Chapter 34: Disclosure

The next day, Chloe took a walk after breakfast and when she returned, an envelope was waiting for her. It was silver with purple embossed lettering:

ISIS

Foundation

Inside was a hand-written note:

Dear Chloe,

I know you must still be in shock after seeing me yesterday. I can only imagine all the questions you must have about my now supposed death. Please come to see me and I will explain everything to you. Call me at the number below and I will send a car for you.

--Lana

"What does she say?" asked Anne.

"She wants to meet with me. Do you have any plans for us today?"

"No, but regardless, you need to see your friend. Call her. I'll know not to expect you this evening unless you call," said Anne.

Chloe looked at her friend. "Thank you. You don't know how much it means to me to have found Lana." She picked up the phone and dialed the number. After a short conversation with Lana's assistant, she hung up. "Lana apparently cleared her calendar for me today. A car will be here in twenty minutes. I'd better get my things." She found her briefcase and made sure her notebook, laptop, and the rest of the tools of her trade were inside. She added the files with her research including a copy for Lana. She was just finished getting ready when the car arrived.

The ride to the ISIS Foundation was brief, and she was ushered into a beautiful suite of offices. She picked up a brochure and looked at it while she waited for Lana. The Goddess Isis was, among other things, the protector of orphans. To that end, the Foundation was dedicated to placing orphans into loving homes, especially those considered to be too old for adoption by many agencies –older children. "Chloe! I am so glad you came. Please, come into my office. Inge, please bring a double espresso for my guest." She led Chloe into her office and motioned to the comfortable sofa and chairs. "Let's sit on over here, the desk seems so official and unfriendly. Do you want to ask questions first, or shall I just start?"

Chloe was silent for a minute, her thoughts racing around her head in a self-conversation. Was now the time to come clean? Probably. –But she was so excited about finding her; she didn't want to scare her off. However, Lana wouldn't have invited her over here if she weren't planning on full disclosure. She decided to risk it.

"I think I had better go first. There are a few things you need to know. You might be angry with me after you hear what I have to say," said Chloe.

Inge entered with coffee for both of them, and silently left the office. They would now be undisturbed.

"I can't imagine being able to fault anything you might have to tell me after what I've put you and everyone else through," said Lana. "I wish I could have done it differently, but there was no other way."

"Well to start things off, I have known you faked your death since about April. I'm actually here in Odense looking for you. The story, while entirely real, is a cover."

Lana's eyes were wide with questions.

"Let me start at the beginning." Chloe told her of Lex being charged with her murder, but as there was no evidence, those charges were on hold and he was only convicted of having conspired to commit murder. Lana said that she'd been following the trial and knew of his jail sentence. "There's something you don't know. Perry made Lois, Jimmy and me a team and our assignment had been to find the evidence to put Lex away for good." She went on to tell her about the lack of evidence to her death, so at Lois' suggestion, started looking for her survival. She told her about getting access to the accounts, and all of the research they had done. "We found the trust, Lana. It led us to Rygata and Anne, and we figured out that you had to be behind it."

Lana's eyes widened at that revelation.

"Clark is the one who figured out you were alive." She looked in her notes for the worksheet and handed a copy of it to Lana.

"He always was one for working out difficult puzzles," she said. "I'm impressed. It took me the better part of an afternoon to make it up. Keep going."

"We knew Rygata was the key, and so I have been working on finding you through them, but have worked very hard to avoid hurting Anne or the child in any way, because they have to be innocent in this whole thing. I have brought a copy of the whole file to give to you so you can see for yourself that I have used whatever means I can find to keep them unaware of what I am doing. You don't know how glad I am to have met you by accident like this. All I have wanted to know is that you were okay and what drove you to such extremes to fake your death."

Lana sighed. "Yes, they are both innocent. I think it is time for me to start my story. I need to go back further though. I told you last night that I thought I was happy and I thought I was in love with Lex. I really was. We were going to have a beautiful baby, and he seemed so happy. After I lost the baby, he was so devastated, and in my own grief, I was worried that something might be wrong with me. Lex was traveling, so I found a doctor in Metropolis and went in for a full work-up. He told me that I was fine but that my pregnancy had been faked! He told me that all that was needed to do it was to give me hormones either by injection or in pill form, and then suspend them to trigger the miscarriage. No wonder Lex wanted me to see his own personal physicians. You can imagine how devastated I was."

She went on to tell Chloe that she'd started spying on Lex after that, because while she didn't doubt that he loved her (in some warped way), he had used the pregnancy to trick her into marrying him so quickly. "At first I thought it was just a ploy to hurt Clark, but found it went much deeper than that. Hurting Clark was just a bonus," she said sadly.

She recalled Chloe asking her about the so called "33.1" labs, and asking her to confront Lex about them, who of course denied everything. "I realized that as Mrs. Luthor, I had access to methods of looking into things that were previously out of reach. I figured that if Lex wanted to watch me, I'd watch him. That's when I found out that the 33.1 projects were real and he was getting really frustrated that labs all over the world were being destroyed. Every time one was destroyed he had to start over."

"Then one day I found this…" She crossed the room and came back with her laptop. She sat next to Chloe and opened it. A few keystrokes later, and Chloe was looking at files for a 33.1 project called Renaissance. In it were details of the harvest of cells from Lana and others to create clones. This lab was located deep in the Reeves Dam under the guise of creating a new water purification plant for Smallville.

"So what Lois saw in the lab was not really the dead soldiers, but their clones??!" Chloe was horrified and told Lana about Lois' discovery.

"Yes and no. Lex had found a way to use the DNA from an alien source, probably those things that came out of the ship that I saw, but I don't know for sure, to give the soldiers unearthly powers and was working on creating a personal army. Once he figured out a way to produce viable clones, he would no longer need to steal injured soldiers from the military and could produce his own with unlimited resources."

"So what did you discover that was so horrific as to make you fake your own death?" asked Chloe.

Lana took a deep breath. "I, and other unsuspecting women were part of the cloning research. Lex was working with my doctor to harvest the cells they needed to produce the clones. You say Rygata is a mystery, for her name is an anagram. You haven't figured it out yet?" Lana pulled up another file and Chloe's mind started reeling. On the screen was a picture of Lana, apparently sleeping, in a lab. There were other sleeping figures in the room with her, including some small forms, apparently children.

Chloe looked at the screen. "That's you! But it isn't is it?" Lana nodded and pointed to the smaller figures. "Rygata is a clone!" She recoiled in horror.

"Yes. When I discovered my clone, as well as the children, I decided I had to do something. My clone was not 'alive' in any sense of the word. It had no heartbeat, and no brain activity. The child, however, was alive and breathing, and notes on her chart indicated she was to be uploaded with memories and integrated into OUR household. Lex was going to have us adopt her! I quickly figured out that the child was the only one that was alive so far, and that the others were either not ready to be animated or were just waiting for the procedure. Technically, though, as you can see," she pointed to a table, "they are all listed as "dead."

"So you decided to destroy the lab and hide the child," said Chloe. "But you weren't the one to destroy the lab."

"After I'd faked my death I planned to go back and blow up the lab, but the destruction of the dam did my work for me. I did destroy my own clone though. I can't tell you how creepy it is to see your own self lying on a table. I had visions of Lex replacing me with her someday," Lana said.

"It took several weeks, but I pulled the money for the trust, and stole the child, and brought her to Denmark where she would be safe." She could see Chloe was about to ask a question, so she answered it. "Denmark just happened – when I made the anagram, the name looked Dutch so I went there. I created the ISIS Foundation and after creating a back story for her, arranged for her adoption in a way that I could keep an eye on her and protect her if necessary."

"So you did all of this weeks before you left?"

"Yes. Lex was furious when she turned up missing but headway was being made on the phantom DNA project so thankfully his attention was diverted. He was also so busy that I was able to come and go and he didn't really keep tabs on me as much as before. It was almost too easy."

"Do you think he knows you're not really dead?"

"I don't think so, or he'd have left no stone unturned in looking for me, but I've decided to go home and turn myself in. I need your help though. Anne and Rygata must be protected. Anne has no idea that Rygata is a clone, and of course the child is too young to understand. All Anne knows is what I have told her. I suppose we'll have to tell her the truth," added Lana sadly.

"Hey…I have only known her for a short time, but she loves the child and will defend her fiercely. She will probably be upset with me at first, for using them to find you, but she will see that I have been careful to protect them." Chloe thought for a minute. "Lana, there is a way. You will be shocked to hear this, but Lionel is not the baddie we all thought him to be. He still has to be watched, but he was devastated to hear that you had died, and is the one who has been funding my search."

Lana was thunderstruck. "LIONEL? He always seemed so ruthless. I hated him."

"Well he had to keep that facade to stay inside Lex's circles and keep track of him, but he's been on our side all along. Let me call him. He'll be here probably as soon as he can get a plane in the air and he'll help."

"Okay. The phone over there on my desk is secure."

Chloe went to the phone and dialed the direct number to Lionel, putting him on speakerphone, motioning Lana to silence. He was pleased and surprised to hear from her. "Chloe! How nice to hear from you. What can I do for you?"

"Lionel, I need you to come to Odense as quickly as you can. Can you drop everything and come? No questions, just plan to be gone for at least a week if necessary, and get on a plane."

"Give me the rest of the morning to re-arrange my calendar and I'll be on a flight as soon as the pilot can file a flight plan."

"Call me when you have your itinerary so I can meet your plane when you land. I'll meet you," said Chloe.

"I'll call you soon," said Lionel as he rang off.

Chloe looked at Lana. "Well, there's no turning back now, is there?"

"I'm afraid not. I promise you, I will do everything I can to protect Anne and Rygata. I do have an important question. We know she's not related to Lex – we thought for a while she was an illegitimate child of his, but is she at all related to Lionel?"

"I will have to check the files. I know what her designation was before I took her." She clicked a few keys and looked through the file. "Lex did not use himself or Lionel for donors. Her donor is from another state. How do you know she's not related to Lex?"

Chloe went ahead and gave Lana the whole file and left to get more coffee while Lana read. When she returned, Lana was skimming through the last of it. "You sure are going to be a great reporter, if you aren't one already. This is amazing. I've been here the whole time. I don't know how I didn't know Lois and Jimmy were here," said Lana with admiration in her voice.

Chloe came back in with the coffee. "Lionel called me while I was getting coffee. He is scheduled to depart soon, and should arrive sometime in the middle of the night. The flight is something like twelve hours. He suggested I pick him up at his hotel at 9am tomorrow."

That sounds fine. I'll send a car for you in the morning and you can bring him here."

"That's settled then. Well, I'm famished. Let's go to lunch," said Chloe. "What is your favorite spot? Take me to all of your favorite places and let's have one of our famous 'Girls' Day Out' like we used to. I'll spend the afternoon with you, and then if I can have access to a car, meet Lionel and bring him here."

Lana smiled the first genuine smile Chloe had seen since they had been reunited. "That sounds wonderful. Thank you, Chloe for being so understanding. I was afraid you'd be horrified."

"Well this whole thing is horrifying, but from what I can see, the only law you have actually broken is faking your death. The money was technically yours since you were married to Lex when you allocated it. Lionel and his attorneys, of whom you are probably going to want to take advantage of, will be better advisors. Let's deal with that tomorrow. One more day of being dead to the world won't hurt." She linked arms with her friend and they headed out for lunch followed by an afternoon of shopping.