Chapter Five

In Between Worlds

Time: Nonexistent

Professor Hamilton was experiencing an extreme form of vertigo. He fell back into a chair and clutched his throat where the clone had grabbed him. It took him a moment to regain his breath.

"I'm sorry about that, Emil," Wentworth said, still standing next to the computer. He had allowed the clone to choke him for about ten seconds before he had ordered it to let him down. "I was afraid that its first actions would be hostile. Thank you for stepping in for me."

"That thing could have killed me," Hamilton said.

"I hardly think so," Wentworth said. "They wouldn't do anything to anyone unless I tell them to." He turned back to the clone. "Adam, wake up your brothers. I'm going to need you, Brice, and Caleb to cross over in a few minutes." Adam stepped out of his cylinder and nodded. Wentworth went to the machine that was emitting the field around them and pulled out three white jumpsuits from a storage compartment in the bottom. "And put these on. You can't go running around naked."

Hamilton looked around. His entire laboratory had vanished. All that remained were the objects that had been in the room when his counterpart had switched on his toy. He looked down at where the floor should have been below the chair that he was sitting in. There was nothing there. He could only see the dark blue clouds that surrounded them and the outlines of the infinite number of worlds leading off into the distance.

"Emil," Luthor said from beside him. "How is all of this possible? If these planets were actually in such close proximity to one another they would cause massive earthquakes and flooding."

"We're not a part of reality, Mr. Luthor," Hamilton whispered back. "These Earths are not actually here. We're seeing a physical representation of the many different levels in the multiverse. It's a way for our brains to explain to us what our eyes are seeing."

"You really are the smartest Hamilton that I've ever met," Wentworth said from his seat in front of the computer. Until then he had given no clue that he had been listening. He wheeled around in his chair and faced the two men seated behind him. "Lionel, you are currently not a member of any reality anywhere in the multiverse. I have taken us out of your world and created a pocket universe. We are in our own little world here. Look behind you.

Hamilton and Luthor turned around and saw the edge of the force field surrounding them open up. Through that opening they could see the lab at LuthorCorp that they had left a few moments before. There was no one in it and all of the furniture and equipment was gone. It had all been brought here with them.

"Is that…?" Hamilton started.

"That is your world," Wentworth replied. "That is known by the worlds that catalogue these things as Earth Ninety-Seven. It is in a cluster with two other similar worlds." Two more openings made themselves visible on either side of the one that they had been looking at. The one on the left looked like a small farm, probably somewhere nearby. There was a farmhouse and a barn. The other opening showed a city that looked a lot like Metropolis. Wentworth pointed at the farm. "That is Earth Seventy-Four. The other one is Earth S. They are both very similar to your world and so the three of them co-exist. Most people think that parallel universes cluster because they are so similar. But the fact is that the cluster holds them together. If one of them were to be destroyed, the other two would follow suit. They feed off of one another."

"Is that what you plan to do?" Hamilton asked. "Are you going to destroy them?"

"Of course not," Wentworth said. "Emil, I am originally from Earth S myself. Why would I want to destroy my own world?"

"I'm sure that I don't know," Hamilton said. "Why would you kidnap us?"

"Oh, that's simple," Wentworth said. "For your clones of course." He stepped closer to the portal that led to the farm and peered through it. "He'll be here in a moment." He turned to the bank of clones behind him. "Adam! Brice! Caleb! Come here."

Three of the Lucas clones stepped around the computer terminal and stood at attention in front of Wentworth. They were all wearing the skintight jumpsuits that he had given them. Hamilton was overjoyed to see his creations in motion for the first time while being terrified at what they might be being used for.

"You're going to Earth Seventy-Four," he said. "Your target is Clark Kent."

"Will the target be eliminated?" one of the clones asked.

"No," Wentworth said. "I want him brought back here. You will know the target because he looks exactly like you. But be careful. He has powers similar to your's. He is susceptible to this." He handed one of them a lead box that Hamilton assumed contained a meteor rock. "It won't hurt you. When you have him overpowered, use this to render him unconscious." He handed a small device to another one. "He's on his way now. Go and hide and attack him. But don't hurt him. I need him alive and in one piece."

"Yes, Father," one of them said. With that they turned and ran into the portal. There was a shimmer and a flash as they crossed. Hamilton watched as they headed for the barn.

"It will take them some time," Wentworth said.

"What do you want with Clark?" Luthor asked.

"I suppose I should let you in on what's going on," Wentworth said. "Emil, are you married?"

"Yes," Hamilton replied. "My wife and I have been married for three years."

"Do you have any children?" Wentworth asked.

Hamilton shook his head. "No. We had a son. He was stillborn."

Wentworth smiled. "I already knew all of that about you." He tapped the large machine. "I told you that there are three worlds in a cluster that include this one. Each of those worlds has a version of you and me. On this world you have a wife with no child. On Earth Ninety-Seven our counterpart has a son but is a widower. And I lost my wife and three-year-old son last year when our house was robbed while I was out of town."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Luthor said. "But I don't understand what it has to do with us and this machine."

"I was out of town because I had perfected my projector," Wentworth said. "I had been exploring parallel worlds. I came home one night to find my wife and son lying in a pool of their own blood in my living room. I called the police. Of course they wanted to know where I was at the time of the murders. I tried to explain my invention to them like a fool. Before I knew what was happening I was placed under arrest. They thought that I had murdered my own family!

"I went to court and everything," Wentworth went on. "Finally, I was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to die by lethal injection. But on my way to the penitentiary there was a bad accident and the driver was killed. The guard was pinned beneath the bus. Several of the prisoners, including myself, managed to get away. I don't know where they went, but I went directly back to my house and used my projector to escape that reality. I haven't been back to Earth S since."

"So, you're trying to find who killed your family?" Hamilton asked.

"That was what I wanted at first," Wentworth said. "After a while I decided that it was more important to get them back. Over the last year I discovered this device as well as you and your world. I decided that since you have my wife's counterpart and the other Hamilton has my son's counterpart that I could finally do something to restore my family."

"My god!" Luthor said. "You're going to kidnap them?"

"No, Lionel!" Wentworth said. "You old fool! I'm going to combine the three worlds. I'm going to use them to form one world in which my family is together."

"An amalgam universe?" Hamilton asked. "That would blend every person with their counterparts on the other two worlds. They would become completely different."

"They would be the same," Wentworth said. "They would have traits of all three."

"You don't know that!" Hamilton said. "They may cease to exist! The new amalgam universe may decide that there is no place for them!"

"I'm not killing anyone, Emil!" Wentworth said. "You should be happy. You'll get your son back."

"I'll lose my soul," Hamilton said. "It won't be me! It'll be part me, part him, and part you. The last one is the part that I'm afraid of. You could turn me into a killer."

"I could turn you into someone with some balls," Wentworth said. "In two worlds you work for this coward. I don't work for Luthor. In my world, Luthor is in prison."

"I'm not going to let you do this, Samson," Hamilton said. Wentworth pulled the pistol out and leveled it at him.

"You don't have a choice, Emil," he said. "I have a gun and ten metahumans at my disposal." He turned and tapped a few keys on the computer. The fourth clone opened his eyes and stepped out of the cylinder. "Darius, come here." The clone stepped around the console and stood before him. "Put on a jumpsuit, and then I want you to stand guard over my friends here. Make sure that they don't interrupt my plans."

Darius nodded and went to get a jumpsuit out of the compartment. Before he came back there was a loud popping noise and the other three clones came running back into their pocket universe carrying a sleeping Clark Kent.

"The target has been acquired," Adam said. They dropped Clark onto the ground. He opened his mouth and his eyes rolled around in their sockets.

"Very good, boys," Wentworth said. He sat down and worked at the computer for a minute. A slab of metal that looked like a makeshift surgical bed materialized beside the array. It was attached to the machine and had a lot of wires and other things attached to one end of it. Wentworth motioned to Adam and the clone picked up Clark and laid him on the slab, binding his arms and legs with shackles that had an eerie green glow to them.

"What have you done to him?" Luthor asked.

"Nothing," Wentworth said. "He's fine."

"Those shackles have kryptonite in them," Hamilton said. "They'll kill him."

"I assure you that there is only enough to keep him from escaping," the doctor replied. He attached two electrodes to either side of his head. Finally, he pressed a button on the array and Clark's eyes exploded open. "Hello, Clark."

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Clark had a vague knowledge of being dragged and placed on a cold surface. He did not come to himself fully until he felt the jolt. It was like a joy buzzer that was a hundred times stronger than it should have been being pressed against his brain. He opened his eyes and saw Professor Hamilton looking down at him. But he looked different. He had a full beard and his hair was a little grayer than he remembered. He looked down at his hands and saw the shackles. He tried to break them but found that he could not move his arms. He turned back to the professor.

"Professor Hamilton?" he asked. "You betrayed me? Chloe warned me…"

"Hush, boy!" the man said. "I'm not Hamilton. I'm his counterpart from Earth S. My name is Samson Wentworth."

Clark looked around for the first time. Professor Hamilton and Lionel Luthor were both sitting in chairs not far from him. The three attackers that looked like him were standing close by. But all of that paled in comparison to his surroundings. There were no walls and there was no floor. It looked like they were standing in the middle of a thunderstorm cloud. Then he saw the planets, and he could see that all of them looked like Earth. Some were larger than others and one of them looked like a cube, but they were all Earth.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"You know Emil Hamilton and Lionel Luthor," Wentworth said.

"From my world?" Clark asked.

Wentworth shook his head. "No. They come from the world that you paid a visit to last week. The one where you met Lucas Luthor. Remember him?"

Clark nodded. "These guys are the clones of Lucas that Professor Hamilton made?"

Wentworth smiled. "You're bright. Maybe you'll understand my plan." He turned to Adam. "Take your brothers and go to Earth S. You have the same mission. This time the target's name is a fifteen year old boy named Billy. I don't know his last name. His cellular structure is in your programming so that you can find him." He grabbed a little black box from the table and handed it to Caleb. "This is a neuron-destabilizer. Use it on him so that he won't speak. I want him nice and quiet when you get back. Adam nodded. He, Brice, and Caleb ran out through the third portal. Wentworth turned back to Clark. "I was just explaining to my counterpart that I plan on merging your world with two other and created a new universe. How do you feel about that?"

"I feel like stopping you," Clark said.

"Which is exactly why I'm using you," Wentworth said.

"What are you on about?" Luthor asked. Wentworth leveled the pistol at Luthor and shot him in the arm. Luthor screamed and fell to the floor and Hamilton leaped to his side. Clark tried to get up but his arms were still frozen in place.

"I told you to shut up, Lionel," Wentworth said. "The next time you speak to me in that disrespectful tone of voice, I'll shoot you in the head. Now, to answer your question, I have to have a battery from each of the three worlds in order to merge them. It has to be a living person with DNA that is original to that world. I could have used three normal people. I even thought about using Emil and myself as two of the batteries. But then I thought I'd use Clark here so that he wouldn't be able to sneak in and save the say at the last second like he usually does."

"What happens to us when you merge everything?" Clark asked.

"It will create an amalgam universe," Wentworth said. "Everyone will merge with their counterparts from the other two worlds, creating one person."

"This is completely selfish," Hamilton said. "You were done wrong, Samson. You shouldn't have been accused of your wife's murder. But this is not the way to fix it!"

"This is the only way to get her back!" Wentworth said. "You can say anything you want, but you can't stop me. If you try, my boys with tear you apart before you ever get to me."

Clark did not understand everything that was being said. He did not know what Wentworth's wife had to do with anything. All he knew was that he had been pulled back into this whole parallel universe thing again, and this time there was more at stake than just his and Chloe's lives. This time there were entire universes full of humans and aliens that could lose their lives or their identities if something was not done.

What could he do? He was losing energy every second that these krypto bracelets held his hands and feet down. And even if he could get up, there were still seven clones in the room that apparently could not be hurt by kryptonite.

He laid his head back and closed his eyes. Think, Clark! Think

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It was nearly an hour before the three Lucas clones bounded back into the pocket universe. Adam threw a young boy on the floor and looked at Wentworth.

"The target has been acquired, Father," he said.

"Good," Wentworth said. "You boys have done well. You can go and rest now." The clones walked back to their cylinders and stood with their arms folded, as if they were waiting for instructions.

Clark looked down at the boy as Wentworth turned him over onto his back. The boy was awake, but he could not move. Wentworth smiled.

"They used it on you," he said. "Didn't they, boy? You can't move and you can't talk. Good!" He tapped the keyboard until another slab materialized. He picked the boy up and threw him down onto the hard surface. He shackled his arms and legs and stuck the electrodes in his head.

"Who is that boy?" Hamilton asked.

"Just someone that I know from back home," Wentworth said. "He's the smartest boy in the country. He has an IQ that's through the roof. He'll make a great battery for my machine. Now, I've got someone from Earth Seventy-Four and someone from Earth S. All I need is someone from your world. Lionel, I believe that I will let you do the honors."

"Over my dead body!" Luthor said, still clutching his injured arm.

"No, I need you alive," Wentworth said. "I'll kill you afterward. How about that?"

"I'm not getting in that damned contraption and letting you ruin billions of lives," Luthor said.

"Caleb," Wentworth said. "Help Mr. Luthor to the array."

As Caleb stepped forward another slab appeared on Clark's left. Caleb grabbed Lionel Luthor by the throat and picked him up. He hurled him across the room and he landed hard on the metal slab. Wentworth shackled him while he was disoriented and stuck the electrodes to his head. He went back to the computer and typed in a few last commands.

"Now, I'll warn you," he said to the three people connected to his machine. "This is going to be extremely painful."

Suddenly the array lit up. Clark felt like there was a fire being lit inside his head. His mind seemed to leap out of him and travel across a vast distance, looking for another version of himself to merge with. He traveled all over Earth S in seconds. There was no counterpart in that world. He went back to his own world and found nothing. He was the only one of him in any of those worlds.

He screamed at the searing pain as the universe began to come together. He could tell that he was being written out of the show. There would be not Clark Kent in this new world. He was being erased from existence.

Then he found someone. His counterpart from the second world was not where he was supposed to be. He was between the worlds. He was traveling at near light speed.

"Lucas!" Clark screamed.

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Light years away in another reality Lucas Luthor heard a man scream his name and he felt a fire shoot through his body. He screamed and fell from the sky. Anya called out to him and followed him down.

DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

Clark looked over at Lionel Luthor. The man was frozen in pain. He was already merging with the other two versions of himself. His clothes were changing from a black suit to a prison jumpsuit and back again. On his other side, Billy was slowly disappearing. Apparently there was no other version of him. The three portals seemed to be moving toward one another. Soon there would be one portal leading to one world. As for himself, he could feel Lucas' strength slowly flowing into his body. He had to do something before this merging went too far. He ripped his arms from the shackles and then pulled his legs free. He swung off of the table and grabbed Luthor, yanking him free of the machine. The lights went out on the array and the pain went away.

"Darius!" Wentworth said. "Wake up your brothers…all of them!"

Clark leaned into a punch and sent Darius flying across the pocket universe, crashing into the force field and causing it to shudder. Wentworth went to the computer and the six remaining clones opened the eyes and made their way down. One after the other the clones took turns taking Clark on. He fought each one to a standstill, but managed to get the upper hand in the end. But they kept getting up and coming back. He had to get out of here. He saw that the portals to the other worlds were all still open.

"Mr. Luthor!" he yelled. "You and Professor Hamilton need to get out!"

Luthor grabbed Hamilton and they leaped through the middle portal.

"No!" Wentworth yelled. "You're ruining everything!"

Clark ran in a flash to the slab where Billy was lying. He was just beginning to come to himself and opened his eyes.

"Billy," Clark said. "Are you okay? Can you move yet?"

"Yeah," Billy replied. "I think that thing they did to me wore off. Who are you?"

Clark grabbed the shackles and pulled them off of him. "I'm Clark. I'm going to try and get you back to your world. Then I'll take care of these guys."

"Clark, I…" Billy started.

"Just follow me," he said. He turned just in time to meet Adam's fist. He flew back into the array and fell to the floor. A small meteor rock landed on his chest and he felt the burning flow through him, taking his new strength away.

"Don't let them though," Wentworth said. The clones lined up in front of the portals.

"Run for it, Billy!" Clark said as loud as he could. "Just go!" He knocked the rock off of him and started to get up.

"But, Clark…," Billy started.

"Don't talk!" Clark yelled. "Just go!" Caleb slugged him in the stomach and he bent over in pain.

But Billy did talk. He said one word that Clark would find out probably saved both of their lives.

"Shazam!" Billy said.

End of Chapter Five

Note:

Yes, Billy is Billy Batson---AKA Captain Marvel. But they're not out of the woods yet, not even close. But next chapter we're going back to Lucas, so you'll have to wait a few days to find out what happened with Clark and Billy. And don't worry; the two stories will come together soon enough.

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