Author's note: I'd like to apologize, again, for the lack of consistent
updates to this story as of late. To allay all fears right now, I want to
offer a flat denial of any desire on my part to introduce Bizzaro into this
story. What role the clones are going to play is not going to be an
attempt to clone Superman. Remember, he's a newbie on the scene. Well,
now it's time to get back to the story…
The moment Clark heard the word clones, he turned to Chloe and told her that he had to get to Gotham and see something. Five minutes later, he was standing in the Batcave.
"I hate it when you do that!" Bruce stood up from his chair when he heard the swoosh behind him, only to see Clark standing behind him.
"I'm sorry, Bruce. I just couldn't believe what you told me. I had to see it for myself."
"Well, let's go then." Bruce got up and went into the dressing his dressing chamber. Two minutes later, he emerged in the Batsuit, greeted by Clark in his own costume. "Ok, I still don't recognize you the first time I see you."
"Well, that makes it official. If Batman can't tell who I am, then no one can."
Clark's smile caused a rare reciprocation from the Dark Knight. "Come on, we'll take my car."
Inside of fifteen minutes, they were both standing outside an abandoned warehouse in Gotham's industrial district. The building looked like it hadn't been used in over a decade, rusted walls, broken windows. Bruce opened the door and he and Clark walked into the center of the room.
"I couldn't believe that I didn't notice it the first time, but there is a trap door in the floor here." He reached down and brushed dirt away from what looked like a seam in the tiles of the floor.
"I can't see anything with my x-ray vision. The floor must be lined with lead."
"Yeah, they are. Most likely to prevent anyone from detecting some of their equipment." Bruce began to descend the ladder that lead down into the hole.
Soon, he and Clark were both at the bottom, faced with a very dark corridor. Bruce made his way down the side, seemingly completely comfortable in the dark. Clark walked confidently behind him. When they'd gone several yards, Bruce opened a door to their left. Behind it, a horrible sight greeted Clark. Floating, suspended in tanks in the middle of the room were what looked like young men, all connected to various machines. Bruce walked up to one of the nearby computer banks and began punching buttons. On the screen in front of him, appeared an illustration of the cloning process.
"From what I've been able to ascertain so far, Superman, these clones aren't viable. They were all produced and grown, but they're not able to survive past this age. There's something going wrong in the developmental process, and they haven't been able to figure it out yet." Bruce punched up the monitors for the various tanks. "From these readings, these five have been like this for just over a week. They're brain dead, being kept alive by the instruments attached to them."
"There's no idea who is behind this?" Clark walked over to one of the tanks and put his hand against the glass.
"None. There are only two companies in the world, which I know of, who have even played with the idea of cloning humans. Neither has announced any advances, and one actually announced that they were abandoning their project because of difficulties they had experienced in the animal testing with Primates. That was STAR Labs, and the other was Wayne Enterprises. Wayne Enterprises is still in the early stages, having only managed to clone livestock. They're years from a viable test with Primates. They're being responsible." He joined Clark next to the tanks.
"Well, it looks like there's a new player in the game." Clark took his hand away from the tanks. "And, it looks like they're in the lead."
"I'm not totally sure who it is, but I have my suspicions." Bruce made his way to the door, following Clark's lead.
"What other company or group has the technology and resources to implement a project like this?" Clark shut the door and sealed it with his heat- vision.
"Two real options: the government, or LuthorCorp." They had returned to the warehouse.
"I think it is time that I finally paid Lex the visit I've been meaning to." Before Bruce could even respond, Clark was gone.
Chloe hated it when Clark had to run out on her like this. She knew that what he was doing was bigger than both of them, but her heart was still broken every time he walked out the door, or in his case, flew out the window. She'd been laying in her bed for the past four hours, trying to sleep, unable to rest. Finally, she got up and made her way back into the living room. Before she could sit down, the phone rang.
"Hello?" Chloe's voice was soft and sleepy.
"Chloe, it's Lois." Lois sounded like she'd never been to sleep that night.
"Lois, it's 4:30 in the morning. What do you want?" Chloe wiped her face with her hands, trying to wake herself.
"I think I might have found something about our stories. The only problem is, that I need some help. I tried calling Clark, but he wasn't home." Chloe finally noticed that Lois seemed excited.
"Where are you?" Chloe was finally most of the way awake.
"Well, right now I'm at the office, but someone just called me, saying that they have some information about the disappearances in Suicide Slum and they said that it has something to do with the Mayor."
"You just sit tight, and I'll be there in about thirty minutes." Chloe got up and made her way back into her room to grab some clothes. "Don't budge until I get there."
As she hung up the phone, she grabbed a pen and some paper to leave a note for Clark. Five minutes later, she was dressed and on her way to the office. When she arrived, she found the building fairly deserted. Perry had given keys to both she and Clark. He told them that they'd surely need them at some point, Lois always did. Chloe finally understood what he had meant by that.
The elevator ride up to the newsroom floor was quiet, the only sounds besides her breathing was the dings of the elevator as it passes the various floors. When she got off at the newsroom, she found Lois slumped over her desk, asleep. She gently shook.
"Lois, I'm here." She sat down at her desk as Lois picked up her head from the desk.
"What time is it?" Lois looked blankly at her clock. "Oh Shit!"
"What?"
"We're supposed to meet this source in ten minutes, on the other side of town." Lois grabbed her purse and ran to the Elevator.
"Don't' worry. I'll get us there." Chloe smiled as she pushed the button for the ground floor.
"I'm tired of your excuses!" A loud voice boomed over the speaker system in the blank, white room. In the center of it, a man was on his knees. "Why haven't you been able to complete your project?"
"Sir, no one can figure out why the clones keep dying. We're doing all that we can." The man trembled as he kept his head pointed at the floor. "And, every effort we've made to get what we need from LuthorCorp, something stops us."
"No more!" The voice boomed, once again. "I'm tired of hearing about this…Superman!"
"But…"
"Take him out and kill him. I don't want to see his face again." The man was then drug from the room, kicking and screaming. When the door shut, the room darkened again.
"Mr. Luthor, there's someone at the door for you." Lex's butler had just gotten to work to find Lex at his desk, already checking the markets in Europe.
"Who is it?" Lex looked up from his computer.
Before he could respond, Clark came into the room, or more correctly, Superman came into the room. "We need to talk, Mr. Luthor."
"Superman, to what do I owe this visit?" Lex got up from behind his desk and made his way over to Clark.
"To get directly to the point, I need to know if LuthorCorp is working on a human cloning project." He ignored Lex's offered hand, intent on his question.
Lex was slightly surprised by the forwardness of Superman's question, but he quickly recovered. "Superman, I can assure you that LuthorCorp is obeying the ban on human cloning that was initiated last year. The only project in the area of cloning that we have in the works deals with the cloning of livestock. We've been publicizing that for years."
"Well, Mr. Luthor, it seems that someone is interested in something you have going on at LuthorCorp. I just found out that the men who have tried to kidnap you and Miss Lang are into some pretty serious, and definitely illegal, experiments in human cloning." Clark noticed Lex's already pale face turn an even more ghostly shade of white.
"You can't be serious. That's barbaric." Lex sat back down at his desk, as Clark came closer to him. "What could they possibly want with me, or my company?"
"I'm not entirely sure, Mr. Luthor, but are you sure that there's nothing in your ongoing projects that could be useful to these criminals?" Clark sat down across from his friend.
"Nothing, Superman, but I will definitely let you know if I find anything out, can you do the same for me?" Lex reached his hand out to Clark.
"Certainly. Give my best to your sister, please." Clark shook the man's shaking hand. "You may want to double your security for the time being as well."
"Already done." Lex breathed deeply as Clark turned to leave. "When can I expect you again?"
"Tomorrow. Hopefully, by then I will have more answers. Do you mind if I…" Clark indicated the Window directly behind Lex's desk.
"By all means. Thanks, again for the heads-up." Lex opened the window and Clark prepared to fly away.
"Just be careful, these are some very, very sick people." At that, Clark was off, leaving Lex alone, behind his desk, looking out into the morning sky.
"This isn't going to be good," Lex said as he turned back to his desk.
"What isn't going to be good?" Lana was up earlier than Lex had expected. "Did I just miss someone?"
"Are you sure he said that he'd be here at six?" Chloe and Lois had been waiting in an alley behind a bar in Suicide Slum for a little over an hour. At first, the bums had been rather benign, still sleeping off the previous night's drinking, but several of them had begun to awaken, stirring in their piles of newspapers. Some had even gotten up and dug through the trash looking for their breakfast.
"He said he'd be here, and he's never stood me up before." Lois ducked back into Chloe's Jeep and took another sip of her coffee. "This just isn't like him, not at all."
Just then, one of the bums knocked on the window of the Jeep. Chloe and Lois nearly jumped out of their seats. "You ladies waiting for someone in particular?"
It took Lois a moment, but she recovered enough to respond to the man's question. "Yeah, I'm looking for Jack O'Bannon. He spends most of his nights here, you know him?"
"Black Jack, yeah, I know him. Also know that he aint never gonna show his face around here again. Not after what the Ninja's did to him."
Chloe and Lois both looked at each other in disbelief. Chloe was the first to speak. "Ninjas?"
"Yep, Ninja's. Grabbed him last night not long after most everyone was asleep. I saw them, but luckily they didn't see me, else they'd a gutted me for sure." The man mad motions that Lois and Chloe could only guess were supposed to mimic those of a Ninja.
"Any idea what they did with him?" Lois squeezed her way back into the conversation.
"Well, they threw him into the back of a big, black van and drove off. I'm guessin' they took him wherenever they took the rest." The m an leaned up against the Jeep and seemed to get a tad depressed by the story he was telling.
"You mean you've seen these men before?" Lois reached into her purse and grabbed her note pad.
"Sure have, they're always around these parts, grabbing people and wees never bees seein' thems again. Several me friends been taken. Miss 'em." Tears began to form in the man's eyes.
Before either Chloe or Lois could respond, something in front of the car caught their eyes. It was Superman. "Either of you ladies have anything new on the disappearances in these parts?"
Chloe smiled as she rolled down her window so that they could hear him better. The homeless man fled in fear back to his bed of newspapers and cardboard boxes. Lois was also sitting in her seat, smiling as Clark approached the vehicle. "Well, we were supposed to be meeting one of Lois's sources down here, but it seems the bad guys got to him first. At least that's what that guy over there told us."
"Well, why don't we get you two back to the Planet and Clark can fill you in on the rest. I already talked to him before coming to look for you two. In the mean time, I've got some more investigating to do."
"Sure thing Superman." Chloe winked at her lover, hoping that Lois didn't see her.
Lois was not to be outdone by her partner in crime. "We'll see you later then?"
"Definitely, Miss Lane." Clark soared back into the sky as Chloe started up the car and pulled out of the alley, turning towards downtown and the Daily Planet building.
The moment Clark heard the word clones, he turned to Chloe and told her that he had to get to Gotham and see something. Five minutes later, he was standing in the Batcave.
"I hate it when you do that!" Bruce stood up from his chair when he heard the swoosh behind him, only to see Clark standing behind him.
"I'm sorry, Bruce. I just couldn't believe what you told me. I had to see it for myself."
"Well, let's go then." Bruce got up and went into the dressing his dressing chamber. Two minutes later, he emerged in the Batsuit, greeted by Clark in his own costume. "Ok, I still don't recognize you the first time I see you."
"Well, that makes it official. If Batman can't tell who I am, then no one can."
Clark's smile caused a rare reciprocation from the Dark Knight. "Come on, we'll take my car."
Inside of fifteen minutes, they were both standing outside an abandoned warehouse in Gotham's industrial district. The building looked like it hadn't been used in over a decade, rusted walls, broken windows. Bruce opened the door and he and Clark walked into the center of the room.
"I couldn't believe that I didn't notice it the first time, but there is a trap door in the floor here." He reached down and brushed dirt away from what looked like a seam in the tiles of the floor.
"I can't see anything with my x-ray vision. The floor must be lined with lead."
"Yeah, they are. Most likely to prevent anyone from detecting some of their equipment." Bruce began to descend the ladder that lead down into the hole.
Soon, he and Clark were both at the bottom, faced with a very dark corridor. Bruce made his way down the side, seemingly completely comfortable in the dark. Clark walked confidently behind him. When they'd gone several yards, Bruce opened a door to their left. Behind it, a horrible sight greeted Clark. Floating, suspended in tanks in the middle of the room were what looked like young men, all connected to various machines. Bruce walked up to one of the nearby computer banks and began punching buttons. On the screen in front of him, appeared an illustration of the cloning process.
"From what I've been able to ascertain so far, Superman, these clones aren't viable. They were all produced and grown, but they're not able to survive past this age. There's something going wrong in the developmental process, and they haven't been able to figure it out yet." Bruce punched up the monitors for the various tanks. "From these readings, these five have been like this for just over a week. They're brain dead, being kept alive by the instruments attached to them."
"There's no idea who is behind this?" Clark walked over to one of the tanks and put his hand against the glass.
"None. There are only two companies in the world, which I know of, who have even played with the idea of cloning humans. Neither has announced any advances, and one actually announced that they were abandoning their project because of difficulties they had experienced in the animal testing with Primates. That was STAR Labs, and the other was Wayne Enterprises. Wayne Enterprises is still in the early stages, having only managed to clone livestock. They're years from a viable test with Primates. They're being responsible." He joined Clark next to the tanks.
"Well, it looks like there's a new player in the game." Clark took his hand away from the tanks. "And, it looks like they're in the lead."
"I'm not totally sure who it is, but I have my suspicions." Bruce made his way to the door, following Clark's lead.
"What other company or group has the technology and resources to implement a project like this?" Clark shut the door and sealed it with his heat- vision.
"Two real options: the government, or LuthorCorp." They had returned to the warehouse.
"I think it is time that I finally paid Lex the visit I've been meaning to." Before Bruce could even respond, Clark was gone.
Chloe hated it when Clark had to run out on her like this. She knew that what he was doing was bigger than both of them, but her heart was still broken every time he walked out the door, or in his case, flew out the window. She'd been laying in her bed for the past four hours, trying to sleep, unable to rest. Finally, she got up and made her way back into the living room. Before she could sit down, the phone rang.
"Hello?" Chloe's voice was soft and sleepy.
"Chloe, it's Lois." Lois sounded like she'd never been to sleep that night.
"Lois, it's 4:30 in the morning. What do you want?" Chloe wiped her face with her hands, trying to wake herself.
"I think I might have found something about our stories. The only problem is, that I need some help. I tried calling Clark, but he wasn't home." Chloe finally noticed that Lois seemed excited.
"Where are you?" Chloe was finally most of the way awake.
"Well, right now I'm at the office, but someone just called me, saying that they have some information about the disappearances in Suicide Slum and they said that it has something to do with the Mayor."
"You just sit tight, and I'll be there in about thirty minutes." Chloe got up and made her way back into her room to grab some clothes. "Don't budge until I get there."
As she hung up the phone, she grabbed a pen and some paper to leave a note for Clark. Five minutes later, she was dressed and on her way to the office. When she arrived, she found the building fairly deserted. Perry had given keys to both she and Clark. He told them that they'd surely need them at some point, Lois always did. Chloe finally understood what he had meant by that.
The elevator ride up to the newsroom floor was quiet, the only sounds besides her breathing was the dings of the elevator as it passes the various floors. When she got off at the newsroom, she found Lois slumped over her desk, asleep. She gently shook.
"Lois, I'm here." She sat down at her desk as Lois picked up her head from the desk.
"What time is it?" Lois looked blankly at her clock. "Oh Shit!"
"What?"
"We're supposed to meet this source in ten minutes, on the other side of town." Lois grabbed her purse and ran to the Elevator.
"Don't' worry. I'll get us there." Chloe smiled as she pushed the button for the ground floor.
"I'm tired of your excuses!" A loud voice boomed over the speaker system in the blank, white room. In the center of it, a man was on his knees. "Why haven't you been able to complete your project?"
"Sir, no one can figure out why the clones keep dying. We're doing all that we can." The man trembled as he kept his head pointed at the floor. "And, every effort we've made to get what we need from LuthorCorp, something stops us."
"No more!" The voice boomed, once again. "I'm tired of hearing about this…Superman!"
"But…"
"Take him out and kill him. I don't want to see his face again." The man was then drug from the room, kicking and screaming. When the door shut, the room darkened again.
"Mr. Luthor, there's someone at the door for you." Lex's butler had just gotten to work to find Lex at his desk, already checking the markets in Europe.
"Who is it?" Lex looked up from his computer.
Before he could respond, Clark came into the room, or more correctly, Superman came into the room. "We need to talk, Mr. Luthor."
"Superman, to what do I owe this visit?" Lex got up from behind his desk and made his way over to Clark.
"To get directly to the point, I need to know if LuthorCorp is working on a human cloning project." He ignored Lex's offered hand, intent on his question.
Lex was slightly surprised by the forwardness of Superman's question, but he quickly recovered. "Superman, I can assure you that LuthorCorp is obeying the ban on human cloning that was initiated last year. The only project in the area of cloning that we have in the works deals with the cloning of livestock. We've been publicizing that for years."
"Well, Mr. Luthor, it seems that someone is interested in something you have going on at LuthorCorp. I just found out that the men who have tried to kidnap you and Miss Lang are into some pretty serious, and definitely illegal, experiments in human cloning." Clark noticed Lex's already pale face turn an even more ghostly shade of white.
"You can't be serious. That's barbaric." Lex sat back down at his desk, as Clark came closer to him. "What could they possibly want with me, or my company?"
"I'm not entirely sure, Mr. Luthor, but are you sure that there's nothing in your ongoing projects that could be useful to these criminals?" Clark sat down across from his friend.
"Nothing, Superman, but I will definitely let you know if I find anything out, can you do the same for me?" Lex reached his hand out to Clark.
"Certainly. Give my best to your sister, please." Clark shook the man's shaking hand. "You may want to double your security for the time being as well."
"Already done." Lex breathed deeply as Clark turned to leave. "When can I expect you again?"
"Tomorrow. Hopefully, by then I will have more answers. Do you mind if I…" Clark indicated the Window directly behind Lex's desk.
"By all means. Thanks, again for the heads-up." Lex opened the window and Clark prepared to fly away.
"Just be careful, these are some very, very sick people." At that, Clark was off, leaving Lex alone, behind his desk, looking out into the morning sky.
"This isn't going to be good," Lex said as he turned back to his desk.
"What isn't going to be good?" Lana was up earlier than Lex had expected. "Did I just miss someone?"
"Are you sure he said that he'd be here at six?" Chloe and Lois had been waiting in an alley behind a bar in Suicide Slum for a little over an hour. At first, the bums had been rather benign, still sleeping off the previous night's drinking, but several of them had begun to awaken, stirring in their piles of newspapers. Some had even gotten up and dug through the trash looking for their breakfast.
"He said he'd be here, and he's never stood me up before." Lois ducked back into Chloe's Jeep and took another sip of her coffee. "This just isn't like him, not at all."
Just then, one of the bums knocked on the window of the Jeep. Chloe and Lois nearly jumped out of their seats. "You ladies waiting for someone in particular?"
It took Lois a moment, but she recovered enough to respond to the man's question. "Yeah, I'm looking for Jack O'Bannon. He spends most of his nights here, you know him?"
"Black Jack, yeah, I know him. Also know that he aint never gonna show his face around here again. Not after what the Ninja's did to him."
Chloe and Lois both looked at each other in disbelief. Chloe was the first to speak. "Ninjas?"
"Yep, Ninja's. Grabbed him last night not long after most everyone was asleep. I saw them, but luckily they didn't see me, else they'd a gutted me for sure." The man mad motions that Lois and Chloe could only guess were supposed to mimic those of a Ninja.
"Any idea what they did with him?" Lois squeezed her way back into the conversation.
"Well, they threw him into the back of a big, black van and drove off. I'm guessin' they took him wherenever they took the rest." The m an leaned up against the Jeep and seemed to get a tad depressed by the story he was telling.
"You mean you've seen these men before?" Lois reached into her purse and grabbed her note pad.
"Sure have, they're always around these parts, grabbing people and wees never bees seein' thems again. Several me friends been taken. Miss 'em." Tears began to form in the man's eyes.
Before either Chloe or Lois could respond, something in front of the car caught their eyes. It was Superman. "Either of you ladies have anything new on the disappearances in these parts?"
Chloe smiled as she rolled down her window so that they could hear him better. The homeless man fled in fear back to his bed of newspapers and cardboard boxes. Lois was also sitting in her seat, smiling as Clark approached the vehicle. "Well, we were supposed to be meeting one of Lois's sources down here, but it seems the bad guys got to him first. At least that's what that guy over there told us."
"Well, why don't we get you two back to the Planet and Clark can fill you in on the rest. I already talked to him before coming to look for you two. In the mean time, I've got some more investigating to do."
"Sure thing Superman." Chloe winked at her lover, hoping that Lois didn't see her.
Lois was not to be outdone by her partner in crime. "We'll see you later then?"
"Definitely, Miss Lane." Clark soared back into the sky as Chloe started up the car and pulled out of the alley, turning towards downtown and the Daily Planet building.
