10
She'd wanted to go toe New York alone, but Clark had refused to let her go. He'd latched himself onto her the moment she'd entered the living room and, much like a tick, hadn't relinquished his grip. Superstrength, as he'd figured out, was only so advantageous. Chloe couldn't use it against humans. If she tried too hard to yank Clark off of her, she'd just accidentally hurt him and he knew she'd never risk that. So, stuck with a ridiculously stubborn boyfriend, Chloe'd run with him all the way to New York. The position had been awkward as Hell, but she'd managed. Just barely.
Now she stood in front of the reception desk of Dr. Swann's secretary, an annoying woman who smacked her gum and whose eyeglasses were latched onto her neck by a long, beaded chain.
"Dr. Swann does not see visitors ever, Miss Sullivan."
"But you don't understand." Clark started, giving her the full force of Kent puppy eyes. They were usually more persuasive than her beating the crap out of someone but failed to work on her. Bummer.
The secretary rolled her eyes. "No admittance means no admittance."
Tired with the nice guy route, Chloe oh-so-carefully slammed her fists onto the desk and shouted, "Look, get up off your lazy, internet solitaire playing ass and tell him that Chloe Sullivan is here to see him or, hand to God, I will sneak into his office myself and ambush him with an interview for my Podunk high school newspaper and tell him the reason I got through is because his sorry excuse for a secretary was too busy with Snood to do her goddamn job."
"Fine." The woman huffed, pressing the call button on her telephone headset. She then did a 180 so fast that even Chloe couldn't keep up with it. "Hello, Dr. Swann. It's Lydia, I'm so sorry to bother you but there's a girl here by the name of Chloe Sullivan and she insists that she has an appointment. She does? Oh of course, doctor, right away."
Chloe smirked back at her. "I'm on the list, aren't I?"
"Told you so." Clark added.
Lydia stood up and gave a quick nod. "Miss Sullivan, Mr. Kent, I am so sorry about everything. Dr. Swann's so particular about his privacy and I've been keeping him distraction free for over a decade and I am just incredibly sorry." She finished as she opened up the door to Swann's office.
"Well, you know how it is." Chloe added. "I'm just amazed at the personality change. I mean it's all so very 'horse of a different color,' you know?"
Lydia chafed at the reference. Shoving her hard enough that, if she'd been human, it would have been uncomfortable, the secretary added, "Just get on in there, kid."
The door slammed shut behind both of them and Chloe gaped at the cluttered collection of telescopes and radio equipment in front of her. "Off to see the wizard indeed," she muttered under her breath as she took Clark's hand. After a few moments, they'd passed through the maze of discarded equipment and came to a clearing through which Dr. Swann sitting at his desk was visible. Standing beside him was a woman about her father's age, maybe a little younger, with dark brown hair and wearing a smart red blazer.
"You said this was private." Chloe grumbled, glaring at Swann.
Dr. Swann moved his eyes over Clark. "I did but apparently neither of us took that part too literally. This is my partner, Dr. Bridget Crosby. She helped me build my company and she's been my right hand in organizing my communications project over the last thirteen years."
Chloe nodded. "Since the day after the meteor shower."
"Exactly."
The other woman moved forward just as Chloe and Clark made their way to the front of the desk. Holding out her hand, she said, "It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Sullivan." Then, as a conciliatory after thought, she added, "And you as well, Clark."
Chloe took her hand and squeezed it just a little harder than she should have. Bridget didn't wince. Impressive. "Anything that goes on here today is private. Is that understood? It doesn't leave this room. I don't care if you have a team of underling scientists doing all the nitty-gritty for you. Whatever I say or don't say is for your ears only."
"We know." Dr. Swann added, the perfect picture of equanimity. "The building, as you might have noticed, is as well secured as any in the city and, considering recent events, you can imagine how many hidden video cameras that would be. However, there is nothing in this room at all. I assure you. My own now legendary paranoia and your condition would never allow for anything else. Nothing you say here will be repeated, ever."
"Condition?" Clark asked and it was clear from his tone that he was as offended as she had been.
"Perhaps that was not the best way to start things." He replied, his tone contrite. "I just wanted to assure both of you that you have our utmost discretion."
"We'd better." Chloe said, glaring back at both of them. "Now, you've got me here, what do you want from me?"
"Bridget, would you do me a favor and lower the screen, please?"
"Of course, Virgil." She said and her tone was surprisingly gentle, far too gentle for someone who was just an assistant. Chloe arched an eyebrow at Clark and he nodded back at her. He'd picked up on it too. Swann and Crosby were apparently partners in more than just the academic sense.
The other woman pressed a button on Swann's desk and a large screen slid down. A few subsequent presses later and the screen lit up with a myriad of symbols. The script moved in front of them, and Clark frowned at the intricacy of it, at the alternating lines speeding along in opposite directions. Even Chloe felt the encroaching vertigo as she processed it. This was the first time that she'd ever seen her language written out like that.
"What is it?" Clark asked, his awe and excitement genuine.
"It," Swann said, focusing his attention solely on Chloe. "Is a message from the stars, a signal that arrived the same day as the shower. It took me years to decrypt it."
"Does it look familiar?" Crosby prodded, her tone as eager as Clark's.
Despite her heart pounding in her chest, Chloe managed to remain calm. "No, what does it say?"
Swann frowned slightly, a look reminiscent of all the ones Lex had given her over the years, but he didn't press her further. Instead, he merely translated the message for Clark's benefit. "This is Kala Jor-El of Krypton, our infant daughter, our last hope. Please protect her and deliver her from evil."
Chloe swallowed at the gravity of it. Now that he'd pointed it out to her, she could understand exactly hiw the opposing swirls were supposed to be read. It was so clear now, even down to the now familiar sign of the diamond around the figure eight. It wasn't just "air;" it was the symbol for her birth family, for "El." Ignoring Clark's politely restraining arm, she walked forward and brushed the symbols with her fingers.
"Kala Jor-El. Krypton." She said, not even bothering to look back at Swann.
"I often wondered what happened to that girl, if she survived the trip, and then, three days ago I found a picture of the side of a high school branded with the symbol for hope."
"A high school in the middle of ground zero for the meteor shower." Crosby added. "It wasn't hard to suss things out. We started with The Ledger and looked back over it for anything that seemed weird or unusual. It led us back to your work at The Torch and all the 'infected' that had sprung up in the town over the years. At first we were overwhelmed. With Tina Greer and Jody Melville and so many others, it was obvious there were many girls in Smallville with abilities that one might describe as 'extraterrestrial.'"
Chloe tensed but let Swann continue. "But the one girl whose name kept turning up more than any other was yours, Chloe-the girl who saved Lex Luthor from a crazed employee at the plant and the one credited with saving a fellow classmate from a tornado. The papers said your quick thinking helped you find Miss Lang and get her into a ditch in time, but the evidence, even the doubt in your friend's interview, all pointed to a less mundane explanation. Add that in with all the odd events, all your mentions in police reports and Ledgerstories..."
"…once we took into account the Luthor heiress scandal, things began to fall into place." Crosby finished for him and Chloe was amazed at the rhythm they had. It was the same easy, familiar one she and Clark shared. "Once we figured out that your adoption was a sham, well, it was obvious who you truly were?"
Taking a deep breath, Chloe forced herself to look away from the screen. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"It all sounds very conspiracy nut-Magic Bullet to me." Clark agreed as she came back to stand beside him. Looking down, he added, "Come on, Chlo. We don't need to hear anymore of this."
"I know." She said, glaring at Swann. "I'm sorry, doctor, but you're wrong. I'm just Chloe Sullivan."
"We're not trying to expose you." He answered, still unerringly calm.
"There's nothing to expose." She finished. "I'm not the person you're looking for." She replied, yanking every so lightly on Clark's arm. "Come on. You're right. Let's go home."
They were half way to the door when Crosby called out. "It's your decision, Chloe, but if you leave now, we'll never invite you back. You'll go straight to the no admittance list with everyone else who wants a piece of Virgil. This is it. Either you can live without knowing the truth or you can't."
"What truth?" She barked back over her shoulder. "You think I'm some kind of alien. That, doctor, is a fantasy."
"Correction. We highly suspect what you are but cannot prove it to be the case," Swann said. "However, there is a second half of the message. If you leave now, I will never show it to you."
It took everything she had not to blur back to his desk and shake the fucking answers out of him, and she was pretty sure it was only Clark's strong hand on her back that kept her from doing just that. Instead, she turned around and let him lead her back to the front of Swann's desk.
"Why are you doing this to her, doctor?" Clark asked once they'd come to stand in front of the doctor once more.
"Because I need to know." He finished, saying "know" in the same reverent tone that Lex always did. God, he was every inch the scientist Lex was, but, then again, he wasn't quite. He had left the decision up to her, even now. She could walk and he'd let her. His curiosity would probably consume him, of course, if it hadn't already over the last thirteen years, but he'd let her leave and continue living her lie. Of course if his burning need to know had consumed him then eventually so would hers. He knew that. She paused and looked back and forth between Clark and Swann. There was something about them both, something earnest and stalwart and trustworthy, that reminded her of Dr. Willowbrook as well.
They were truth seekers and scientists the lot of them, even Clark in his amateur way, but they respected knowledge. They wanted the truth for the truth's sake just as she did. Swann, just like Clark and Dr. Willowbrook before him, wasn't trying to seize power or to manipulate her.
He just wanted to know.
"You need to know you're right." She finished for him.
"No." Crosby corrected. " We need to know that, after all of this, that we're not actually alone in the universe. Besides," she added, her tone strangely gentle again. "We wanted to make sure that the lone little girl we've thought so much about survived. We need to know she's okay."
No, Chloe realized. Gentle wasn't the word.
Maternal was.
And that threw her more than anything had since she'd woken up on Route 8.
Swann might have wanted to solve the puzzle, but Crosby had become invested in her story.
"I…you're right." She finally admitted, fighting her instinct to look away from both of them. She'd only told two people in her entire life and both of them had, even if it had only been for an instant and they'd both gotten over it, looked at her fearfully when she'd revealed it. This time it was different. Before her, Swann smiled and Crosby let out a sigh of relief. They were actually happy to have found her and how weird was that?
"Thank you, Kala." Swann replied.
"It's Chloe, please." She corrected.
"Are you sure about that?" Swann asked.
God no, she really wasn't.
"Virgil, save the philosophical discussion for another time." Crosby chided softly pressing the button again as the screen flashed to a new configuration. "Can you read this, Kala?"
She ignored the use of her birth name. Chloe had a feeling that, after thirteen years of thinking of her like that, Dr. Crosby and Dr. Swann weren't going to easily switch over to saying "Chloe Sullivan" instead.
Sighing, she read the message aloud for Clark's benefit. "Of course. It says, 'We will be with you Kala Jor-El for all the days of your life.'" She frowned. "That's it? My whatevers bother to send me to Earth and send out this huge SOS and that's all of it? There's no instructions on how to phone home? What? Is a girl just supposed to grab a Speak-and-Spell and hope?"
"Kala-" Swann started.
"Chloe!" She snapped, starting to pace back and forth, despite Clark reaching out to steady her. "There's supposed to be more. I mean, this doesn't tell me anything but two names. I don't know if I'm going to keep changing or what I'll end looking like when I'm full grown. I don't know why everything keeps feeling different every damn day; why the sun has such a pull over me. Hell, you're supposed to be the key. You're supposed to tell me where the rest of them are and how to find them!" She was panting by the end of it, more worked up than she'd been even through the week's worth of interrogation sessions with Lex and her father. It couldn't be true. This couldn't be everything her birth family was ever going to give her.
It just led to more pressing questions.
Swann swallowed and glanced warily at Crosby. "You can't read star maps can you?"
"Why the Hell would I be able to do that? I was raised in Metropolis, not Krypton. I can write an article in under thirty minutes, but I don't know anything about space. It's not a race memory thing." At least she was pretty sure it wasn't but sometimes, despite herself, she'd look up at the sky and just know things, feel drawn to certain patterns, especially the wolf's head Kyle had shown her.
"I can." Clark said hesitantly, crossing over to the large map behind Swann's head. "I'm not you, sir. I can't even pretend to have that kind of knowledge so if I'm reading it wrong, please feel free to correct me."
In spite of the situation, Chloe couldn't help chuckling. "Clark's been very polite about everything but he's like your number one fan. He's been going on about your Nobel winning paper ever since you contacted me."
Crosby smiled wryly back at her. "You're dating someone who's in love with astronomy?"
"Well, we'd been friends for a while before he knew about the ALF thing and how'd you know that?"
The other woman's smiled widened and she gave Swann's shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Same way you did, I suspect."
"Yeah." Chloe said, blushing slightly and turning back to Clark. "You've got the floor right now."
"Thanks, Chlo." He said and, then, biting his lip added, "Dr. Swann, if it's not too much trouble can I get your autograph? I have a copy of the last thing you wrote for Science with me and oh…" He trailed off, flushing a bright crimson.
Swann's tone was gentle when he replied. "It's quite alright, Clark. I have a legal signature and I'd be happy to sign whatever you have on the condition you tell us all what you know."
"Oh, right, well it's what you do really but this." He said, pointing to a highlighted dot on the map. "This is the point you traced the signal to. This is where Krypton is." Then he looked back at her and shuffled nervously from foot to foot. Chloe felt her chest tighten. She knew that look. It was the one he'd given her after all the cows on his farm had been poisoned or when he'd informed her about the hostage situation at LuthorCorp tower. Whatever he said next would not be good.
"What?" She asked.
"I…Chlo, I could be wrong, but the way the map's labeled…I don't think that Krypton's around anymore."
That was just insane. "What do you mean 'it's not around anymore?' Planets don't just disappear, Clark."
"I'm afraid," Crosby said, her voice as sincere and gentle as Martha Kent's had ever been. "That that's exactly the case."
"No…I…that can't be right." Chloe said, feeling her legs beginning to give out on her. Clark noticed her stumble and hurried to her, wrapping strong arms around her shoulders before she collapsed. Leaning into him, taking comfort from him as she always did, she whispered, "It's not true."
"I'm sorry." Swann answered, still frustratingly calm.
"You're sorry? My entire everything doesn't even exist anymore and all you can say is sorry? The Hell? Why don't you tell me where it went and what happened?"
"I don't know." He said simply.
"But planets don't just poof out of existence."
"Then pick any scenario you'd like-war, natural disaster, pestilence. Is it that hard to believe that people as advanced as yours were had the same kind of problems with arms races that we do now?" Swann replied.
"But you have to know more." She pleaded.
"We only know what the message told us. You have all that we do." Crosby added.
"But I can't be the only one. You don't understand at all. You're supposed to tell me that there are others like me and that you know where they are, that I got lost or something in the moving plans."
"There were no other messages." Swann said.
"Well what is she supposed to do now?" Clark asked, his tone angrier than she'd heard it in a long time. "You just drag her here for a session of show and tell. You get excited over meeting your traveler and she gets what? The honor of being told she's the only one? Do you even know how cruel it was to tease her like that, to make her think you had more answers to offer her?"
Stressed to the breaking point, Chloe laughed. "'Only one,' huh? Makes me sound like I'm Tigger or something."
"You're not." Clark said firmly. "There have to be others somewhere. A whole advanced civilization going around colonizing other planets doesn't just disappear."
"That may very well be the case." Swann said, "But as far as we know, Kala Jor-El is the only Kryptonian here. I'm so very sorry about that. I truly am." He smiled sadly and glanced down at his useless limbs. "I know something about loss. It's not the same, not at all, but I know how angry you must be."
She shook her head and when she spoke it was barely above a whisper. "I was angry when my father showed me my ship and told me I wasn't even human. What I feel now-it's emptiness."
"I wish we had better news for you, Chloe." Crosby added, "But if you should ever need anything from either of us. If you want us to go over the message again or to share our research…." She looked thoughtfully over at Clark, "If you ever need to know more about yourself and your limits-"
"You mean if I want to be lab ratted?"
She shook her head. "No. I most certainly don't mean that, but if there ever comes a time when you want to know if certain things are possible, things that we can't have," She added pointedly, running her hand over the back of Swann's chair. "Then we'll help with that as well."
Clark, finally catching up with the discussion, blushed again and Chloe swore his voice broke when he answered. "Oh gee, that's really great and did I mention I'm still just fifteen?"
"It's okay." Chloe said, squeezing his hand. "That's so on the bottom of my list until I at least win a Pulitzer, maybe three. Besides, I think we're done here. There's nothing else to be said."
"Yeah, there really is." He corrected. "Dr. Swann?"
"Yes Clark?"
"What is she supposed to do now?"
And then she knew. She had a moment of insight akin to those uncanny leaps of logic Clark enjoyed. "'The fault lies not within our stars but in ourselves.'"
"Huh?" Clark gaped.
Crosby smirked. "You are quick."
"I was always quick. I doubt it's entirely a Kryptonian thing." She snarked.
Swann waited for his tube to take another breath and then spoke. "There aren't any answers for you out there, Kala. You're going to have to make your own destiny."
She nodded and looked back at the first screen, her focus narrowing in on the symbol of her house for she knew now exactly what it was. "That's what I'm afraid of."