Previously on Another World:

"What does Chloe's fortune say?" Lois asked her husband.

He glanced down at the slip of paper and his smile faltered. "Take heed, travel is

not advised."


"This building has access to two power grids. What's the issue with the first one? Any way to make it a viable backup?" Bruce asked

"Forget it," Oliver insisted. "Like I said, it's an old building. The power substation and the regulator banks have major grounding issues. Right now there's no way to cut power at that substation so when the switches are bypassed, if you are touching anything that is touching anything, even a rope attached to the building, you will become the electrical ground and…"

"And a couple megawatts of current will tear right through your body. Beautiful," he muttered darkly.


Bruce crossed his arms and braced himself better against the balcony railing, sinking into the shadows now that the night's darkness had fully fallen on the city. "In a couple hours, we will activate the AU-ray and retrieve Ms. Sullivan and her elusive Mr. Kent and then," he smiled in anticipation, "he and I are going to have a nice little chat."


Chapter 45-On Schedule

This was it.

The thrum of anticipation slid through Bruce's veins. He was a man that recognized the wisdom of exercising patience, but he his, had been sorely tested. He nodded his head, giving his ok to activate the AU-Ray. Finally, time to bring Chloe and her mysterious Clark home.

A dense beam of gilded light jetted out of the tip of the ray and for a moment, the row of lights overhead dimmed before returning to their regular brightness. Bruce shot a questioning glare at his cracked science geeks. The pair Chloe brought him were indisputably brilliant, but inexperienced. Their first panicked test run outside of the theoretical had ended with a Kansas farm boy expressed to another world. Now was not the time for surprises.

"We're good!" Victor shouted. "The power is now steady!"

Senator Martha Kent clutched Queen's hand like she would be sucked into the gateway if she let go, but her eyes stared unblinking at the churning golden fog swirling into itself like matter into a black hole. Bruce found it hard to look away from the hope burning in her soul.

"Something's coming through!" Milton announced.

Milton was right. In the recessed living room of Oliver's chrome and steel apartment, a condensing miasma blocked the shine of the polished cement floors and dimmed the dazzle of Metropolis's downtown lights. The shimmering haze grew and thickened until an amber colored shadow started to emerge. Large, blue sparks crackled in the air and then a blinding white arc of electricity spiked between the grate of the elevator door and the iron minute hand on the giant clock face behind them.

"Get her out of here!" Bruce barked at Queen. Oliver quickly ushered Mrs. Kent away from the indoor lightning rod. At the same time, something snapped loudly on the AU-Ray. One of the wunderkinds swore and the beam of light cut out. The metallic taste of burning circuits filled the air. Shielding his eyes, Bruce was turning to assess the damage when Senator Kent let out a loud gasp. Even with the AU-Ray off, a haze hung heavy in the air, but out of the murk, a tall, bulky youth wearing a retina burning red jacket stepped forward.

"Clark!"

"Mom?"

Fast enough to make Bart Allen proud, Mrs. Kent leapt down the handful of steps leading to the living space and threw her arms around the young man. Bruce watched her face as hope and joy collided. A flash of fear over what could have been moved her to tighten her trembling arms and fight back her tears. There was no doubt how much Martha Kent loved her son; that didn't mean every son was worthy of such a display. For Martha's sake, he was pleased to see her son openly return her emotion.

Clark buried his face in her faded red hair like a lost little boy needing the cradle of his mother's arms before he believed he was found, but when Martha could no longer hold back her tears, their roles reversed and he became the comforter. Clark straightened and began gently stroking his mother's back.

"It's ok, Mom. Everything's gonna be ok." His whispered reassurances only made his mother's tears run faster. They streaked her makeup and left dark smudges beneath her eyes, but they were good tears, strengthening tears, the kind that only came when tragedy was undone. Far too few of them fell for anyone.

"Oh Clark, Clark! You're home."

"I'm home and I'm not going anywhere."

Martha gave him one last tight squeeze and then pulled herself together. She leaned back to look at him.

"I can't believe you're actually here." Martha laughed and shook her head. "I mean of course I believe it," she said. Clark looked on fondly as Martha wiped at the wetness on her face. "I knew you would come home, she promised she would bring you home and if I've learned one thing about Chloe…"

The mention of Ms. Sullivan's name snatched the elation from Clark's expression. Clark dropped his hands from his mother's shoulders and spun around, searching the room. Then he charged up the steps and growled at Oliver.

"Where's Chloe? Why isn't she here?"

Bruce raised an eyebrow, surprised at the forceful tone emanating from the same marshmallow of a guy who a moment ago had been holding mommy's hand. He reassessed Clark's bulk and realized there was nothing soft about the man. Kent took another menacing step toward Queen, his glare so heated that for a second Bruce swore he was literally seeing red. To Oliver's credit, he didn't flinch, but he looked far more wary than any billionaire, crime fighter should have when talking to a farmer's kid. Who was Clark Kent?

Oliver waved his hand to his right. "Talk to Bruce. It may be my apartment, but he's hosting this shindig."

Clark's gaze switched to him. Bruce extended his hand. "We haven't been properly introduced; I'm Bruce Wayne." Clark ignored the offered handshake. He didn't even unclench the fists at his side.

"I know who you are. Where is Chloe?"


Seven seconds before midnight, Clark finished saying his goodbyes and by the time the clock finished chiming, the lights in Lois and Clark's living room stopped flickering. A faint tang of ozone hung in the air.

"He's gone."

"Oh my!"

Chloe stared at the empty spot beside her where Clark had stood. The resonator recorder watch worked. Bruce kept his promise. She closed her eyes and sent a brief thank you out to the universe. Right about now Martha should be wrapping her arms around her son.

The relief was overwhelming and left her a little weak in the knees, but even as she felt the pressure to make things right lift, a different kind of pressure formed next to her heart. It was the same feeling of loss and confusion she'd felt the first time Clark vanished from her universe. Muted, but the same. He wasn't lost this time, but for the moment, the facts remained the same. In the world she inhabited, her Clark Kent did not exist. She pushed that dispiriting thought out of her mind, focused on the positive and found her voice.

"Right on schedule."

Mrs. Kent reached for her hand and gently squeezed. "But dear, if he's gone, why aren't you?"

Chloe gave Martha Kent's hand a returning squeeze before quickly letting go. She couldn't be sure of the physics of retrieval, but it was best not to be in contact with another person. "It's alright. I was expecting this."

The sole remaining Clark Kent in the current universe frowned. "And what exactly, were you expecting?" Lois nodded in concern.

"I knew the device Clark wore emitted a more powerful signal then the locater discs I'm using to stabilize my frequency. He was always going to go first. Don't worry. I'll get my turn in a minute or two, depending on how the AU-Ray held up."

She plastered on as cheerful a smile as she could produce, clutched her bulging leather satchel close and ignored the leaden worry lodged in her stomach. As eager as she was to reunite with Clark, the trip back still made her nervous which was completely absurd since she'd already crossed universes once.

"The ray should be okay, shouldn't it?" Lois asked. "This next time you're actually using the technology they designed to work with their crazy machine."

Chloe nodded, happy for the reassurance. "I guess we'll know pretty soon."


Clark listened while Bruce curtly explained about Chloe's delay and then he let his mother lead him off to the side; there would be plenty of time to grill Gotham's dark nut after Chloe was safely home. At least Wayne didn't appear to be holding a grudge from when Chloe tasered him.

"Come with me Clark. The boys will fix the ray faster without you hovering." His mom squeezed and patted his hand. "Everything is going to be fine Clark."

Clark craned his neck back so he could still watch Milton and Victor. Oliver oversaw their work leaning against the bookcase, while Bruce consulted a paper schematic.

"How long will this take?" He asked his mother.

"No time at all. You heard Bruce; they only need to swap out a few overloaded connections. They planned for this. Now tell me about where you went. What was that world like?"

Clark glanced one more time at the AU-Ray before giving into his mother's distraction. "Different, yet more similar to our world than you'd expect. Metropolis had fewer skyscrapers but the biggest change was the location. It's not even in Kansas."

"Where is it?"

"Upper east coast, right on the ocean." He snuck another glance at the workstation behind them.

"What else?" His mother again prompted. He shrugged.

"Cell phones and computers are a decade out of date and yet they have an internationally run space station populated by civilians and doing cutting edge medical research." His attention drifted back to the AU-Ray.

"I know you met another version of yourself. What was that like?"

He watched closely as Milton removed a burnt component and Victor reached for a replacement. "Strange, but ok. There was no real resemblance, so he was more like a long lost big brother."

"What did Chloe think about everything?"

Clark turned around and gave his mother his full attention. "Chloe was amazing. We were there for only a few days and she already had two articles on the front page of the Daily Planet, the IT guys worshiping at her feet, the FBI quivering and Perry White begging her to work full time."

"Perry White, the tipsy TV guy from X-Styles who tried to expose you?"

"Here he's been on the wagon for years and works as a freelancer for the Planet. Over in the other world, he's the Editor in Chief." A smile tugged at his lips. He glanced out the broad windows at the sleeping city of Metropolis. "One day soon someone in charge here is going to notice Chloe and then nothing will stop her from making every one of her dreams come true."

His mother studied him thoughtfully and then carefully chose her words. "Not all of Chloe's dreams have to do with reporting."

He felt his smile deepen. "I know." A wave of emotion washed over him, the feeling steadied him. His eyes flickered back to his mothers. Surprise and uncertainty hovered in Martha's green eyes. "I love her mom."

Surprise turned to pleasure on his mom's face, but not all of her worry lines vanished.

"Are you sure you're not confusing gratitude for something bigger?" his mom asked. "What Chloe accomplished is incredible but…what about your feelings for Lana?"

He slowly shook his head. "Even if Lana wasn't already marrying Lex, I let go of those feelings before all this."

"Letting go isn't always that simple."

"Mom, when I was stuck alone in that other universe, it was Chloe who I couldn't live without. I may have had to travel to another world to figure out my feelings, but they aren't going to change."

He turned and stared at the spot in the living room where the AU-Ray would activate. Soon. Chloe would be here soon. A cold slide of fear slithered down his spine. What if her stabilizers weren't working? What if they couldn't read her signal? He clenched his jaw and tried to stop thinking about all that could go wrong. As he'd done before when he found himself trapped away from Chloe, he closed his eyes and let her image fill his mind. He pictured the shine of her eyes, the curve of her cheek, the warm happy feeling that came with a glimpse of her smile.

He clung to that feeling and opened his eyes. He looked back his mom.

"Chloe's my best friend. I love her. She's believed in me even when I haven't been able to believe in myself. She makes me feel human without having to be human and with her by my side, I'm not afraid of the future - whatever it brings."

His mother blinked back new tears and reached for his hand.

"That's all I've ever wanted."


"And we're back in business!"

At Milton's shout, Bruce looked up from the AU Ray's power schematics. His junior scientists hurried through the reset process: flipping switches, testing connections, and getting readouts on the laptop. He frowned as Oliver sidled up to him.

"What's wrong?" Oliver asked.

"Maybe nothing," Bruce replied.

"But you're not sure?"

Bruce pointed at the schematic. "The ray burned out half its connectors to the power ports."

"I thought we expected to fry a few connectors."

"This was more than a few. The way we burned through connectors was disturbingly similar to the damage we experienced with the overload fluctuations on the other power grid. Hamlish and Davinhoe blame the disparate technology in the watch Clark wore, but that doesn't explain why power dipped at the end of the retrieval before surging back and overloading the ray's circuits."

"How's the power now?"

"Levels are steady but…"

"But…," Oliver prompted.

"How long ago did Luthor Corp stop placing 'unexpected demands' on the grid?"

"You think Luthor Corp caused the fluctuations?"

"Something did."

Oliver scrubbed his hand over his chin thinking. "I don't know. When Luthor Corp was at it, they chose weekends and waited until the city was sound asleep. Why change to midweek and only a little after midnight?"

"For Chloe's sake, I hope to hell you're right."


Waiting sucked. Nope, not a particularly new thought, Chloe acknowledged but at least the circumstances were unique. What kind of small talk does one make to pass the time while waiting to see if a rift in the universe is going to open up and suck you back across spatial reality? Mrs. Kent opened her mouth several times only to shake her head and fall silent. Chloe decided she preferred the silence even if it made the sound of shuffling feet and the ticking of the living room clock sound unnaturally loud.

Was this what it was like for Clark? Did all the mundane sounds of living layer together into one loud cacophony? Did each clearing of the throat and deep breath make him drive his nails further into the fleshy part of his palms? She clenched her jaw. Somewhere on the block, a dog wouldn't stop barking. Chloe hitched the bag she was carrying higher on her shoulder and all eyes fixated on her, the unasked question clear on all their faces. Was this it?

She started to shake her head, all this tension was silly - the retrieval would happen when it would happen, when as if on cue, the lights in the living room flickered. Dread and elation warred inside of her, but she concentrated on the life that waited on the other side and elation won out. Chloe swept her eyes over the people in the living room one last time; strangers that in a very short time had become as close as family. They were the reason she and Clark found the courage to go after what they most wanted in life. Tears filled her eyes and her voice cracked when she broke the silence.

"I'm never going to forget you, any of you."

"Nor you dear," Mrs. Kent said while Jonathan wrapped an arm around his wife and nodded. A half sob burst from Lois and she buried her face against her husband's chest. Clark mouthed 'thank you' and held his wife a little tighter.

The overhead light and the living room lamps flickered more wildly and the metallic scent of ozone swamped the air. Chloe's heart began to race; she felt light headed. A mist began forming between her and the rest of the room, but she could still see Lois's face when she pushed away from Clark and called out.

"When I have a daughter, I'm going to name her Chloe."

Lois's promise reached her ears just before the roaring in her mind overwhelmed all thoughts. As Chloe slipped into the nothingness between universes, she smiled. Chloe Kent did have a nice ring to it.


Clark prowled back and forth the short length of Oliver's clock tower apartment, his eyes never leaving the dense center of light coming together to create a vortex with no end and no beginning. He'd never seen light bend like that. The intense orange beam from the AU-Ray kept feeding into it, making it grow from both ends.

"Increasing power!" Victor called out from behind the ray. The hum from the machine grew louder and the honey colored, crystalline light started to change density.

Clark stopped in front of the clock face. "Chloe!"

"Almost there!" Milton shouted.

The bright haze hanging in the living room thickened and expanded. Clark held his breath and even though he knew the lack of oxygen shouldn't affect him, his heart sped up and tightness gripped his chest. This was it. Chloe was almost home. Almost back in his arms. Just a few more seconds.

Such long seconds.

His abilities were getting in the way and for an instant everything in the room slowed down. He stared at the light emitted from the ray and everything inside him went cold.

With the world slowed down, Clark could see something was wrong. Instead of one continuous stream, the orange beam was coming in spurts, and the gaps in the stream were growing longer. The dense ball of light forming in the living room flickered and faded, almost vanishing before bursting as bright as before. Another break in the power made the same thing happen. He wrenched himself out of speed mode immediately next to Milton and Davinhoe, praying they could fix this.


Bruce blinked in confusion. Clark Kent was now standing immediately next to Milton and Victor when he was certain a second ago Clark had been waiting in the living room. Was Clark another speedster like Bart?

"The beam is sputtering. We're losing Chloe's signal!" Kent insisted.

Bruce snapped his head back toward the living room and the coalescing beam of light. It looked unchanged to him.

Victor glanced between the beam and the gauges and shook his head. "No nothing is…shit, he's right."

The scientists scrambled to check readings on the connected laptop, hitting switches and adjusting dials on the machine. "It's not the AU-Ray. Something is blocking the power. We have to cut the link."

Milton knocked Victor's hand away from the off switch.

"It's too late; her signal is already in flux between worlds. If we disconnect, it's gone and scattered."

The beam on the ray visibly sputtered and all the lights in the apartment flickered.

"Switch power grids!" Bruce ordered, shouldering his way to the panel without waiting for anyone else to do it. Damn, damn, damn. For once he'd wanted the nagging feeling at the back of his neck to be wrong. He pulled the lever and the lights steadied but shone less brightly than before.

"But the phase overlap will destroy the ray before we ever get her home," one of the scientists complained. Bruce knew that as well as anyone.

"Prolong her time in stasis," he ordered. "The power level spikes highest at the end. If you reduce the power..."

Victor nodded quickly, not waiting for Bruce to finish. "On it."

Bruce unrolled the building schematics. He'd looked at them before but they hadn't given him any answers he liked. Clark grabbed his arm. His grip was hard enough to bruise.

"What's going on? What's happening?"

"I'm buying us some time."

"I don't' understand." Clark backed up and looked around the room. "How do we fix this?"

Bruce stayed silent, but Victor pushed his glasses up on his nose and spoke.

"I don't know if we can. Look outside. Someone else on the electric grid just grabbed the power we need, and they are not letting it go." He swept his arm out at the dark skyline. "None of those buildings have power."

"But we do."

Victor shook his head. "Not enough. We switched grids and temporarily stabilized the transfer process but the grid access we're tapping is old, unstable. Several of the relay switches need to be bypassed or the power flow will stall without reaching the levels we need."

"And then we'd be right back to where we are." Clark finished for him. Victor shook his head again.

"Worse. A stall will build up a power surge and fry all the ray's circuitry."

"So we bypass the switches."

Milton slammed his fist on the table. "Don't you get it? It won't work! Even if you had enough time, you can't safely bypass the switches at the substation without shutting down the whole grid or dangling a man down from the sky."

"How long can you keep the signal stable?" Bruce suddenly asked, pulling his cell phone out of his back pocket. .

Victor answered sadly. "We're already overheating connections. Three minutes. Five tops."

Bruce put the cell phone down and swore under his breath. "Not enough time for a copter. There is another way. Queen, I hope to hell you keep spare grappling lines around."

Martha gasped and reached for her son's sleeve. Clark nodded and said, "No. I'll go. I'll do it."

"Now's not the time for nobility kid. I've studied the schematics. I know what to bypass and if I time it right…"

Oliver cut Bruce off. "Don't underestimate what they grow in Kansas."

"You're all crazy," Milton shouted throwing his hands in the air. "Aren't you listening? Grounding is shot. If you're not defying gravity, that's a couple megawatts."

Oliver ignored his outburst and steered Clark's attention to the building schematics. Bruce didn't wait around to hear the problem explained all over again. He quickly went to the center of the clock tower, pressed a "hidden" button and accessed Queen's stash of goodies. Let Queen explain his hidey-hole. He'd tell Alfred to beef up the non-disclosure section in Davinhoe and Hamlish's already detailed contract once this was all over.

Look at him, planning for the future. And who said he wasn't an optimist?

Fortunately, Oliver kept his apartment stash well equipped. Bruce grabbed some wiring that he looped around his shoulder, a pair of self-propelled blast arrows with attached repel lines, and a few other choice items. The first bypass switch was the most important one. There had to be a way of using a few acrobatics to solve this problem. After all Chloe risked, she deserved better than to arrive home to a fried farm boy and there was no way she was not coming home.

At the elevator cage, Bruce flipped the panel open and hit a switch. The whirring rumble confirmed the decent of the elevator moving down out of the away. Bruce muscled the safety cage open and shot the repel line up the empty shaft. The arrow lodged with a satisfying thwack. In the background, he could still hear Oliver giving out instructions.

"The substation is at the top in the gear room. Bypass the switches here and here and tie directly into the bus cable."

The rest of what Queen said was lost as Bruce shot up the dark shaft. He swung over to a ledge on the side and circumvented the cables and heavy pulleys used to raise the elevator, found the panel in the ceiling and pushed it up to access the substation. He threw out a handful of flares and watched them roll into the corners before they burst to life with fizzing sound, lighting up the space.

Despite the replica of the giant clock face in Queen's penthouse, the real inner workings of the actual clocks looking over Metropolis were housed here along with the power substations. Each of the four walls showed the interlocking sprockets of the back side of a clock face. Spotlights trained on each panel from outside added shadowy illumination to the room and helped him identify the substation, a grandiose term for the orderly rows of metallic plates and thick wires wrapped with brittle, black tar paper. Bruce grimaced. The archaic state Queen allowed the Clock Tower to remain in was appalling.

On the opposite side, a stronger, sleeker line along with what looked like a bundle of coaxial cables entered into a box with protective covering. The other power grid. Welcome to the new millennium: shiny, new and useless.

Ok, he needed to reroute the power from the glitched switches and channel it directly to the terminal source. His eyes fixed on the 3, 7 and 10 switches. Damn, he'd hoped to limit this to the first two, but the burning scent of charred paper told him it wasn't going to be that easy. Shimmying up the base, he carefully pulled off the useless and tattered insulation, careful not to touch the lines as he exposed them. Taking the wire looped around his shoulder, he measured out the length, adjusted the clamps and fashioned small loops on each end and in the middle. The concept was similar to playing horseshoes except for adding in a free fall while going for the double ringer. Or triple ringer in this case. As long as he released the wire before he touched ground, he wouldn't be electrocuted.

It might be easier to learn to fly.

He grabbed the second grappling arrow, getting ready despite the failed calculations laid out in his head, when suddenly Kent was just there again, pulling off his trick of appearing out of nowhere. Definitely another Bart Allen. There was no other way to explain how six feet of lumberjack could sneak up on him. Confirmation though, would have to wait.

"Kent, get out of here. There's no time for…" The young man cut him off.

"You're right. There is no time. Her signal is degrading. Can't risk you interfering," he muttered and then vanished into thin air.

Before Bruce could comprehend what he was not seeing, he registered a splintering sound and then he was propelled upward, gasping for air as the wind stole his breath and the pressure in his chest made pulling in a lungful of air impossible. The pressure…it was like the g-forces of hypersonic flight.

He flailed his arms and legs about but there was nothing to grab on to. His eyes were watering too much for him to get a clear look at where he was, but the blood rushing to his feet told him if he didn't slow down soon, he was going to pass out. Just as he was thinking it, he began slowing. He gasped in air and the fresh infusion of oxygen mixed with the overload of adrenaline coursing through his system. His mind kicked in again.

He was…outside. That much he was certain of. He would have blamed the rush of wind on a free fall, but if his senses weren't deceiving him, he was still going up, although at a much slower rate now. The clouds against the stars made perception tricky. How could he be falling…upward?

It wasn't a question he needed to dwell on as gravity reasserted control and the rush of wind reversed directions. He bowed his body into the wind, creating a greater resistance in an attempt to slow his descent. Metropolis was below him, part of the city swathed in darkness, but the sign on the Luthor Corp building burned bright. He had to be just below regulation flight altitudes. He had no explanation how he got there, but based on his current rate of descent, at least going down would take considerably longer than going up.

Squinting his eyes against the wind and using the beacon of the Luthor Corp sign as reference, he mapped the streets rushing toward him and identified Oliver's clock tower as a faint glow on the edge of the black out. While he watched, two arcs of white lightning clashed above the peak of the tower, culminating in a flash of blinding light. Bruce shielded his eyes. On the heels of the flash, the roar of an exploding fireball rolled up to meet him. It flamed out, harmlessly dispersed in the night air.

The spotlights on Oliver's building quadrupled in brightness. A clutch of hope grabbed at his chest. Had the kid miraculously made the bypasses? Or, a more cynical voice asked, had the AU-Ray simply blown and thus stopped drawing up all the available power? He noted how fast the distant roof tops were becoming near and decided to worry about those questions if in the unlikely event he actually survived his unexplained freefall.

He still had the arrow launcher clutched in his hand, but taking in the rate of his fall versus the estimated propelled speed of the arrow only provided him a 67% chance of reaching a target. He didn't feel like calculating the added odds he'd snap his back even if he could stall his fall. Sometimes you had to take the leap and adjust the details out on the way down. A grim smile tugged the corner of his mouth. Pun not intended.

Closer.

Closer.

He was seconds away from his only good shot. The right angle, the right height, the speed…too fast but if he could…no more thinking. He aimed the grappling arrow and watched it whistle below him in a straight line. It hit its target…and bounced off.

Never a Batarang around when you need one.

Maybe if he could change his trajectory and get close to the edge of the building and…an arm reached around his waist and his – their – descent slowed. Then a voice that sounded a lot like it belonged to the mysterious Mr. Kent sounded in his ear.

"Sorry. I was out of time. Up was the safest place for you."

"Up? I'm still up."

"Yeah, maybe we could talk about that later?"

Bruce nodded succinctly, already embarrassed about his babbling. Ms. Sullivan's flying man angled them back toward the Clock Tower, carefully floating, yes floating, down through a charred circle cut out in the roof and then before he could blink again, his feet were touching the cement floors of Queen's clock apartment. He was still standing next to the elevator while Kent vanished only to reappear across the living room next to the shower of sparks cascading into itself like the water over Niagara.

Satisfaction settled over Bruce. Chloe's signal had not been lost. He looked over at Queen for confirmation. Both he and Mrs. Kent were watching the spot in the middle of the living room with rapt attention. Milton and Victor had their eyes glued to their readings.

"We're at full power," Victor announced, excitedly pushing his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose." Bruce looked back at the spot in the living room. The gold cascade now had form and substance. "Retrieval will be complete in 5…4…3…"

Her shape coalesced, he could see outline of her hips and the voluminous satchel she'd insisted on carrying through to the other side.

"2…1 …and cut the power. We did it!"

Everyone in the room held their breath as Chloe stumbled forward, a glazed look in her eyes and visibly swaying on her feet. Could they have saved the body but lost the soul?

"Clark?" Focusing on her farm boy in front of her, Chloe seemed steadier on her feet. "Are we home now?" She asked in a clear voice.

Bruce closed his eyes and leaned heavily against the wall. She sounded normal.

"Yeah, I'm here. We're home," Clark reassured her.

"Good. Wake me up in a week." Chloe said and slumped forward into Kent's waiting arms.