Omega Beams

Once upon a time, far across the stars, on a world of iron towers called Apokolips, there lived a tyrant named Darkseid. He had many powers — a will as hard as stone, a voice like grinding rock — but nothing was more famous, or more feared, than his Omega Beams. Let me tell you about them.

Two bolts of crimson light could shoot from Darkseid's glowing eyes whenever he wished. But these were not ordinary beams. Once they locked onto something, they curved through the air, bending this way and that, hunting their target the way a hawk hunts a mouse. Almost nothing could stop them. Stone walls cracked. Steel doors melted. And if an Omega Beam struck someone, it did not hurt them the way you might think — instead, it simply sent them flying, tumbling far, far away, out of the fight entirely.

Darkseid liked to say his beams never missed once they had locked on. And because he liked to be exactly as good as his word, he practiced.

High above Apokolips floated a quiet, tumbling field of space rocks called the Rift Spires. Darkseid's engineers hung tiny targets among the spires, no bigger than a coin, tucked between rocks the size of houses. It should have been impossible to hit them without smashing everything around. But Darkseid would stand very still, narrow his glowing eyes, and fire. The beam would curve — left, then right, then left again — slipping between the asteroids without so much as a scrape, until it struck the target dead in the center. Every single time. Even the greatest power in the universe, he believed, deserved practice.

His control was not only for smashing things, either. Deep inside his fortress sat an old vault, sealed shut since the days his mother, Queen Heggra, had ruled Apokolips. Its iron door had rusted closed over centuries, and no ordinary tool could open it. Darkseid could have blasted it apart in an instant. Instead, he narrowed his eyes and traced one careful, narrow beam along the very seam of the door — slowly, gently, precisely — until the old locks melted away like frost in sunlight. Not one relic inside was harmed. Desaad called it a waste of such power on something so small. Darkseid called it patience wearing a crimson glow.

That patience was tested again on a night no one on Apokolips expected.

Far away, on Earth, a hero named Cyborg — a member of the Justice League, with a glowing Mother Box built into his very chest — had found a way to hack open a Boom Tube of his own. Quiet as a shadow, he slipped through the swirling orange portal and stepped right into Darkseid's own throne room, searching for secrets on Desaad's data terminal, hoping to learn what the tyrant of Apokolips was planning next.

But Darkseid was not so easily surprised in his own home. He rose from his throne before Cyborg's Mother Box had even finished its first scan, his eyes already glowing crimson. One Omega Beam struck the data terminal, sending sparks scattering across the floor. The second beam curved wide — not aimed to strike hard, but to tag. It touched Cyborg's armored shoulder as gently as a fingertip, leaving behind a small mark of glowing light.

"Run home," Darkseid rumbled. "I will find you wherever you go now."

Cyborg did not wait to argue with a tyrant. He opened his own Boom Tube in a flash of orange light and stepped through, vanishing from the throne room in an instant.

What Darkseid did not realize — not until it was far too late — was that Cyborg's Mother Box had already finished copying every secret on that terminal before the very first beam struck it. The tag was real. Darkseid truly could find Cyborg again someday, out there among the stars. But the secrets Cyborg carried home were real too, and by morning, the whole Justice League knew exactly what Apokolips was planning next.

Desaad grumbled that letting the hero escape at all was a disaster. Darkseid only rumbled a low, thundering laugh, settling back onto his throne. A tyrant with patience, he said, always believes there will be a next time.

And do you remember what I told you earlier — that almost nothing can turn an Omega Beam aside? That is still true. Only Wonder Woman's silver bracelets have ever truly done it. Everyone else in the universe has to be clever instead, finding a way around a power that almost never misses.

That night, high above a little blue planet called Earth, Cyborg smiled to himself, glowing tag and all. He had outsmarted the beams — not by dodging them, but by finishing his mission before they even landed. And somewhere far across the stars, in his iron fortress on Apokolips, Darkseid sat on his throne in the dark, patient as ever, already dreaming of the next time his crimson beams would fly.

The end — for now.