Chapter 17: Making An Exit

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"How much further?" I whispered to the Atom. Light from a ventilator grill illuminated the shaft.

"It's not much further, Diana. Keep your shirt on." He turned to look over his shoulder at where I crawled behind him. He froze for a moment and gulped.

Hunched over as I was, I realized, I was showing off a considerable amount of cleavage. I smiled.

"Ah, figuratively speaking, of course," he choked out.

"It's not me," I told him. "Connelly is starting to hyperventilate. I think he's slightly claustrophobic. And if Zabrowski's swearing gets much louder, I'm afraid someone will hear him."

"We're almost there," Atom assured me, looking anywhere but at me. He turned back and started forward again. I crawled along behind him, the two congressmen following me, with Batman bringing up the rear.

We came to another grill. The Atom looked out, then turned to me and grinned, thumb up. He scampered past to make room for me. I looked out the grill, to see a room similar to – but much smaller than – the room with the Parasites. This one had only seven tubes, four occupied, and one soldier sitting at a console.

I shifted around, not easy in the confined space, braced my feet against the grill and pushed. The grill popped off and landed with a clang half way across the room. I pushed off against the far wall of the ventilator shaft and popped out, myself. The soldier on duty looked completely confounded. Then he jumped up and turned to run, but he was too late and I grabbed him by the back of his collar. I held him up so his feet dangled just off the ground and turned to look around.

This was where the Luthor clones had been grown, no question about that. Four were still here, fully grown and looking exactly like the President, except that one had a deep burn on its upper right chest. The other three tubes were empty. I looked around for security cameras, but saw none.

Connelly had climbed down and was bent over, his hands on his knees, breathing loudly. Zabrowski slid backwards out of the vent. Batman eeled out after him, then stood, straightened his general's uniform importantly and speared the soldier with his gaze.

"You!" he barked. "Tell me what's going on in this room. Now!"

"Sir, this is a top-secret area. Unless you have clearance…."

Batman stepped up to the soldier. Raised off the ground as he was, the soldier was on eye-level with him. Batman glanced at the soldier's sleeve, taking in his two stripes. Without his paunch, Batman's uniform hung loosely on his frame, but it did not detract from his aura of command.

"What's your name, corporal?"

"Jason Ridder, sir."

"Corporal Ridder, I am General Douglas Peabody of the Inspector General's office. I have been ordered by the Inspector General to inspect of this facility. Every inch of this facility. We suspected there were illegal activities going on. Or did you think it is legal to go around cloning the President of the United States?"

"Uh…"

"Quiet. I have already interrogated your superior, Colonel Artenberger. Now I want confirmation from you on exactly what the hell's going on here."

"Sir, I'm not supposed to talk about it."

"Corporal," Batman's voice went dangerously quiet, "up to this point, you can probably get away with the excuse of just following orders. That won't cut it anymore, unless you are claiming you received orders from a higher authority than the Inspector General. Well?"

"No, sir. What do you want to know, sir?"

"Who knows of this room?"

"There are three other techs, our immediate commander – Lieutenant O'Connor – Colonel Artenberger and Colonel Davis before him. There is a civilian doctor who has worked with the clones. I don't know his name."

"Tall, oriental, wears glasses?"

"Yes, sir."

"No one else?"

"No one I am aware of, sir."

"How long has this operation been going on?"

"Eighteen months."

That meant it had started up within a month or two of Luthor's inauguration. I looked at the congressmen and saw they understood the implications.

"How many clones have been produced?"

"Seven, sir, including the four still here."

"Artenberger said six," Batman snapped.

"One was before his time, maybe he doesn't know about it."

"Tell me about that first clone. When did it leave?"

"Five months ago. That civilian doctor came here and operated on it and then it was shipped out. I don't know where they go, sir."

"That would have been right about when The Daily Planet broke the story that Luthor knew in advance about the attack by the Imperiex probes."

"Funny you should mention that, sir. We got the order to rush the completion of one clone a couple of days before I read about that in the newspaper. The clone was shipped out the day before the President's news conference, the one where he proved he didn't know."

"So that's how he defeated the Martian Manhunter's mind probe," I told the congressmen. "Of course the clone knew nothing of the attack."

I could see that both the corporal and Batman had already guessed the truth. The corporal went pale.

"Maybe, I shouldn't say anything more, sir. I mean the President; he outranks even the Inspector General. If he's behind all this…"

"Do you know he's behind it?" growled Batman.

"No, but the sergeant just said…"

"The sergeant is speculating. The court martial you'll be facing if you don't answer my questions is no speculation. What happened to the other two clones?"

The corporal glanced over his shoulder at the door into the room. He said, "They went out early this morning. That doctor was here a couple of days ago to operate on them and then we shipped them out. As I said, sir, I don't know where they go."

"Anything special about either clone?"

The corporal glanced at the door again. "One was burned exactly like the clone in tube 4, if that's what you mean, sir."

I sidled towards the door.

"Why do you keep glancing at the door?" demanded Batman. "According to what you and the Colonel both said, no one in security should even know about this room."

"Actually…"

With a loud bam!, the door blew off its hinges and flew across the room. I barely ducked out of the way in time, pulling Senator Connelly – who had followed me curiously – with me. The door imbedded itself in the opposite wall.

In the doorway stood a Bizarro.

"… we have our own security, sir."

"Hee-yah!" I flew straight into the Bizarro, knocking him out of the room, across the corridor, through the wall on the other side and into the room beyond. I had a brief glimpse of dimly lit pallets of cartons and supplies, now scattered and broken.

Behind, I heard Batman talking. "Oracle, extraction now. Home on this signal." Calling up all of my Hermes-given speed, I struck again and again. The Bizarro shrugged off the blows and backhanded me back through the wall. The blow was not as powerful as I had expected. I was on my feet in an instant. The Bizarro was faster and I barely ducked out of his way. I grabbed his leg as he went by and jerked. He tumbled and hit the wall broadsides, smashing through it, back into the Luthor Clone Room and, from the sound of it, out through the wall on the other side. At this rate, I thought fretfully, the ceiling won't stay up much longer.

I flew through into the room, my attention on the gaping hole in the far wall. This time, I didn't even see him coming. This time, he hit every bit as hard as I had expected. The pain tinted my vision red. But I twisted in mid-air and the Bizarro hit the wall first.

We were back in the storeroom, I realized. I grabbed the Bizarro's arm and threw him over my shoulder. He hit the wall, bounced back and I slammed into him, knocking him through another wall. This room was brightly lit and full of astonished soldiers.

This time, the Bizarro was slower getting up than I was. I grabbed his foot and pulled. He fell and I swung him around by his foot and let go. He hit the wall and smashed through into the storeroom. I followed, pursued by ill-aimed fire from the soldiers. I caught the Bizarro getting to his feet and knocked him back down, hitting him again and again, giving him no chance to recover. He grunted with pain, feeling the blows, and… he shouldn't. The soldiers called to each other, getting up the courage to follow us through the gaps in the walls. I heard Batman calling.

"Princess, back here!" One last blow and I turned towards the corridor.

It was filled with smoke, punctuated by plasma bolts. Evidently other soldiers had been drawn to the scene of destruction. I sped across the corridor and into the Clone Room. The corporal and both congressmen were prone on the floor – for good reason. There was damage all around and one of the tubes had been shattered. Evidently plasma blaster bolts had ricocheted into the room. Batman was crouched near the doorway, the Atom on his shoulder. He nodded at me; then his eyes looked past me. I turned and saw the Bizarro walking through the plasma bolts towards me. He ignored the plasma bolts impacting on his body and continued relentlessly forward. I braced myself for attack when a small ball flew past me and hit him on the chest. It burst into a spray of red dust and the monster screamed in agony. He raised his arms, as if to shield himself from the red kryptonite dust, but it was useless. He staggered sideways into a wall and then, with a sweep of his arm, shattered it. I heard a roar and the roof fell in.

Only, it was not out in the corridor where the Bizarro still cried out in pain, but inside the Clone Room. I turned and saw the pile of rubble choking the center of the room and, on top of it, a young man in an all-black costume.

Through the gap in the ceiling flew another young man, but even the all-black costume couldn't disguise Superboy, looking much better than the last time I had seen him.

"Damage, dude," he exclaimed, "you know how to make an entrance! Or, in this case," he chuckled, "an exit." He glanced at me and stopped. "Whoa, who's the hot chick?"

I batted my eyelashes at him playfully. "A little peroxide and you don't recognize me, Superboy?" I teased. "I feel insulted."

"Diana," growled Batman, "get the invisible plane ready. Superboy, help Damage."

Superboy snapped off an irreverent salute as he helped the dazed Damage to his feet. I carefully removed the miniscule invisible plane from under my thumbnail and willed it back to full size. As soon as that was done, I helped Batman shepherd everyone aboard. With the agonized cries of the Bizarro echoing in my ears and the plasma bolts of the soldiers ricocheting all around us, the invisible plane thundered upwards, through the gap in the roof and into the night.

Author's Note: The Daily Planet story appeared in several of Superman's comics a couple of years ago. As far as I know, Luthor coming up clean – when his pre-knowledge is shown in the Our Worlds At War trade paperbacks – has never previously been explained. Red kryptonite, a non-lethal but extremely painful alternative to green kryptonite, was developed by Batman and first appeared in the JLA issues collected in the Tower of Babel trade paperback. Damage was accidentally left off the teams listed in Chapter 11, but that proved providential!