The sterile white walls of the medical bay press in. Albyon sits on the edge of an examination table, the cool gel of the sensor pads a strange pressure against his skin. Superman stands across the room, arms crossed, his gaze a weight. Batman hovers near a console, his fingers flying across a holographic interface, not looking at Albyon but missing nothing. Two other figures, a woman with a golden lasso at her hip and a man whose skin gleams green, watch with varying degrees of suspicion. “My name,” Albyon begins, his voice raspy, a stranger’s voice, “I think it’s Albyon. Albyon Titan.” He tries to remember where he heard it last, how he knows it, but the thought dissolves like smoke. “‘Think’?” Batman’s voice is a low growl from the console. “You phased through a reinforced hull, survived vacuum, and you’re not even sure of your own name.” Albyon’s hands clench, then unclench, the tremor barely perceptible. “I don’t remember. Anything before… before waking up out there.” He gestures vaguely towards the viewport that shows the swirling, distant stars. “Just the void. And then… here.” Superman steps forward, his boots silent on the linoleum floor. “Our scans show no known energy signature related to your abilities. No records of Vultremite Physiology. Your body composition is… unique.” His words are calm, but the underlying current is unmistakable: danger. “It’s like my body just… changed,” Albyon says, struggling for the right words. “Like it adapted. The cold, the lack of air, phasing through the metal… it just *happened*. I didn’t mean to.” He looks from Superman to the woman with the lasso, seeking some understanding, some crack in their unified front. Their faces remain closed, unreadable masks. “You didn’t mean to breach the Watchtower’s defenses?” Batman asks, not bothering to turn. “A facility designed to be impenetrable?” His voice holds a flat note of disbelief. Albyon shakes his head, a knot tightening in his chest. “I was just… drawn. Like a current pulling me. And then I was inside. I swear, I’m not a threat.” The words feel hollow, even to him. How could they believe him when he barely believed himself? He wants to show them, to *make* them understand the terror of waking up lost, the crushing confusion. His gaze drops to his hands, calloused and strong, yet so alien. These are not the hands he remembers, if he ever had memories of hands at all. The silence stretches, heavy and thick, punctuated only by the soft hum of the medical bay’s machinery. He feels like a specimen under a microscope, every flicker of his eyes, every shift of his weight, analysed, judged. The fear of failing to explain himself, of being seen as the monster they clearly suspect, burns cold in his gut. He lifts his head, meeting Superman’s unwavering stare. “Please. I just want to know where I am. Who I am. If I had a home…” The last word catches in his throat, a ghost of a concept. --- The tension in the room ripples, almost visible. Albyon’s plea hangs in the air, unanswered, until a new presence steps forward. The woman, statuesque and serene, moves with a grace that seems to calm the very air around her. Her dark hair falls over one shoulder, and her eyes, blue and deep, meet Albyon’s. This is Diana Prince, though Albyon does not know her name. He only feels the warmth of her gaze, a stark contrast to the icy scrutiny of the others. She reaches out, not with a weapon, but with an open hand. Her fingers, strong yet gentle, brush his arm. “We understand your confusion, Albyon,” she says, her voice a low, resonant melody. “It is clear you are distressed.” Her touch is electric, not painful, but a jolt of pure empathy. It cuts through the cold fear, dissolving some of the hard knots in his stomach. For the first time since he woke up, Albyon feels a glimmer of connection, of being seen not just as a threat, but as a being. He looks into her eyes, and something ancient in him recognizes honesty. “I… I don’t know anything,” Albyon whispers, his voice cracking. “It’s like a blank space where everything should be. Except… sometimes… flashes.” He sees a faint, shimmering image behind his eyes – not a memory he can grasp, but a feeling of warmth, of sunlight on something green. Diana’s hand remains on his arm, a steadying anchor. “Flashes of what, Albyon?” Her voice is soft, encouraging, without the demanding edge of Batman’s questions. He closes his eyes, trying to focus on the elusive feeling. “Light. So much light. And… peace.” He opens his eyes, looking at her, then glancing at Superman, who still watches, but with a shade less intensity. Batman has paused his console work, his silhouette now angled towards them. “Can you show us these flashes?” Diana asks, her gaze unwavering. “Sometimes, emotions can speak where words fail.” Her encouragement feels like a lifeline in the cosmic ocean he finds himself adrift in. The sheer relief of someone believing in his distress, rather than simply interrogating his presence, nearly overwhelms him. He nods, a single, hopeful movement. --- Albyon closes his eyes again, concentrating. He reaches for the flickering images, the faint echoes of what might have been home. A soft, internal hum starts, a resonance deep within his Vultremite Physiology. It’s not a conscious command, but an instinctive outpouring. He feels a warmth spread from his chest, and then, before his closed eyelids, the images begin to coalesce. He projects them, not as words, but as pure visual data, shimmering into existence in the air before them. The medical bay air shimmers, then resolves into a breathtaking vista. Tall, crystalline spires pierce a sky of impossible blue, reflecting a sun that glows with gentle, golden light. Buildings of glass and chrome curve elegantly, blending seamlessly with lush, vertical gardens that climb their facades. Automated sky-vehicles, sleek and silent, glide along invisible paths between the towers. People move below, their forms indistinct, but radiating a sense of calm purpose. There are no harsh angles, no chaotic crowds, only a harmonious flow. He sees vast, sprawling parks where trees with bioluminescent leaves pulse with a soft glow, illuminating pathways made of polished obsidian. Children laugh, their voices unheard but felt, playing with drones that flit like iridescent insects. He sees a library, impossibly large, filled with holographic scrolls unfurling narratives of ancient wisdom and scientific discovery. The air, even though it’s only a projection, feels clean, sweet, imbued with a sense of profound tranquility. Then, the images flicker. A pang of profound loneliness, sharp and sudden, pierces Albyon’s chest. This is not his current reality. This is a dream, a memory, something lost. A single tear escapes his closed eye, tracing a path down his cheek. He sees a family, a group gathered around a central light source, faces obscured but radiating love and belonging. A hand reaches out, a child’s small fingers grasping an adult’s. A sob escapes Albyon’s throat, raw and involuntary. His voice, ragged, narrates over the silent images. “My world… my home… it was like this. Peaceful. Full of knowledge. Everyone… connected.” He chokes on the last word. The images begin to fade, dissolving back into the sterile white of the medical bay walls, leaving only the echo of what was, what might have been. The silence now is different. Less hostile, more contemplative. Diana’s hand still rests on his arm, her thumb gently stroking his skin. Superman’s posture has softened, his brow furrowed not in suspicion, but in something akin to sorrow. Even Batman, though his face remains hidden, seems to hold a stillness that suggests deep thought. The pain of loss, of a world that is no longer his, is a physical ache in Albyon’s chest. He opens his eyes, seeing the empathy reflected in Diana’s face, and for a moment, he is not alone in his grief. --- Hours later, the Watchtower’s central monitoring chamber hums with a quiet, powerful energy. Batman sits hunched over his main console, the holographic displays illuminating his cowl’s sharp angles. The room is dark, save for the data streams flowing across his vision. He ignores the chatter from other sectors, focusing on the anomaly. Albyon’s presence. He cycles through the Watchtower’s breach logs from the moment Albyon appeared. Standard energy readings, atmospheric pressure changes, internal camera feeds – all normal, until the precise nanosecond of his materialization. Then, a spike. An impossible reading. He zooms in, isolates the data. It’s not an energy signature Batman recognizes. Not Kryptonian, not Atlantean, not even anything from Darkseid’s vast arsenal or Brainiac’s advanced probes. It’s a quantum ripple, a distortion in spacetime that defies known physics. A momentary tear, a whisper of something vast and ancient, far beyond anything Earth’s scientists – or even the Justice League’s combined intellect – could comprehend. The signature fades almost as quickly as it appears, leaving no residual energy, no lingering trace, as if the universe itself tried to immediately stitch the wound closed. He runs a diagnostic, cross-referencing with multiversal threat databases, Project Cadmus files, even the esoteric texts in the Fortress of Solitude’s archives. Nothing. No match. Zero percent correlation. His gauntleted finger taps a specific point on the glowing graph. The spike represents a massive, instantaneous energy transference. Not a teleportation, not a boom tube, not even a phased shift as he understood it. This was something else entirely. Something that tore a hole, deposited Albyon, and then vanished without a trace, leaving only the disoriented man behind. He reviews Albyon’s projected memories again, displayed on a secondary screen – the serene spires, the peaceful light. A world of advanced technology, yes, but not of this kind of raw, reality-bending power. Albyon claims he just “woke up.” He claims no memory. Yet, the energy signature is undeniably tied to his arrival. The data screams an impossible truth. His mind races, connecting disparate dots, seeing the patterns that shouldn’t be there. The scale of this anomaly, its sheer alienness, sends a cold shiver down his spine. He leans back, the chair groaning softly. The cowl remains expressionless, but his voice is grave: “Your story is… impossible. And something tells me you’re not the only one.”

Chapter 2: Echoes of a Lost World