Lab 8

Late the third night, driven by the morbid curiosity of insomnia, Clark wandered over to the lab wings. He'd spent a wonderful afternoon in the nanotech and laser labs, listening to geeks happily arguing geekiness in a language he was only barely beginning to comprehend, feeling his mind turning on more completely than it had ever done before, even when the spaceship's AI forced its programming into him.

That hadn't been fun at all, he decided in retrospect -- that had hurt, as if flooding his brain with alien knowledge was more important to those who had sent him to this planet than letting him learn on his own, allowing him his own identity or mental integrity. To the science teams here, though, he was just another bright curious kid to be fondly, patiently indulged, and given whatever toys to play with that he wanted and that they judged he could safely handle.

(Kal-El had momentarily surfaced with a snort at the thought. Like there was anything this pitiful planet could do to stop him! Then he remembered Nicole, and Lake, and Dylana, and the unknown Baron John. No telling how many of these scientists and engineers and technicians were also Specials. And even if they weren't, he was beginning to accept the idea that human minds, at least, could do things that even he would never be able to.)

He'd found an out-of-phase adjustment in the laser replicators that six people were cursing at by looking straight into them, much to the consternation of one experimenter, until another one mentioned admiringly that they'd often tried to teach Nicole how to do that with no success.

He'd courteously lifted a two-ton microcontroller so that an impatient mechanic could fiddle with the interior without having to schedule downtime and a platform, and listened with interest to the mutterings coming from underneath. The mechanic finally remembered that the machine he was working on was not being supported by a machine itself, and poked his head out to ask considerately if he were getting tired. Clark, who was holding a soda in one hand and the whole apparatus up in the other, while leaning against it with his legs crossed and reading from a screen across the room, just grinned and told him that this was a lot easier than fixing the tractors.

He'd offered to use his heat vision to try to help with the buckminsterfullerene transformation, eliciting an excited round of speculation and enthusiastic applause from the lab techs when he melted or set on fire fifteen thousand dollars of equipment and produced nearly a tenth of a gram of carbon-60 buckyballs.

He'd spent an hour in Nicole's "playroom," grunting and straining at her weights, and decided that she was still stronger than he was. He was actually being tempted to work out for the first time in his life. (He suspected that he was being monitored -- true -- but didn't much care. What difference did it make to them whether he could lift ten tons or twenty?)

Wynter had chided him for falling behind in his tests. ("For pity's sake, Clark, it's only the faster-than-light cone!") He'd apologized by spending six hours after dinner going through material on the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, though the former depressed him and the latter gave him a headache trying to keep up with who did what and why they did it when they did it. So now it was after midnight, he'd already finished Asimov's Foundation Trilogy and most of the Robot series (Clark found himself sympathizing mightily with Daneel and Giskard), and his apartment held less appeal for him than the dangers of forbidden fruit.

The Labs 6-through-10 wing looked like all the other lab wings. Heavily reinforced walls of various metals and/or concrete / plastic, depending on what experiments were being conducted and what protection was advised or interference protected against. Pipes of pressurized gases and various fluids, all well insulated and monitored and alarmed. (Clark had met both a former NASA engineer and an industrial ammonia boiler plant operator down here, and both were grudgingly admiring of the safety precautions.) Electrical lines inside crawl spaces that reminded Clark of the, what were they called on Star Trek? Jeffries tubes, right. They might as well be handling antimatter. Clark wasn't sure yet that they weren't.

He paused at the hallway leading to the hazardous-chemistry lab section. Lab 8 looked no different from any of the others, from here, even with x-ray vision. Lead and stronger inert metals lined and dotted all of them. He hesitated, then, in the rebellious chafing against any restrictions that is typical of independent-minded people on this planet and probably any other, summoned up annoyance at being told he would have to be escorted like some kid. He grimaced, then grinned, at the thought of what his parents -- his human parents, and somehow it didn't hurt so much any more to think of them that way -- would have said. Clark Kent, if we told you not to shave the cat, not to put handprints in the wet paint, and not to put meteor rocks up your nose, you would immediately go and try to do all three.

He stepped through the entrance and was startled at the soft "bong" and voice that issued from the ceiling. "Clark Kent, Kal-El. Please summon your preferred escort. If you wish, I can notify any on-duty personnel to accompany you."

Clark spun around. Wow, they weren't kidding about personnel recognition sensors. He didn't see any cameras. Though the perimeter of the doorway was suspiciously warm. "I don't need -- I mean, I was just looking."

"Access to this wing is restricted because of the hazardous nature of the materials stored and tested here."

"Are you a computer?" Clark stayed where he was, but decided to have some fun.

"If you wish to challenge me to a Turing test, then please do so from outside the hazardous areas."

Turing test? Aha! Clark sat down where he was, grinning. No doubt any security computers that Wynter had a hand in would know who he was and why he was forbidden here, and could probably outwit him, but how would a human being on security detail react?

"What if I refuse?"

Almost as if in answer, two men and a woman appeared at the doorway. One was obviously fresh out of sleep, but the other two had the pleased expressions of people on late-night boredom details who had been given something interesting to do.

"Hey, Kal-El." The woman spoke casually, with that unnervingly practice-perfect Kryptonian accent.

"Kent, what the hell are you trying to pull now?" Yawning and rubbing sleep-crusted eyes. "If you wanted to run some kind of lab work, couldn't you wait until first shift?"

"Oh, for -- " the big guy looked around, frowned, and walked through the doorway, which Clark now saw to be thick with sensors as they activated. "Kid, this ain't no place for you to be. Why didn't you just ask for somebody to get whatever you wanted?"

Clark shrugged. "I just wanted to look around." And while I didn't deliberately set out to test your security, this is very interesting. Three people on immediate call?

"Go look around the biology labs," the sleepy one advised. "Or the video room. I don't think we're doing any meteor-mutant viruses or showing Day of the Triffids this week."

Clark stood up, feeling his stomach tighten but his resolve harden. "I want," he said steadily, "To look in Lab 8."

The three stared at him. Then they looked at each other. Then back at him. The smaller man sighed and took out his mini-phone. "John, our newest arrival is a masochist."

"So I see." The Baron's growl held no trace of sleep. "Can you handle him, Carlston?"

"No prob, sir," said the bigger man.

Handle me? Clark thought. He peered at the big man. Was Carlston a Special? He was obviously strong, but his body density didn't look like anything unusual.

"Very well. Kal-El, if you so much as blink twice, Carlston will pick you up and carry you outside and dump you in the fountain on your ass. Don't break his arm or anything, he's under orders to do so, and he'd rather piss off you than me. Roger that?"

"Um, roger, sir." The Baron's voice had that indefinable air of command that brooked of no defiance. No wonder even Lake answered to John.

"Myriam, you have lead code access. Don't let him rip the doors off any of the vaults, it'll take hours to repair. If he's actually bound and determined to prove that he's mortal by making himself thoroughly sick, just because it's there and children can't resist temptation, give him up to five seconds. Then dump him in the fountain."

"Understood, sir."

"Jacques, I know you're tempted to queer the lock, but it won't do any good. Nothing in there is built to Nicole's specs. Just play cards against him later."

The sleepy man smiled and nodded. "I'll keep that in mind, sir."

"Good. Actually, Carlston, get him to the sun room if he passes out; medical can take it from there. Questions? Thanks. Out."

Clark blinked at his three escorts, trying to get used to the idea of being treated as both someone allowed to make his own decisions (children, hah!), and someone fragile to be protected at all costs. The resources they were expending on his safety alone were beyond his imagining. And John just...? He cleared his throat. "Shall we? And, uh," it felt weird to be saying it, considering what he was about to do, but he owed them this. "Thanks."

All three of them had to give access authorization codes to get the door to Lab 8 open, and the computer challenged them every step of the way, repeatedly pointing out the presence of "vulnerable personnel." Clark whistled to himself. When he had been a small child, he had felt safe and secure in his mother's arms, but that had been an illusion. Safety at all was an illusion in life. Nothing could protect him from himself, he knew that now. If anything could come close, though, Special Operations could.

It was so tempting ... to stay here among people who called him Kal-El as easily and casually as Clark, to be where very nearly nothing threatened or could hurt him, to be not only allowed but encouraged to push himself to his own full potential, to have friends he didn't have to lie to. To have friends who could take care of themselves. To have friends, period.

But something inside him told him that the easy way out was a cheat, a lie all on its own. It would be worse than accepting Lex's money and becoming his whore. It would be lazier than just sitting on his ass and doing nothing when there were people he could help with a flick of the finger. It would be a betrayal of both the parents who had given their lives and everything they had been to send him here, and the parents who had spent their whole lives hiding and denying their friends and family in order to raise and care for him.

It would be living a lie in a whole different way, a denial of who -- and what -- he was. It would cost him his soul. Cyrus had clarified that for him without realizing it. Bill had gone through hell, both physically and mentally, to acknowledge his own personal truth, and he had come out the other side because he had been willing to sacrifice himself for others..

Clark wasn't quite sure what his future should be, yet, but he knew his destiny wasn't to stay safe and hidden. If Whitney and a million others like him, ordinary people who were heroes when heroes were needed, could turn their lives over to service for their people and their countries and their world, then by whatever swear words Kryptonians used, so could he.

That was, he realized, part of why he had needed to be here in this deadly place tonight. Not just to prove something. To discover something.

The door to Lab 8 swung open, and Clark held his breath.

Nothing. The place was as clean as his mother's kitchen (Martha, his mother for his whole life that he remembered, said the background voice with a pang -- Clark's mom, Clark, not Kal-El) after one of her cleaning frenzies, as sterile as any other lab, as harmless as Lana's room (minus the old green necklace and the horrid pinkness). He walked in, slowly, scanning with wide-open paranoid senses. A stacked line of small labeled vaults. Another line of matching labels on the file cabinets. Computer terminals and various instruments here and there. A faint chemical smell from acids and bases and detergents. A lab. Big deal.

He turned to Myriam (Doctor Delarissa, he remembered belatedly) and inclined his head. "If you please? I don't want to have to rip a door off if it causes a problem."

She sighed. "G. Gordon Liddy has nothing on you, and that is not a compliment. Command, computer, vault one," the one nearest the door, "six two one five oh, level three, authorization green red blue white red, voice ID, check."

It took all three of them again, and the computer fought them even harder, until finally Jacques did something by passing his hand over the lock. "Five seconds," he said softly. The heavy door unlocked and opened a crack. Clark felt faintly queasy, but that was nerves, not radiation, since the small door was still all but shut. He closed his eyes for a long second and took a shallow, deliberate breath. He could do this. He had done it before.

He needed to do this. He took one step forward and pulled it open.

The pain hit first, like a solid wave, ripping fire in every nerve. Clark gasped and staggered. There was never really any way to prepare for it. He could brace himself, and fight not to show the terrible effects -- he'd had to, more than a few times -- but it took so much out of him just to keep his expression blank that there had to be a really, really good reason to make the effort. Like if Lana were watching him. Or Lex. Or Lionel.

His gut muscles convulsed from the shock. Icy sweat ran down his face with the rising fever. Radiation poisoning added its more debilitating nausea as it built. The room swam around him through the pounding in his head, and his vision faded to a cold semi-conscious tunnel of gray and green. His legs gave way. He fell to his hands and knees with a low moan, holding his stomach, no longer aware of anything except the poison that was killing him. He wanted very much to pass out and get it over with. Self-descriptions like "idiot, moron, stupid" flitted distantly through the agony and life-draining weakness leaching at his mind.

Them the torture stopped, just like that. The sound of locks clicking shut got through the crippling dizziness still blurring his senses about the same time that he realized he had been picked up like a child and was being carried out of the room and wing at a run. "I'm okay, I'm okay," he managed. "Put me down. I just need a few seconds. On solid ground."

Carlston stopped and lowered him sitting to the floor, holding him upright. "You sure you're not gonna be sick or pass out? You still look pretty bad."

Clark put one hand to the floor to keep it from moving around and rubbed his eyes with the other. The aches were already all but gone. "No, I'm fine." How many times had he excused himself with that lie? How many of them had believed it? Carlston clearly didn't. But the debilitating effects did fade pretty fast, even at night, when his superfast metabolism had to draw on internal resources to heal without the restoring power of direct sunlight.

It was tempting to go to the sunlamp room. Would that be admitting to a weakness, or flaunting a strength? Clark sighed. Didn't matter. Either way, it was just something else that made him different.

Then again, Dylana stole electricity right out of the wiring. Hah. Why did they even have a sunlamp room, anyway? Were there other solar-powered mutants here? Clark snorted to himself as his mind began to come back online, still not risking a deep breath quite yet, but regaining his sense of humor. More likely, it was because most of the techno-geeks -- their own words for themselves -- never went outside, and had to be ordered to get their vitamin D activation dose while still connected to their beloved labs and instruments and computers.

Jacques and Myriam came up behind them, Lab 8 and the 6 through 10 wing both sealed and guarded again, and the computer no doubt in a bad mood at being defeated in its purpose. Clark anticipated a tough time with the tests in the morning. The AI team included some people who were not averse to turning their creativity to vengeance.

"Are we all done with the craziness? I still have orders to toss you in the fountain." Carlston was clearly going from unhappy to on the P.O.'d side.

Clark smiled, a little shaky but under control. "That might not be such a bad idea."

"I'll @#$%^! say," a new voice put in. Clark glanced up to see Cyrus in his underwear, long hair nearly as unkempt as Wynter's, madder that five wet hens and one newly-woken bear. "Clark, if you ever pull a stunt like that again, I will HIT you. I could hear you scream from a mile away. I don't even want to think what condition Randal is in right now, unless he blocked you as soon as you came up with this hare-brained idea."

"I didn't scream," Clark protested meekly.

Cyrus tapped his head. "Ohhh, yes you did. Come on, Carl, we owe this dork a dunking. And we gotta figure out a proper penalty for when Jacques creams him at poker."

"Hmph." Clark got to his feet, almost completely recovered, but still subdued at the display of concern from the four people now surrounding him. "X-ray vision, remember?"

The other four gave him mysterious smiles. "Won't help."

With a shout of "One! Two! Three!" Jacques and Carlston (Clark had objected to being carried again, but remembering John's orders, allowed himself to be dragged) swung a giggling Clark into the central fountain, eliciting unappreciative comments from several windows around about it being a little early in the morning, y'know? Cyrus jumped in on top of him and put a foot on him, at which dare Clark stood up and balanced Bill upright and overhead by said foot on one hand, like a trained seal with a ball on his nose. Myriam winked at Cyrus and snuck up behind Kal-El and rubbed against him, causing Clark to yeep and drop Bill, who, having been forewarned, did a credible back flip and landed pretty well in the water. Jacques rummaged in the pool for a penny and sat back on the ledge, flipping it idly.

"So what the hell was that all about, kid?"

Clark sat down heavily in the water and wiped his forehead, for all the good that did. "I'm not sure I can explain it. Are you guys Specials?"

Jacques grinned, and Myriam raised a finger. "Eidetic memory, clairvoyance, a psycho-telekinetic talent for making machines do what I want. I was lucky, my parents thought it was nothing worse than a girl engineer in the family. John found me when I started getting strange results out of all the instruments in college. He wanted me to work on the cold fusion team instruments, but I seem to be psi-blind on that particular subject."

Carlston shook his head. "Nope, just ex-of world-wide wrestling. Closest I ever came to Warrior Angel was wearing a mask. The Baron picked me up because I liked to read. And knit. Not something you'd expect in a smackdown. No Talents, though."

"I think my mom would consider both of those talents," Clark said mildly. My mom, he thought suddenly. My biological mother probably doesn't even know what knitting is.

"You're avoiding the question." Cyrus was sitting on the edge of the pool too, and though he was obviously shivering, his attention was focused completely on Clark.

"Want a warm-up?" Clark offered, knowing with a sinking feeling that Bill had him there, game, set, and match. "I can keep the heat vision on low power, you know...."

Sure enough, Cyrus shook his head. "Not until after you answer the question."

Clark looked down and swallowed. That the empath would rather be cold and wet than let Clark off the hook told him just how much he needed to do this. "I feel kind of stupid, saying this to you guys. You know all about what it's like to be different. Alone. Wondering what your purpose was. Why you were blessed with this oddness, or cursed with it. But my whole life, I had to live a lie, and still be lectured every day that I should be honest and straightforward. I had to be careful not to use any unusual abilities where someone would see, and I had to use what I have or watch people suffer or die. I'm a farm kid, and I'm from another planet. Hypocrisy drives me crazy. And hypocrisy is practically my middle name.

"And I don't have any choice in the matter. Those awful rocks are the only time when who I am, what I am, is totally clear, that I'm not lying to myself or anyone else. It's also the only time that I'm not an invulnerable alien," he caught himself before the word "freak" slipped in, "who can't be hurt, or can't understand what other people go through, or can't even have any contact with the rest of the world. The only time I feel ... normal."

Silence all the way around the fountain. The depth of emotional pain that had driven Kal-El to try to gain acceptance through physical pain would have killed Cyrus if he hadn't had training at Randal's feet. He swallowed, and moved over to touch Clark. Clark shrank away from him, knowing that the contact was unpleasant for the empath, not knowing that to leave Kal-El in this state hurt the healer far worse. "I'm not going to force it, Kal," he said quietly. "I can't, not when you're putting up walls like this. I'm not nearly as good as Randal, and I hope I'd kill myself before I'd live with the power or even the thought of being able to rape your mind the way a psychotic psi-fire like Lake could do."

That was the wrong thing to say, and Clark and Bill flinched simultaneously. Because Clark did have very nearly that kind of power, and the thought that he might someday use it in such a fashion was exactly what did terrify him.

Bill swallowed carefully and recovered by sheer force of will. "You think I don't understand? I've been there. I can only offer. But I would appreciate it if you'd accept."

Clark looked up at him and fought back tears that even being soaking wet would not disguise. "You're -- I mean, thanks for trying. But I don't belong here. I don't belong anywhere. Nothing can change that, not you or anyone else. I'm. Not. Human."

"Shall we play a game, my young friend?" Jacques broke in casually, still flipping his penny. "Heads says you're human. Tails says you're not."

"What...?"

The broad grins of the other two clued Clark in that he was being taken, but he settled himself and surrendered with a mental sigh to the old tired pretension at normalcy. It pushed the hurt away, sometimes, for a little while. "OK, heads and tails it is. Best two out of three?"

Jacques met his eyes, and Clark realized for the first time they were a startling amber, like a cat's. "How about one out of a hundred? If you get one tails, you may declare yourself not human." He handed Clark the penny. "Someone keep score here."

After the penny came up heads 88 times in a row, Clark shook his head and gave up, acquiescing to Bill's soul-warming power.