Man of Steel: The Official Movie Novelization

CHAPTER FIVE

The walls of the Council Chamber opened like the petals of an enormous ceramic flower, revealing the night sky—and the ominous prison barge hanging just above the exposed amphitheater.

The Black Zero resembled a gargantuan cephalopod, with three huge tentacles hanging down from its bulbous black mantle. Each tentacle was nearly as long as the council tower was high. The ship’s massive shadow fell over the arena where Zod and his top lieutenants awaited judgment.

The prisoners had been stripped of their armor and uniforms, so that they wore only stark black skinsuits. Energized shackles bound their wrists and ankles. They stood before the Council of Five, much as Jor-El had done only a few days before.

A new solon had been elevated to replace the martyred Ro-Zar. Lor-Em had taken his predecessor’s place as High Eminence. His saturnine countenance offered no promise of mercy.

“General Zod,” he said with stentorian gravity. “For the crimes of murder and high treason, the Council has sentenced you and your fellow insurgents to three hundred cycles of somatic reconditioning.”

Gasps arose from some of the prisoners, as well as from a small party of onlookers gathered at the perimeter of the amphitheater. Zod spotted Lara among them, representing the House of El. In the tumult surrounding the aborted insurrection, Jor-El’s own transgressions— including the theft of the Codex—had been hushed up in order to avoid troubling the populace any further. Even the existence of his unnatural offspring had been kept from the public. Lara herself had escaped prosecution, so far.

She was dressed formally, wearing a silken red cloak over an elegant gown—in marked contrast to the humiliating prison garb to which he had been reduced. Zod tried to catch her eye, but she steadfastly refused to look at him.

“Have you any last words?” Lor-Em demanded.

Zod regarded the Council with scorn. He alone would speak the truth, even if these craven figureheads lacked the courage to do so.

“Krypton is dying,” he replied. “And you respond by clinging to protocol?” He scoffed at their farcical pretenses, and confronted them with the unpalatable reality they seemed unwilling to acknowledge. “The Phantom Zone is a death sentence! Who will be left to release us when our ‘conditioning’ is done?”

Lor-Em scowled down from his throne.

“We are discussing your punishment today, Zod. Not your release.”

Zod gave this cowardly evasion all of the derision it deserved.

“You won’t kill us,” he said. “You wouldn’t sully your hands… but you’ll damn us to a black hole for eternity.” He spit upon the floor. “Jor-El was right. You’re a pack of fools. Every last one of you!”

Apparently Lor-Em had heard enough. He signaled the master jailer to carry out the sentence. Cryostasis cells, composed of shimmering force fields, rose from the floor, encasing each of the conspirators in an individual sarcophagus.

Preservative gel began to fill the cells, spurring the condemned rebels to panic. Tor-An pounded uselessly at the translucent walls of his sarcophagus, while Faora screamed in rage. Nam-Ek required a larger cell than the others, but even his mammoth fists were unable to break through the rectangular force field that contained him.

Zod wheeled about to confront Lara while he still had the chance. He hadn’t forgotten her role in banishing the Codex to space, nor the child to which she had obscenely given birth…

“And you!” he snarled. “You believe your son is safe, but—” He took a menacing step toward her, but the energized walls of his cells held him back, even when he shoved against them with all his strength and fury. “—I will find him! I will reclaim what you’ve taken from us.”

She flinched at the vehemence of his words. Her hand went to her chest, which bore the emblem of the House of El.

The gel rose to choke him, stinging his eyes and throat, but he shouted over the screams of his fellow prisoners. He would not be silenced—not by the Council, and not by the accusing eyes of Jor-El’s beautiful partner in crime.

“I WILL FIND HIM, LARA! I WILL FIND HIM!”

The gel rose past the level of his face, filling the cell completely. He clenched his jaws, stubbornly fighting the effects of the gel, but it was a lost cause. It invaded his nose and lungs. An icy numbness spread through his body, while his senses dimmed. Unable to speak any longer, he could only stare at the translucent gel obscuring his vision.

His world went dark.

His last conscious thought was that he would never again set eyes on his beloved Krypton.

Within seconds, it was over.

Lara watched as the petrifying gel congealed, revealing the rebels, frozen within their cells—as immobile as statues. They were preserved in various states of fear and anger. A look of utter malice contorted Zod’s rigid features. His unmoving eyes glared balefully at his captors.

Lara shuddered. She derived little comfort from the awful spectacle that was unfolding before her. Banishing the renegades would not restore her husband or son to her, nor ease her fears regarding Kal-El’s uncertain future. She could only pray that the Zone would prevent Zod from carrying out his dreadful threats. The rebel leader had already murdered the love of her life.

She didn’t want him in the same universe as her son.

The next stage of the process began. With the prisoners secure in their solid-energy cells, the circular platform on which they stood lifted off from the floor, moving toward the prison barge that hung above the Council. An airlock opened in the underside of the Black Zero’s plated black hull. Craning her head back, Lara glimpsed the gloomy hibernation bay that was waiting for the new prisoners. Empty niches would hold the cryostasis cells, perhaps for all eternity.

Honest executions might have been kinder, Lara thought.

She shivered, and drew her crimson cloak more tightly about her. Had her own crimes been exposed, she could have easily found herself in a cell of her own, facing the same endless purgatory.

There but for the grace of Rao…

The levitating platform approached the open airlock. Robotic loading arms received the frozen prisoners. Zod was the last of the rebels to be loaded aboard the Black Zero. The airlock door shut, sealing the prisoners from view, while the transport platform descended to its original position on the floor of the amphitheater.

It’s almost over, Lara thought. He’s almost gone.

A ceremonial klaxon blared, proclaiming to all of Kandor that the rebels’ banishment was underway. The Black Zero rose vertically into the sky, its lower tentacles still pointing down toward the planet. The fully loaded prison barge ascended into orbit, where the Phantom Zone projector awaited.

The projector had been devised by Jor-El. He had done so back when he was still in the Council’s good graces, and acclaimed as Krypton’s greatest scientist. It was a triangular, shield-shaped jump-gate kept in geosynchronous orbit above Kandor. When dormant, the gate consisted of a single satellite. But as the Black Zero rose toward the it, the device split into three parts, with each point of the triangle heading off in its own direction.

Lines of energy connected the points so that they formed a much larger triangle over a far greater expanse. A distortion field manifested within the triangle. Phase-shifting colors blurred together like the prismatic optics of a soap bubble. Space-time rippled and fractured, forming a gateway to another plane of reality.

The Phantom Zone.

The Black Zero rose into the distortion field, threading the needle between the points of the triangle. The distortion effect washed over the ship. Solid matter particularized before vanishing into the two-dimensional plane of the portal. Within moments the entire ship had vanished, removed from the universe, taking its condemned cargo with it.

The three points of the projector converged once again, closing the gateway as the device powered down. The shield-shaped satellite floated silently in orbit once again.

The klaxon sounded again, signaling the end of the ritual. In theory, every exile was to be released— eventually—after cycles of solitude and subliminal conditioning had curbed their antisocial tendencies. But Lara knew this was unlikely to happen before Krypton perished. Zod had been right about that at least. He and his people had been condemned to the Zone for all time.

Or so Lara prayed.