For those of you who don't know, Jenny Sparks was the Spirit of the Twenty Century and was able to control and manipulate electricity to the point where she could become electricity and travel by radio waves or power lines. She was born at the stroke of midnight, January 1st, 1900, and died exactly 100-years later, although she did stop ageing some time around 1920…
Calling of the blood
Part 3: Hereditary Traits
"So what do we know about her friend." Snow sat behind a desk at the hastily put together Smallville office of Planetary, looking at his two main teams.
"He isn't human, regardless of how he looks." Dr Spica looked up from a pile of paper work, "He's not anything we've encountered before. I'd like to bring Dr Brass in to consult on this: he's got a lot more experience with this sort of thing then I do."
"Ok, call him, but keep working on it yourself." Snow nodded, "Do you think we could take him down if we had to?"
"Possibly." The blond guard from the hospital nodded slowly, "He's powerfully, I can tell that by just looking at him. It would probably take someone like Jeroen or Apollo."
"Well, Jeroen is on guard at the hospital, so maybe he'll be able to find something out." Snow turned to look out the window, "Why did Jenny keep quiet about all this?"
"Hi Chloe!" Clark slipped into his friends hospital room, "How you feeling?"
"Ready to start climbing the walls if I don't get out of here soon!" Chloe smiled, "No, seriously, I'm good. Dr Spica says I should be out of here by tomorrow."
"Any idea how you survived that lightning strike without a scratch? Is there any chance you're a…
"A meteor-freak? No, it's nothing like that…"
"What aren't you telling me?"
"Things are, complicated. I'm not sure I can talk about it right now, not with someone guarding my room 24/7."
"You mean that guy?" Clark looked over his shoulder at the man who was sitting in a chair in the hallway, snoring loudly, "What's with all this?"
"You remember I told you The Torch had a new sponsor?" Chloe looked a little guilty, "Well it doesn't: I've been paying for it all myself, after I paid of all my dads debts."
"How can you afford that?"
"A man named Elijah Snow offered me a million dollars a year, for life, if I kept him up to date on the weirdness that happens around here. I'm allowed to use my own discretion when it comes to what I send him, so he doesn't know about you."
"What are you talking about?"
"Come on Clark; I'm not blind. You're always there to save the day in a way that no one can explain, you're the centre of most of the wired stuff that happens around here, and I kind of remember some of what happened when Pete and I got infected by those plant spore that removed our inhibitions…"
"How much do you remember?"
"Not everything, its still a bit hazy: I do remember Pete and I trying to jump the gorge in his car and you catching us, and I remember what happened in the Talon…"
"Now this is interesting." Randle Dowling looked at the files Lionel Luther had faxed him; "You're a clever boy Elijah, keeping her a secret from me all these years."
"Anything we can use against him?" Leather asked, "He's been getting more determined in his little quest."
"Possibly, possibly: it appears that Jenny Sparks has a daughter in small town America who recently survived a lightning strike that should have killed her." Dowling handed the fax to the other man; "It is almost unheard of for any of the 'Century Babies' to reproduces, Miss Wagner being the most prominent of the handful of decedents they have left behind. If Sparks' child has indeed inherited some of her power, she could be a most dangerous opponent…"
"…Or a useful ally. I like the way you think." Leather smiled, "You want me to go get her?"
"Yes, but be careful: Snow has both his field teams in the area." Dowling rubbed his chin, "Take Greene with you: he'd enjoy the outing…"
"Clark!" Pete called out after his friend as he made his way across the hospital car park, "You ok man? You look like you've seen a ghost!"
"Chloe remembers some of what happened that time you got dosed with those plant spores: not everything, but enough to know there's more to me than I let on."
"That's not too bad: if she's kept it secret all this time it means she's not told Lionel…"
"She remembers what we did in the Talon."
"Oh. How do you feel about that?"
"I don't know: I mean, she's Chloe, I've know her almost as long as I've known you…"
"And the other part?"
"The other part knows that I'd wanted to kiss her like that for a long time, but never wanted to risk the friendship."
"Sounds like you love her."
"I do, as a friend, but I'm not sure if there's anything more to it than that."
"And you don't want to hurt her, right?"
"Right."
"Sorry man, but the workings of the human heart are way out of my territory!"
"Something wrong, Shen?" Snow leaned against the low wall sounding the roof of the Planetary field office, "Storm coming?"
"In a way." Shen Li-men looked up at the darkening sky, "I think we're going to have company real soon."
"Artemis?"
"I'd put good money on it."
"One of these days, you're going to read the currents in the air and give me some good news for a change." Snow shook his head, "Guess we'd better get everyone together: we're going to need all the muscle we can get if it is The Four…"
The tall, heavily built man watched from the shadows as the guard outside Chloe's room left when his pager sounded. He smiled to himself: he'd been waiting for days to get an opportunity like this, and his employer was getting impatient for results.
Dressed as an orderly, he pushed the empty wheelchair into Chloe's room, careful not to wake the sleeping girl. He looked down at her as she slept, pulling a hypodermic needle full of a powerful sedative from his pocket and tapping it to get the air out. Carefully as he could, he pressed it against Chloe's arm.
Chloe woke with a start when she felt the needle pick her in the arm. She sat bolt upright, sending the hypodermic flying across the room as she reached for the light switch.
"Big mistake you little bitch!" The man snarled, drawing a dart-gun from its hiding place under his coat and bring it round to bear on the startled woman.
"NO!" Chloe shot her arm out to try and spoil his aim.
All the lights in Smallville dimmed as the electricity was sucked from the power grid and was redirected to one room in the hospital.
The glass wall shattered as the man slammed into it before landing in a heap in the corridor, smoke rising from his charred body.
"Oh god…" Chloe mumbled; eyes fixed in terror on the small sparks of electricity that still jumped between her outstretched fingers.
Deep inside her mind, something stirred.
To Be Continued…
