Time for a Change
By Les Bonser
This is a work of non-commercial fan fiction. The characters used in this story remain the trademarked property of their respective owners. No trademark infringement is intended and no profits are made by the author for writing or distribution of this work.
No permission is given to anyone other than the author to archive this on any website. No permission is given to anyone other than the author to repost this on any newsgroup.
Chapter 13
USS Enterprise, in the Beta Quadrant
"Commander La Forge, can we beam him aboard?" Picard asked.
Geordi La Forge, the Enterprise's chief engineer, stood at the Engineering station at the rear of the bridge. He was watching the sensor scan intently on his own monitor. "I'm not sure, Captain," the engineer said. "The anomaly is creating a highly localized temporal field. Beaming him out of there will be a problem."
La Forge had no idea if the alien was a man or not, but they all assumed it was male ever since Q had taunted them with the "Tin *Man*" riddle.
"How so?" the captain asked.
"Well, basically, the flow of time is slowed by a factor of about 2,000 right in the anomaly. Where the lifeform is, time is pretty much slowed to a crawl. Everything is going two thousand times slower, including his molecular processes. To suddenly transfer him to our 'normal' time flow might be too great of a stress. It could also cause problems with the Heisenberg compensators in the transporter matter buffer."
"Either way, it could kill him," Crusher said.
"I concur," Dr. Bashir said, from the Defiant.
Picard had almost forgotten about their companion ship. "Captain Sisko, everyone," he addressed the crew of the Defiant and his own crew, "Does anyone have any ideas?"
No one said anything for several long minutes as they all searched their brains for a solution to this tricky problem. They all knew that the humanoid figure at the center of the anomaly might also have answers their larger questions. What was the anomaly and why was it placing their universe at harm. To beam the person aboard and communicate with it might answer those questions.
Picard finally stopped waiting. "Data, you and La Forge coordinate with Mr. O'Brien on the Defiant. Find a way to get that man out of there."
"Yes, sir," Data replied.
"Number One," Picard addressed his first officer, "You have the bridge. I'll be in my ready room preparing our report to Starfleet."
"Aye, Captain."
It was almost an hour before Picard finished with his initial report to Starfleet Command. When he walked back on the bridge of the Enterprise, he saw that Chief O'Brien had beamed over from the Defiant. The Chief was at the Engineering station with Data and La Forge. The three were deep in discussion.
"Report, Commander?"
Riker stood from the center chair. "We have an idea. Commander La Forge?"
"Yes, Commander," Geordi said. He turned his attention to Picard and headed down the ramp to the command area. "We've taken readings from the surrounding area. The temporal field around the anomaly appears to be stable and it's time dampening effect lessens the further you move from the center. Our idea is to take three shuttle craft and string them along between here and the anomaly. We can then use them as transporter relay stations. Each one will be time shifted slightly from the next, but will provide us a way to move the man into our 'faster' time frame gently enough to prevent any lasting damage. To either him or our equipment."
"Captain Sisko?" Picard called out. The Enterprise computer automatically placed Sisko's face on the main viewer. The other captain was waiting patiently on the bridge of the Defiant.
"Yes, Captain?"
"Have you heard about this plan?"
"Yes. A couple of us over here helped a little with some of the sensor scans. Dr. Bashir has faith that it'll work," Sisko said.
"Dr. Crusher. Your opinion?"
Dr. Beverly Crusher shrugged. "I don't know Jean-Luc. It might work. Until we know what race this man belongs to, we have no way of knowing how he'll handle the temporal stress. And there's too much interference to determine more than that he's alive and humanoid."
Picard considered all the options. "Any other problems?"
Data said, "Yes, Captain. Even using this method, we will still have to run our transporter buffers at near their maximum load. We will have to turn off some of the safety protocols."
"Which ones?" Picard asked.
"We'll have to turn off the transporter biofilter," La Forge explained. "Nor the automatic disabling of weapons."
Picard nodded his understanding.
The transporter biofilter was standard on all Starfleet vessels. It was a component that scanned and removed disease and virus organisms from incoming individuals during the transport process. Likewise, if the transportee was carrying a known weapon, the transporter computer automatically removed the harmful object or objects from the transport. These systems prevented accidental contamination of the ship and its crew by a person being transported aboard and increased security.
"Can we beam him into a isolated area?"
"We're setting up an area in Sickbay right now," Crusher replied. "Level one bio-containment."
"And security force fields," Riker added. "Shouldn't be any problems. We'll use the emergency medical hologram as an extra set of hands inside the isolation area."
"Good, Number One, good," Picard said, nodding. "Make it so," he ordered.
It took a couple hours to reprogram the shuttle craft transporters and autopilots. Because of the temporal interference, the shuttles would be dispatched using a pre-programmed flight plan and under control of the on-board autopilots.
Also because of the temporal interference, it would take several hours to move the first shuttle closest to the anomaly. As it moved closer to the anomaly, everything slowed down for the shuttle. What should be a two minute trip would become a several hours before the shuttle was in position.
Once in position, the first shuttle would then transport the man from the center of the anomaly. It would then rematerialize him on a portable transporter in the shuttle's passenger compartment. After a ten-second delay, it would then transport him to the next shuttle. Once the transport was completed, the shuttle's autopilot would bring the shuttle back.
The process would be repeated three times, with the Enterprise-E being the transport target on the third and last transport. If all went well, the man would materialize in the isolation bay of Sickbay where the EMH waited to administer any medical treatment that might be required.
The command crews of the Defiant and the Enterprise waited patiently for the shuttles to move into position. A countdown ticked by one the main screens of both bridges.
Eventually, the countdown reached zero.
"Well?" Riker asked.
"Commander," Data explained, "The shuttle closest to the anomaly is slowed down by a factor of over 1,500 times. The ten second transport delay there will take over four hours for us. Each stage moves approximately a factor of magnitude faster. The man will be beamed into sickbay in exactly 4.38 hours from now.
"So we wait," Riker said.
"Yes, Commander," Data agreed. "We wait."
Four hours later, Picard, Riker, Data, and La Forge met in Sickbay. They joined Dr. Crusher there. From behind the bio-isolation and security force fields, they watched the final stage of the transport process.
At exactly 4.382 hours after the transport began, they saw a man in red and gold armor beam into the chamber.
Iron Man sensed a light getting brighter. He hadn't remembered falling unconscious, but he must have been. As he awoke, the first thing that came to him was that the armor was off-line.
What the hell happened? Tony Stark asked himself inside the passive metal shell.
He looked out from the eye slits and saw what he first took for a clean room. As he looked around, he saw that it was some sort of medical suite, but one far more advanced that even the one at the Avengers Mansion.
There was an intense partially bald man standing beside him. The man was dressed in what appeared to be some sort of uniform. It was largely black, but had a stripe of blue running from shoulder to shoulder. He didn't look harmful, but Iron Man wouldn't have been able to defend himself even if the man did try to hurt him. With the armor off-line, it was simply a heavy metal weight that he could barely support.
"Please state the nature of your medical emergency," the man stated.
"Medical emergency?" Iron Man asked.
The man looked perplexed. "If there's no medical emergency, why was I activated?"
Iron Man looked around. Behind a transparent wall, he saw four men and a woman watching him and this strange man.
"Emergency Medical Hologram," the woman behind the wall said, "This is Doctor Crusher, Chief Medical Officer of the Enterprise. Your patient is in a bio-isolation field. You need to conduct a preliminary medical examination of the patient."
The Enterprise? Stark thought. This didn't look like any aircraft carrier he'd ever seen. It looked more advanced than even the SHIELD Helicarrier.
"Understood," the man beside him said. The man grabbed a small plastic box about the size of paperback book and began moving it around in front of Iron Man. "Can you remove your garment, please?" the man asked Stark. "The metal in it is interfering with my tricorder."
Tricorder? Stark wondered. He didn't have any idea where he was, but he was loathe to remove the armor. He glanced at the displays internal to the helmet to try and figure out what was wrong. The passive power displays showed that the armor had 85% full power, but the entire suit was off-line. He saw that the reboot process was failing. Over and over again, the suit tried to reboot itself, but it failed at a point very early in the boot up process. He wouldn't be able to do anything until he could get out of the suit and do some major diagnostics.
"Where am I?" Stark asked. He knew that with the suit off-line, the voice changer built into the helmet wouldn't be working. He just hoped that it baffled his voice enough to prevent anyone from determining his identity. Enough people knew that Tony Stark was Iron Man as it was; he didn't need any more to find out.
The older man in the group spoke up. "You're aboard the USS Enterprise. I'm Captain Picard. This is my ship." The man had in a similar uniform to that of the "doctor" beside him, except that his had a red accent. The other men also wear similar uniforms. The tall one with the beard also wear red, but the other two, the one with the funny eyes and the pale skinned one wear yellow. The woman was apparently a doctor; she wore a similar uniform, but it was largely covered by a white medical jacket.
It struck Stark that the older man looked a lot like Dr. Charles Xavier, the renowned expert on mutants. Iron Man wondered if this Captain Picard was a relative of Professor Xavier.
"This doesn't look like the Enterprise I know," Iron Man said. "Since when did the Navy change uniforms."
"Navy?" Picard asked. "Ah, you must think you're aboard the naval carrier from the twentieth century." As an amateur historian, Picard was well versed in military history. And even if he hadn't been, as captain of the Enterprise, he would have known the illustrious history of the line of ships by that name.
"If I'm not on the Enterprise of the twentieth century, what century is this?" Iron Man asked.
"I'm sorry to tell you this, but you're in the twenty-fourth century," Picard said.
"I see."
Picard had seen men and woman that were displaced in time previously. He and his crew had encountered a number of such displaced people while on the Enterprise-D. They had encountered the USS Bozeman NCC-1941, a Starfleet vessel displaced by almost 100 years do to a temporal causality loop, as well as a small bunch of people that had been recovered from cryogenic stasis after nearly three hundred years.
All of the individuals Picard had previously encountered had a problem believing that they were now far into the future. Granted, the armor made it hard to read this man's expressions, but Picard had the feeling that the man wasn't overly surprised.
Well, that answers that question, Stark thought. The last time he'd been on Doom's time machine, he and Doom had gone backwards in time. This time, he'd gone forward. If he was in the future, and as far forward as the twenty-fourth century, then that meant he was already dead. The fact that Iron Man was really Tony Stark was a matter for the history books. He had no secrets here.
He reached up and pressed the hidden manual studs that released the helmet when the suit was powered down. Normally, the helmet could only be removed by cybernetic command, but in the event the suit computer wasn't working, Stark didn't want to be trapped in the armor.
He pulled off the helmet and laid it down on the bed next to where he was standing.
"Captain Picard," Stark said, "My name is Tony Stark. I'm from the year 2000."
"Welcome aboard the Enterprise, Mr. Stark," Picard said.
The EMH gave Tony Stark a clean bill of health and confirmed that Stark didn't carry anything more harmful than a few common cold germs. The EMH gave Stark a hypospray of general anti-virals and then concurred with Dr. Crusher that his assistance was no longer needed.
Dr. Crusher deactivated the Emergency Medical Hologram and turned off the bio-isolation field. With Picard's consent, she also deactivated the security field and moved into isolation bay to run her own medical tricorder over Mr. Stark.
While Crusher examined her patient, Picard and his other officers interrogated the newcomer.
"We found you in the midst of a temporal anomaly, Mr. Stark," Picard explained. "Exactly how did you come to be there?"
Stark tried to explain briefly how Doom's machine had been accidentally activated. It must have brought him here.
While Stark told his story, Data began reviewing the historical records from a nearby computer terminal. "Captain," Data reported, "I've scanned our history records. There are no mention of an Anthony Stark, an 'Iron Man' or anyone by the name of Baron Victor Von Doom in the records."
"Believe me, Captain, I'm telling the truth," Stark said. "I realize how fabulous it must sound."
"I think I can explain the discrepancy," Crusher offered. She showed Picard the tricorder reading. "Mr. Stark here is isn't from our universe. His quantum frequency is all wrong."
Picard studied the readings and then turned to his officers. "Data, can you confirm this?"
The pale man named Data picked up a tricorder and began to move it in front of Stark. With the man closer, Stark was able to observe him in better detail. "You're an android," Stark said.
"Yes I am," Data agreed.
"How did you figure that out?" La Forge asked.
"I'm an engineer," Stark said. "And I've met a few androids in my day." He thought about his fellow Avenger, the Vision. "Built a few too. Are those artificial eyes?"
"Yes," La Forge said, somewhat uncomfortable with the attention. After a lifetime of wearing his visor, he was still getting used to the attention his new ocular implants caused. La Forge had been scanning the armor Stark was wearing. "Did you design this suit?"
"Yes."
"If so, to say that you're an 'engineer' is an understatement. This is like nothing I've ever seen before." La Forge was obviously impressed.
"And did you also build that artificial heart?" Crusher asked. "And the nervous system?" Her medical scan had uncovered an artificial heart beating in Stark's chest and an augmented nervous system running through most of the man's body. The heart wasn't as sophisticated as Jean-Luc's, but considerably advanced considering that Stark was from nearly 400 years in the past.
"I had a little help with both of those," Stark admitted. It was now obvious to Stark that the handheld devices they were using were sophisticated scanners of some sort. They were apparently a standard diagnostic tool aboard this ship.
Stark explained that he'd invented the suit of armor originally to support his failing heart after a deadly injury in Southeast Asia. He'd eventually had his damaged heart replaced as soon as technology had advanced enough to create an artificial one.
The nervous system had been necessary after a jealous girlfriend's bullet had severed his spine.
By the time Stark had finished his story, Data confirmed that his atoms did have a slightly different quantum frequency. Tony Stark, the invincible Iron Man, was from a totally different universe. He'd traveled not just through time, but across dimensions previously unknown.
"Captain, I'd like to suggest that we outfit Mr. Stark here with a change of clothes, assign him temporary quarters, and then do a full debriefing with the command crews of both ships," Riker suggested.
Picard nodded his agreement. "That's a good idea, Number One. I think we're beginning to put the pieces of this puzzle together."
The command crews from both the Defiant and the Enterprise reconvened in the Executive Briefing Room. Picard introduced Stark and asked the man from the twentieth century to recount his story.
Stark explained who he was and what role he played as an Avenger. He described the battle with the Mandarin and how Dr. Doom's time machine was accidentally activated.
"There's nothing else in the anomaly or in this vicinity," Sisko pointed out. "I for one would like to examine that time machine."
"So would I," Chief O'Brien agreed.
"The time machine cycled twice," Stark explained. "After the first time, I reappeared in a city, in mid-air. The time machine was falling toward some pedestrians and I had to twist it around to miss them. When it cycled a second time, I was upside down and the thrusters of my armor were running. It's possible I was moved away from the machine while still in the timestream."
"If you ended up here, where did the machine end up?" La Forge wondered.
Riker interjected, "Is it possible the time machine is still cycling? Or perhaps it landed somewhere and caused some sort of time paradox. Data, could that cause the temporal anomaly?"
Data considered the Commander's questions. "Possibly," the android said. "Without further data, it is hard to calculate the potential outcomes."
Stark said, "During the fight with the Mandarin, my armor was in what I call 'battle-mode'. It records everything around it and threat assessment subroutines provide me with tactical updates and suggested offensive and defensive options. If I can get the suit working again, it's possible the suit's sensors might have recorded something during both cycles that could help us figure out what happened."
Just then, Picard's communicator chirped. "Picard here," he said.
It was the senior officer from bridge. "You have an urgent message from Starfleet Command, sir."
"Have it relayed here," the captain said.
Picard played the message on the main viewer behind the podium.
It was an automated message from Starfleet Command acknowledging Picard's earlier report. At the end of the message was an attached visual from Admiral Ross.
The Admiral said, "Hello, Jean-Luc. I'm glad it's the Enterprise and the Defiant out there. If anyone can get to the bottom of this, it's you and Benjamin."
Ross continued, "Whatever you do, figure this out soon. We're beginning to receive reports from all around the Federation. Weird things are happening. It's like time itself is going crazy. Chronometers running backwards, computers malfunctioning, ships disabled, you name it."
"So far, nothing major has occurred. No injuries or fatalities. But eventually, something major will happen. It appears as if that anomaly out there is unraveling the very universe."
"Good luck, Jean-Luc. Starfleet Command out."
A sober Picard turned from watching the message. The two crews and their visitor were likewise solemn.
"Well, it appears things have gone from bad to worse," Picard said. "La Forge, O'Brien, work with Mr. Stark to see if you can get any sensor readings from his armor. Data, contact the Vulcan Science Academy. Give them our findings and see if there's any way to predict the effects of this anomaly."
All three officers nodded and said, "Aye, captain."
Stark, La Forge, and O'Brien moved the Iron Man armor to a work room near Engineering. They placed the suit on the work table and Stark started the boot-up routine while the two Starfleet engineers monitored the suit with their tricorders.
Stark explained how each tile of the suit was a separate computer unit and how the whole was integrated and coordinated by the master computer unit in the helmet.
Once again, the boot-up process aborted.
The La Forge uploaded his tricorder's recordings into the main Engineering computer and called it up on the work console beside the table. "This suit is pretty sophisticated," he commented. "Hard to believe that you were able to develop anything this advanced four hundred years ago."
"Our universes apparently followed a similar course of history," Stark commented, "But not necessarily the same one. My universe four hundred years ago doesn't necessarily relate directly to what your universe was like four hundred years ago."
"Point taken," Geordi said. "But I still wonder what the divergence point was. What happened in your universe at some point in history that caused your science to advance so much faster than ours?"
Stark shrugged. "Don't know."
"Look," O'Brien said. "It looks like the start-up process if failing right here, when it tries to initialize these timers."
"Of course," Stark exclaimed. "This universe must have a slightly different time flow. The timing circuits in the suit tiles can't initialize properly because here in this universe, they run slightly faster than they would in my universe."
He opened a panel on the wrist pad of the left arm of the suit. Stark adjusted a parameter using the manual override buttons in the pad. "That should do it," he said.
He restarted the suit boot-up process. This time it worked. "I just adjusted the timer variance parameter," he explained to the Starfleet engineers. "Normally, it runs at a very tight tolerance to ensure coordination between the suit components. For now, it will run, but I wouldn't want to wear the suit in a fight. But it'll enable us to download the suit sensor logs."
"What will it take to fix it permanently?" La Forge asked.
"Well, to really fix it, I'd have to redesign each suit tile to work independently of each other. That just wouldn't work. I think I can jury-rig a patch for the suit's operating system to compensate for the timer difference. It might take a couple hours and maybe another hour or so to test."
"But right now, we need to see these logs," O'Brien said.
"Right," Stark agreed. "Let me tell you how the data is formatted."
It took La Forge, O'Brien, and Stark another three hours to write a translation program to convert the Iron Man sensor log files into a format that the Starfleet computers could understand.
At the end of the process, they were watching a video representation of the battle with Mandarin. There was a secondary window running a parallel data stream of various suit settings and sensor values.
The video showed the scene from Stark's point of view. The three men watched as the Mandarin raised his hand to fire at Iron Man. They watched as Stark's own armored hand came into view and the HUD overlay of the repulsor targeting system appeared on the screen. They saw the suit power levels dip as the repulsor fired. They noted the electrical discharge from Natasha's Widow's Bite hit Mandarin. Some of the Widow's Bite charge was carried back to Iron Man via the conductivity of the plasma created by the repulsor blasting through the air.
They watched in slow motion as the suit absorbed the excess energy and stored it. La Forge once again marveled at the overall sophistication of the suit.
They saw the tactical display showing Mandarin's own blast moving off target and hitting the time machine on which Iron Man had been standing. And they watched as the visual faded as Iron Man was transported through time. La Forge and O'Brien noted that the visual was similar to that of what a person see's when they used the Starfleet transporter. Everything faded to black and then faded back in.
The visual continued. Black sky and stars were visible. The view changed rapidly, as Iron Man and the time machine were tumbling. A view of the ground appeared. Four people were seen standing directly below the spinning time machine. One women, three men. Off to one side, another woman stood. The three men were holding the woman and they all appeared to be arguing. The video replay ended in a flash of light and the suit sensor readouts stopped as the Iron Man suit shutdown.
"What was that flash at the end?" O'Brien wondered.
"I don't know," Stark said. "I don't remember it myself. But the suit caught it, so it must have happened."
"Let's slow the replay down even further," La Forge suggested.
They restarted the playback again, this time during just the last couple seconds. The image of the five people under the time machine froze on the screen.
"You recognize any of these people?" La Forge asked Stark.
"Nope," Tony said. "But this guy is dressed like a superhero." He pointed to the image of the man in the black cape and cowl. "And this woman, here," he pointed to the woman in purple, "Appears to be wearing some sort of costume too. The rest are dressed normally."
"What does this number mean?" O'Brien asked. He was pointing at one of the figures in the suit status window.
"The suit has a beta ray collector," Stark explained. "It's part of the redundant energy system. That's the amount of beta rays per second the collector is absorbing. And the second number is amount of energy it creates."
"But both numbers are zero. And earlier, the first number was running into the millions."
"Then that means there's no beta rays," Stark said.
"But there are always beta rays," La Forge said. "We've got millions of them passing through us right now." He turned on a tricorder and ran a quick scan to confirm that. He was right. He showed the tricorder display to the other two men.
All three men studied the display. "If there are no beta rays at this moment, then that means something was wrong with the beta ray collector," Stark said.
He checked the suit. "But it's working okay right now." A thought struck him. "What if I passed through another universe?" he said. "One where beta rays don't exist?"
"Would that explain this reading?" O'Brien asked.
"Yes," Stark admitted. And it explained why he didn't recognize the costumed man. It was another universe with superheroes, but one different than his own.
They advanced the playback. At the slower speed, they saw the flash of light as it occurred.
The flash came from something in one of the men's hand. La Forge, O'Brien, and Stark studied the display carefully. They advanced the playback as slowly as the limited recording would allow. The power readings went off the scale at the exact fraction of a second the flash occurred.
"Seems obvious to me, there's something else besides the time machine at work here," Stark said.
"I'd have to agree. But what?" O'Brien wondered.
"Maybe we can run this through image enhancement," La Forge suggested. "See what's in this man's hand."
"Maybe. But, look at this," O'Brien said. "This display here shows a huge power spike in the verteron range. No wonder you were thrown through time. And this reading here. Is this an energy reading?" he asked Stark.
"Yes. But it seems to be coming from this man," he pointed to the tall man. "Whoever he is, I don't think he's human. I've never seen a sensor reading like that. The rest of them all read as normal humans."
The three engineers were in Picard's ready room off the main bridge of the Enterprise. Picard, Data, and Riker were there as well, and Sisko and his bridge crew were patched in via the computer. La Forge, O'Brien, and Stark ran the visual display they'd downloaded from the armor for the rest of the group.
"Have you determined what the object is that the man is holding?" Picard asked the obvious question.
"We think so," La Forge said. "Ran this through some standard image enhancement routines. Cleared the image up a lot." He leaned over Picard's desk and touched the control pad on the computer display. A close up of the man's hand appeared on screen. The video rolled forward in slow motion. "There's one point here," La Forge said as he stopped the display. "We get a pretty good look at the object 0.2835 seconds before the flash. It appears to be some sort of large crystal or gemstone."
"Our hypothesis is that the crystal focused the temporal energy of the time machine, much like dilithium crystals focus the energy in a warp drive reactor," O'Brien explained. "That, combined with the fact that crystal generated verteron particles of its own, created the 'tunneling' effect into this universe. And possibly others."
"And we filtered out most of the visible light from the flash," La Forge said. "Gives us a picture of each of the four people, five including Tony here, vanishing. We think they all traversed to different times and/or universes also. The other woman in the picture appeared to be out of the range of the effect. We can only surmise that she's still in her home universe."
La Forge touched the control again. All four of the people in the picture seemed to fade and recede from view. Picard thought the effect looked a little bit like the Kolvoord Starburst he'd seen cadets perform at the Starfleet Academy. In the extremely risky Kolvoord Starburst maneuver, five ships would fly in unison to a point and then pull away, each in a different direction. The exhaust from their ships would be ignited and the entire exhaust trail would light up, creating a spectacular visual effect.
"So we have five displaced persons instead of merely one," Picard said. "Four from this universe," he pointed at the computer display, "and one from Stark's."
"And according to T'Pal of the Temporal Research department of the Vulcan Science Academy, the only way to correct the anomaly is to return all of the parties to their points of origin," Data said. "Each person must be returned to their native universe at the exact moment they left. Otherwise, the stress on the multiple universes, the 'multiverse' if you will, will cause all of existence to collapse."
"So how do we go about finding these other four people?" Sisko asked over the communications link.
"I do not know, Captain Sisko," Data said. "But it is imperative that we find a way."
New York City
The next morning, three people walked down the street several blocks from Sotheby's. One was a man, wearing a trench coat and a hat. His name was John Jones, and he was a private detective. Well, a sometimes private detective. He spent most of this time as Jon Jonzz, the Martian Manhunter, but occasionally used his shape-shifting power to transform into various aliases, as he'd done today.
The other man was a tall black man, with a small, clean cropped goatee, and wire-rimmed glasses. He was dressed in a dark business suit. He was Dr. John Henry Irons, formerly a weapons designer for the United States military, and currently the Justice League's technology expert. When he put on a suit of high-tech armor, he became the superhero known as Steel.
The last person was a tall woman with thick black hair. She was wearing a conservative suit. She was Diana of Themyscira otherwise known as Wonder Woman.
The trio had decided to come here to investigate the incident themselves. Both Jon and Diana knew Superman's secret identity and when they had seen the news report mention Lois Lane was an eyewitness, they realized Clark couldn't have been far away. And when they'd heard from Oracle that Batman was missing also, they knew something was wrong.
John looked around the area. "There," he said, motioning to a vagrant laying in the alleyway. He concentrated.
"Anything?" Diana asked.
"Yes," Jon said. "It's muddled by the alcohol, but he definitely saw something."
Jon Jonzz was a Martian. Not only was he a shape-shifter, but he was also a telepath. He'd scanned the vagrant's thoughts. By chance, they'd stumbled upon one of the people that had witnessed the explosion.
Dr. Irons pulled a small device out of his trench coat pocket. It looked like a television remote control, but was obviously something else.
"And what does it do?" Diana asked as she looked around. A young man in a NY Mets tee-shirt, leather jacket, and baseball cap was eying them. Diana was getting uncomfortable. She didn't understand how Batman could do this sort of "undercover" work. She was a warrior and preferred to plow right into a fight.
"It tells us that lots of exotic energies were released here," John said. "Not much else. Maybe Kyle can figure something out with his ring. I think we've reached the limits of Earthly science."
"We need to find Ms Lane," Diana said. "She might be able to tell us what happened."
The young man approached the two. He wore the baseball cap backwards as was the fashion these days and had a goatee. He smiled. "You guys stand out like a bunch of sore thumbs."
"Who?" Diana started to ask. But Jon telepathically gave her the answer. The young man was Nightwing, Batman's partner. "Oh," she said.
"Perhaps we should go somewhere and compare notes," the young man suggested.
The group walked down the street for a block and found a small diner. The three men and one woman sat at a both in the back where they could talk unheard by the rest of the patrons.
"So, what did you guys figure out?" the disguised Nightwing asked them.
Dr. Irons said, "There was not an explosion. It was more like an implosion. That's why there's no damage in the area. Whatever happened, it caused a big pop from the air rushing into a vacuum, not the other way around. Other than that, I can't figure it out."
"How about you?" Jon Jonzz asked.
"Asked around. Not many people saw it and those that did told everything to the cops. Only person I haven't found, yet, is Lois Lane. She should be a pretty observant person, being a report and all. How many Pulitzers does she have?"
"Yes, we'd like to talk with her as well."
"So, you figure Superman was mixed up in something? And Lane was covering the story?" Nightwing asked.
Diana thought about how to answer that question. She wasn't sure Batman had shared his personal knowledge of Superman's ID with Nightwing. And not knowing that, she didn't want to inadvertently gave anything away. She'd always been open about her identify, but then her family was all isolated on Themyscira and in little danger. But perhaps there was some benefit to keeping a secret identity actually secret; some of her friends had been threatened and harmed for having known her.
"Probably," Diana said. "We'll know more when we talk to Miss Lane."
"So, is that our next objective?" Jon Jonzz asked.
"Until Green Lantern returns to Earth, it seems as though we've exhausted just about every other option," Dr. Irons said.
The group heard a quiet buzzing. Nightwing leaned back and dug a cell phone out of his pants pocket.
"Hello," he said into the device. A pause. "Yeah, I'm there now. And I ran into three of your other friends." Another pause. "The brainy one, the green one, and the babe."
Nightwing stopped talking for a moment and handed the cell phone to Diana. "It's for you," he said, with a grin on his face.
Diana took the tiny cell phone with a bit of apprehension. "Hello," she said into the device.
"Wonder Woman, this is Oracle. I see you've run into my other operative," the voice on the phone said.
"Yes, I guess we have," Diana said.
"Lois Lane just contacted me. I don't know how she knew to contact me, I guess Superman must have told her in case of some sort of emergency," Oracle said.
"Where is she?"
"She's in a hotel near your current location. The Four Seasons, suite 2256."
The four arrived at the hotel after a short walk. Diana knocked on the door. The door opened after a moment.
Lois Lane-Kent stepped back and motioned for the group to enter. "Hello, Diana," she said. "I wasn't expecting a convention."
Nightwing and the other two men detected the cattiness between the two women, but didn't have any idea what was causing it.
"Hello, Lois," Diana said. "We were in the neighborhood."
"Hello, Dr. Irons," Lois said. "And you're Jon Jonzz, right?"
The disguised Martian nodded.
"But I don't know you."
"I usually hid this ugly mug behind a mask," Nightwing said, "Instead of a scratchy glue-on disguise." He tugged at the goatee, but didn't remove it. "I honestly don't know how Batman does it."
"Ah, you must be Nightwing," Lois said.
"Bright lady," Nightwing retorted.
Lois walked into the living room area of the suite. They all sat down. "What happened, Lois," Diana asked.
Lois looked at the others. Diana knew all of her secrets, but she still wasn't sure how much Clark had shared with the rest of his JLA team. And Nightwing wasn't in the JLA. But Clark was missing. As was Batman and the others. But for a quirk of fate, Catwoman trying to make a break for it, she herself might very well be gone as well. She decided that getting her husband back, again, was the paramount goal here.
"We were coming back to the hotel from a late dinner. After a play," Lois explained.
Nightwing sat quietly and listened to the woman talk. It was obvious by her reluctance, that it was difficult to talk. Was she having an affair with Superman? She'd only married Clark Kent about a year ago, he thought. Or was she trying to keep something else secret? he wondered.
"We'd stopped on the street for a moment. And then Catwoman came running down the alley. Superman stopped her. And then Batman and Bond came running down the alley."
"Bond?" Dr. Irons asked.
"James Bond. He's a British secret agent."
"What would the British have a secret agent here for?" Jon Jonzz wondered.
"I think he was guarding the gemstone," Lois said. "Although he's a very high priced babysitter if you ask me."
"Catwoman got the gemstone?" Diana asked.
"Yeah, she had it, but she dropped it when Cl...uh, Superman grabbed her."
"I don't remember Superman being mentioned in the news reports," Dr. Irons said.
"Uh, he wasn't in costume," Lois said, shifting uncomfortably in her seat.
Diana came to her rescue. "He was undercover, like we are now," the Amazon princess said.
"Uh, yeah," Lois agreed. The two women exchanged a look that went unnoticed by the men. A look that said something like, why is she helping out--maybe she not so bad after all.
He still wasn't sure he believed it, but he accepted it for now. He knew Superman had assisted Batman several times in undercover situations, so it wasn't beyond belief. This whole situation was beginning to solidify an idea that Nightwing had been playing with for a while. He didn't have any conclusive proof, no "smoking gun" evidence anyway, nothing like an eyewitness or a photo, but he'd suspected that Clark Kent was actually Superman. This would explain why Lois Lane was in New York having a late dinner with Superman.
Nightwing nodded his agreement with the women's explanation. He was more than content to let Lois tell him her secrets if she wanted. He wouldn't let on that he already knew.
"So Catwoman stole the gem, Batman and this British agent were on her trail, and she ran into Superman and you. She gets caught, end of story," Dr. Irons said. "What happened."
"She made a break for it," Lois said. "She only got about ten yards or so. The three men almost tackled her. But then there was this really loud noise and they were all gone in a flash. If I'd chased after her also, I'd probably be gone too." She was close to tears. "I can't lose him again."
"Lois," Jon Jonzz said. "I understand this is difficult for you. Do you remember anything else? What caused the noise, anything?"
Lois shook her head, tears welling in her eyes.
"You might have seen something, but don't recognize that you did," Jon said. "If you'll allow me, I can probe your mind. I wouldn't ask, except in these dire circumstances."
She thought about it for a few moments, but Lois eventually, reluctantly, nodded.
"Just clear your mind and take a couple deep breaths," Jon told her.
She did as he asked, or tried to. The deep breaths were easy, but she wasn't sure how clear she could make her mind. There were so many thoughts.
The group sat still for a moment. Jon closed his eyes and concentrated.
The Martian Manhunter slowly and carefully probed into the mind of Lois Lane-Kent. Her love and concern for her husband was clearly evident. These feelings were foremost in her mind. Using the mental disciplines developed by his people eons before humans developed on the plains of Africa, Jon slid beyond the surface thoughts of the woman's mind and deeper into her memories.
Due to her concerns for Clark, Lois' mind was chaotic. Usually, she prided herself on being clear minded and focused. It was what made her the reporter that she was. It took Jon a few minutes to sort through her memories and find the ones from the previous night. And being fresh memories, they hadn't been sorted and shuffled and stored as the human mind, by nature and evolution, was wont to do. Thus they were harder for the telepath to find and arrange.
Jon finally found them, sorted them into the order they actually occurred, and saw things that Lois had seen. Some were seen so briefly, they'd impressed on her memories, but couldn't be consciously remembered. Like the cause of the shrill sound.
He broke the mental link. Lois was surprised that she was calm and refreshed. For some reason, she'd always assumed a mental probe was something akin to an assault, but it hadn't been. Jon's intrusion into her mind had been just the opposite.
"Well?" Dr. Irons said. "Did you answer any of our questions, Jon?"
"Yes, I think so," the Martian Manhunter said. His attention had been focused on the mind probe and thus he'd reverted to his natural form. The green skinned alien sitting in the chair opposite Lois concentrated for a moment and the fedora wearing private detective John Jones reappeared.
"I know what caused the loud noise that was reported. Lois saw it, but it was too brief to have done more than barely register on her conscious mind."
"What was it?" Diana asked. "Was it Prometheus or Darkseid striking at our numbers again?"
"No," Jon said. "A man-shape in gold and red somehow appeared and the machine he was with fell toward our friends. At the split second before the impact, they all disappeared in a flash of light."
There was a small tapping at the window. The group turned from Jon's description of the events from the previous night.
Lois got up and opened the curtains leading to the balcony. A young girl, bearing an adolescent by the looks of her, was standing on the balcony. She wore a blue dress and on her chest was Superman's "S" emblem. Lois slid the door open. "Who?"
"I'm Supergirl," the young blonde girl announced. "I understand my cousin Superman is in trouble. I'm here to help."
The assembled group was stunned into silence. They all knew Supergirl, and she wasn't a child. And she wasn't Superman's cousin. Clark was the last and only survivor of the planet Krypton.
The superheroine known as "Supergirl" was actually an artificial lifeform from a mirror universe. She'd merged with a Earth woman, Linda Danvers, and operated out of Leesburg, Virginia. Prior to her merger with Danvers, Supergirl had been a shape-shifter, similar to Jon Jonzz. She had been able to transform into a number of different forms, but now she could only change between Linda and Supergirl.
"You're Superman's cousin?" Dr. Irons asked.
"Yes," the girl said.
"Uh, how come we've never seen you before?" Diana said.
"I'm supposed to be his secret weapon. Kal-El doesn't think I'm ready for the world to know about me yet. I'm still in training. But when I learned he was missing, I figured it was my duty to come here and help out."
"How did you learn Clar...uh, Kal-El was missing?" Lois asked.
Supergirl looked in astonishment at Lois. "You know Superman's real identity? I didn't think he'd told anyone, Miss Lane."
As the newcomer and Lois were talking, Diana felt Jon tickling her mind. Yes, Jon, she thought.
I've scanned her with my Martian vision. She's a Kryptonian. The "real deal" as Flash would say. Something isn't right here.
Lois about lost it. "Of course I know his real identity, you little imposter, I'M MARRIED TO HIM!" She stood facing the blonde child, quivering in anger and frustration and pain.
Well, there's my independent verification, thought Nightwing.
"Lois, calm down," Diana tried to soothe the other woman. She placed her hand on Lois' shoulder.
Lois pulled away from Diana's touch. "I don't want to calm down. All I *want* is to find my husband."