Clark opened his eyes again and looked around the room. This time he felt nearly normal – human normal at least. He wasn't in any pain this time and he wasn't dizzy as he sat up. But it felt odd to be mortal again. He'd been 'mortal' on his trip to Krypton – although he'd been in stasis nearly the entire journey, the ship's computer waking him up only for decisions and a little sight-seeing. He'd been sick from kryptonite poisoning on his way back, something he didn't ever want to repeat but he seemed condemned to.
"Perry figured you'd come out of it as soon as the sun came out," Alice White said as soon as she noticed he was awake. "How are you feeling now?"
"A lot better, thanks," Clark told her. "Almost normal."
"Normal for you, or normal for everybody else?"
"Normal for everybody else," Clark admitted. "I'm still a little weak. But I'll live."
Alice peered into his face. "You're still a little pale, but a lot better than earlier. You were positively green." She began puttering around the room. "You gave us quite a scare you know. First disappearing for so long, then falling out of the sky, and then you get sick." She stopped and shook her head. "How does your poor mother stand it?"
"I honestly don't know."
There was a timid knock on the open door and s slight man with a moustache and wire-frame glasses cleared his throat. "Pardon my intrusion, Mister Kent… but I was wondering how you were feeling."
"And you are?" Clark asked.
"Oh, yes," the little man said, eyes wide in apparent surprise. "I'm H.G. Wells."
"One of the usual suspects," Clark muttered.
Wells smiled, obviously pleased. "You've heard of me?"
Clark nodded. "Were you responsible for dumping Lois and me into that other universe?" he asked.
"Oh no, my boy," Wells protested mildly. "That was a tempocane. No one controls those except possibly God, or if you believe Mister Heinlein, authors with a particularly fanciful and perverse imagination."
"You've read Heinlein?" Clark asked in astonishment.
"Of course my dear boy," Wells said with a chuckle. "I must keep up with modern temporal and planar travel theories. He wasn't wrong, you know. So, how are you feeling?"
"Well enough to head into work this morning," Clark said. "Even if I don't get anything else done, I can finish what I needed to get done today and maybe do some research on our little problem."
"You're sure you're up to it?" Perry asked from the hallway behind Wells.
"Give me time for a shower? And you wouldn't happen to have an extra razor, would you, sir?"
"Lois called a little while ago," Perry told Clark as Perry navigated the Acura across the bridge onto Ordway. "Jason's doing much better. But it seems her house was bugged and she's afraid Luthor may think that Jason is Superman's son. She didn't say what might have made him think that."
"According to Lois, Jason threw a grand piano across the room into the man who was threatening to kill her," Clark told him.
"That, uh, kind of puts a different complexion on things, doesn't it?"
"Yeah," Clark agreed. "It certainly does. Luckily, I doubt any abilities besides strength will manifest before puberty, and strength will only show up when he's under extreme stress."
"So, don't do anything to scare him?" Perry suggested.
Clark nodded once. "I should go to the hospital and check on the baby."
"Actually, I was heading there first," Perry admitted. "I wanted to check on Lois. And just so you know, just because Richard's leaving for Paris doesn't mean I'm going to stop considering Jason a member of my family. Or Lois for that matter."
Clark didn't reply but he had that wary, hangdog look Perry was getting familiar with, the look that said he was expecting to be yelled at. Clark's next move would be to push up his glasses and put on a goofy half smile that said 'Gee Perry, why didn't you say so…"
Perry pulled the car into a space in the hospital parking garage and turned off the engine. "Do you know why Lois wrote that article?"
The wary look was back without the Forrest Gump goofiness. "She told me she was upset that I didn't have the guts to say goodbye."
Perry snorted. "Interesting. And it may even be partly true. But what really hurt her, what drove her to air her dirty linen for all to see was the fact that the two men she thought she could trust not just with her life, but with her heart, turned out to be the same sort of bastards who hurt her before."
"Perry, I swear I never meant to hurt her. I just… It got… It wasn't going to work. I gave up everything to be with her, and it wasn't enough. 'Clark' wasn't enough."
"You're sure about that?"
Clark looked away, eyes focused onto some place beyond space, beyond time. "You didn't see her face when she realized Superman wasn't going to fly off the save the day anymore. When she realized all that was left was someone that half the time she could barely tolerate, someone she was coming to pity for having chosen to be a mere mortal. I couldn't bear to see her disappointment, so I went back and took up the mantle again. The price was being with her ever again." His voice was shaking as he spoke and grief was written across his face. Grief for everything he'd hoped for and lost.
"Clark, the day after you left, Lois stormed into my office, furious with you because you weren't there. When I told her you'd quit, she was furious with me for letting you leave," Perry told him. "Like I had a choice in the matter. A few days later she realized Superman hadn't been seen in Metropolis. She started tracking down leads, trying to find him."
Clark opened his mouth to speak but Perry put his hand up to stop him. "She was looking for Superman so she could talk him into looking for you, for Clark. She spent nearly six months trying to track you down. I managed to talk her out of going to Smallville and pestering your mother. As it was she was calling about once a week to see if you'd checked in. After Jason was born she asked me whether or not she should put your name down as his father. I told her to use her own judgment. I never asked whether she put you on the birth certificate or not."
"I don't think she did," Clark said, mostly to himself. "And we didn't even think to take precautions because I'd been told for so long that I wasn't human… Who da thunk it, I became a father and I never even knew it. Never even thought it was possible."
Perry sighed and went on. "After a while she settled for Richard. Maybe settled isn't the right word, but he was here when she gave up, when she finally realized that she had to get on with her life. When she realized that you weren't coming back anytime soon and Superman had left for Krypton."
"She knew I'd left for Krypton?"
"Didn't take a genius to figure that one out," Perry said. "The Planet publishes a supposedly reputable report that Krypton's been found and there might be life and the one Kryptonian on the planet disappears only a week later? Lois was in love, not brain-dead. First Clark breaks her heart by running away then Superman takes off without a word at the time she needed his help the most."
"I've already promised Lois that we'll try to work out something, at least for Jason's sake," Clark admitted. "At least I know it's possible. They managed it. But he's not the goof up I am."
"Clark, there's something else you ought to know," Perry told him. "Wells didn't want me to say anything yet since he's double checking the information he was sent and he's hoping it's wrong. But apparently the last confirmed sighting of Superman in this time-line occurred at the oil refinery fire yesterday. Wells is afraid the infection may have cost you and Jason your powers permanently."
Clark sighed. "That's just great. And Luthor's out there, plotting something and we have no idea what it could be."
"You know what to do, Kitty?" Luthor asked. The woman nodded, adjusting the nurse's hat perched on her dark hair.
"I know what to do, Lex," Kitty assured him. "Don't worry."
"Good," Luthor commented. "Baxter will go with you, just in case."
Luthor ran his thumb over the sharp edge of the kryptonite shard in his pocket – the shard that had been removed from Superman's back, the shard that still had the alien's blood on it. He'd gotten the piece from one of the hospital employees whose job was to clean up the examining rooms.
The last piece of the kryptonite meteorite Luthor had stolen from the Museum of Natural History was supposed to have been sent to STAR Labs for study, but no one seemed to have noticed it had gone missing. No one seemed to have noticed the employee had gone missing as well. Luthor figured her body would wash up on the shore of Hobs Bay fairly soon and the police would assume she'd simply been raped and murdered – which she had been, after turning over the shard on the promise of ten thousand dollars cash.
"Have you got a fix on the alien?" Luthor asked Smith who was holding the alpha wave detector.
"He's somewhere above us, on one of the upper floors," Smith responded. He peered at the device in his hand then hit it with the heel of his free hand.
"Be careful with that," Luthor hissed.
""I've lost him," Smith announced.
"You've what?" Luthor glowered at him. "What did you do?"
"Nothing," Smith defended himself sourly. "Obviously he's stopped doing whatever it was he was doing that the detector was picking up."
"But he hasn't flown off?" Luthor demanded.
Smith shook his head. "He's in the building. But unless he does something to trigger the device, we're not going to find him."
"Then we'll just have to do something to bring him to us," Luthor said, checking his reflection in the plate glass. Of all his current collection of wigs he liked this brown curly one best. He pulled a pair of eyeglasses out of his pocket and put them on, smiling. "Show time. You all know what to do."
"I'll stop by and check on Lois and Jason," Perry announced as they got into the elevator. "You check on the baby, see what Jerome is up to."
"Yes, sir," Clark agreed.
The door opened on the ninth floor and Perry stepped out. The elevator doors closed behind him, leaving Clark alone. Lois was mad at Superman because Clark disappeared? But she hadn't made the connection. She hadn't remembered that Clark was Superman, not really. It hadn't clicked. So…?
His ruminations were cut short by the elevator doors hissing open. He stepped into the tenth floor lobby and over to the wide window that overlooked the newborn nursery. The other Superman was sitting bare-chested, holding a baby in his arms. He smiled when he caught sight of Clark, handing the baby off to one of the nurses. He blurred into his shirt and cape before coming out into the main nursery.
"Nurse Marzollo," the brown-eyed Superman said to one of the nurses. "This is Clark Kent, the baby's father." 'Jerome' gave him an appraising look. "You're looking a lot better."
"Feeling a lot better," Clark admitted. "Still not a hundred percent, though."
"You didn't have the same thing she had, did you?" Marzollo asked suspiciously.
"Uh, no," Clark said. "She's too little for left-over Chinese take-out."
Marzolo grabbed the note board with the baby's records. "Miss Lane said the child's mother died during childbirth?"
"That's my understanding," Clark said. "I couldn't be there. We thought we had a little more time until the baby was due. Then things got complicated and Superman got involved."
Mazollo gave Jerome a curious look and he shrugged.
"Well, let's get a cell sample so we can do a paternity test," Mazollo said. "Once that's confirmed, we can get her a birth certificate."
Getting the swabs from the inside of his cheek took almost no time and he watched as Mazollo marked the samples for the lab and set them aside.
As soon as Mazollo was out of earshot. "How is she?"
"Much better," Jerome said quietly. "Oh, and I doubt you have to worry about the test – if it's the same as on my world, they'll stop when they get the complete blood type. Kryptonian is a little rare and we do have the same blood type… You said you weren't at one hundred percent?"
"The powers are gone," Clark admitted. "Wells told Perry it might be permanent since apparently Superman is never seen in this time-line again."
"Time is both fragile and strong," Jerome said. "So are the powers. And things do change."
Mazollo came back.
"Can I see her?" Clark asked the nurse.
"Right this way," she told him, taking his arm and leading him into the interior intensive care area. She looked back the man in the Superman suit. "And thank you for your help."
"Glad to be of service," Jerome said with a smile. Then he left the nursery and disappeared down the corridor.
Kitty and Baxter slipped through the side door and disappeared down the corridor, heading toward the main elevators.
Luthor followed them through the side door to a different elevator. Once at their destination, he headed to the main reception desk. The white uniformed woman looked up at Luthor curiously. "May I help you?"
Sheep. "I had a report that Superman was in the building," Luthor began, smiling at her disingenuously.
The woman shrugged. "A Superman impersonator came through earlier, but I haven't heard anything about Superman himself."
"You're sure it was an impersonator?" Luthor demanded.
"Well, yeah. The suit wasn't quite right and the fellow had brown eyes," the woman said. "I mean he was fit and kind of looked the part, but he certainly wasn't Superman."
"Interesting," Luthor murmured to himself. "Where did he go?"
"He was asking about the neonate ICU," she said. "So I assume that's where he went to visit."
"And the neonate ICU is on which floor?" Luthor asked.
"Tenth. But visiting hours don't start until seven."
"Who said we were visiting a patient?" Luthor asked, jerking his head to Smith. The other man sneered at the woman then went around the counter, grabbing her arm and pulling her out from behind the counter.
Luther looked around and spotted the security camera covering the main door and the reception area. "Not here," he hissed. "Bring her with us. You can have your fun later."
Smith shrugged and Luthor was gratified to see the terror in the young woman's face as Smith started toward the elevators with her in tow.
Kitty looked around the corridor. She smoothed her skirt and made herself look busy reading a patient chart as she and Baxter waited for the other people in the area to leave. She only recognized one of them – Lois Lane, the boy's mother. Lane called the younger man 'Richard,' and the older gray-haired man 'Perry.' Kitty didn't catch the name of the other dark-haired woman.
"No, I'll be okay," Lois was saying. "The doctor was saying he plans to have Jason moved to a regular room in a little bit, then he'll be able to have visitors. Assuming the tests turn out okay, I should be able to take him home tomorrow."
"Lois, you're sure you don't want me to stay with him so you can get some rest?" the younger man asked.
"I'm sure," Lois assured him, gently pushing him away.
"I can't believe she threw him over for somebody else," Kitty whispered to Baxter. "He's cute."
"Kitty, get with the program," Baxter warned. "The bitch is an alien lover and he found out and now she has some other poor sap on the line."
"He's still cute," Kitty stated.
In a few minutes Lois entered the ICU room. She was alone with the boy. Kitty and Baxter crossed the hallway to the glass-walled room.
"Miss Lane, we're here to take Jason over to the lab for some more tests," Kitty announced, turning off the various monitors and disconnecting the lines from Jason's body.
"Doctor Maher didn't mention taking Jason to the lab," Lois pointed out.
Kitty unlatched the side rail and lowered it. Then she bundled Jason into one of the blankets. "Oh, Doctor Maher didn't order it," Kitty told her. "Someone else did."
"Who?" Lois demanded. Kitty watched the other woman's eyes widen as she spotted the gun in Baxter's hand. Kitty was pretty sure she'd been made as well.
"Well, if you come along quietly, you'll find out," Kitty promised. "Otherwise…"
"You can't honestly believe you and Luthor can get away with this," Lois protested. "Kidnapping is a federal offence."
"All we want are some blood and tissue samples," Kitty told her. "If you want to come along, I promise you won't get hurt. Otherwise, he'll just shoot you and we'll take the boy anyway."
"Mommy," Jason wailed.
"I'm right here, baby," Lois assured her son. She glared at Kitty and Baxter. "I won't let them hurt you."
Mazollo handed Clark a surgical gown to put over his clothes then sat him in the rocking chair. The baby still had several monitors attached to her and Mazollo took care not to disturb them as she handed her tiny charge to over to him.
"She's quite a fighter," Mazollo commented.
"Yeah, she is… Do you have any idea what made her sick like that?" Clark asked.
Mazollo shrugged. "As far as I know the lab hasn't come up with anything aside from it being a virus of some kind, but sometimes it takes them a while. But that medicine Superman brought for her seems to have done the trick. Plus having him here… I don't remember reading anything about him being able to do that."
"I'm sure it's something he just found out," Clark told her. "I'm also sure it's something he'd rather not have spread around."
"He did say it didn't always work," Mazollo admitted. "Maybe it's better not to get people's hopes up… He must be a pretty good friend of yours then, to risk letting people know about it."
"Yeah, I guess he is," Clark admitted slowly. "My partner and I do a lot of writing about him and we're pretty good at getting interviews out of him."
"Your partner?"
"Lois Lane, Daily Planet?" Clark explained. "She's my writing partner."
Mazollo checked the clock on the wall as another nurse walked in. "Shift change. I've got to brief the next shift."
"Look, please don't mention him being here."
"I won't," she promised then headed toward the newcomers.
Clark settled back to watch the small being in his arms. He hadn't really studied her very closely before. Her eyes were dark and almond shaped. Her hair was also dark and straight. She was so small. He hadn't really noticed how small she was earlier.
"Hello Esperanza," he said. She seemed to try to focus on his face, her mouth making a little 'O'.
"You've had a pretty rough time of it. First your mom dies then you get sick," he continued softly. "But everything's gonna be okay now. You're gonna like it here. There's all sorts of people, and there's green grass and trees and blue sky and cities and forests and farms. I don't know if you're going to grow up to be super, but you have a big brother named Jason… He's all excited about being a big brother, too. You have a grandma in Kansas, even though she's moving to Montana pretty soon… Last week she thought she'd never see any grandbabies and now she has two…"
The ID band Marzollo had put on his wrist caught on the blanket and he peered at it in bemusement. 'Kent, Clark.' It matched the ID band around Esperanza's ankle, identifying him as her parent. "And I guess I'm your daddy. At least that's Lois has decided. We certainly couldn't leave you there. I've never been anybody's daddy before, so we're going to have to work through this together…"
He watched the new shift of nurses go through their paces, checking on their charges, wheeling some of them out to their mothers. Soon he was going to have to give Esperanza back to the nursery nurses and get to work. He had only been back at the Daily Planet for a week and wasn't qualified to take parental leave yet and he couldn't afford to take time off without pay, especially since he'd only been back to work a week.
"We'll get this figured out," he promised. She yawned.
The door to the main nursery opened and a stocky man with curly brown hair and glasses walked in accompanied by a shorter man with close-cropped hair and flat, cold eyes. Both were wearing white orderly uniforms. The short man was reading something off of what looked like a PDA. The taller man appeared annoyed at whatever the short man was saying.
There was something familiar about the taller man and Clark watched him, trying to identify him. The taller man spoke to one of the nurses who shook her head, then nodded toward the intensive care nursery. The men started toward the glass door and the nurse stepped in front of them. The shorter man shoved her aside and Clark realized he had a gun tucked into his waistband. Clark had also placed the taller man – Lex Luthor.
Clark felt a frisson of fear run down his back as his heart sped up. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to fight down the panic he felt rising. Panic would do no one any good. He was human. He was defenseless.
Luthor opened the door and walked in, his eyes flicking over the small room, the equipment, and finally to Clark holding Esperanza. Clark was reminded of a snake, its tongue flicking about as it tasted the air.
"Where's the flying freak?" Luthor demanded.
"I beg your pardon?" Clark stammered out. That was the last question he'd expected to hear out of Luthor.
"Superman," Luthor hissed. "He was here. Where is he?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Clark managed to get out. Esperanza was starting to fuss, her tiny face screwing up in distress or pain. "Superman hasn't been here. I saw a Superman impersonator, but not Superman."
Luthor took a step forward and Clark felt burning in the wound on his back and in his joints and temples. Kryptonite. The baby began to scream and Clark was sure it was pain. He put her up to his shoulder, carefully supporting her head as he patted her back and cooed in attempt to calm her, even a little bit.
"Shut the brat up!" the shorter man yelled.
"And what do you suggest?" Clark yelled back. "I don't know where the hell Superman is and my daughter is sick. So kindly get the hell out of here and leave me alone. I can't help you."
"Can't or won't, Kent?" Luthor asked, stepping closer. The pain in Clark's head and joints got worse, but he realized it wasn't so bad that he couldn't stand. With any luck Luthor wouldn't notice his discomfort or would attribute it to the baby's wails.
"Can't," Clark stated as firmly as he could.
"I think you're wrong," Luthor said taking the PDA device from the shorter man. The other man grabbed Clark's arm and he felt the muzzle of a gun in his side. "Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. You come along quietly and I keep my associate here from shooting this place up." Luthor made a show of looking around the small room. "I don't think this equipment would take kindly to bullets. Neither would the bassinets."
"You are a monstrous, sick old man, Luthor," Clark said, trying to keep his voice from shaking.
Luthor chuckled. "So I've been told." He jerked his head toward the door. "Come on. And bring your brat with you."
With a sigh of resignation, Clark shrugged away from the hand of Luthor's 'associate' and removed the various sensors from the baby's body. He wrapped her in the blanket, hoping it would be enough. Then he followed Luthor out of the inner room and then out of the neonate nursery to the elevators.
"You know the police are probably already downstairs, don't you?" Clark told them.
The doors to one of the elevators slid open and Luthor ushered Clark through, following at his heels. Clark went to the far back of the elevator car, leaning against the back wall. The feeling of weakness wasn't as bad as usual from kryptonite poisoning and he wondered a little at that, although he did feel beads of cold sweat breaking out on his forehead and back.
Luthor nodded to his associate, who pushed the stop button on the elevator control panel then pulled a multi-tool out of his pocket along with another, different, PDA looking device. He opened the panel and spent a few moments clipping wires and splicing them together before running wires to the PDA. He tapped a series of instructions into the device and the elevator began moving up.
"Wonderful, all this technology," the associate said. "The more complex the system, the easier it is to break."
Luthor turned to Clark. "Of course the police are downstairs. But we're not going down, are we?"
"What do you want, Luthor?"
"What I've always wanted," Luthor said blandly. "Superman out of the way. He cost me five years of my life. Five years I spent in a hellhole." Luthor's voice had gone distant, as though he was repeating something he'd memorized.
"And you cost him more than five years of his," Clark stated quietly. "I'd say you were even."
"You're not the one saying, are you?" Luthor spat. "Superman was at the hospital for whatever reason. And now he'll come to me."
"As far as I'm aware, the last time anyone saw Superman was at the refinery fire last night," Clark told him.
"Well, that's where you're wrong," Luthor stated. "This little black box detects alpha waves. Not the normal low-level ones from humans, but the ones Superman's muscle-bound brain puts out while he's flying or doing 'super' things. The little black box says Superman was flying around last night. After he was exposed to a little surprise I left for him at the refinery."
"What sort of surprise?" Clark asked as the elevator doors opened onto the small glass enclosed lobby that looked out onto the roof helipad. There was a helicopter sitting there, rotors lazily turning. The side door was open and Clark could see a woman in a white uniform sitting beside the door – Kitty Kowalski. Beyond her were other figures he couldn't make out in the shadows of the helicopter interior.
"Let's just say," Luthor said, pushing Clark ahead of him toward the helicopter. "I'm astonished he can still fly. But I promise he won't be for long."