The pool of memory was stirred, and fragmented images began to surface within him.
His gaze was locked on the stranger before him, completely frozen.
The stranger smiled at him—a warm, bright, confident smile that was so full of life.
Just by seeing it, you couldn't help but trust him completely, as if no one in the world could be more worthy of your faith.
"Batman sent me to bring you away," the stranger said.
He stepped into the room, the firm soles of his red boots making contact with the floor.
Looking around thoughtfully, he added, "This whole place is made of Corundium steel—it must have taken quite an effort to build."
Soren remained curled up on the small sofa, clutching his Superman doll tightly, the bright sunlight streaming from behind Clark almost too painful for him to look at.
Uneasy, he lowered his gaze to the doll in his hands.
The plush toy stared back with wide eyes and the same warm smile.
Its small cape was made of soft, velvety red fabric, a single piece that flowed like water.
Soren pinched the edge of the cape between his fingers, thinking to himself.
This is my Clark.
His Clark was faded, worn, and weathered by misfortune.
It had sat on a forgotten shelf, gathering dust for years.
When he had opened the packaging, he could still feel the thick layer of dust on its surface.
His Clark had been with him through every long, lonely night.
Whenever he woke up from nightmares in the middle of the night, Clark was always there, his cape a bright crimson like blood, a red that could still be seen even in the darkness.
His Clark was here, right in his arms.
No one else could be Clark.
The boy was so thin he was almost unrecognizable.
His frail arms clutched the plush doll to his chest as he said helplessly, "I don't know you. I don't want to go with you."
The big man in blue uniform looked at him, surprised.
His eyes moved down to the boy's bare feet, noticing the thick iron chain wrapped around his ankle.
For a moment, his heart skipped a beat, then a quiet anger rose inside him.
He knelt down, gently grasping one of Soren's feet, and looked up at the boy, his voice low and serious. "Did he put this on you?"
Soren flinched and tried to pull his foot away, but the large, warm hand holding him was firm and inescapable.
He could sense the shift in the stranger's emotions, which only made him more afraid.
Unable to speak or nod, Soren avoided the man's gaze and instead focused intently on tidying his plush doll.
The stranger finally noticed something was off.
His brow furrowed as his exceptional Kryptonian mind raced, piecing together the details that didn't add up.
After all, the Batman of this world had said—
"I don't know how else to explain this," the stranger began, his voice open and sincere.
He looked at Soren as he spoke. "I'm Clark Kent. I come from a parallel world, a different universe. I'm the counterpart to your Superman. Your Batman used a cross-dimensional transmission device to bring me here. He hopes we can help set this world back on its proper course."
"You should know me, right? Batman told me that you grew up with your world's Superman."
Soren shuddered.
Superman.
The word felt so familiar, but as soon as he heard it, it was as if a drill had begun to burrow deep into his mind, painfully trying to break through some hidden barrier.
Soren's headache flared up again.
He clutched his head, his face turned pale from the pain.
Curled up like a shrimp, he whimpered in agony, "I don't know you… I don't know you… my head hurts so much…"
This was the reaction he had painstakingly learned over the years under Kal-El's care and training.
In the beginning, he hadn't even known how to cry out in pain.
When the iron chains had rubbed his ankles raw, he didn't know how to express his discomfort.
It wasn't until Kal-El noticed the broken, swollen skin around his ankles that he added soft padding inside the iron cuffs to prevent further injury.
Kal-El had taught him to voice his pain aloud, but it took Soren a long time to learn how to express it.
On the first day he finally managed to say the word "hurt," he had lain in bed, clutching his chest in confusion, looking up at Kal-El with wide, bewildered eyes as he said, "It hurts here."
Kal-El had only been able to hold him tightly, his hand pressed over Soren's heart, his expression on the verge of breaking into tears.
"Has it always hurt?" Kal-El asked, staring into Soren's eyes.
Soren's beautiful blue eyes reflected Kal-El's face back at him. "Always."
That day, Kal-El held him for a long, long time—so long that Soren eventually fell asleep in his arms.
When he groggily awoke in the middle of the night, he saw Kal-El's handsome, tortured face, wet with trembling tears in the darkness.
His mind couldn't process it.
He looked at Kal-El for just a moment before slipping back into sleep, falling into his small, golden dream.
In that dream, the sky was blue, the clouds were white, and the fields stretched out in golden waves.
Clark Kent, the bright, handsome man standing before him now, was completely taken aback by Soren's reaction.
He frantically activated his X-ray vision, scanning Soren's head—and what he saw shocked him.
Soren's white matter was severely damaged, the kind of damage that could never be undone.
The fact that Soren still retained the ability to express himself through language was nothing short of a miracle.
For a fleeting moment, Clark Kent thought of this world's Injustice Superman—whose most notorious method of dealing with criminals was lobotomizing them by severing their brain's white matter.
Could Kal-El have gone to such extremes?