Chapter 29

He led them into the large hall, Lois's arm firmly interlocked with his as both Chloe and Jimmy followed behind. There was something unsettling about entering a room filled with so many influential people. Clark stopped and took a look at his surroundings.

The room was filled with numerous people, some he recognized from all sorts of media, but there was only one looking towards him. It was Perry, who was waving him over. Clark nodded and whispered to Lois, who smiled and followed after him.

Lois looked stunning in her black dress, her hair hanging loosely down her back and her make-up on just perfect. There was a sense of pride that accompanied escorting such a beautiful woman, but deep down it was much more than that.

As they finally reached Perry, who was talking to another man roughly his age, Clark smiled. "Perry," he said softly.

"Ah, Clark, Lois, I'd like you to meet a friends of mine. This is Jim Alcot, a freelance reporter from California."

Both Clark and Lois exchanged handshakes with the middle aged slender man.

"Nice meeting the two of you, but if you'll please excuse me, the convention is about to start and I have a presentation to present." He smiled at all three of them and stepped up onto the small podium.

"Jim and I used to work at the Planet together back in the day," Perry said as he began to walk away from the front, guiding both Lois and Clark to a table. "I managed to get you both a seat at my table. Lois, from what I know and what your cousin has told me, you work for the Inquisitor?"

"I do," she replied with a smug smile.

"Something tells me you're not too fond of the job?"

"No, no," Lois hastily replied.

Perry pulled a chair out for her and said, "Don't worry, we all have to start somewhere. There's no shame about working and doing what you love. Sure, it's a tabloid newspaper with outrageous stories, but even I have had my experiences with the tabloids."

"You?" Lois asked in surprise as Perry sat down beside Clark, who was smiling ruefully.

"Yes, even me. Why else do you think I've met your strapping young boyfriend Clark here?" He slapped the young on the shoulder and grinned at Lois. "My editor thought there was something fishy about Smallville, and she thought it'd cook up some strange stories."

Lois peered at Clark who gave her the shyest yet most innocent look she had ever seen. Perry didn't know the half of it. "Did you get anything good?" she asked a second later.

Shaking his head and taking a sip from his glass of water, Perry let out a small sigh of appreciation. "Nope, but like I said before, I wasn't particularly sober at the time." He grinned wildly and looked to Clark. "Isn't that right?"

Clark, a little uncomfortable with Perry's up front behavior, tried his best at infusing humor. "That's putting it mildly."

Perry let out a loud laugh and nodded. "That it is. I was stinking drunk the whole time and I swear I saw some of the strangest things in my life."

"I'm glad you're doing better," Lois said quickly, seeing that Clark wasn't very happy with the way the conversation was going.

"Thank you," Perry replied at he pointed his glass at her.

Clark sighed heavily as the man they had met earlier began to quiet down the chatter and begin his presentation. Alcot welcomed everyone and said a few thank you's before he tore into an interesting presentation about the lack of newspaper reporting and the effects that television has on youth looking to get into journalism.

It wasn't more than five minutes into the presentation before he was looking around to see where Chloe and Jimmy were. After a few seconds, he found them sitting only a few tables behind. They were by themselves, a little sign signifying what paper they were from. They smiled at him and he nodded back.

"Something wrong Smallville?" Lois asked, leaning in and whispering to him.

"No, I was just curious as to where Jimmy and Chloe were sitting."

"Oh. Where are they?" She turned her head slightly to look.

"Just a few tables behind us."

She spotted them and smiled. Turning around, she gently took Clark's hand in her underneath the table. There was no reaction on his part though. She concluded that he couldn't feel her, and her mood suddenly darkened. She wondered how much effort he had to put in to not crush the hand of the man who was on stage talking.

As the voice at the front continued to drone on, she found herself not paying attention. After a few minutes she felt Clark's hand tighten around hers and she looked over. He was looking right at her, smiling warmly.

"It takes a while," he commented as he squeezed her hand again. He had to be careful not to squeeze too hard, but she would definitely tell him if he had. As soon as he had turned his head back to the stage in front of him, he could feel a soft buzzing inside his head.

"Kale-El?"

Clark's eyes went hard s he heard J'onn speak to him. Having a voice inside his head was not only annoying, but very alien. "What?" he asked back, making sure to use the link.

"I need to speak to you."

"I'm busy J'onn."

"It's very important, I must speak with you face to face, right now."

The urgency in his voice was evident. Clark shuffled uncomfortably in his chair. "Can you wait a few minutes?"

"Yes, but only a few. Once you get the chance to leave, get to me quickly."

"Where are you, are you in trouble?"

"I am in your hotel suite, and no, I'm not in trouble, at least not yet."

"What? Not yet? What you do you mean not yet?"

"Just get here as soon as you can, Kal-el."

The link broke and Clark stayed completely rigid, his eyes still firmly locked to the figure at the front.

"Smallville?" Lois asked as she leaned over and whispered to him again. "What's wrong? You're crushing my hand over here."

"Sorry," he replied, lessening his grip and removing his hand from hers.

Rubbing her aching hand with her other, she didn't move from his ear. "What it is it?"

Clark looked left and right and made sure no one was looking at them. "John needs me."

"Now?"

"Yes, now."

"I'm coming with you," she said softly.

He almost laughed, but he shook his head as the people in the room began to clap, the presentation apparently over. "No, I don't know how long I'll be. I don't want Perry getting suspicious either. I'm sure it's nothing. I'll be back before you know it." He kissed her quickly before she could respond and stood up. "Excuse me Perry, I have to-."

"The restroom? Right, Son, hurry back." The young man nodded and darted off rather quickly. He smiled and looked to Lois. "Must have had something bad for lunch?" He winked as he could have sworn she rolled her eyes.

Clark darted out of the large room and looked left and right. When there was no one in sight, he sped up the stairs and to the door of his room. Slipping the card into the lock, he opened the door and closed it quickly behind him. "J'onn?"

"In here," the Martian responded from the main room.

Frowning, Clark slipped his coat off and threw it on the bed as he walked into the main room. He stopped dead in his tracks at the sight before him.

Candice was sitting in a chair, her legs and hands tied up and her chin sunk to her chest. She was bloody, her hair matted in red as she was unresponsive. "What the…"

"I'm assuming this is Candice?" J'onn asked as he leaned up against the counter with his arms crossed. He wasn't sporting his coat anymore; instead he wore a thick, black cotton shirt with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

Clark quickly darted over and lifted her chin. He withdrew his fingers suddenly and took a staggering step back. "She's…"

"Dead?" J'onn finished for him as he walked over to the body and stood facing it. "When I found her she certainly wasn't."

"You mean you killed her?" Clark asked in shock, staring over at his friend.

With his arms still crossed and his eyes on the dead woman in front of him, he shook his head. "No, I didn't kill her."

"Then what happened?" he asked hastily, the sight of seeing Candice dead almost causing him to vomit.

J'onn walked over beside the chair and turned to face the young man. "When I spoke to you at that cabin, I told you I found an alien presence. You said it was this woman Candice."

"And?" Clark asked as sorrow set in, his voice dry and hoarse. Candice was a good woman, maybe a little brash and provocative, but she didn't deserve to die.

"I followed the trail and found her lying in the snow at the top of the mountain. She wasn't moving so instantly I figured something was wrong. I remember you told me something about the moon and her strength, and then I thought she was just bathing in the early moonlight. As I got closer I noticed that her eyes were open. Something felt odd as I got closer, and when I bent over her to get a better look, she hit me." J'onn rubbed his left cheek

"She hit you?" Clark asked with wide eyes.

"You told me she possessed great strength, and maybe it also had to do with being surprised, but she launched me all the way across mountain and over the edge." He shook his head as he crouched down and looked at her again. "I'm no slouch Kal-El; she was beyond anything any meteor infected."

"What are you getting at?" Clark asked as he paced back and forth. He went to rub the nervous sweat off his brow with his arm, but thought better of it and rolled up his sleeves to make sure he didn't ruin them by accident. The sight of her dead body was still unsettling, but there seemed as if something else was at play.

J'onn walked over and grabbed a chair from the dining table, setting it right in front of Candice's limp body. He reversed it and straddled the chair, staring intently at the still form. "Brainiac."

"What about Brainiac?" Clark asked, his attention suddenly riveted.

"I fought her Kal-El, I fought her with all I had. I'm never met anyone who could come that close to my own power, but she did."

J'onn seemed somewhat fascinated with the dead woman in front of him. Clark didn't really understand, but his alien friend wasn't exactly human. "What does Brainiac have to do with of any of this?"

Still staring at the dead girl, J'onn replied. "I tried to get her to talk, but she said absolutely nothing. I had to reveal my true self to match her strength, and when I tried to communicate telepathically, there was a barrier."

"A barrier?" Clark asked, puzzled.

"That's what first triggered me to think that something else was a play. Brainiac has the ability to block the mind from me. That I have no doubt, but I still had a million things running through my mind at the time." When Clark didn't say anything, he continued.

"I had to push away those questions though; I had to worry about not getting myself killed. It didn't take long before I overpowered her though. No matter how strong she was, she didn't possess anything else. With the little time I had, I managed to turn myself invisible and allow her to pass through me. When she turned around, I grabbed her head in my hands and knocked her out."

Clark shook his head in confusion. "If you said Brainiac was blocking her mind, how did you knock her out?"

"The old fashioned way actually. I applied enough pressure to her temples and she crumbled in my hands. She may have been strong, but she's not bulletproof like you are. Again I tried to get inside her head, but the blockade was still there. That confirmed that there was an outside agent controlling her. When someone is unconscious, I can read the lingering thoughts, but I was still blocked."

Stopping his pacing and leaning up against the counter, Clark put two fingers to his forehead. "Brainiac controlling her wouldn't be much of a stretch. He did it before with Fine."

"No, this was different. Brainiac was Fine. He created Milton Fine to use. Here he simply inhabited another being."

"How?"

J'onn shrugged as he continued to stare at the woman. "I haven't a clue, but he was in there."

Clark rested his two hands on the counter behind him. "What else happened?"

"When she was unconscious, I brought her here and tied her up. She would awake eventually, but I couldn't be quite sure when. It wasn't a few seconds after I had her tied up that she woke up."

"Weren't you afraid she would break out of the chair?"

Shaking his head, J'onn said, "No. She may have been strong, but what I did to her left her groggy and disoriented. When her eyes opened and looked at me, they hinted at nothing alien. Then she spoke, but I'm not stupid, I knew full well it was likely a trick."

"Was it?" Clark asked.

"Indeed it was. She tried to break free a second later when I did nothing, but she was weak. I had tied the ropes around her wrists and ankles tightly. There was no way she was getting out. The tensile strength of fine rope is quite remarkable I must say."

"J'onn," Clark said with a low voice.

"Right. Well, as I was saying, I looked her right in the eye and asked her what her name was. When she gave me no answer, I smiled and told her there were other ways of getting it. I'm not one to torture or manipulate people, but I knew there was some of the woman in there somewhere. Brainiac had full control of her, but she was alive still. I knew I couldn't hit it out of her."

"Hit it out of her? You're saying that you would honestly do such a despicable thing?"

"If it was a last resort? Maybe. I've never done it before, but this is Brainiac we're talking about."

"She was a living person, you can't just go and hit her!"

"Exactly Kal-El, and that's why I didn't. If I knew for certain that the woman inside her was dead, I would have done whatever I wished. Brainiac is a computer program, not an organic specimen."

"How would it help to beat a dead body?" Clark asked with a disgusted tone.

"It doesn't matter, but what I'm saying is that I was lucky that there was some of her left inside. I tried over and over and I eventually broke down the barrier around her mind. As I had attempted to do so, I could here an alien voice in the background. It was taunting me, telling me that it would all be in futility because in the end Earth would be his."

Clark almost snorted. "That sounds like the Brainiac you speak of."

"I know," J'onn replied as he got up off the chair and walked behind the body and looked back to Clark. "Even though he was controlling her body and her mind, with her body in such a condition, he couldn't use her as easily. After I tore down the barrier, he disappeared instantly, gone from her like a bag caught in an updraft."

"Did he take Candice with her?" Clark asked as he sat down on the chair and straddled the back with his legs spread out. He stared at the blood matted hair on her head and closed his eyes. Death was never easy, and especially when it affected someone he knew. He had accepted that with the dangerous life he sometimes led, that people were going to get hurt, but death was still foreign and hard to deal with.

J'onn's voice made him reopen his eyes though.

"I think she was pretty much dead when he took her. But as she died in front of me, I managed to access her mind. She told me what happened."

"She remembered? I find that surprising."

"Me too, but then again this is Brainiac." When Clark said nothing, he continued. "She told me that she had been walking back to her hotel room and when she slipped her card into the electronic lock, something pricked her finger. Then the next she knew, she was fighting me on the mountain."

Clark hung set his hand on his forearms that were resting on the back of the chair. "I couldn't begin to imagine what it must have been like to be possessed and not have the ability to control your own body."

"It's cruel, Kal-El, and it was not what she deserved."

He nodded and looked up sadly. "Did she suffer?" When J'onn looked away, his head sunk back into his arms. "I should have protected her."

"It was not your fault, even you know that. You are just upset because she's dead. It's what makes you more human than anyone else I know, Kal-El. When a good person is harmed, you feel their pain."

"It sucks," Clark commented softly.

"Of course it does, but if anyone has the strength to live with it, you do. We will stop him Kal-El, we will."

"Why her though," he asked as he looked at Candice and a tear fell down his cheek. "Why her?"

"Simple, it wanted to get to you. You are its main objective."

"Then everyone else is in danger. Jimmy, Chloe, and most of all, Lois, they could all be next?"

J'onn tapped his chin and nodded. "Theoretically yes, but this young woman did show me some other things that make me believe that what Brainiac did to her is much harder than we think. Somehow I think that it has been cooking up this small plan for a while now. You were likely supposed to find Candice, but I did instead. We have thwarted its first attempt to get to you. Yes, a life was the price we had to pay and I'm sorry."

"That doesn't make it any better. She died because of me!" Clark shouted as he stood up and stomped on the chair, wood flying left and right as it was easily demolished.

"Calm down Kal-El."

"How the hell can I? If this is the outcome of all the ones I care about, why don't I just give myself up?" His anger reared its ugly head. "I could never let any harm come to the ones I love."

"I know, but think of what you're saying. If you were to give yourself up, then what would happen to this world? Even if Brainiac promised to not harm the ones you care about, does that mean it was worth the destruction of everything else?"

Clark was about to yell back, but his eyes widened suddenly and his head fell to his chest. "No."

"Right, and I know that Kal-El, and you know that too. Death in itself is painful, but it being on your hands is even worse. She died because she knew you, that is the truth, but what I know that you don't is that she was targeted because of her affiliation with your home planet."

"What?" Clark asked, his head snapping up suddenly as his tears dried up.

"Before she died, she told me that Brainiac had been able to get into her because she had been affected by the meteor rocks. Remember, Brainiac is from Krypton, so it's not much of a stretch to believe that he has an easier affiliation with beings that are somehow affected by its home planet."

"So what you're saying is that it might not be able to take over a normal person?"

"I'm not saying that, what I'm saying is that it would likely be much more difficult. I can't say so for certain, but that's what I got from this young woman just before she died."

Clark began to pace again as his mind ran a mile a minute. "Why is it here, how did it know I would come here?"

"That my young friend I don't know the answer to. Trust me, I asked her this but she had no knowledge of it. She may have shared some of what Brainiac was when it took her, but she didn't know a lot."

Nodding sadly, Clark stopped pacing and stood looking at Candice. "Was there anything else she knew, or said?"

"Just one other thing," J'onn said softly.

"What?"

"She said she was sorry that she couldn't be a strong as you."

Clark placed his hand on the counter and hung his head. He lifted his eyes, tearing and red. "Why J'onn, why is all this happening?"

"Like I told you before, I don't know."

"That's not very helpful."

J'onn nodded in understanding and looked down at the body that was still tied up to the chair. "We need to find a place to put her."

"What?" Clark asked as his head shot up.

"I believe it is your custom to bury the dead, am I right?"

"Yeah?" he replied with a wary look. "What are you getting at?"

"She should be laid to rest."

Clark shook his head sadly and breathed heavily. "It's not that simple. Her friends, her family, they are all going to want to know what happened. It's not as cut and dry as simply placing her in the ground."

J'onn nodded yet again and pursed his lips. "I will take care of it."

"How?"

"I will disguise myself and say that I found her in the avalanche."

"But her friends will have seen her since then."

He rubbed his chin and looked to Clark. "Then I will simply find her friends and wipe out their memory from after the avalanche."

"You can do that?"

"I can do a lot of things."

"But wiping out the memory of others isn't right." Clark stood straight and walked to J'onn and the still slumped over Candice.

"I know, but we may have no other choice."

"Someone once told me that there is always a choice," Clark snapped back.

"Yes, but I choose to ignore that there is another way, simply because I know the difficulty that lies on that path. I will do what must be done so that the safety of you, me, and everyone else, is kept."

"But their memory? You can't be serious?"

"I am. I believe this is the only choice." He could hear the young man grumble deeply beside him, and he simply put a hand on his shoulder. "I know this is hard, but sometimes hard decisions have to be made. You are still young and you don't fully understand, and that hurts, but once you graduate from your training, you will understand."

"I don't want to understand," Clark replied as he put his hands in his pockets.

J'onn nodded and squeezed the young mans shoulder.

Clark was about to speak, but something caught his ear.

"Smallville?"

His eyes went wide as he turned his head and watched Lois walk out of the bedroom and stop dead in her tracks. Her eyes went wide and her hand went to her mouth. "Lois?" he asked with a worried tone.

"Dear god," she whispered as she took a few wary steps forward and close the distance between herself and Candice. "Is she…"

"Dead?" Clark asked, finishing her sentence for her. When she looked up at him with wide eyes, he nodded.

"What happened?" She walked over and stood close to Clark, needing to feel his warmth after seeing such a cold sight.

J'onn answered her.

"The last escapee from the Phantom Zone took control of her."

"Is it dead now too?" She asked.

"No," Clark answered.

"Then where is it?"

J'onn looked at Clark and the young man smiled weakly. "We do not know Miss Lane, it is around though."

"What do you mean around?" She asked, her voice hardening and her reporter side coming out in full force.

"We don't know where it is, Lois. This is not something tangible or organic we're dealing with. We don't know how to destroy this thing."

She turned to Clark, "Destroy? What do you mean destroy? I would never have thought you'd be willing to kill something."

"It's not human, it's not organic," J'onn said. "It is nothing of this world and it means destruction to everything living here. If we do not do away with it, then everything is lost."

"But killing it?" She asked as her eyes drifted back to Candice. "Do you have to?"

J'onn nodded yet again and said. "It's not technically killing it; it's doing away with it. It doesn't have a life force, it is an entity created by Kal-El's race years ago. It is an intelligent computer program that stores the knowledge of everything it finds."

"Then what does it want with Clark?"

"It plans to offer a trade."

"A trade for what?" Lois crossed her arms as she stared at the alien. She didn't know a whole lot about him, so she was genuinely curious.

"It wants to offer him all the knowledge about Krypton in exchange for this world."

"So it wants to rule Earth?"

"No," J'onn replied as he shook his head. "It wants all the knowledge from this earth and then it will destroy it."

"Why would it do that? That makes no sense."

Clark touched her shoulder. "It's a computer program Lois, it has no real conscious, only a set of parameters it can carry out."

Lois frowned and looked to the dead woman in front of her. Death did not affect her like it used too, especially since her mother died, but it was still unsettling. "What was Candice's role in all this?"

Clark looked to J'onn, who nodded to him that he should speak the truth. "She died because she knew me, and because she had remnants of my home planet in her blood."

"And he possessed her because he was Kryptonian too."

"Basically."

"Okay, that makes sense, but what happens now?"

Clark took a deep breath. "I think it's time that you, Jimmy, and Chloe get out of here while we deal with this." He could see an argument begin to boil within her eyes, but before she could say anything, J'onn interrupted her.

"I will take care of her like I said I would. I will leave you two alone to argue."

"What?" Lois asked as she spun around to face the Martian. "We're not going to argue."

"Ha!" Clark spat. "We both know where this is heading."

Bending over, J'onn undid the knots on Candice's ankles and wrists. He gingerly picked her up and slung her over his shoulder. "Miss Lane?" he asked.

"Yes?" Lois managed to answer as she didn't take her eyes from Clark.

"I suggest you listen to Kal-El. You don't have to agree with him, but you really should let him explain. I agree with him, getting you and your friends out of here is the best plan, but we must also get everyone else out of here too. No one is safe."

Clark shook his head. "How in the world do we that?"

"I don't know, find a way." J'onn smiled weakly and walked to the balcony doors and opened them.

"Find a way?" Clark shot back with annoyance.

"That's right, find a way." With that, J'onn flew out the window without looking back.

"Just great," Lois said with a sigh. "You're both crazy."