Chapter 302: Collared Lies Part 1

Superman flew back to the hall with shipping containers. At this time, the children were all in greater panic, with locked in containers constantly banging against the metallic walls.

"Don't panic; you're going to suffocate," Superman warned in a loud voice as he immediately began flying across the hall to rip open the doors of the other containers. He performed this action incredibly fast before descending down to ground level to look at the collar on one of the children from a close angle. 

He looked at it with immense concern, checking for any weak points at all, but it was pointless to try and the only hope was using his strength. However, the moment his fingers got too close to the collar, a radiation of red light would be emitted in the form of a spark which would cause the person wearing the collar to yell out in loud and intense pain. 

The pain immediately caused the boy to drop to the floor, as he grabbed his neck while breaking into tears. Watching this, Superman felt his heart sink; he was running out of options and the beeping continued. With no other option, he had to attempt this, so he crouched down to the child and gave them a hopeful look.

"I am sorry, please stay strong. We're going to get you out of this," he assured before raising the boy up slightly and narrowing his eyes at the collar. In the next moment, Superman used his x-ray vision to try and pierce through the strange metal. 

Unfortunately, his laser vision simply bounced off the metal as if by reflection before striking him back at an angle less than 30° downward. This closed his laser vision to damage part of his own suit right below his chest, but it of course brought no harm to him as a whole. 

But following that failure, a true feeling of dread now dawned on him—that he really couldn't stop this. His mind was now surging with ideas, but none of them seemed optimal.

While he was doing this, he heard a voice come from behind. "Superman, have you found anything?" Batman's voice asked, prompting Superman to look behind, thinking that he had perhaps walked back inside. 

However, what he saw was only the drone that had Batman's voice coming from the speaker. Superman immediately knew that Batman had sent the drone shortly after he exited and was likely in his jet flying far away from the island already. 

Once the drone flew close to Superman, an idea finally dawned on Batman.

"Wait, if the collar is the trigger, what if Martian Manhunter tries to hold the children for a moment and phases them out?" he proposed.

"It might," Superman answered, seeing some hope through the situation.

"If the collars really go off in less than five minutes, can you get J'onn here in that time to test that theory?" Batman urgently asked.

"I can," Superman replied, before bursting into a speedy flight and exiting out of the building. The moment he came out of the building, he burst into the air and broke into flight almost like a ballistic missile.

At this time, Kara had been carrying Arias awkwardly by the arm while constantly moving as fast as she could to get away from the island, only stopping when Arias said, "I'm pretty sure we're well out of reach. Then again, with the many collars, who knows just what sort of yield it has. Just what sort of enemies does your league have?" Arias questioned as Kara stopped. 

She immediately broke away from Arias, which she thought would cause him to plummet into the water; however, he simply remained hovering in the air.

'Of course,' she thought to herself before saying, "So, you could get away?"

Arias stood in the air casually, as if he had been standing on actual ground, as he shook his head. "No, I wasn't lying. I simply wouldn't be able to fly that fast. But since it hasn't exploded by now, perhaps these ones aren't as deadly as the ones I encountered," Arias replied, continuing to feed false information into a narrative he wanted to create.

Kara wanted to say something else and probe even more questions; however, her super hearing caught on to something in the distance, which prompted her to look on one side. 

She could see Batman's jet in the distance, growing closer to their location. At the same time, Batman was flying from afar and could see on his radar that he was approaching Supergirl due to the tracking device he had left on her cape. 

Supergirl gazed at the jet and using her vision alone, could see Batman inside. "He made it out." 

Arias added. "Well, I doubt he would've saved me first if he wasn't sure he would get out himself." 

"Not everyone thinks about their life first." Kara argued.

"Then I guess not everyone has common sense," Arias clapped back, causing Kara to frown even more deeply. 

This time, before she could reply, her super hearing caused her to turn in another direction.

*Boom!* From afar, a deafening sonic boom resounded as Superman broke the sound barrier shortly after taking off. 

However, shortly after he had done this, another boom echoed from behind. It caused everyone to immediately turned their attention toward the island. 

However, all they could see was a bright light, almost like a mini white sun, then in the next split second, the bright light expanded into a huge dome that kept growing outward above the sky.

Inside Batman's cockpit, alarms were ringing, with one of the tiny monitors showing a rear view of what was occurring behind. Batman didn't panic in the least, however, and turned his attention toward a bunch of dials, which he pressed and activated before causing his jet to burst forward with even more speed. 

Without going too far, the large dome, which had covered roughly 3 1/2 times the size of the island, began to shrink before completely vanishing, leaving nothing but boiling ocean water where there had once been an island.

What was most shocking about this was it looked nearly identical to the attacks that had been launched on the US, taking out many of their vital institutions and reserves. 

Kara watched in disbelief, her heart truly sinking, her eyes growing slightly watery as she thought of just how many children had died there and then. 

This changed to a look of anger upon realizing that the explosion was similar to the attacks Markovia had launched.

This realization caused her to turn toward Arias, however, he was gone.