Biological Families
Author: duane at duaneaakre dot com
Disclaimer: As always I own nothing. Well I own a house, two cars, a pair of jetskis, and a lot of other junk, but none of these characters.
Story Rating: R The story may drift into the HBO range rather than stay in the WB range, so to be on the safe side, I am rating this R.
Chapter 11
As Clark sprinted to the door leading from the ballroom back into the main hallway, he scanned the hallway with his x-ray vision. Several people were present in the hallway, but he no longer had the patience to wait for the way to become clear. 'Fuck it,' thought Clark. 'The girls are missing. Whitney has already been killed once tonight. If anything happens to him or Indy without Lana here, they will be dead, permanently. Every extra second we spend in this damned chateau increases everyone's risk. If I am going to stop the guards with the mystical braids of Samson, there is no time to waste.'
Hoping Indy wouldn't see what was about to happen, Clark accelerated up to full 'speed mode' just before reaching the door. If Indy had been watching, he would have seen Clark simply vanish. Even the door opened and closed so fast, it would have gone unnoticed. But Indy was not watching as Whitney had already dropped the curtain they were hiding behind.
Clark raced towards the stairs leading back to the dungeon. The vibrations from the pounding of the guards he had entombed within the rock wall had stopped only a couple of minutes earlier; either they had given up and were still trapped or they had escaped. Either way they were still down there somewhere.
Mentally preparing to deal with the two super-humanly strong adversaries again, Clark reminded himself they had only been able to hold their own before he used his 'super-speed' abilities. This time he intended to just stay in speed-mode. With luck, he should be able to find the men, strip them of their hair pieces, and return to Indy and Whitney almost before they knew he was gone.
Picturing the layout of the dungeon in his head as he ran down the stairs, Clark was depending on his speed to keep him from being seen and therefore wasn't scanning ahead. It wasn't until he rounded the last bend that he discovered the exit to the dungeon had been blocked off from the far side. Braking to a halt, Clark took a moment to scan the entire dungeon level.
Starting with the location off to the left, where he had trapped the two men earlier, he saw they had indeed managed to fracture the entire thirty feet of hard granite, which had separated them from dungeon, and had made good their escape.
Looking straight ahead, he saw the bottom of the stairwell had been blockaded with a fifteen foot thick wall of blocks, apparently stolen from the corridor leading to the 'black' cathedral. Beyond the blockage, five sets of machine guns had been set up with crossing fields of fire. And these where not the small sub-machine guns carried on a sling over the shoulder like the first soldiers he had encountered had carried. No, these were big, heavy-duty guns mounted on tripods manned by three soldiers each.
Continuing his scan to the right, he found another dozen soldiers lining the passage to the 'black' cathedral. And in that dark chamber were arrayed another twenty-five to thirty men. Had that many men really passed down the stairs while he had been hiding in the storeroom talking to Indy? Looking closer at the occupants of the black cathedral, he saw most of the men were assembled facing the front of the chamber. Three men were grouped around the altar as though they were leading some kind of ceremony. It was then he noticed the outline of the body lying on the altar, a small body compared to the men surrounding it. While he was coming to the realization the body belonged to a woman, he saw one of the men raise a large metallic blade. They were going to kill her! Remembering the body hung from the large inverted cross, he knew human sacrifice was not beyond these people. What if Lana and Marion hadn't been taken away like Whitney thought? If he was wrong about them being taken to Hitler, he could also be wrong about them having been taken from the chateau. What if the woman was one of them? For the moment, thoughts of the men with Samson's gifts had to be put aside.
Clark turned back to the improvised barricade. If they thought they were prepared for a frontal assault, they were about to find out they were very wrong. After the five seconds he had paused to scope out the dungeon, Clark accelerated back up to 'speed mode'. The fifteen foot thick wall of loosely stacked granite blocks didn't stand a chance against a shoulder backed up by a two hundred twenty pound body moving at several thousand miles per hour. The good old equation of Energy equals mass times velocity squared still applied to objects in Clark's path and to the wall he was the equivalent of several tons of TNT.
Before the soldiers manning the guns could even react to the cloud of granite shards engulfing them, Clark was past. He raced down the passage towards the black cathedral expending more attention and effort avoiding the devastation from his previous journey than was required to sidestep the dozen men with sub-machine guns slung from their shoulders. From Clark's uniquely shifted perspective, they seemed to be frozen in time. So great was the time differential, even as he ran past, Clark had sufficient time to turn his intense heat vision on the barrels of each weapon. By using an extremely short burst and a very highly focused beam, Clark was able to localize the damage to just deforming the tips without overheating the cartridges in the ammo clips. With luck, the damage would go unnoticed until they tried to use their weapons.
Clark reached the end of the corridor and this time the door leading into the black cathedral was standing wide open. He ran inside and then paused to look towards the front. The large inverted cross with its perverted cargo still hung on the wall beyond the altar. It seemed like someone should have removed the rotting body, but then Clark remembered it had barely been thirty minutes since he had escorted Indy from this very chamber.
Looking down towards the front, Clark saw the men assembled in the cathedral were all wearing monkish, dark brown, hooded robes. Well, all except for the three men assembled around the altar. And seeing these three, for a moment it almost felt like the scene at the end of the 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'. The three around the altar were dressed in richly embroidered white robes; the one in the center with the large knife was even wearing a tall miter's hat just like Belloq in the movie. As Clark remembered how the scene played out with the brilliant white light burning into the bodies of the soldiers through their eyes, he briefly wondered if he could accomplish the same effect with his heat vision.
But rather than turning his heat vision on the men in the chamber, for the present, Clark contented himself with using it on the blade descending towards the bound girl. Focusing his full power on the knife, he didn't merely melt or deform the blade, but totally vaporized it. One moment the Nazi wannabe high priest was swinging the knife in a lethal arc, and the next he found himself holding only a useless handle.
Clark allowed himself to relax just a little when he saw the girl lying on the altar was blonde. Unless they had some crazy reason for using a wig, this girl was not Lana or Marion. Perhaps it was time to teach these Nazis the error of their ways. If they wanted so badly to conjure up a supernatural being, he would give them one, just not the one they were doubtlessly seeking.
"Hey, asshole," shouted Clark from the back of the room. When the obvious leader looked his way, Clark continued, hoping the man understood English. "Yeah, you. This is my fucking domain. And I am really, really getting tired of your attempts to resurrect those I banished to Hades thousands of years ago."
Clark raised his right hand and pointed to the inverted cross mounted to the wall above the leader. "I will not tolerate that abomination dedicated to my eternal foes. The corrupt flesh of the martyred shall be consumed in cleansing fire as his soul ascends to the heavens."
As Clark paused, the cross, and the body it supported, burst into flames; flames so intense the leader was forced to take an involuntary step back.
"And," bellowed Clark to be heard over the roaring of the fire. "These murals with their hated images of the fallen ones, I WILL NOT tolerate them in my presence."
Then the giant dark paintings and tapestries lining the walls also burst into flames. Between the burning walls and the cross at the front of the chamber, the room was soon awash in more light than it had ever known. Then the heat started to become oppressive and rapidly accumulating smoke began filling the entire space. Where moments before 'hell' had merely been a fashion statement adorning the walls, now the black cathedral was becoming a real-life version of hell itself.
As the smoke continued to thicken, Clark was just getting ready to run up to the front to retrieve the bound girl when the two nearest robed figures abruptly turned and charged him! The two men he had original come down to this dungeon-level to find had been standing unnoticed in the back of the group of hooded figures. Clark had been so focused on intimidating the leader, the others were on him before he realized or could shift into 'speed-mode'.
Both of the men slammed into Clark at once and quickly drove him back towards the rear wall of the dark chamber. This wall was surprisingly thin, only three feet of rock separated the chamber from the abyss beyond. As quickly as they hit it, all three of them crashed through and tumbled out into empty space. The chateau had been built high on a bluff towering above the Spree River. Even this dungeon deep below the visible portion of the medieval structure was still over one hundred fifty feet above river level.
The shock of hitting the wall and then the cold, fresh night air after the stifling heat of the burning dungeon cleared Clark's head of the daze from the sudden attack. Even before they had started to fall, Clark shifted himself back into 'speed-mode'. From Clark's accelerated perspective it was as though the three of them were not falling, but rather floating in space. At what felt like a leisurely pace, Clark worked himself free from the grip of the two now seemingly frozen men. Next he grabbed with both hands the front of the robe of the nearest man. With a sharp outward motion of his hands he tore the heavy woolen robe open from collar to hem. Underneath he found the man was still wearing the nondescript black uniform from their earlier encounter. Like Clark's own original shirt and jacket, this man's uniform was in very rough shape as a result of their previous battle.
As quickly as he had shredded the man's robe, Clark tore open his black jacket and dark gray shirt. Inside, wrapped snugly around the man's waist, he found what he was searching for: one of the Samson braids. As he unwound it from the man's body and then wound it around his own left forearm for safekeeping, Clark marveled at the simple thing which had caused him so much trouble; the braid was just over four feet in length and barely larger in diameter than Clark's middle finger. The black hair was glossy and supple as though it had just been shorn that very day. It didn't look at all like the frayed, brittle hair you saw on ancient mummies' heads.
Turning to the second man, Clark quickly repeated the procedure of opening the man's robe, jacket, and shirt. By the time he had the second braid also wrapped about his arm, the trio had fallen less than two feet and still had at least one hundred fifty more to go.
For Clark, it felt like almost two minutes had passed since he was slammed through the wall. Two minutes, and they had only fallen about eighteen inches. Twisting around, Clark discovered his head was still almost level with the opening their passage had torn into face of the cliff. Unfortunately, their forward momentum had carried them fifteen feet out from vertical wall; leaving it out of reach and a fall to the distant river inevitable.
Clark had always been exceptionally good at doing math in his head. In a flash, the basic equations of motion and acceleration he had learned in the science camp he had attended during the summer between eighth and ninth grades came back to him: velocity equals acceleration times time, distance equals one half acceleration times time squared, time equals the square root of two times distance divided by acceleration . . . Ah, that last equation was the one he needed. Hmm, an eighteen inch drop took about 0.3 seconds under a constant 1G acceleration. A one hundred fifty foot drop took just over three seconds again assuming constant acceleration, which should still apply since he seemed to remember a human had to fall seven or eight seconds to reach terminal velocity. Wow, that really drove home the significance of squaring the time. It would take only ten times as long to fall one hundred times as far.
When Clark realized with his current accelerated perception of time it was going to seem like they would be falling for another twenty minutes, he almost dropped out of 'speed mode' to get the fall over with sooner. But then he happened to look down and discovered the three of them were on a trajectory to hit a large outcropping of rocks in the river rather than the water itself. There was at least a chance the other two would survive a fall from this height if they landed in water, but not a chance in the world if they came down on solid rock. Now that they had been stripped of their magical gift, they had suddenly crossed over the line in Clark's head from enemies to be fought to victims to be saved. If he returned the Samson braids these guys would probably survive, but after all of the trouble he had gone to in order to retrieve these braids, he was only going to give them back as a last resort. No, there had to be another way.
If he streamlined his body, he would fall faster than the 'soon to be flailing' men. If he could reach the ground first, then he could attempt to catch them. He had caught Chloe back in Rome after he tossed her to about the same height, but he had broken several of her ribs in the process. Catching two men who might land at the same time as much as ten or twenty feet apart might be problematic without seriously hurting them or missing one all together. Plus the uneven rocks below would make that even trickier.
The rocks also made the option of hanging onto them all the way down more problematic. Could he flex his legs sufficiently on landing to keep their deceleration low enough to let the others survive?
Then it struck him, easing the deceleration at the bottom wasn't the key. No, slowing their velocity during the fall was the better solution. Several times over the past year he had awoken to find himself floating over his bed, floating in a manner which didn't feel all that different from falling in 'speed-mode'. Could he figure out how to use his abilities to float or at least slow their fall before they reached the rocks? At least in 'speed-mode' he had a good twenty minutes to figure it out.
-
From Clark's perspective, it was about eighteen minutes later when he achieved some limited control. The two Nazi agents were about thirty feet above the rocks with expressions of terror frozen on their seemingly immobile faces. Clark was thirty feet higher having maintained a constant altitude for over a 'speed-mode' minute.
When he had tried to replicate the 'sleep-floating' effect back on the farm, he had never had any success. But he had never thought to try it while in 'speed-mode'. Chloe had asked him once, shortly after he had told her his secret, why he didn't produce a sonic boom when he ran faster than the speed of sound. Bullets did. Airplanes did. That one car that broke the sound barrier did. So why not him?
Somehow, when he was in 'speed-mode', all the normal laws of physics didn't seem to apply. Air moved around his body differently and, as a result, no sonic boom was produced. Now, it looked like the laws of gravity didn't fully apply to him either in this strange, exotic state which only he was able to achieve. Could everyone do this back wherever he was from? Could others of his kind communicate with each other in this accelerated existence? With all of its advantages, if everyone could communicate, why would they even bother with 'normal' time? This sudden expansion of his gifts, and the associated ideas it brought to mind, raised a whole new category of questions about whom he was and where he was from.
But those thoughts would have to be put on hold for later; the other two men were getting dangerously close to the rocks if he was going to slow their descent without a lethal deceleration. Clark mentally thought to himself 'down' and quickly his body began plummeting towards the others. As he reached the first man, he forced his body to match their velocity. Then he wrapped left arm around the other's waist. Next he turned his attention towards the second man, who was at roughly the same height but about ten feet away. So far, Clark had been focusing his abilities on learning to control the speed of his descent. Now he was going to have to master some lateral control, if he was going to reach the second man.
Closing his eyes to focus for a moment, Clark concentrated on sensing his surroundings. It was like using his x-ray vision, only with his whole body rather than just his eyes. The man in his arms, then the rocks and water below, and finally the other man all came into sharp clarity. Now with an intense effort he began to will his body towards the other man. Slowly at first and then with more speed he moved towards the second man. After what felt like a long ten seconds he opened his eyes and found his body had moved just as he had pictured it in his mind. The other man was now within his reach. Quickly Clark reached out his right arm, grabbed the man's sleeve, and pulled them together until he had an arm wrapped tightly about each man's waist.
They were about fifteen feet above the rocks when Clark was finally able to slam on the brakes and slow their descent. Knowing in his accelerated 'speed-mode' state it would take another thirty seconds to reach the ground, Clark rotated his body until his feet were pointed 'down' and then willed himself to begin slowing.
His control was still less than perfect and they ultimately hit the ground a little faster than he had intended, but still well within the range a 'normal' person could survive without significant injuries.
-
The two Nazis, Schultz and Jaeger, never realized as they slammed their bodies into the strange intruder that the wall at the back of the dark cathedral was so thin. Before they knew what had happened, all three of them were tumbling in free-fall out over the river. Then, only a fraction of a second later they both felt the extremely unpleasant sensation of having their mystical powers ripped away. The sudden feeling of normalcy was like going abruptly from the healthiest day of your life to the worst case of flu imaginable. Weakness. Every ache and pain exaggerated. And after their battles with this intruder, their bodies were filled with aches and pains the 'gift' had been ameliorating. Now it all came rushing back and for a moment they forgot their current plight in their sudden agony, but only for a moment, as the sensation of falling quickly refilled their senses.
It was the dark of night, but they could still see the water glistening far below. As they realized without their 'gift' this fall would surely be fatal, they both began to scream and flail about. Even though the fall would only last a couple of seconds, in some ways it seemed to last infinitely longer as their lives did truly flash before their eyes and their minds reviewed all of the decisions, good and bad, which had led up to this moment.
The dark, suddenly rock-filled waters seemed to rush up towards them, completely filling their field of view, when abruptly a powerful arm wrapped itself around their waists and their terrifying descent began to slow. The feet of the man holding them slammed into the ground and they were jarred lose from his grip. They crashed down on their hands and knees, badly scraping them on the sharp, wet, and cold rocks. After a glance at each other, they looked up with fear-filled eyes at the man standing between them. The man had lost his shirt, tie, and jacket somewhere along the way and was now wearing an ill-fitting Wehrmacht private's jacket, which looked about six sizes too small. The jacket was completely unbuttoned and had sleeves so short they seemed to barely come down to the middle of his forearms. Not that his forearms were bare, no, they were covered by the Samson braids normally worn about their own waists. The expression on the man's face said the braids were of no real importance to him, but merely wound around his arms for safekeeping.
A nearly endless stream of questions ran through the minds of the two men as they looked up at this man who had twice defeated them. What was he? How had he originally trapped them within the solid rock walls of the dungeon? Now, how had he managed to fall from the great height and stayed on his feet? If he had stripped them of their powers, why had he then saved them? Who was he?
-
As Clark dropped down to 'normal' time after one of his longest ever apparent stays in 'speed mode', he looked down at the two men sprawled before him. Stripped of their powers, they suddenly seemed of little consequence. There was still a girl in that lofty dungeon to be rescued. And Whitney and Indy were waiting in the ballroom for his return. And Lana and Marion were lost somewhere in Nazi Germany. And back home, Chloe and Lex were just minutes away from death.
No, he had achieved his goal, these men were neutralized. He needed to turn his attention to other urgent matters. Still, it was probably worth a moment or two to put the fear in them as one more small way to hinder the Nazis' activities in the area of the occult.
Grabbing the men by the backs of their collars, Clark effortlessly hoisted them to their feet. He swung them around until he could look into their faces.
"I will NOT tolerate you fucking Nazis meddling in the affairs of Gods. If you don't want the whole of Germany to feel my wrath, you will tell your people to stop all research into relics and the occult."
Clark paused to look back up towards the distant chateau. The others followed his gaze and saw the large plume of smoke escaping from the hole they had punched in the wall of the black cathedral.
"Don't worry about telling the ones up there," continued Clark, as he saw where they were staring. "I don't think many of them or this wretched chateau will survive this night."
As they returned their attention to him, Clark snarled out with all of the power he could put into his voice when he went into 'God' mode. "FEAR ME!"
Then Clark tossed them fifty feet out into the center of the river. He only watched for a couple of seconds until they appeared gasping at the surface. Before the swift current swept them away downstream, Clark was already turning his attention back to the towering cliff. At the top sat the ancient chateau. A wide balcony stretched across the facade providing a commanding view of the river and the valley beyond. As he stared at it, Clark decided the balcony had to be right outside of the ballroom where he had left Whitney and Indy. If he stared hard enough, he might be able to pick out their silhouettes from here.
But before he could think about rejoining the others, he still had unfinished business in the dungeon. Oh, he had accomplished his original goal of disarm the men with Samson's braids, but there was still the matter of rescuing the girl those stupid Nazis had been trying to sacrifice. Turning his attention back to the gaping hole at the dungeon level, Clark flexed his knees low and then leapt hard in its direction. His feet had barely left the ground when he once more shifted his body back into 'speed-mode', where he could again control his trajectory. Clark grinned to himself; admit it, it was more than just controlling his trajectory, he was actually able to FLY!
-
Without having to limit himself for fear of hurting the two men and not needing all of the time it had taken to figure things out, Clark was able to drive himself much faster on this ascent than on the previous descent. In this accelerated existence less than two minutes seemed to pass compared to the twenty minutes needed for the trip down. In the 'real' world only a small fraction of a second passed and his flight to anyone on the ground would have been nearly as invisible as his fastest running.
As he approached the opening back into the dungeon, some of Clark's control over his lateral motion wavered. In the end, he crashed into the side of the cliff a good ten feet from his goal. Driving his impossibly strong fingers straight into the hard rock surface, Clark decided these results weren't too bad for a first attempt. It had taken him weeks to fully control his x-ray vision. And there were the three Italian forests he had burned down before he mastered the heat vision. He realized he would need to find some time in the next few days to practice. He did wish Chloe was there to help with the practice sessions and, truthfully, to share in his excitement.
But further thoughts of flying needed to be put aside for later; the smoke billowing from the opening was getting very thick. He needed to get back in there and find the girl and then get back to Whitney and Indy. Using his fingers as human pitons, Clark quickly made his way over to the hole and swung through.
The smoke in the dungeon was so thick; he had to revert to his x-ray vision to see. Scanning the chamber, he found a large crowd struggling to get through the constriction of the doorway into the hallway. Then up at the front of the cathedral, he saw the girl was still tied to the altar. And from the way she was struggling, she was definitely having trouble breathing. The three men who had been leading the ceremony when he first arrived were nowhere to be found. Most likely they were mixed in with the others struggling to get through the door, but since in x-ray vision mode their white robes looked much the same as the brown robes worn by the others, Clark couldn't pick them out from a distance. At the moment, rescuing the girl definitely took precedence over identifying the leaders.
Clark raced up to the altar at the front of the cathedral where the girl was bound. At this end of the cathedral the fire and the heat were far more intense. Burning fragments of the tapestries which had covered the walls were coming loose and drifting down towards the floor. Several had already landed on the girl's white gown and it was beginning to smolder. As he reached her, Clark thought he was going to be too late; the smell of burning flesh was almost overpowering. Quickly, he brushed away the glowing embers. When he saw that none of them had penetrated through her gown, he felt a surge of relief as it became clear the burning flesh smell was only coming from the corpse on the inverted cross.
Crouching down, Clark tore free the three sets of ropes that had been used to tie the girl to the altar. As he lifted her into his arms, she experienced another coughing spasm. He quickly pulled her face into his chest and tried to use his open jacket to protect her from the smoke and falling debris. When her face touched his chest, he could feel the heat radiating off of her expose skin. If he didn't get her out of this furnace soon, her flesh was going to have second or third degree burns. Assuming, of course, she didn't succumb to smoke inhalation first.
Accelerating back up into 'speed-mode', Clark quickly scanned the exit. Most of the men had now made it out of the cathedral, but the long hallway leading to the stairway was still heavily clogged with bodies. He could force his way through the crowd, but that way would risk hurting the girl. Looking further to his left, he saw the antechamber to the cathedral, which had been set-up as an impromptu torture chamber. He saw the large mound of debris was still there, where his two opponents had initially tried to bury him. If he used his heat vision to cut a passage directly from the cathedral to the antechamber and then a second passage from the antechamber directly to the stairs, he could bypass all of the men in the corridor. But that still left a long line of men heading up the stairs to contend with before he and the girl could reach the main level of the chateau.
No, the stairs did not look like a desirable route out, which left the hole in the back wall of the cathedral. At least that route had the benefit of being the shortest distance to the balcony off of the ballroom. Thirty minutes ago, he would never have considered trying to scale the outside cliff while carrying a barely conscious girl, but now he had another option. His control might not be perfect, but his flying abilities should be good enough to get them safely up to the balcony. Plus, this route had the benefit of getting them up to the main level quickly enough that the four of them might get clear of the chateau before the people up there fully understood the disaster which had occurred down here.
Clark didn't want the Nazis to ever be able to use this dungeon again for the dark purposes he had witnessed. As he ran the hundred feet from the altar to the hole in the back wall, he remembered the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on September 11th. They hadn't collapse immediately with the impact of the airliners. No, it had taken almost forty-five minutes for the heat of the burning fuel to take its toll. Similarly, Clark didn't want this dungeon-level to immediately collapse, he felt more comfortable if the men in the corridor and on the stairs had at least a chance to escape. Therefore he started to selectively destroy the structure which supported the millions of tons of rock above the dungeon. He used his powerful heat vision to vaporize three quarters of the columns supporting the roof rather than all of them. And as he approached the back wall, he enlarged the hole from eight feet wide to nearly thirty feet leaving an unsustainable span cantilevered above the abyss. Even in 'speed-mode' he could hear the rock overhead beginning to crack and fracture. Studying the fracture pattern briefly with his x-ray vision, he realized he might have done even more significant damage than he intended; the whole side of the cliff might let go and take the chateau down into the river with it. Damn, he had better hurry and get Whitney and Indy clear of the building.
When Clark reached the greatly expanded opening in the cliff face, he didn't even pause before launching himself through in a flat dive like he had often used from the starting blocks at the pool back at Smallville High. Of course, he had never tried diving from the starting blocks with a woman cradled in his arms, but then he hadn't been able to fly when he had done it before either.
Clark shot out of the hole in the cliff-face faster than any bullet. Immediately, he arched into a climbing loop to reach the balcony outside of the ballroom as quickly as possible. It felt good to be out in the clean, fresh air again and to be able to once more see with his normal vision rather than having to continuously use his x-ray mode.
This time the distance he need to travel was shorter and his control a little better. It only felt like it took a little over thirty seconds in the accelerated 'speed-mode' before he was approaching the balcony from slightly above. He took a few extra seconds on their final approach to try for as gentle of a landing as he could manage; the girl had already been through enough tonight without suffering any broken bones because he landed too hard.
Light as a feather, Clark landed on the fifteen foot wide balcony halfway between the doors to the ballroom and the railing above the abyss. Clark dropped back to 'normal' speed as he lowered the girl to her feet.
"Can you stand?" he asked, as he kept a stabilizing arm around her waist.
The girl raised a hand to her mouth and coughed for at least ten seconds before she was finally able to raise her eyes and take in the sudden change in venue. Then she frantically swept her head around as the abrupt change from the altar in the smoke-filled dungeon to this high exposed balcony registered.
"Was Geschah? Wie erhielten wir hier?" she began as her eyes darted wildly about. Finally, her eyes settled on Clark. "Wer sind Sie?"
Clark shook his head and then used up most of his repertoire of German. "Ich verstehe nicht. Sprechen Sie Englisch?"
The girl hesitated for a moment and then answered shyly. "I . . . ah . . . speak . . . a . . . little."
Clark let out a small sigh. He sure wished he had Chloe's knowledge of languages. Always ending up in places where he had to depend on others to communicate was annoyingly inconvenient.
"I am Clark."
"Gretchen," answered the girl. Then trying to mimic a gesture she had seen in several American movies, she held out her left hand for Clark to shake.
Before they could proceed any further with their introductions, a massive tremor shook the balcony. Looking down with his x-ray vision, Clark could see giant chunks of the cliff starting to break away down near the dungeon-level. They didn't have much time before the whole chateau might follow suit.
Instead of shaking the offered hand, he took it in his right and then took two quick strides and reached one of the numerous glass doors fronting on the balcony. With sudden sense urgency, he grabbed the door handle in his left hand and jerked it open so hard, the entire door went sailing past them and disappeared into the abyss. Not pausing to see the girl's reaction, he pulled open the curtains and led her into the ballroom.
Two steps into the ballroom, he froze. Whitney and Indy were no longer hiding behind the curtains. No, they were both kneeling on the floor about twenty-five feet apart. Each of them had the barrel of a submachine gun pressed firmly against their neck. A third German, an officer he quickly recognized as the one who witnessed the initial fight in the dungeon, was halfway between the others and was just in the process of turning from facing the hall doors. Obviously, he had been waiting for Clark and had expected him to enter from that direction.
"Halt!" shouted Captain Hoffman in German. Then he raised his own pistol and pointed it in the general direction of Clark and the girl. But having seen bullets bounce harmlessly off this man before, he could not fully subdue the quaking of his gun hand.
"You will surrender immediately," continued Hoffman still speaking in German. "These bullets may have no effect on you, but I don't think the same thing is true for your accomplices. Therefore if you don't surrender, I will have them shot."
Clark had no idea what the German officer was saying, but could easily guess given the situation. Still, he fell back on his one memorized response. "Ich verstehe nicht. Sprechen Sie Englisch?"
Hoffman in his frustration let loose with another torrent of German. As he spoke, he was gesturing wildly with his pistol.
When he finally wound down, Gretchen decided to try and help things. She didn't understand how, but Clark had rescued her from the hooded men who had kidnapped her and taken her to the dungeon. If he could do that, perhaps he could handle this situation, too. But before she could try to communicate with him, she needed to calm the German officer, who was saying the craziest things and was starting to seem almost hysterical. Quietly she spoke up, also in German, "Herr Captain, I know a little English. Perhaps I could help translate?"
A little of the maniac sheen in Hoffman's eyes receded as someone, anyone, responded to him. He gave the girl a curt nod, but kept his gun pointed in their direction.
Gretchen turned to Clark. "Clark?"
Clark flicked his eyes towards her for a moment before returned his attention to the German officer.
"Yeah?"
Gretchen licked her lips for a second. "The captain wants you to . . . ah . . . oh, I don't know the word. He wants you to . . . give . . . up. Or he is going to totung, er, kill your friends. But first he wants you to give up your . . . this sounds crazy . . . hair?"
Just then another even larger tremor shook the chateau. As the whole building started to shift, all twenty-six glass doors leading onto the exposed balcony shattered at once. The heavy curtains covering the doors kept most of the glass out of the room, but the shattering sound was unmistakable and very scary. Immediately the winds that always buffeted that side of the building started to make the exposed curtains flutter and flap.
The captain staggered under the assault and Gretchen fell to her knees. For a moment before the shaking once again subsided, Clark was afraid one of the guards holding Whitney or Indy would accidentally let off a burst from his gun.
Pulling the girl to her feet, Clark quickly said. "Tell him I set off explosives at the key locations in the dungeon. The whole bluff including this building is about to collapse into the river. We all must get out of here immediately."
Gretchen couldn't follow everything Clark said in such a rush, but she got the key words: explosives, collapse, must get out.
Rapidly she spoken in German and the officer made a short, harsh reply.
"The captain says you the hair must give and then you up must give . . . sorry, meaning you must given up."
Clark briefly glanced down while using his x-ray vision. Even though the worst of the shaking had momentarily stopped, he could still see bigger and bigger chunks falling away from the dungeon level. They had at most a couple of minutes before the chateau started breaking up and followed the rest of the hill down into the distant river. He had to hurry, if he was going to get Whitney, Indy, and Gretchen clear in time.
Hoping to distract the Germans for a couple of seconds, Clark nodded. Then he pulled the ends of the braids free. Slowly they unraveled from his forearms and dropped, coil by coil, to the floor.
-
Marion couldn't stop the tears that rolled from her eyes as the Germans led Lana and her from the ballroom, down the hallway to the front entrance, out into the courtyard, and finally into the back of the same van which had delivered them to the chateau less than twenty minutes earlier. That poor boy, Whitney, was dead. She and Hank had been through several adventures before and always they had come through unscathed. Well, maybe some bruises and a few broken bones, but never anything like this. What kind of a person was this Major Biberach to just gun him down? What would he do next? At the moment he was sitting across from her, barely visible in the dim light. His beady little eyes were fixed on them with a barely concealed hunger. If he could kill with no sign of remorse, what would he do with them after their usefulness was over? A shudder of despair joined the tears she couldn't suppress.
But she was supposed to be the mature, strong one. And it was because of Hank and she that these kids had been drawn into this mess. If she was feeling all of this pain from Whitney's death, what was Lana going through? She had known Whitney for barely an hour, but Lana had been his friend. At first Lana had nearly gone berserk. And the way she had fought those men, where had she learned to fight like that? But then, when the Major had put the gun against her own head, the fight had simply gone out of the girl. Ever since then the girl had calmly followed the Major's orders with little show of emotion. The shock of her friend's death must have truly set in.
Marion reached over and clasped Lana's hand. "I am so sorry about your friend," she said quietly.
But not quietly enough to suit the Major. "Silence. You will only speak when you are told to."
Lana squeezed her hand back. Very softly, she said in the Tibetan language they shared. "Trust me."
Before Marion could figure out what Lana meant or wanted, Lana abruptly dug her nails into Marion's hand. Dug them in so hard, she could feel them break the skin. She had to work hard not to cry out as she felt the blood well up to the surface. Why was Lana hurting her? What did she mean by 'trust me'?
Marion sat there trying to control her breathing when suddenly she started getting a series of overwhelming visions. Visions that seemed so real, it was like they were more real than her own memories. They were Lana's memories. No, her memories. She was Lana.
- Flash -
She was lying on a couch with a bald, young man. With Lex. And she felt so happy and safe.
- Flash -
She was watching ostrich-drawn chariots race in the Circus Maximus.
- Flash -
She was being sucked up into a tornado with Whitney in his truck.
- Flash -
She was allowing her eyes to fill with blood as she and Chloe played their little vampire game with Lionel's head.
- Flash -
She was introducing Clark to her parents in a dark and foggy cemetery.
- Flash -
She was being tortured by soldiers in a scary Roman dungeon.
- Flash -
She was waiting tables at The Talon. Lex was there, but he was no more than her business partner.
- Flash -
She was walking through the strange green doorway of the time machine, moving from Chloe's secret laboratory to a dark alley just off the Olympicstrasse.
- Flash -
She was being held hostage with Whitney, Clark, and a bunch of her classmates in the control room of the fertilizer plant.
- Flash -
She was watching Whitney play quarterback with the Metropolis Sharks and she felt so happy for Whitney and his Dad.
- Flash -
She was fencing in a practice session against the French champion at the Olympic Village and even holding back, it was difficult not to win.
- Flash -
She was forced to watch the execution squad throw lance after lance into her best friend Chloe before they turned their attention to her.
- Flash -
- Flash -
- Flash -
Hundreds and then thousands of visions came faster and faster until Marion finally, mercifully blacked out.
-
Marion suddenly came awake and once more her mind seemed both clear and fully her own. The memories from the visions were still present, but fading until they felt more like normal memories. Scarily, they were not her memories, but felt just as real. Lana had been in ancient Rome like she told the Major back at the chateau. Those memories were just as real and clear as the memories from earlier this same day at the Olympic Village. How was that possible? Then she recalled the memories of the time machine. Time machine?
Slowly, Marion got passed Lana's overwhelming memories and came back to the present. She was standing with her eyes closed; a refreshing cool breeze was ruffling her hair. Wait a minute; she had been sitting in the back of the van. If she had truly blacked out after whatever had happened, surely she should still be sitting or even slumped over.
Cautiously, Marion opened her eyes. Before she could even begin to take in her stunning surroundings, Lana spoke up.
"Marion, are you okay? Do you understand me?"
Marion's eyes were drawn to Lana's voice, but when she looked at Lana she was even more bewildered than before. Lana was no longer dressed in the semi-formal gray business suit she had been wearing only moments ago. No, suddenly she was wearing some extremely exotic costume. Her jacket and blouse had been replaced with a row of golden metallic plates, ten inches wide and one inch tall. The six plates, which were embossed with intricate patterns, were each suspended from the one above by a small golden link in the outer corners. The plates left most of her cleavage exposed and stopped short of her bare navel. Most disconcerting of all was the way various portions of her breasts and nipples came into view as she moved, due to the half inch gaps between the plates.
Marion couldn't stop her eyes from traveling down until they took in the golden silk wrap tied casually low about her tiny waist, a wrap that ended well short of the girl's knees. After her eyes wandered all the way down to Lana's bare feet, she forced them to traverse slowly back up to the girl's face.
And then she received the biggest shock of all. Lana's eyes were completely surrounded by a pitch-black painted-on mask looking more than anything like the mask around a raccoon's eyes. It left the whites of her eyes looking distinctly inhuman as her eyes similarly darted around Marion's face and body. The rest of Lana's face was covered in alternating stripes of turquoise and gold paint like something you would expect to see on a member of some long forgotten tribe from deepest Africa or perhaps the depths of the Amazon basin. Finally, Marion's gaze reached the top of Lana's head and took in the most elaborate jade headband she had ever seen. If Hank had found that headband in some long forgotten tomb, he would have spent days or even weeks talking of little else.
"Where are we? Why are you dressed like that?" was all Marion could think to ask.
Lana glanced down as though taking in her attire for the very first time. "The real question is, why are we both dressed like this?" After taking another long lingering look at Marion, Lana turned to take in their surroundings, as she added. "I am sure the answer will be forthcoming soon."
'Both dressed like this?' echoed Marion in her own head as she glanced down to see she was indeed wearing the same outfit as Lana. Although on her somewhat older, more voluptuous body the effect was very different. The metal plates were pulled tightly against her chest leaving the sides of her larger breasts prominently exposed. And a good portion of her nipples were sticking out between the second and third plates. Quickly she brought her hands up to cover as much of her exposed breasts as possible.
Just then a voice called out, "I thought Marion might appreciate seeing the civilization where her wedding ring was created."
Lana and Marion turned to find a stunning creature approaching them. The first thing to attract Marion's eyes was the massive headdress of solid white feathers which extended down her back all the way to the floor. Next was the hammered gold mask which covered her forehead, eyes, and nose. Then on down to the lower portion of her face and the painted stripes that matched Lana's, and doubtlessly her own, except this girl's were magenta and gold. Finally, Marion's glance traveled down to her gown which consisted solely of a fine gold chain-link mesh, a very open mesh which hid none, absolutely none, of her physical charms.
Marion's gaze was locked on this erotic, exotic beauty and it wasn't until Lana spoke up that the spell was finally broken.
"Laura, you slut."
At the comment the girl, obviously named Laura, burst out laughing. When she finally calmed down, she clapped her hands and then reached up to remove the headdress and the attached half mask. Before she had lifted it more than an inch, two more incredibly beautiful girls seemed to materialize out of nowhere to help with its removal.
As the two girls carried the headpiece away, Laura sighed. "I had almost forgotten how annoying that stupid headpiece was. It's too hot, heavy, and scratchy."
With the headpiece removed, Marion could see this new girl's hair was dyed the same shade of magenta as the paint on her face. And removing the gold mask revealed the same painted-on black mask as Lana wore.
"What is going on?" asked Marion, still carefully covering her breasts with her hands.
"It is the year 833 B.C. We are in Jaguar City. I am Queen Atalaya, ruler of the Uros Empire. Later today I am turning over control of my empire to my daughter, Azurduy. To commemorate this historic occasion, I had this ring specially made," and here Laura lifted the ring Hank had given Marion.
Marion stared at the ring. The names the girl used sounded familiar. Then she remembered the conversation about the ring back at the hotel. Had she fainted from the shock of the boy's death? Was this all just a dream? Repeating the thought out loud, she whispered, "Am I dreaming?"
"No," said Lana with a glare towards Laura; although the facial cues everyone used to identify emotions were lost under all of the paint. "This is real. Well, no, it is not real, but it is not a dream either. Shit, this is difficult to explain. Laura, couldn't you have picked a little more normal place for us to talk?"
Laura shrugged, which caused her mesh gown to shimmer. Once more the others' attention was attracted to her physical assets which this gown revealed rather than concealed. Marion was shocked to realize it wasn't only the hair on the girl's head which had been dyed a bright magenta.
"Well, you said earlier The Talon was boring and you wanted to see other places. Marion's ring seemed to make this a logical choice. Come on, you have to check out the view."
With that comment, Laura swept out onto the surrounding terrace and the view the others first experienced was her effectively naked body as she stepped into the bright light.
Marion turned to Lana. "Who is she? What is going on? Did we actually come here via the time machine?"
Lana looked at Marion, the whites of her eyes seeming to get bigger within the surrounding black mask. "You know about the time machine?"
"I have a memory of you passing through a translucent green doorway and ending up in an alley in the Olympic Village. Where are you from?"
Lana sighed. "We have a lot to discuss. We might as well join Laura for her tour while we talk."
Lana reached for Marion's hand and then noticed the way the woman's arms where protectively wrapped across her chest. Well, life was a lot more conservative back in the 1930's then in the twenty-first century. Plus, Marion hadn't spent an extended period back in ancient Rome to have some of her inhibitions stripped away.
"Here, before we go outside, perhaps this will make things a little more comfortable," said Lana.
Marion watched as Lana closed her eyes in obvious concentration. When she opened them, she asked with a downward nod of her head, "Is that better?"
Marion suddenly realized the metallic plates were no longer under her hands. When she cautiously removed them, she discovered she was now wearing a garment that looked like a Hawaiian sarong except rather than the traditional floral pattern; it had instead a striped gold and turquoise silk design, which matched their facial decorations. This sarong was much more conservative, extending from nearly the top of her breasts down almost to her knees. It surprised Marion how quickly this new outfit made her feel more relaxed.
"How did you do that?"
Lana clasped Marion's now free hand and headed towards the terrace. "No matter how real this place feels, it is not. All of this is taking place within our conjoined minds. Sometimes I let Laura have free reign, because it is fun to experience some of the nearly endless things she has seen and done in her incredibly long life. But I can control things as well, when it suits me."
Marion and Lana stepped out onto the terrace. Spread out before them was a living, vibrant city. The city sprawled across six ever-descending terraces until it reached the shore of the vast encircling lake. Its dominant color was gold. Gold highlighted buildings. Gold encrusted monuments. Even the very streets seemed to sparkle in the brilliant sunlight.
"My god," said Marion, as she looked out on the city in wonderment. "This must be El Dorado."
Laura smiled and for the first time the others noticed how her teeth seemed to have been dyed almost black. "The legends the Spanish Conquistadors were hunting were based on this fabled city. But they are still almost twenty-five hundred years in the future and by then this city will have been gone for millennia."
Marion looked at Laura. "We still haven't been properly introduced."
"Sorry," said Lana. "This is Laura. Well, that is her current name, she has had many names down through history including in this era, Atalaya, as she mentioned earlier. She was born seventeen thousand years ago near the end of a long lost, very high technology civilization which existed just before the last ice age. She was injected with an experimental chemical which keeps her body permanently frozen at the age of sixteen and which also almost instantly heals any wound.
"A side effect of the chemical in her body is that she can communicate like this and heal anyone with whom she has shared blood."
"Shared blood?" asked Marion. "Is that why you dug your fingernails into my hand?"
Lana nodded, which Marion noticed made the gold plates covering her chest shake in a most distracting manner. Apparently, exposing her body didn't bother Lana in the same way it did to her.
"Yeah, normally the chemical in Laura's body is only active in people she infects while she is physically touching them. But with me, something unique happened when she infected me to save my life and now I have all of the same gifts as Laura. And as a side effect, I ended up sharing my body with a copy of her mind."
Lana turned to Laura. "Did that cover the key points?"
"More succinctly than I think I could have done myself. Well, except for maybe one point. When you said our ending up sharing your body was a side effect, are you sure you didn't mean it is your curse?"
Lana stared at Laura for a moment. Then she walked over and pulled Laura into a tight embrace until Lana's metal chest plates were pressed tight up against the golden mesh of Laura's gown and their faces were only a couple of inches apart.
For the moment Marion was almost forgotten, as the two girls stared into each other's eyes.
Finally, Lana spoke. "Of course, you are not a curse. The things I said when we were with Whitney by the Sphinx, well, I was just shocked to find you in my head. But I have had a few minutes since then to think about things. If it wasn't for you, I would have died back in that Roman arena. I will always be grateful for that."
Lana reached up and ran her fingers through Laura's brilliantly red hair. "Did I ever properly say thank you?" And Lana leaned forward and planted a slow languid kiss on Laura's lips.
The kiss went on for seemingly endless seconds as Marion stood and watched in stunned silence. Of course, she had heard of girls doing things like this, but never expected to see it first hand. Trying to get her own rapidly fluttering heart back under control, she felt a change in subject was necessary. As soon as the girls' kiss broke for a moment, Marion spoke up.
"How can you be so casual about things after what happened to Whitney? I can't get the thoughts of his death out of my head," asked Marion as thoughts of Whitney and events back at the chateau once more started to fill her eyes with liquid.
Quickly Lana disentangled herself from Laura and turned towards Marion. Even through her tear-filled eyes, Marion couldn't help but notice the way Laura's now erect nipples tried to push through the golden links of her gown. Nor did she miss the silently mouthed 'Yes' or the wide grin that graced Laura's face once Lana's back was turned. Marion had never met and was unlikely to ever meet the 'real' Chloe Sullivan. And even if Chloe had walked up at this very moment, it was unlikely Marion would have made the connection that Chloe and this Laura had originally been the same person, due to Laura's outlandish appearance. But there was no mistaking the special 'Chloe' smile she got when some plan or scheme met with success. And to Laura the unexpected kiss from Lana had been a small, but important success. Trapped in Lana's body 24/7 with no contact with anyone but her except when a mind-link was active, Laura had been developing an undeniable infatuation for Lana. To the grinning Laura, the kiss had been a most positive sign that at least some of her feelings for Lana were mutual.
Lana stepped up and pulled Marion into tight hug. Once Marion's attention turned from Laura to Lana, she heard Lana begin to whisper into her ear. "I'm sorry, I thought you understood. Whitney is not dead. The whole fight with those Germans was about me maintaining physical contact with his body for the thirty seconds required to heal his wounds. When we left, he was perfectly fine, just playing possum. It wouldn't do to have the Germans realize he was okay. They might have tried to kill him again and I might not have been lucky enough to get the opportunity to heal him a second time."
Lana pulled her face back until she could look into Marion's black enshrouded eyes. "That's the real reason why I dug my nails into your hand; so I could give you the same gift, in case something bad happens to you, too. All of this," and Lana waved a hand to indicate Jaguar City, "is just a side benefit of our sharing blood."
Marion sagged against Lana a little as the shock of everything set in. She thought she had experience some truly unbelievable things during their quest of the lost Ark, but it had been nothing compared to meeting these kids. One girl was seventeen thousand years old and was currently stuck sharing another's body. The other girl could heal someone who had been hit by an entire clip of bullets from a machine gun. And she mustn't forget Clark who was apparently bullet-proof. And they had a time machine. And they could create places in their mind, like this city, which seemed completely real. It was all beginning to feel overwhelming.
As Marion stood there trying to catch her breathe, a young woman walked out onto the terrace and approached Laura. With a deep curtsy, she said, "Your Highness, Ambassador Mbout is waiting in the throne room."
Thank you, Ouiladuya," replied Laura with a curt nod. "I will be along shortly."
With another curtsy, the messenger girl retreated back into the palace.
Swinging her attention back to the other two women from the future, Laura said, "Come on you two. Let's go get this meeting with the ambassador from the Zingh Empire out of the way and then I will take you to see the fabled, ten thousand year old, sacred 'Golden Sun Disk of Lemuria' over at the temple. If you 'ooh and ahh' sufficiently, I might even tell you where it will be hidden when this civilization falls. I am sure it is a relic Hank would give his eyeteeth to recover."
As they walked back into the palace, Marion remembered one of the numerous stories her father regaled her with when she was growing up. Sometimes it was fortuitous that she had spent her whole life around archeologists.
"Laura, I thought the Zingh Empire was in Africa."
"It is. Oh, are you wondering what their ambassador is doing here in the heart of the Andes?" Laura smiled, once again showing off her blackened teeth. "Everyone thinks Columbus 'discovered' America. Or maybe the Vikings were the first. But long before them, the Phoenicians had a thriving trading operation with America. And even before them, there were the Zingh.
"Back in the days when Egypt was the true powerhouse of the eastern Mediterranean, the Zingh Empire controlled Western African along the Atlanta coast. In this era, the climate is much more temperate than in our own and the Zingh Empire is an agricultural paradise. With bountiful surpluses, they have had plenty for export, which led them to become a powerful trading empire. In their dealings with us, the primary trade goods are our jade and gold in exchange for their spices and silks."
Laura shook her head. "Unfortunately, the climate has been growing distinctly warmer over the past half century and it will soon start disrupting the food supply and trade throughout the world. All of the planet's civilizations are about to descend into one of the periodic 'dark ages' and in two hundred years when things once again turn brighter, different civilizations will move to the forefront.
"But enough about the depressing realities of the world, we are here today to have some fun!"
They were strolling down a long hall lined with giant carved statues; most of them were half human and half jaguar. Marion realized they had been here for at least thirty minutes and from what Laura was saying it sounded like she expected to be here for most of the day.
"I don't understand," began Marion. "How is it possible for us to be here for so long?"
Lana reached up and tapped the side of her head. "Time can move at a different rate in your head when I am touching you." For a moment Lana closed her eyes. "Back in the van, less than two minutes have passed since I drove my nails into your hand. I can control the responses of our bodies and even hold conversations with the Germans if necessary with them being none the wiser. Who knows how long this van ride will last, but we might as well enjoy the time here in Jaguar City, rather than sitting back there under the hateful stare of the Major."
Marion nodded her agreement; she had no desire to look upon the Major for one second more than was absolutely necessary. He may not have actually killed Whitney in the end, but that had been his sincere intention. And who knew what his ultimate intention was for them.
Since worrying about the Major was of no immediate benefit, Marion tried to make herself relax and enjoy this most remarkable of days.
-
From where Whitney was forced to kneel with his head twisted painfully to the side, he could clearly see the confrontation between Clark, the girl, and the German officer. He had no idea how Clark and this unknown girl had ended up out on the balcony. And at the moment that wasn't important. No, what did matter was Clark's statement that the whole chateau was about to tumble down the cliff into the river far below, a statement which been clearly backed up by the steadily increasing series of tremors shaking the building.
He didn't know Clark's plan for getting them out of this situation, but he never expected Clark to let the braids drop harmlessly to the floor. Helplessly, he watched as Clark started raising his hands in the universal sign of surrender. Then when Clark's hands were out in front of him, he abruptly stopped their upward motion and closed them into loose fists.
Even though the German officer probably wouldn't understand him, Clark said in a calm, clear voice as he gave his closed hands one brisk shake. "I would take your threats to my friends a lot more seriously, if the guns actually had bullets."
Then Clark opened his hands and a steady stream of bullets went tumbling down to bounce and ping off of the floor. All three German men in the room were so focused on this seemingly magical appearance of the bullets in Clark's hands that none of them immediately noticed the missing braids of Samson's hair which should have still been lying on the floor where the bullets were now harmlessly bouncing.
But Whitney and Indy couldn't help but notice the sudden, unexpected arrival of the braids looped around their torsos, which Clark had deposited there in 'speed mode' at the same time he was stripping the guns of their projectiles. No, there was no way they could miss the unmistakable feeling of strength and power as the mystical energies of the braids worked their magic on their bodies. Whitney had never imagined he could feel better and more alive than when Lana turned on the 'bots in his body, but he had been wrong. The intoxicating power which surged through his body was unbelievable. He felt like could lift mountains. Was this the way Clark felt all of the time? He had never dreamed this feeling of strength would be so good.
Whitney surged to his feet and grabbed the soldier who had been holding him. With what felt like less effort than it normally took to throw a ten yard screen pass to his tight end, Whitney threw the man sixty feet to the far side of the ballroom.
Like Whitney, Indy also sprang up and quickly subdued his guard. Abruptly, the German officer realized the tables were turned and his meager pistol would hardly slow these three enhanced men.
But almost instantly, before Whitney and Indy had fully come to grips with the sudden change in their situation, another even more powerful tremor ripped through the chateau. Immediately they all heard the balcony rip away and start its long descent to the river below. And this tremor didn't stop. A split second later, the ballroom tore loose from the rest of the building and started tilting over the edge to follow the balcony down.
A spike of fear passed through Whitney as the roof of the ballroom started to collapse, blocking the path to the rest of the building. Without Lana here, this time if he died, it would most definitely be permanent.
Abruptly, the room tilted over sharply and they were all knocked from their feet.
"Everyone, out through the balcony doors," shouted Clark over the noise of shattering wood and stones.
'Is Clark insane,' thought Whitney. 'The balcony is gone and there is nothing out those doors but a long, long freefall to the river below.'
As Whitney bounced around the tumbling room, he watched Clark toss first the girl and then Indy out through the fluttering drapery. As Clark started scrambling over to Whitney, the electrical cables to the room finally tore loose and the room was plunged into darkness.
Suddenly, Clark was beside Whitney and shouting in his ear to be heard. "Whitney, time to go."
"Go where, Clark? We won't survive the fall."
"Trust me," answered Clark, as he grabbed Whitney and together they tumbled out through the missing balcony door.
As they fell clear of the room, Whitney's body rotated around until he was looking back up. In the moonlight he saw the ballroom finally rip completely away and start its own descent down to the river only fifteen feet behind them. Shit.
-
Clark dropped to the ground next to the 'frozen in-place' trio of Whitney, Indy, and Gretchen. As he reverted to 'normal' speed, he felt more exhausted than he could ever remember. Never had he tried to hold himself so far up into the 'accelerated-time' zone for so long. From the moment he and Whitney tumbled clear of the ballroom, less than a quarter of a second had passed in the 'real' world, but from his personal perspective it had felt like more the twenty-four hours, twenty-four hours of non-stop activity. And the longer he stayed in 'speed-mode', the hard it was to maintain. The last several 'virtual' hours had really started to strain his body and his mind, but finally he was finished. He had rescued all one hundred twenty seven people he could find in the chateau and its lower levels who were still alive. It had meant burning countless new tunnels through the cliff to reach some of the people, which would only accelerate the cliff's ultimate collapse. But it didn't matter now, and he was finally fully convinced Lana and Marion had been removed from the chateau before he had initiated his binge of destruction. At least with all of his flights to ferry people clear, he had greatly improved his flying skills.
To keep them clear of the destruction and the surviving Germans, Clark had deposited Whitney and the others on the next ridge over from where the chateau stood. He had positioned them and himself so they would have a clear view of the chateau's final moments. Now, as he decelerated back to normal time, he watched the balcony hit the river while the ballroom still had one hundred feet to fall. With his hearing also returned to normal, he could suddenly hear the roaring of the cliff's collapse. The rest of the chateau didn't follow the ballroom over the edge, but rather rode majestically down in an upright position with the rest of the underlying hill for the first seventy-five feet. Finally, the building broke apart and was just part of the pile of rubble which flowed into the river and blocked almost half of its width.
"Wow," was all Whitney could exclaim, as he watched the devastation and realized they had somehow been magically transported from freefall to this position of safety.
The others just nodded in stunned silence for the fifteen seconds it took for the noise and the rumbling to stop.
It was Clark who ended up breaking the silence first. "I hope this finally teaches the stupid Nazis to stop looking for mystical relics; they always will lose in the end."
Indy shook his head. "Some people never learn." Then he looked over to Clark. "How did we end up over here?"
Clark climbed to his feet and reached down to assist Gretchen. "More wonders of Vulcan technology. They have a device call a 'Transporter', which can instantly move things from one place to another. Their version has a range of thousands of miles, but the ones we have been able to build so far only have a range of a little over a mile. I have a transmitter that allowed device to 'lock on' to me and transport me clear. Then I used it to transport everyone who was in freefall here and everyone else in the chateau to a clearing a quarter of a mile in the other direction from here."
Clark then pointed to the large mound of clothes on the ground behind them. "The transporter has the ability to tell the difference between living tissue and inanimate objects, so when I sent the people over there, I sent all of their clothes over here. I figured if they are all naked it would slow any pursuit. Plus, I think most of us could use a change of clothes before we head back into the city."
Gretchen stared at the three men and had to agree. She didn't understand this talk about 'Vulcans' and 'Transporters', but clearly the three men all needed new clothes. Clark was once again stripped to the waist and by now his pants were in tatters. The older of the two men with Clark was wearing just an ill-fitting jacket from an army private. The other, younger man was drenched in dried blood. She had clearly seen it was blood when they had been in the well-lit ballroom. Here, under only moonlight, the stains could be from almost any dark material.
The three men all moved over to the large pile of clothes and started sorting through them to find the best-fitting, least damaged items they could find. As they worked, Whitney looked over at Clark.
"What's the next step in locating the girls?"
Clark had had lots of time to think about this while he had been rescuing all of the occupants of the chateau. Unfortunately, he hadn't come up with any brilliant solutions. He had no idea where to begin looking.
"Until someone comes up with a better idea, I think we should head back to the Olympic Village. If we are in amongst all of the athletes, the ones holding the girls are less likely to try another abduction. Hank should get a hold of his hotel and have them forward any messages to our house in the village. Then I think we will just have to wait for them to contact us."
No one else had any better suggestions. As the men were finishing changing, Whitney inquired how they would get back home to the Olympic Village.
"One of the Nazis' trucks is parked about a mile from here along the road to the chateau. If anyone knows how to hotwire a German military truck, then I think we have wheels."
Indy looked up with just a hint of a grin. "I think I have a little working knowledge in that area."
End of Chapter 11
Author's Notes:
I hope everyone enjoyed my variation of how Clark first develops his flying abilities. I thought it would be interesting if he could only fly in 'speed mode' where no one could see him and therefore not necessarily believe he can actually fly.
What is everyone's opinion about the girls' visit to Jaguar City? Would you like to see more, or should I just move on?
Athenais – Thanks for the catch on Apollo vs Ares, I have fixed the one spot I found in chapter 10.
BeyondLSD – The stuff we talked about – I needed to do these couple of scenes first to set things up and, as usual, I am always wordier than I expect. Plus what I have in mind fits better as the beginning of the next chapter rather than the end of this one. Hopefully, you can be patient for a little longer and I will try to make it worth the wait!
Neo.logic – We will have to wait and see about making Lex's 'bots permanently active. With all of his wealth and power, I sort of like leaving him dependent on the charity of the girls in this area.
Rebel Goddess – I hope you liked the bit with the girls. I hope my description of their faces and costumes was clear. I have this strong mental image of how they would look all dressed up as part of some ancient bronze-age society and it is so cool.
To everyone else who sent a review – Thanks, they are always appreciated!
Until next time,
Duane