While everyone else stood stunned at the sight they had just witnessed, Colonel Wilson had immediately grabbed the satellite phone and informed his superior of what had happened. Suffice to say that it had gone about as well as a phone call regarding an extra-terrestrial encounter would be expected to go. The real surprise had been the return call about fifteen minutes later.

Once he had kicked the scientists enough that they woke up to what they had witnessed though, he didn't have too much to do but maintain oversight. They had come looking for the source of a transmission that was beyond known abilities, they had succeeded, in a manner that had far outstretched anyone's expectations.

Whoever had assembled the group of scientists had done a good job, they had already set up zones for the new site by the time he had received the return call.

"In light of recent events and new information we are inclined see this in a different way."

"Is that so?"

"Colonel, we will be sending you a piece of information. You will use the scientists at your disposal to delegate and compartmentalise information as best as you can."

"How long do you truly think we can keep something like this a secret?"

"That, for now, is entirely in your hands, Colonel."

"So, what you expected then?" Chloe asked softly.

"Honestly," Clark said slowly, "I'm not sure what I expected." The two of them were in the kitchen again, Chloe tossing out her now cold coffee into the sink. The vomit on the floor had been cleaned up, but a bucket remained.

"To be the last of your people?"

"You're my people." Clark said matter-of-factly, drawing a sweet look from Chloe, "They are just, well, dead, I guess."

"Clark..." Chloe turns, filling her previously used cup with fresh coffee.

"Well, how would you want me to react hearing about the deaths of people I never knew?"

"Well, I don't particularly know." Then she turned her head to the window, stirring her coffee, "You do have a chance to find out though." And turning back to Clark slightly she finished the thought, "I mean, they may be dead, but they're not lost. At least, not yet."

"You heard him though, they were a twisted sorry lot who killed themselves."

Lifting the cup in both hands she stop short of her mouth to say, "Clark, if we learn anything from history, it is that we are a twisted sorry lot who destroy ourselves."

"You yourself were disgusted when you heard about them. Seeking to create the perfect people, the ideal man and woman."

"And my response to that would have to be; Hollywood." With Clark finding nothing to say to that, they both dropped their eyes in the silence. Moving to take a seat Chloe said, "Look Clark, I don't think, not really, that we are as different as all that. I mean, you have the strength, the speed, and the fancy vision tricks, but underneath it all, you're really just as emotionally fragile as anyone else."

"Thanks."

"No, you're not hearing me. I've always wondered if that was just because of your upbringing. And though yes, that is a part of it– now, seeing the girl, hearing of the destruction of your race, well, I think that they were all just the same, really. Many historians sort of look at Nazism in Germany as a kind of madness that took hold of the country, the Second World War a result of that madness spreading beyond the control of the sane. The only real reason there hasn't been a large war since wasn't ever because of mutually assured destruction, it was simply because the people in charge weren't insane enough to go through with it. But, what if, something happened? What if, in those times, the psyche of the human race fractured again, like it did in the 30s? I mean, the madness wasn't restricted to Germany, that was simply where it was most profound. The thing is Clark, I do think that what he told us about your... Kryptonian eugenics is horrifying. But in the end, it could have only provided the platform for that madness. I think something went wrong with Krypton Clark, something very wrong. Something that no one could have truly seen coming so that when it did no one could actually accept that it was happening."

"And with the madness manifest in the face of that something they destroyed themselves?"

Chloe nodded. "We, as a race, have done some very horrifying things ourselves Clark, some of the tamest stuff in the last century as weird as that is to say. But would you simply just look at that, and discard us out of hand? Or look at how we got to where we are and not only ask how, but also, perhaps, be a little proud of how far we have come as a species?"

Clark looked at her like the annoying sister she was to him. "You're not gonna let this go until I find out, are you?"

Smiling she shakes her head, "Would you expect me to?"

"You're not as sly as you think."

Lowering her cup, "And yet I'm still the craftiest person you've ever met."

"That arrogance will get you into trouble one day."

"They'll have to catch me first. And when they do, I'll just use that muscle in my head – you know, the one you forget about – to get myself out of it."

They smile at each other for a moment, before Clark suddenly has a thought,"Hey, you don't really think that, right? That she, well, lived through that, do you?"

"Clark..." Chloe said gently, lowering her head, "Are you sure you want to know what I think?"

Slowly, recognising the serious depression in her voice, Clark pushes the question, "Yes."

"Well," Just toying with the cup in her hands for a moment, she thinks before she says, "She was in a kind of stasis right? So, she has been asleep for almost your entire lifespan."

Not really a question Clark confirms anyway, "Yes."

"And the ship you found her in, it had more than one of these stasis chambers?"

"I, think so. I mean, it was more like concaves in the wall, but yeah, there were four of them."

"Then, Clark... I think, she should tell you."

Realising her reluctance, Clark doesn't really push it any further, knowing in his gut that she thought it was something far worse. "Chloe, how could it possibly be worse than just living through all of that?"

A little hunched over her cup Chloe turned her eyes up at Clark, muttering softly, "Because she survived." Taken aback a little, Clark opens his mouth, then closes it again. "I couldn't even imagine the things she has seen."

Kara Zor-El sat on the wooden fence behind the Kent farmhouse, a field of half-dead, poorly grown corn crop stretching out before her. But her attention was on nothing in particular, just looking across the horizon toward the yellow sun, almost touching the horizon in the distance.

She heard Martha Kent walking up behind her, but paid no attention as the middle-aged woman motherly put a blanket around her shoulders. "It can get surprisingly cold in these parts at night, Clark used to feel it quite a bit." Kara hunched away from the attention, turning her eyes toward the ground. Martha, gently putting a hand on the girl's arm continued with, "You're welcome to stay here for as long as you like. And even after."

She turns and heads back toward the house, stopping when she hears, "Martha Kent?" She turns at the pause, but only sees Kara's back, "Thank you."

"You don't ever need to say that here, you're family."

With that Kara tries to hunch over more, and only succeeds in toppling off the fence. Shocked, Martha hurries over to help as Kara pushes herself up to a sitting position, arms around her knees. Martha kneels down beside her, picking up the blanket once again, stopping short when she hears Kara mutter, "Please, just leave me alone." Martha, shocked, waits a moment, just watching the girl cry, when she sees Clark standing just a few feet away. Then she lowers the blanket over Kara, opening her mouth to speak as she touches the girl on the shoulder again, but Kara speaks first, "Please." And Martha gets up, looking at Clark as she walks by, heading back into the house.

Slowly Clark walks over and sits down next to her, she had already pushed off the blanket. For the longest time he just sits there with her, only starting to speak once the sun fallen halfway out of sight. "It can be quite peaceful here, don't you think?"

"I suppose." Kara replied softly, "A bit uncomfortably warm though."

Clark looked at her quizzically, "How so?"

"Home was... cooler."

After a few moments Clark looks away and asks, "What was it like, our home?"

"Probably a lot like this place." She replies, "But the differences, Kal-El..." When she stops he looks down at her, it takes her almost a full minute to continue, staring up at the sky, the first stars appearing above them, "Wide frozen plateaus that glittered like crystal beneath a large red sun. The Scarlett Jungle, more reds than you can imagine created by scientists only to see if they could, flanking the Xeno River; a running of water so wide you can barely see the other bank as it ran across a continent before flowing into the great still seas. Immense mountains seeming to be made of nothing but thousands of gemstones, and the Hall of Worlds, how I wish you could have seen that Kal-El; a building the size of a city, containing replicas of every known planetoid, the known history of the universe."

"It sounds beautiful."

"For it's part."

Long after the sun has disappeared, they are still sitting there, Clark refusing to leave, if only to sit next to Kara. At one point he asks another question, "Hey, how is it that you can speak English?"

"I can speak some fifty languages with relative fluency."

"Really?"

She nods, "I learned what we knew of this planet on the way here."

"Learned?"

"Raw knowledge, sort of injected into my brain."

"That would be, weird." Clark said slowly.

"You don't really feel it, at least consciously. You went through a similar type of thing on your journey."

Eventually though, Clark managed to bring himself to say what he really wanted. "I can't truly know what you've been through. But you're not alone, okay, I promise you that."

"We all make promises we can't keep." She replied simply.

"But you're here, you're alive. And I can help you."

She looked at him then, for a long time before she responded, "You remind me so much of him, Kal-El. You're father was a good man, possibly the best I ever knew. He has done so much for us, even in death."

"What about you're father?"

With that she turned away, back toward the stars. "He did what he believed was right."

"Oh."

"It's nothing unique. A great many did in the final years."

The middle of the next day, the sun high in the sky, a man sits on the ledge of a mountain, legs crossed as he looks down on a city below. The man is in his late twenties, wearing the distinctive armour of the Kryptonians that appeared in the Arctic. The city stretches out before him, from suburban neighbourhoods relatively near to the skyscrapers in the distance, his eyes sweeping across to production facilities off to the side, thin smoke plumes rising into the air above them.

The sun shines down directly on him, casting only a tiny shadow behind. His eyes turn down to his hand that he turns up to his face, removing a glove his eyesight shivers and distorts as he finds that he can see through it in flashes. Taking a deep breath he calms himself, focusing in on it until he can switch between seeing his hand and not.

Sweating, he lowers his hand and turns his face up to the sun, closing his eyes as though he were dropping into a meditative trance, soaking in the sun's rays. But before long his chest begins to tremble and he can't sit still, reflexively bringing his bare hand up as he can't contain a severe cough any longer. Not able to breathe easy he looks into his hand, finding a thick glob of blood covering it.

He stares at his bloodied hand for a moment, considering it as he raises his left hand, and with it, a small breathing mask. Covering his nose and mouth, just a few seconds of using it and he is breathing easier.

A gloved hand is placed on his shoulder and he turns to see the face of a woman in her mid-to-late thirties, and by her body shape, possibly the small Kryptonian that went into the ice cave. "We're almost ready." She says through the breathing mask.

The man nods, rising. The woman sees his bloodied hand, and though concerned, she says nothing. "Do we know who it belongs to?"

She shakes her head, and the man looks back to the city, pondering. After a moment the woman asks, "What is it?"

"There is something wrong here." He says, "According to our records this plant should have been ideal to support us, and yet now..."

"It's the atmosphere." The woman responds. "Something must have happened since this world was last catalogued."

"That's not possible." he replies, turning to face her once more, "Faora, this world was not just capable, it was ideal. There is nothing known that could possibly change the atmosphere enough in such a short time that it would become toxic to us– and a mild toxicity at that – while the shape of the planetoid remains the same."

"The natives then."

"I believe so, yes."

"Is it a concern?"

"That they have the ability to make a biological weapon against us?" He pauses a moment, considering, "No, I don't think so. A lethal amount would cause them considerable harm. And on this world, in this particular environment..." he looks to the sun, "they would be foolish to stand against us."