Chapter 1: Breaking In, Breaking Down
The National Space Museum at midnight glowed under a sickly, neon-blue haze. It wasn't the security lights. Benny Briklos stared into his open duffel bag, his face bathed in an unearthly green. The light came from a chunk of rock the size of his fist, nested inelegantly between a snatched commemorative plaque and a dusty, decommissioned space pen. It pulsed softly, like a corrupted heartbeat.
“Oh, you are definitely not from around here,” he whispered to it, poking the rock with a gloved finger. It was weirdly warm. He’d thought the moon rock exhibit would be a quick, boring score—something to fence to a collector for a few grand to cover his daughter’s braces. But this thing in the lead-lined display case, labeled only with an indecipherable string of numbers, had called to him. It hummed. A low, sub-audible vibration he felt in his molars.
The air in the silent gallery was cold. Statues of astronauts stood as silent sentinels, their glass eyes reflecting the eerie glow from his bag. Other moon rocks sat dull and inert in their cases. This one was different. It felt… alive. And heavy. Not physically, but with a presence that made the back of his neck prickle.
“Okay, Benny, think,” he muttered to himself, cinching the bag shut. The green glow seeped through the thick canvas, painting a faint phantom light on the floor. “Weird glow-rock equals more money. More money equals less yelling from Linda. This is a good thing.” He forced a grin, trying to ignore the primal part of his brain that was screaming at him to put it back.
That’s when the world shattered.
Not metaphorically.
The immense glass skylight of the atrium cathedraled above him exploded inward. A sonic boom rolled through the vast space like the wrath of God, followed by a rain of crystalline shards that bounced and skittered across the marble floor like diamonds. She came through the hole in a streak of blue and red, landing in a three-point crouch that cracked the stone beneath her.
Benny froze, his heart hammering against his ribs. Supergirl.
Her head lifted. Eyes like arctic ice scanned the room, zeroing in on him with terrifying precision. Her cape settled around her shoulders. She looked pissed.
“Put it down,” she said. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it carried, clean and hard, cutting through the ringing in his ears.
Benny’s mouth went dry. He’d seen her on TV, all smiles and saving cats from trees. This was not that woman. This was something else—a force of nature contained in a skirt and a crest he didn’t recognize. He held up his hands, the duffel bag dangling from one trembling fist.
“Look, lady—Supergirl—it’s just a rock. A glowy one, sure, but—”
“It’s not just anything,” she interrupted, taking a step forward. Her boots crunched on glass. “It’s dangerous. To everyone. You have no idea what you’re holding. Now, put it on the floor and step away.”
Her confidence was absolute. It filled the room. Benny felt the weight of it, the expectation of immediate compliance. He was just Benny the Brick, a two-bit guy from Metropolis who’d never been fast or strong, just occasionally clever. Facing her, he felt none of those things. Just a deep, marrow-level fear.
And then, a strange thing happened.
As she took another step, her knee buckled.Just slightly. A tiny, almost imperceptible stumble. Her brow furrowed, not in anger, but in confusion. She glanced down at her feet as if the floor had betrayed her.
Benny’s brain, usually focused on exit strategies and alibis, made a desperate, lurching connection. The rock. The rock in his bag. It was humming, and she had just… stumbled. She was looking at him, but her posture had changed. The absolute certainty was gone, replaced by a flicker of something else. Strain.
He didn’t understand it, but his street-smart instincts, honed by a lifetime of reading aggressive body language, screamed at him. She’s weak.
It was the most insane thought he’d ever had.Supergirl? Weak?
But she didn’t advance. She stood her ground, one hand coming up to press lightly against her own sternum. “Last chance,” she said, but her voice had lost its razor edge. There was a breathlessness to it.
A wild, stupid gamble crystallized in Benny’s mind. He couldn’t outrun her. He couldn’t outfight her. But maybe, just maybe, he could out-bluff her.
“Or what?” Benny heard himself say, the words coming out braver than he felt. He hefted the duffel bag, shaking it slightly. The green glow throbbed. “You’ll take it from me?”
Her reaction was instant and visceral. Her eyes tracked the bag’s movement with sharp focus. Her lips parted. She took an involuntary half-step back.
Bingo.
Benny’s fear melted, replaced by a giddy, terrifying surge of power. He had something. He didn’t know what it was, but she did, and she was scared of it. He took a step forward, swinging the bag gently like a pendulum.
“That’s close enough,” he said, trying to sound tough. “You stay right there, cape, or I’ll… I’ll smash it.”
It was a ridiculous threat. He had no intention of destroying his payday. But her face went pale.
“Don’t,” she breathed. The command was gone, replaced by pure plea.
He took another step. She retreated again, her boots scraping on the debris. The distance between them was closing, but he was the one advancing. The hierarchy of the room had flipped. The feeling was intoxicating, alien. He, Benny Briklos, was making Supergirl back down.
He was close enough now to see the fine sheen of sweat on her upper lip. To see the way her chest rose and fell just a little too quickly. The arctic blue of her eyes had darkened, clouded with pain and a dawning horror.
“What’s the matter?” he taunted, emboldened. “Not feeling so super?”
He reached out with his free hand, not to strike, but to shove her shoulder. It was a test.
His palm connected. Instead of meeting the unyielding steel he expected, he felt muscle and bone give way. She was solid, but not immovable. She staggered back, a gasp catching in her throat.
The sound undid something in him. It was a sound of pure vulnerability. It flooded his veins with a dark, hungry heat. The giddy power twisted, morphing into something else entirely. He stared at her—the symbol of invincibility, now swaying on her feet, her breath ragged, her eyes wide with a fear she’d probably never felt before.
The want hit him, hard and crude. It wasn’t about the rock anymore.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice dropping to a rough growl. “That’s what I thought.”
He dropped the duffel bag. It hit the floor with a heavy thud, the green light blazing from within its confines, painting her legs in its sickly hue. She cried out, a short, sharp sound, as the proximity of it visibly sapped her strength. Her knees gave way and she crumpled to the floor, catching herself on her hands, head bowed.
Benny closed the last of the distance. He stood over her. He could see the delicate line of her spine through the cape, the tremor in her arms as they held her up. He reached down, tangling his fingers in the golden hair at the nape of her neck. It was softer than anything he’d ever touched.
He yanked her head up. “Look at me.”
She fought it, a last spark of defiance, but her neck muscles were weak. Her eyes, blazing with hatred and terror, met his.
“Please,” she whispered, the word tasting like ash in her mouth.
He ignored it. The plea only fueled him. With his other hand, he gripped the shoulder seam of her famous blue top. The material was stronger than any fabric on Earth, but she was weak. He pulled, hard. A terrible ripping sound filled the quiet gallery as the top tore open down the front, revealing the smooth, pale skin and the gentle swell of her breasts beneath a simple sports bra.
She flinched, trying to curl in on herself, but he kept his grip in her hair, holding her upright, on display. A choked sob escaped her. The sound went straight to his groin.
“Shut up,” he muttered, his own breath coming fast now. He wasn’t thinking about Linda, about braces, about fences or consequences. There was only this: the overwhelming reality of his control over something so powerful, the dizzying degradation of it. He fumbled with his belt with his free hand, the clink of the buckle obscenely loud.
He forced her down onto her back on the cold, glass-strewn marble. The remaining fabric of her top was pushed aside. He shoved her legs apart with his knee, the rough movement making her cry out again. He was hurting her, and the knowledge was a thrill. Her strength was gone, leaving only this human frailty, this animal fear.
He didn’t prepare her. He didn’t care. He was painfully hard, driven by a crude, possessive frenzy. He positioned himself and drove into her in one brutal, tearing thrust.She screamed. A raw, shattered sound that echoed off the moon rocks and astronaut statues. Her body arched beneath him, not in pleasure, but in acute, shocky pain. Her inner muscles clenched tight, a spasmodic, resisting knot.
“Fuck,” he grunted, the tight, dry heat almost too much. He began to move, a harsh, punishing rhythm, each thrust slamming her body against the unyielding floor. Her screams dissolved into ragged whimpers, her face turned to the side, tears cutting clean lines through the dust on her cheeks. One of her hands, weakly flailing, found the strap of his dropped duffel bag. Her fingers curled around it, not to push it away, but to cling to it, as if it were the only solid thing in a world unraveling.
He fucked her like that, under the shattered sky and the cold half-moon, in the museum of human achievement. He used her body, chasing his own climax, fueled by each hitched breath she took, each broken sound she made. Her bravado, her power, her very identity were all stripped away, leaving nothing but this violated flesh beneath him.
When he finished, it was with a deep, guttural groan, his body slumping heavily onto hers. For a few seconds, there was only the sound of their harsh breathing—his triumphant, hers devastated.
He rolled off her, already zipping his pants. The post-coital clarity was like ice water. He looked at her. She lay perfectly still, eyes open and staring at the broken ceiling, seeing nothing. The torn blue top exposed her. A trickle of blood smeared her inner thigh.
A wave of cold, sick horror washed over Benny, brief but intense. He scrambled to his feet, avoiding her gaze. He snatched the duffel bag from the floor. Her hand, which had been clinging to it, fell limply to the marble.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, the word meaningless. He backed away, his boots crunching on glass. She didn’t move. She didn’t look at him. She just lay there, broken in the neon-blue haze and the fading pulse of stolen green light.
Benny turned and ran, disappearing into the museum’s dark corridors, the weight of the rock in his bag now feeling like the weight of a planet.
Alone in the gallery, Kara Zor-El finally blinked. A shudder wracked her frame, violent and uncontrollable. She slowly, painfully, rolled onto her side, curling her knees to her chest. The cold of the floor seeped into her bones. The sharp bite of the kryptonite, though now distant, was a dull, persistent throb in her core, a poison intertwined with a new, unimaginable violation.
She did not get up. She lay there, in the wreckage, as the first fingers of dawn began to bleed a sickly grey light through the shattered sky above.