NOTE: Some research revealed to me that the hidden city of the Homo Magi
was not, as said by Bruce Wayne in the last chapter, in the Rockies, but
rather somewhere in Turkey (see JLA #164 for details). I have corrected
that slight mistake.
#
Part 10: Who to Trust?
#
Kara watched helplessly as Diana sifted through the ashes of yet another destroyed city, this one little more than a whole in the ground with but the barest of structures still visible amidst the devastation.
"You've been here before?" she asked, putting a hand on Diana's shoulder.
"Once," the amazon answered sadly. "Zatanna was looking for her mother, one of the Homo Magi. We found her but ... let's just say things didn't end all that well." She sighed deeply, looking out across the destroyed city. "These were not good people living here, Kara, but they didn't deserve this."
"No one does," Kara answered, squeezing Diana's shoulder a little tighter.
Just a few hours ago they had agreed to meet Bruce Wayne tomorrow in order to hammer out a plan to take on the Four, wherever they might be. Bruce hadn't been happy about the delay, but had finally agreed.
The four misplaced heroes had wanted those 24 hours to check out a few of the things Bruce had told them, not quite ready to trust the man despite the close ties they had all had with his counterparts on Earths 1 and 2. This was a different world and might have created a different man.
Helena and Dick were busy digging into records, looking for any trace of the Four, anything to verify the tale Bruce had told them about these four people who supposedly controlled the fate of this world without anyone knowing it. Kara and Diana, meanwhile, were making a fast track around the world to check some of the places where the Four had been busy.
One of them was this city. Or what had once been a city.
"Any sign of survivors?" Diana asked.
Kara swept the crater with her superhuman senses. "Nothing. Everything has been reduced to ashes, I can barely make out the traces of organic residue among it. Only thing out of place is ... well, there is a human body lying at the edge of the crater. Judging by the rate of decay I'd say he died about thirty years ago."
Diana nodded, her face grim. "That's probably John Zatara, Zatanna's father. In our world he was mortally wounded and stumbled upon this city by accident. Sindella, Zatanna's mother, saved his life."
Kara understood without Diana needing to explain further. In this world there had been no city to find here, no one to help John Zatara. Just one more body among the wreckage.
"Let's get out of here," Kara finally said. "We've got a bit more ground to cover before we meet the others." In truth she just wanted to leave this place, both for her own peace of mind and that of Diana, whose mood seemed to grow grimmer and grimmer with every moment they spent in this world.
A moment later the two heroines were underway again.
#
Helena was trying to concentrate on her work, but her thoughts kept straying to other things. Things like the man who had visited them a few hours ago. The man who, in another world, had been her father.
One would think she'd be used to it by now. She had met the Earth-1 Batman dozens of times, before and after her father had been killed. Yet it had always been hard, there was no getting used to it. And now, with their own world gone, all the people she knew either wiped out or having forgotten her existence, she had to meet another version of her father.
Maybe the universe had a lot of fun playing these kinds of tricks on her. Or maybe it just didn't give a damn what she felt. Either way she didn't much like it.
"I've rechecked our original findings," Dick said, catching her attention. "It all still holds up. Bruce works for the FBI as a profiler. The Wayne fortune is administered through several trust funds. Bruce still holds the majority shares for Waynetech and several other companies, but apparently isn't active in regards to the day-to-day business."
Not that he ever was, Helena mused. On her world her father had played the role of the idiot playboy to cover up his activities as Batman, only getting involved in the business when it was absolutely necessary. After his retirement as a crime fighter he had gone to work as Gotham City's police commissioner, taking over for the retired James Gordon. On Earth-1, she knew, Bruce Wayne was still playing the rich idiot for all he was worth.
Calling herself to order, she tried to concentrate on her own research. Getting a hang of the Internet hadn't been difficult, but both their hacking skills were rather lacking, being eighteen years behind technologically. Helena had chosen the old-fashioned way of doing things, breaking into several public records buildings to acquire what they needed.
Only there wasn't a single trace to be found of anything relating to this Artemis project or the four people Bruce had told them of. The Four, she repeated in her mind. Four people with superpowers who had committed unspeakable atrocities on this world and gotten away with it.
So far, she emphasized for herself. Only so far.
A breeze of wind announced the arrival of their two superhuman friends and Helena looked up from the stolen records with a sigh, rubbing her tired eyes.
"Hope you were more successful than us," she told Kara and Diana.
Diana, she immediately saw, had dark circles under her eyes and her hands seemed to be permanently clenched into fists.
"What little Bruce told us checked out," Kara said, keeping one eye on Diana at all times. "The city of the Homo Magi in Turkey was destroyed. I managed to spot several satellites in orbit that, while appearing to be TV satellites, actually house some kind of beam weapons. They are inactive, though. No trace to be followed, I fear."
She hesitated a moment before adding, "We also went to Smallville. I didn't take the time to really look around the first time I was there, but upon a closer look ... there is some residual shrapnel of Kryptonian origin to be found beneath the soil." She almost chocked on those last words.
Helena knew what that meant. If Bruce was right than the rocket carrying the last son of Kryption to Earth had been found not by a pair of Kansas farmers who would love and care for the child, but rather by the Four. God alone knew what they had done with him.
"I'm afraid we came up pretty empty," Dick said, his tone of voice clearly telling that he was trying to change the topic for the sake of Kara. "What we originally found on Bruce checks out and there is no trace to be found on this Artemis thing. Nothing."
"There wouldn't be," Diana said, her voice carrying a sharp edge of simmering anger. "If these Four are as Bruce has said they would have taken great care to wipe out all proof of their existence."
"Let's say everything he told us is true," Helena interjected. "That still leaves us with the question of how he knew about us. Where we come from and how to find us."
"He said he would tell us once we agreed to join him."
Dick's lips spread in a bit of a smile. "How about we don't wait quite that long? I looked into the city's maps a bit and, while the cave below Wayne manor is apparently empty, I know the Bruce of Earth-1 had a second cave beneath a Wayne building directly in Gotham. A cave that appears on the old city maps back in the 1950s, but is curiously absent from the more recent ones."
Helena smiled as well. "Wanna bet some things never change from world to world?"
#
Finding the cave was surprisingly difficult, even taking Kara's superhuman senses into account. They only found because they knew exactly where it had to be. Kara couldn't tell what kind of technology was used to hide it, but it was definitely far in advance of everything humans had ever come up with, even eighteen years into the future.
Once they did find it, though, breaking in wasn't difficult at all. The booby traps erected to surprise unwelcome visitors were quickly found and disabled, either by Kara or by Helena and Dick's deep knowledge of how their mentor had worked. Apparently some things really didn't change much from world to world.
The cave itself, though, did look quite different from either of those the four of them were familiar with. There was no costume vault, no launching ramp for the Batmobile, no giant penny or dinosaur robot. The only thing familiar was the giant computer array in one corner, a single seat in front of it.
"Do you suppose he built all this just to battle the Four?" Kara asked.
"If there is one common trait among all the Bruce Waynes I've known," Dick answered, "it's that they don't do things halfway. Our Bruce dedicated his fortune, his skills, his entire life to the battle against crime. I'm not surprised this world's version has done the same, only with a slightly different goal."
Kara quickly took a look around, her senses easily penetrating all the walls now that they were inside whatever had been used to hide this cave so effectively. Within a minute she spotted something. Something that was definitely familiar.
"I think I have found the reason why this Bruce knows so much about us," she whispered, her eyes riveted to a certain spot on the wall.
"What? What is it?"
Not answering the question she walked towards the wall in question, her fingers quickly finding the hidden latch and opening the heavy door without so much as a strain. A sour odour greeted them as they stepped inside.
"What is he keeping in here?" Dick asked, revolted. "It smells like something has died in here a couple of times over and ..."
He fell silent as he finally saw what Kara had spotted from outside. His eyes needed a long moment to make sense of what it was he was seeing and, even then, he needed yet more time until recognition set in. Not that he could be blamed for that. He had seen the occupant of the room only a handful of times in his life and he had looked a lot better then.
"Dear God," he whispered.
Diana was the first to step closer to the mangled figure that rested on a table in the centre of the room, her eyes not showing rage for once, but deep sadness and compassion.
"J'Onn?"
#
The man's dark eyes were fixed on the TV screen, tuned to one of the many stations that were still showing the images captured in Washington just yesterday. A flying woman. A flying woman who wore a very familiar costume.
"This can't be," the man murmured over and over again.
Over the course of the last few months he had come to the conclusion that this world was not one of the few he was familiar with. It was a completely strange place and he didn't know of any way to get back to his homeworld. If it still existed at all, that was.
Suddenly his phone rang, tearing him out of his thoughts. He considered simply letting it ring, but then reached over to pick up the receiver anyway.
"Hello, sir," an unknown voice said from the other end. "I believe we can be of tremendous service to each other."
"I'm not interested in buying anything."
He was about to hang up again, but the voice stopped him with its next words: "We know you are not from around here. We also know that you ... how shall I put it ... haven't exactly been yourself since coming here. We can fix all that. Are you still not interested?"
He hesitated only for the briefest of moments.
"I'm listening." Clark Kent leaned back in his chair, settling down for a long conversation.
TO BE CONTINUED
#
Part 10: Who to Trust?
#
Kara watched helplessly as Diana sifted through the ashes of yet another destroyed city, this one little more than a whole in the ground with but the barest of structures still visible amidst the devastation.
"You've been here before?" she asked, putting a hand on Diana's shoulder.
"Once," the amazon answered sadly. "Zatanna was looking for her mother, one of the Homo Magi. We found her but ... let's just say things didn't end all that well." She sighed deeply, looking out across the destroyed city. "These were not good people living here, Kara, but they didn't deserve this."
"No one does," Kara answered, squeezing Diana's shoulder a little tighter.
Just a few hours ago they had agreed to meet Bruce Wayne tomorrow in order to hammer out a plan to take on the Four, wherever they might be. Bruce hadn't been happy about the delay, but had finally agreed.
The four misplaced heroes had wanted those 24 hours to check out a few of the things Bruce had told them, not quite ready to trust the man despite the close ties they had all had with his counterparts on Earths 1 and 2. This was a different world and might have created a different man.
Helena and Dick were busy digging into records, looking for any trace of the Four, anything to verify the tale Bruce had told them about these four people who supposedly controlled the fate of this world without anyone knowing it. Kara and Diana, meanwhile, were making a fast track around the world to check some of the places where the Four had been busy.
One of them was this city. Or what had once been a city.
"Any sign of survivors?" Diana asked.
Kara swept the crater with her superhuman senses. "Nothing. Everything has been reduced to ashes, I can barely make out the traces of organic residue among it. Only thing out of place is ... well, there is a human body lying at the edge of the crater. Judging by the rate of decay I'd say he died about thirty years ago."
Diana nodded, her face grim. "That's probably John Zatara, Zatanna's father. In our world he was mortally wounded and stumbled upon this city by accident. Sindella, Zatanna's mother, saved his life."
Kara understood without Diana needing to explain further. In this world there had been no city to find here, no one to help John Zatara. Just one more body among the wreckage.
"Let's get out of here," Kara finally said. "We've got a bit more ground to cover before we meet the others." In truth she just wanted to leave this place, both for her own peace of mind and that of Diana, whose mood seemed to grow grimmer and grimmer with every moment they spent in this world.
A moment later the two heroines were underway again.
#
Helena was trying to concentrate on her work, but her thoughts kept straying to other things. Things like the man who had visited them a few hours ago. The man who, in another world, had been her father.
One would think she'd be used to it by now. She had met the Earth-1 Batman dozens of times, before and after her father had been killed. Yet it had always been hard, there was no getting used to it. And now, with their own world gone, all the people she knew either wiped out or having forgotten her existence, she had to meet another version of her father.
Maybe the universe had a lot of fun playing these kinds of tricks on her. Or maybe it just didn't give a damn what she felt. Either way she didn't much like it.
"I've rechecked our original findings," Dick said, catching her attention. "It all still holds up. Bruce works for the FBI as a profiler. The Wayne fortune is administered through several trust funds. Bruce still holds the majority shares for Waynetech and several other companies, but apparently isn't active in regards to the day-to-day business."
Not that he ever was, Helena mused. On her world her father had played the role of the idiot playboy to cover up his activities as Batman, only getting involved in the business when it was absolutely necessary. After his retirement as a crime fighter he had gone to work as Gotham City's police commissioner, taking over for the retired James Gordon. On Earth-1, she knew, Bruce Wayne was still playing the rich idiot for all he was worth.
Calling herself to order, she tried to concentrate on her own research. Getting a hang of the Internet hadn't been difficult, but both their hacking skills were rather lacking, being eighteen years behind technologically. Helena had chosen the old-fashioned way of doing things, breaking into several public records buildings to acquire what they needed.
Only there wasn't a single trace to be found of anything relating to this Artemis project or the four people Bruce had told them of. The Four, she repeated in her mind. Four people with superpowers who had committed unspeakable atrocities on this world and gotten away with it.
So far, she emphasized for herself. Only so far.
A breeze of wind announced the arrival of their two superhuman friends and Helena looked up from the stolen records with a sigh, rubbing her tired eyes.
"Hope you were more successful than us," she told Kara and Diana.
Diana, she immediately saw, had dark circles under her eyes and her hands seemed to be permanently clenched into fists.
"What little Bruce told us checked out," Kara said, keeping one eye on Diana at all times. "The city of the Homo Magi in Turkey was destroyed. I managed to spot several satellites in orbit that, while appearing to be TV satellites, actually house some kind of beam weapons. They are inactive, though. No trace to be followed, I fear."
She hesitated a moment before adding, "We also went to Smallville. I didn't take the time to really look around the first time I was there, but upon a closer look ... there is some residual shrapnel of Kryptonian origin to be found beneath the soil." She almost chocked on those last words.
Helena knew what that meant. If Bruce was right than the rocket carrying the last son of Kryption to Earth had been found not by a pair of Kansas farmers who would love and care for the child, but rather by the Four. God alone knew what they had done with him.
"I'm afraid we came up pretty empty," Dick said, his tone of voice clearly telling that he was trying to change the topic for the sake of Kara. "What we originally found on Bruce checks out and there is no trace to be found on this Artemis thing. Nothing."
"There wouldn't be," Diana said, her voice carrying a sharp edge of simmering anger. "If these Four are as Bruce has said they would have taken great care to wipe out all proof of their existence."
"Let's say everything he told us is true," Helena interjected. "That still leaves us with the question of how he knew about us. Where we come from and how to find us."
"He said he would tell us once we agreed to join him."
Dick's lips spread in a bit of a smile. "How about we don't wait quite that long? I looked into the city's maps a bit and, while the cave below Wayne manor is apparently empty, I know the Bruce of Earth-1 had a second cave beneath a Wayne building directly in Gotham. A cave that appears on the old city maps back in the 1950s, but is curiously absent from the more recent ones."
Helena smiled as well. "Wanna bet some things never change from world to world?"
#
Finding the cave was surprisingly difficult, even taking Kara's superhuman senses into account. They only found because they knew exactly where it had to be. Kara couldn't tell what kind of technology was used to hide it, but it was definitely far in advance of everything humans had ever come up with, even eighteen years into the future.
Once they did find it, though, breaking in wasn't difficult at all. The booby traps erected to surprise unwelcome visitors were quickly found and disabled, either by Kara or by Helena and Dick's deep knowledge of how their mentor had worked. Apparently some things really didn't change much from world to world.
The cave itself, though, did look quite different from either of those the four of them were familiar with. There was no costume vault, no launching ramp for the Batmobile, no giant penny or dinosaur robot. The only thing familiar was the giant computer array in one corner, a single seat in front of it.
"Do you suppose he built all this just to battle the Four?" Kara asked.
"If there is one common trait among all the Bruce Waynes I've known," Dick answered, "it's that they don't do things halfway. Our Bruce dedicated his fortune, his skills, his entire life to the battle against crime. I'm not surprised this world's version has done the same, only with a slightly different goal."
Kara quickly took a look around, her senses easily penetrating all the walls now that they were inside whatever had been used to hide this cave so effectively. Within a minute she spotted something. Something that was definitely familiar.
"I think I have found the reason why this Bruce knows so much about us," she whispered, her eyes riveted to a certain spot on the wall.
"What? What is it?"
Not answering the question she walked towards the wall in question, her fingers quickly finding the hidden latch and opening the heavy door without so much as a strain. A sour odour greeted them as they stepped inside.
"What is he keeping in here?" Dick asked, revolted. "It smells like something has died in here a couple of times over and ..."
He fell silent as he finally saw what Kara had spotted from outside. His eyes needed a long moment to make sense of what it was he was seeing and, even then, he needed yet more time until recognition set in. Not that he could be blamed for that. He had seen the occupant of the room only a handful of times in his life and he had looked a lot better then.
"Dear God," he whispered.
Diana was the first to step closer to the mangled figure that rested on a table in the centre of the room, her eyes not showing rage for once, but deep sadness and compassion.
"J'Onn?"
#
The man's dark eyes were fixed on the TV screen, tuned to one of the many stations that were still showing the images captured in Washington just yesterday. A flying woman. A flying woman who wore a very familiar costume.
"This can't be," the man murmured over and over again.
Over the course of the last few months he had come to the conclusion that this world was not one of the few he was familiar with. It was a completely strange place and he didn't know of any way to get back to his homeworld. If it still existed at all, that was.
Suddenly his phone rang, tearing him out of his thoughts. He considered simply letting it ring, but then reached over to pick up the receiver anyway.
"Hello, sir," an unknown voice said from the other end. "I believe we can be of tremendous service to each other."
"I'm not interested in buying anything."
He was about to hang up again, but the voice stopped him with its next words: "We know you are not from around here. We also know that you ... how shall I put it ... haven't exactly been yourself since coming here. We can fix all that. Are you still not interested?"
He hesitated only for the briefest of moments.
"I'm listening." Clark Kent leaned back in his chair, settling down for a long conversation.
TO BE CONTINUED