I returned to my dorm room to find Jesse sprawled on my bed watching television. He was wearing only athletic shorts and he was stroking his bare chest absentmindedly.

I'd only known him a few short days, but already I was picking up on some of his more endearing traits, such as his almost-constant stroking of his chest. He always held himself in high regard; always thought of himself as God's gift to women…or in his case, God's gift to men.

Days before, I had given Jesse a duplicate key to my room; hell, we both spent so much time in and out of each other's room, not bothering to leave any messages or anything of that nature, that it became something of commonplace to find ourselves spatially mismatched.

In any event, there was Jesse lying prostrate on my bed, in black athletic shorts, and stroking his own chest as if to keep himself occupied. I threw my bas down and sat in front of the computer, opening up my email server.

"Purveying the wildlife?"

"Funny," I said dryly, not bothering to look at him. "You need anything?"

"Nah," he said passively.

"How was swimming?" I asked.

"Nothing special. Saw some guys, did some laps. That's about it."

I was surprised to find, under the 'New Messages' folder, a message from Tim Drake, my once-and-future sparring partner in the war of Luthor. I turned back to Jesse.

"Hey…"

"What?"

"I, uh…just wanted to apologize. For earlier…that whole thing about Armstrong."

"It's alright, Allen. You did what you had to."

"Sure?"

"Yeah. Armstrong may be a dick—and not in the good sense—but he's got an opinion…just like everyone else. I don't like it, I can't change it, but I've learned to accept it. Anyway, to show there are no hard feelings, there's a present for you on my bed next door."

"Oh yeah?"

"Anna Kournikova…well, in poster form."

I stared at him confoundedly for a second. What an eccentric gift for someone. "You truly go out of your way, don't you?" I ribbed lightly.

"Hey, I do what I can," Jesse said with a chortle.

I went back to Tim's email. Intrigued by the premise of what he had to say, I opened the mail:

Allen. You never asked for this, but I'm giving it to you anyway. What you do with this is up to you, but here it is. Here are the answers to the Luthor question: Melissa Dugan, Gretchen Kelley, Sydney Happersen, Sasha Green, Dabny Donovan, Paul Westfield, Frank Berkowitz, Contessa Erica Alexandra del Portenza. Find these people, and you'll find what your 'hero' is all about.

-Tim"

I almost deleted the email, had it not been for my reporter's instinct kicking in at the last second. I wanted to take on Tim's churlish little challenge, if only just to say 'I told you so', so I opened a search engine and typed in the first name on the list: Melissa Dugan. If nothing else, I thought the research would lubricate the cogs of my brain. Chances were the names on the list were no-names, thought up by Tim on the spot to try and scare me away from Lex.

In any event, I spent the rest of the night researching the names (thank you Lexis). How Tim got them was not nearly as surprising as why he would send them to me.

In any case, I reminded myself that Tim Drake was Robin, the Teen Wonder. Superhero for all the hormone-addled girls (and maybe even the guys) in Gotham and beyond—providing of course that Robin acted outside the shadows like the Bat-Man that NewsTime enjoyed talking about so much.. The superhero mentality required a great deal of altruism—something that just didn't jive with me. Nonetheless, I spent the night researching the list of names. It took me an hour to find anything substantive on Melissa Dugan alone.

A few years back, it seems, Ms. Dugan was once an employee of LexCorp and long-time lover of Luthor, in his more Casanovan days. But after a brief tenure in the company of Luthor, she left for the more lucrative S.T.A.R. Labs. According to the first site I was shown, the Metro Library's online microforms, Ms. Dugan was found face-down in her cereal bowl a few months after leaving LexCorp. Toxicity tests showed that neither the milk nor the actual cereal was tainted with any traceable amount of poison. There were no signs of breaking-and-entering in her apartment, and no physical signs of trauma on her body. These cops dig too deep, I thought. Maybe she actually did drown. Typical insomniac, probably awake the whole night and finally gave up the ghost around 4 a.m.…casting caution to the wind, as it were, and residing in the drowning comfort of 2.

She had worked at LexCorp for two years, but left; a reason was not disclosed. The article didn't give specifics, but I suspected it was over something trivial like wager disputes. She then went to STAR Labs and worked there for approximately eighteen months. The day she was supposed to be promoted to department head, according to the article and STAR Labs' Head Professor Emil Hamilton, she didn't show up to work. The SCU found her drowned in her own Froot Loops the next morning. No signs of abuse, lacerations or striations around the neck or arms. Blood alcohol level of .08 (she was, apparently, quite the wine-drinker).

I didn't sleep at all that night. I kept playing the numbers over in my head. Presuming she was a social drinker—indulging a glass of wine every morning before leaving for work, there's no way it would integrate into her system before she got to work. Alcohol doesn't work that fast at the chemical level. Not unless you had the metabolism of a shrew.

So, question: What soluble drug or poison did?

I moved on to the next name on the list: Dr. Gretchen Kelley. I found all the information I needed on the Daily Planet archives website, written originally by a man named Clark Kent.

Apparently, a few years ago, Gretchen Kelley was Lex Luthor's personal doctor. She held that position for over twenty years. After Lex died, an illegitimate son—progeny of the original Luthor and this Dr. Kelley—came forth and saved Metropolis from social decay in the elder Luthor's absence.

Then, something called Project Cadmus started cloning people. Cloning people? According to the article—and its wordsmith Clark Kent—a mysterious plague began affecting the Cadmus clones soon after the news of Cadmus itself broke. Lex Luthor the second fell ill around this time from said plague, and it was Kelley who nursed him through it.

As I read on it became increasingly clear to me that the facts, oddly enough, spoke for themselves. There was a subtext creeping in that just screamed 'believe this article and he who wrote it.' Odd as it was, and as much as it went against my principles, I believed this Kent character. There was just…a level of believability in his words, his style. In any event, I went on.

As the cancer—or whatever the hell it was—which plagued the clones began to destroy Luthor's body, Kelley stood by his side, but privately sold him out to the media; aired his dirty laundry and flung herself into a big scandal. She was currently serving out the third of several charges regarding treason, extortion, blackmail and a host of other white-collar crimes.

Cloning…interesting. Science straight out of Ray Bradbury. Or something like that.

So much for Dr. Kelley…but facts aside, the article was convincing. I moved on to the next name: Sydney Happersen. The search results were meager; the Planet files didn't hold so much information on this Happersen fellow. Chances were he probably suffocated in oatmeal or something. I pressed on.

It seemed that Happersen was Lex Luthor's personal assistant and a capable scientist in his own right. He was Luthor's right hand man since LexCorp's inception and was privy to the majority of LexCorp's so-called private projects—government and defense contracts, the alien in the hanger at Wright-Patterson Air Base, Area 51, and the nuclear weapon that France is hiding under the Eiffel Tower. All that crackpot conspiracy theory junk.

Happersen—as Luthor's second-in-command—oversaw the transition of LexCorp between the older Luthor and his "son". Luthor II fell ill suddenly, mysteriously, and was close to death when Happersen activated what Kent described as 'a series of emergency demolition charges designed to destroy Metropolis in the advent of it falling from Luthor's control'.

Happersen died soon after, apparently from massive coronary hemorrhaging. Article said that distant relatives claimed the body and declared a 'No Autopsy" order be filed with the Mayor's Office—then under Frank Berkowitz.

Berkowitz, as luck would have it, died soon after. Taken down during a public event by an assassin's bullet. There was not much else about the late mayor. A similar 'no autopsy' file had been made, and his death was left at that. Berkowitz left no heir; his next of kin moved to Canada and hadn't been seen since.

Damn.


Next: And the beat goes on...