Chương 4: Where He Came From

The man saw that Kaelvorn was still strung tight, still watching him with those wary eyes, and his smile didn't shrink. If anything it warmed, turned into something meant to settle a nervous animal. He lowered his hands slowly, palms forward, making it obvious he wasn't carrying anything, and only then turned toward the kitchen. Steady steps, with that loose-jointed ease fishermen tend to have. The old floorboards let out a thin creak under him.

"Superman was right about you. You're a careful kid." The man swept a few scattered shells and a rag caked with sea mud off the edge of the stove as he talked.

"I'm Tom. Friend of his." Something shifted in Kaelvorn's chest. His ears sharpened.

"When he found you out there, you were about done. Vitals so faint they barely registered."

"He brought you here on purpose. Coast is quiet. Good place to heal up." Tom moved gently, keeping the noise down while he tidied. Tom? Kaelvorn ran the name back through his head, and his brow tugged down a fraction of an inch. His eyes swept over Tom like a radar sweep. Blue work coveralls washed pale, a few faint salt stains at the collar, sleeves rolled up carelessly. The forearms underneath were covered in fine, dense scarring. The scars ran at different depths. Some looked like net burn.

Others looked like rock had opened him up. On appearance alone, he was a genuine article. A man who made his living off the water. So why? Whether Superman had fisherman friends was not something Kaelvorn could verify from memory. Between the comics, the shows, the movies, and a multiverse setup layered on top of all of it, the continuity garbage from his old life was one enormous knot he'd never managed to untangle. But here, for him, this was a new reality.

Ten years of getting hurt in every survivable and unsurvivable way had made Kaelvorn something close to a doctor. He knew exactly what state his body had been in before he blacked out. That damage went to the bone. Bandages weren't going to touch it. The tear crossing his chest and gut had gone deep enough to show bone, the muscle along the edges already dead. Of the four broken ribs, two had punched through the pleura, and breathing hard dragged a spike of pain through his lung.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. The spinal sprain was the dangerous one. Any moment it could press on the central nervous system and leave him paralyzed. Add twenty-some wounds of varying depth across the rest of him. Some into blood vessels. Some grazing the edges of organs. Even with a healing factor no human could match, without dedicated medical equipment there was no version of this where he stands up and walks in a few days.

Forget basic bandaging. The best medical resources his old Earth could offer would have struggled to keep him alive. Superman must have done something. The man with the Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic, Kryptonian technology at his fingertips, and an entire Justice League standing behind him. Before he went under, Kaelvorn had assumed he'd wake up somewhere loaded with hardware. A medical bay in the Fortress. Maybe the League's satellite base.

Instead he was in a house with no visible disinfectant, no visible clotting agent, nothing. Questions piled up in his head and knocked into each other. He nearly said all of it out loud. Where is Superman. What do you actually want with me. Then he swallowed it back down. Standing somewhere behind this man was that Superman in black, whose power had no measurable floor. Not a being Kaelvorn could afford to provoke right now. Tom came back over carrying a steaming bowl.

Light seafood smell, mixed with something else, something clean and familiar.

"Made some soup. Little shrimp and clams, fresh this morning. Didn't season it much." He set it down gently on the old wooden table and slid it across to Kaelvorn. His knuckles were thick, and there was sea mud packed into the creases of his fingers that clearly wasn't coming out. It made him look even more like exactly what he claimed to be. Kaelvorn looked at the bowl. Milky broth with a few red shrimp and pale clam meat floating in it. It looked good. He looked back up at Tom.

The man's gaze was open, no flinch in it anywhere, and the concern underneath didn't read as performance. Like he really was just a decent fisherman putting everything he had into taking care of a hurt stranger. Kaelvorn looked down, sat with it a moment, then picked up the spoon. One small mouthful. Warm broth sliding down his throat, carrying a heat he hadn't felt in a very long time.

"Thank you." He set the spoon down and coughed twice, trying to get his voice to come out clearer. He didn't raise a single question about his injuries or about Superman. Just the thanks. What he needed now was to observe, and to find footing in an unfamiliar place as fast as possible. Playing the weak, grateful alien refugee was the safest option available. It was the only way to buy enough time to learn this world, and to find out whether Viltrum left any trace at all in this universe. Tom smiled.

It was a gentle thing, like sunlight off the water. He pulled out the chair across from Kaelvorn and sat, the legs scraping the floor with a sound that set teeth on edge. His eyes stayed warm, curious without pushing, the kind of look that doesn't make a person want to close up.

"Don't mention it." Still that low, worn voice, but easy to like.

"When Superman dropped you off, he gave me the short version. Said you're from another planet, ran into some trouble, asked me to take good care of you."

"You're young. Drifting out there alone, you must have been through it. Want to tell me about it?" Kaelvorn's hand stopped on the spoon, a small stiffness running through his fingers, and inside he understood. Here it was. He'd seen this coming. The man had taken him in, but he still wanted to know where he'd come from.

"About me?" Kaelvorn let his eyes go hollow, drifting off into memory right on cue.

"Uh, like which planet you're from. And whether something bad happened back home." Tom's questions sounded offhand, the way an older man makes small talk with a kid. Every one of them landed exactly where it counted. He wasn't using an interrogator's tone. He wore concern instead, which made the digging feel like something else. Any planet in the universe treats a stranger who falls out of the sky as a potential threat.

And Kaelvorn needed Tom anyway, as a channel to Superman and whatever organization was standing behind him. He needed to hand over some useful information and buy trust with it. Trust was the only road to Superman's technology, and to answers for the questions he actually cared about. He didn't answer right away. He set the spoon down first.

"I'm from Viltrum." There was a fatigue in his voice, and a roughness, and underneath both of them something close to disgust.

"It's a planet that... takes pride in fighting. And in conquest."