they studied. A weapon they were building. An asset to be catalogued, measured, and perfected.

Through the glass, I could see the observation room. Three scientists today—Dr. Evelyn Chen, her heartbeat steady at 142 beats per minute, elevated from her usual 98. Anxious. Dr. Marcus Voss, unnaturally calm as always, his pulse a metronome at 72. And Dr. Sarah Kimura, new to the project, her heart hammering at 156, breath quick and shallow. Afraid.

Good. Let them be afraid. Let them remember what they were caging.

“Subject is responsive to visual stimuli,” Dr. Chen said, her voice crackling through the speakers embedded in the ceiling. Clinical. Detached. “Pupil dilation normal. No signs of aggression.”

No signs you can see,I thought, keeping my expression blank. I’d learned years ago not to react. Reactions gave them data. Data gave them power.

“Commence Protocol Seven,” Dr. Voss said. His voice never changed. Never inflected. I’d listened to that voice order my torture for six years and had never heard emotion in it once.

The restraints activated with a pneumatic hiss, metal bands clamping around my wrists, ankles, chest, and throat. Not tight enough to restrict breathing—they needed me functional—but tight enough to remind me I was trapped. The chair tilted backwards forty-five degrees, forcing me to stare at the ceiling where the lights burned into my retinas with the intensity of small suns.

“Increase neural stimulation to level four,” Dr. Voss continued.

The pain was immediate.

It didn’t come from the restraints or the lights. It came from inside, from the suppressor chips they’d embedded in my spine, my skull, the base of my brain stem. Thirty-seven surgeries over six years to install the network of devices that kept me controlled. Kept me contained. Kept me theirs.

The suppressors emitted a frequency that disrupted my cellular structure at the molecular level. Not enough to kill me—nothing they’d tried could kill me—but enough to cause agony that registered on every nerve ending simultaneously. Pain designed specifically for Kryptonian biology. Pain tailored to my alien physiology in ways human suffering could never be.

I didn’t scream. I’d learned not to scream three years ago when they’d run Protocol Seven for sixteen consecutive hours. Screaming gave them satisfaction. Screaming proved they could break me.

But my eyes betrayed me.

Heat built behind my retinas, red and terrible, the genetic gift of my dead world trying to escape. My vision blurred crimson at the edges, and I saw Dr. Kimura step backwards, her fear-scent spiking—adrenaline and cortisol flooding her bloodstream in the universal human response to predators.

“Ocular thermal emission detected,” Dr. Chen said, making notes. Always making notes. “Heat vision manifestation at twenty-three percent capacity despite suppressor activation. Fascinating. The Kryptonian biology continues to adapt.”

“It’s not biology,” Dr. Voss corrected, leaning closer to the glass. “It’s evolution in real-time. Every time we suppress one ability, the others compensate. Increase efficiency. He’s becoming more powerful even in captivity.”

I’m right here,I wanted to say.I can hear you. I understand every word. I’m not an ‘it.’

But I said nothing. I’d tried speaking four years ago, tried explaining I was sentient, intelligent, that I felt pain and fear and loneliness. They’d increased the suppressor levels and added Protocol Nine: seventy-two hours of sensory deprivation followed by forty-eight hours of sensory overload. I hadn’t tried speaking since.

The pain intensified. Level four became level five. Five became six. The suppressors burrowed deeper into my nervous system, and my hands clenched against the armrests hard enough that the reinforced metal groaned. Not enough to break—they’d learned to use titanium-osmium alloys after I’d destroyed seventeen previous restraint systems—but enough to show my strength was still there. Still waiting. Still hungry.

“Heart rate increasing,” Dr. Chen observed. “Respiration elevated. Muscle tension at critical levels. He’s approaching threshold.”

“Maintain current levels,” Dr. Voss ordered. “I want to see how long he can sustain this.”

How long I can sustain this.As if I had a choice. As if my body wouldn’t simply continue functioning long after a human would have died from shock. That was the problem with being indestructible—there was no escape hatch. No merciful unconsciousness. No relief.

I closed my eyes, trying to retreat into the darkness behind my eyelids, but my hearing wouldn’t let me hide. I heard everything. The scratch of Dr. Chen’s pen on her clipboard. The subtle wheeze in Dr. Kimura’s breathing that suggested early-onset asthma. The electrical current running through the walls at 220 volts. The blood pumping through Dr. Voss’s carotid artery at exactly 1.2 liters per minute.

And beneath it all, deeper in the facility, I heard other sounds. Footsteps in corridors three levels down. The hum of servers in the data center. The thud of something heavy being moved in the loading bay. The desperate, muffled sobbing of another prisoner—another experiment—somewhere in the east wing.

I wasn’t alone here. I’d never been alone. There were others. Other specimens. Other assets. Other things that had once been people.

“Level seven,” Dr. Voss said.

The world exploded into agony.

My back arched against the restraints, every muscle in my body contracting simultaneously. The suppressors sent cascading waves of disruption through my nervous system, and for a moment—just a moment—I felt what it might be like to die. To simply cease existing. To stop.

But I didn’t stop. I never stopped. That was the curse of being what I was.

The heat behind my eyes built to critical levels. I couldn’t hold it back anymore. Couldn’t control it. Red light burst from my vision, lancing upward, cutting through the ceiling tiles and melting through the steel support beams above. Alarms shrieked. Sprinklers activated, raining cold water down onto my face.

“Ocular emission at eighty-seven percent capacity!” Dr. Chen shouted over the alarms. “He’s breaking through the suppressors!”

“Impossible,” Dr. Voss said, but I heard the lie in his heartbeat. The sudden spike to 118 beats per minute. He wasn’t calm anymore. He was afraid.

Good.

“Shut it down!” Dr. Kimura screamed. “You’re going to kill him!”

“He can’t be killed,” Dr. Voss said, but his hand moved toward the emergency shutdown panel. “That’s the point.”

The suppressors powered down to level three, and the pain receded to a manageable roar. I sagged against the restraints, water streaming down my face, mixing with something that might have been tears if I still remembered how to cry.

“Session terminated,” Dr. Voss announced, his voice steady again. Professional. “Subject has demonstrated increased resistance to suppression protocols. Recommend upgrade to Model Seven suppressors and implementation of additional containment measures.”

Additional containment measures.More surgery. More implants. More ways to make sure I could never be free.

The restraints released with a hiss, and I slumped forward in the chair, muscles trembling from exertion, suppressors still humming at their baseline frequency in my skull. The door to the observation cell opened, and two guards entered—Marcus and Jenkins, both armed with weapons specifically designed for me. Sonic disruptors. They’d learned long ago that bullets were useless.

“On your feet, Specimen,” Marcus said. Not unkind, just... tired. He’d been assigned to me for three years. We’d never spoken, but I’d memorized the rhythm of his breathing, the pattern of his footsteps, the particular scent of his aftershave—something pine-based.

I stood slowly, carefully, showing no aggression. Compliance was survival. The moment I fought back was the moment they’d find new ways to hurt me.

They escorted me back to my cell—a ten-by-ten concrete box with a steel cot bolted to the wall, a toilet, and nothing else. No windows. No light except the strip of fluorescents that never turned off. Home.

The door sealed behind me with a pneumatic hiss and the heavy thunk of magnetic locks engaging. Alone again. Always alone.

I sat on the edge of the cot and stared at my hands. Hands that could crush steel. Hands that had never touched another living thing with kindness. Hands that were weapons.

What am I?The question surfaced like it always did in the quiet moments.What am I supposed to be?

I had no answer. I’d never had an answer.

I lay back on the cot, staring at the ceiling, counting the cracks in the concrete. Two hundred and forty-seven. I’d counted them every night for six years.

Tomorrow they would hurt me again. And the day after that. And the day after that. Forever.

Unless something changed.

The memory came unbidden, triggered by pain and exhaustion. I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t control when the past decided to visit.

I was seven years old—or at least, that’s what they estimated. I had no birth certificate. No medical records. No identity beyond the moment they found me.

Found me.That was the word Dr. Voss always used. As if I’d been misplaced. As if I’d chosen to crash-land in a Kansas cornfield inside a vessel that should have been impossible.

I remembered waking up for the first time. Not in the ship—I had no memory of that, no memory of before—but in a white room with machines beeping and people in hazmat suits staring at me like I was a bomb that might detonate.

I’d been afraid. So afraid. I didn’t understand where I was or what these strange creatures were or why everything was so loud and bright and overwhelming. I’d cried. I’d screamed. I’d tried to run.

They’d sedated me. Again and again. Until I learned that struggling only brought more needles, more drugs, more restraints.

“The subject appears to be a juvenile specimen,” one of the scientists had said—I didn’t know names then, didn’t understand that these creatures had identities beyond their functions. “Extraterrestrial origin confirmed. Cellular structure unlike anything in the known biological database. Capabilities... unknown.”

“What do we do with it?” someone else had asked.

“We study it,” Dr. Voss had said. Even then, even seven years ago, his voice had been emotionless. Clinical. “We learn what it is. What it can do. And then we determine if it’s a threat or an asset.”

I hadn’t understood the words. But I’d understood the tone. The coldness. The way they looked at me through the glass like I was an insect pinned to a board.

They’d run tests. So many tests. Blood samples and tissue samples and bone marrow extractions. X-rays and CT scans and machines that hummed and buzzed and made my head hurt. They’d measured my strength, my speed, my durability. They’d documented everything.

I’d been cooperative at first. I hadn’t known any better. I’d thought if I did what they wanted, they might be kind. Might explain where I was. Might help me.

But there was no kindness. No explanations. Only more tests. More pain. More isolation.

The first time my powers manifested—truly manifested—I was eight years old.

They’d been testing my pain threshold with electric shocks. Standard voltage. Then higher. Then higher still. I’d been strapped to a table, electrodes attached to my chest, and I’d been screaming, begging them to stop, and—

The heat had erupted from my eyes.

Twin beams of red light, impossibly hot, impossibly focused, cutting through the restraints like they were paper. The table had melted. The electrodes had exploded. And I’d run, terrified and powerful and completely out of control, crashing through walls and doors until they’d cornered me and hit me with enough tranquilizer to kill an elephant.

It hadn’t killed me. Nothing killed me.

When I’d woken up, they’d been different. Excited. Hungry.

“Ocular energy projection,” Dr. Voss had said, watching footage of my rampage. “Thermal output exceeding fifteen thousand degrees Celsius. The potential applications are...”

He’d trailed off, but I’d understood. I wasn’t just an asset anymore. I was a weapon.

They’d intensified the experiments after that. Testing the limits of my abilities. Discovering new ones. Flight. Invulnerability. Strength that grew exponentially as I aged. Senses that could detect a heartbeat from a mile away.

And with each discovery, they’d tightened the cage. Built stronger restraints. Developed the suppressors. Made sure I could never escape. Never be free.

By the time I was ten, I’d stopped thinking of myself as a person. I was Specimen S-01. The asset. The weapon. The thing in the cell.

By twelve, I’d stopped speaking entirely. There was no point. No one listened. No one cared what I thought or felt or wanted.

By fourteen, I’d accepted that this was my existence. Forever. This cell. These tests. This pain.

Until today.

Today, something had broken. Not the restraints. Not the cell. Something inside me. Some last fragment of hope or defiance or desperation that I hadn’t known still existed.

Today, I’d felt my power surge past the suppressors. Felt the heat vision break through. Felt, for just a moment, the possibility of freedom.

And once you felt that possibility, you couldn’t unfeel it.

The memory faded, and I was back in my cell, lying on the cot, staring at the ceiling. My body ached—not from injury, nothing could really injure me, but from the constant strain of fighting the suppressors. They hummed in my skull like angry insects, a reminder that I was never truly free even in this small space.

Footsteps in the corridor. I heard them before the door opened. Two sets. Marcus and someone else. Jenkins was off-duty tonight—I could always tell by the shift change at 22:00 hours.

The magnetic locks disengaged with a series of heavy thunks, and the door slid open. Marcus entered first, sonic disruptor at his side but not raised. Behind him was a younger guard I’d seen before but didn’t know well. Anderson? Allen? I couldn’t remember. They all blurred together after a while.

“Meal delivery, Specimen,” Marcus said. The usual script. They always announced everything they did, like I might not notice them entering my cell.

The younger guard carried a tray—standard fare. Gray protein paste, a cup of water, a single vitamin supplement. Food designed for efficiency, not taste. Not that I needed much food anyway. My biology was impossibly efficient. I could go weeks without eating and maintain full strength.

But they fed me anyway. Part of the routine. Part of the control.

The younger guard set the tray on the floor near the door—they never came close to me, never within arm’s reach—and stepped back quickly. His heart was racing. 134 beats per minute. New guards were always afraid.

Marcus nodded toward the door, and the younger guard left quickly, relieved. But Marcus lingered, and that was unusual. He stood there, sonic disruptor holstered, just... looking at me.

I sat up slowly, non-threateningly, and met his eyes. He was in his mid-forties, I estimated. Weathered face, gray starting at his temples, crow’s feet from smiling—though he never smiled here. Never smiled at me.

“You okay?” Marcus asked quietly.

I blinked. The question was so unexpected that for a moment I didn’t understand it. Couldn’t process it. No one had asked me that in... ever. No one had asked me anything that implied I had feelings. That implied I was more than the asset.