Chapter 4 – Lost in Space

Traveling through space and time never seemed to be a problem for Superman. He had, on occasion, broken through dimensional barriers almost as easily as he had broken the sound barrier. However, in the majority of those circumstances it was at least of his own free will and with the aid of a device that he had some rudimentary level of understanding. This was a method of travel that he was not accustomed to, nor did he feel particularly safe as he clung to the side of the Tardis with his arm anchoring him into place. The trans-time space warp corridor spiraled all about them; brilliant shades of blue and violet colliding in a cacophony of sight that sourly tested his vision.

The motion of which however was making the Kryptonian rather nauseous. It felt as if he were being pulled in every conceivable direction at the same time. Between the spiraling of the Tardis, the bobbing and weaving of the time corridor and the psychedelic display of lights it was all he could do to hang on. In fact, there were several moments he felt his grip loosening from the inside. He fought the urge to vomit, trying desperately to remain conscious however it was a fight he was sorely losing.

The longer the Tardis remained in the tunnel the weaker he became. He could feel his strength waning with every passing moment. Dizziness soon became a real problem as they continued to travel along. His vision soon became blurry as the last of his strength slowly ebbed away. His grip on the Tardis as well as his grip on his consciousness finally slipped. All went black for the estranged son of Krypton.

xXxXx

The Doctor's eyes fluttered open. He shook his head briefly as he found himself on the floor of the Tardis. It took him a moment to even recall what had happened. He took a quick inventory of the events that led to his current predicament. He was currently in the Tardis and in no clear and present danger. That much seemed sure. He was in the Tardis because he was on his way to rescue the daughter of Mrs. Hagen. He had deduced that she had been taken forcefully when he found a swatch of her sweater coated with blood back in the alley. The trace elements on the sweater lead the Doctor to believe that she had been captured by Cybermen.

At the thought of Cybermen, the Doctor bolted into an upright sitting position. Yes, there had been a recent brash of unexplained disappearances in Cardiff. The Cybermen were no doubt behind them. He remembered he ran into the Cybermen and confirmed his suspicions. Once more he came across a whole brood of them. Or more to the point, they came across him; on the rooftops of all places. He scratched his head and adjusted his bowtie. He didn't quite remember how he got to the rooftop.

He pushed himself up to his feet and took in his surroundings. There was the head of the Cyber-Leader. Superman had kicked it off as an involuntary… Superman! His eyes darted to the door of the Tardis. The large hole that was there had diminished greatly. The Tardis was already well on its way to repairing its self. How in the worlds did a single man manage to break the door of the Tardis? To the Doctors knowledge the defense system worked on a form temporal phase shifting making it nigh impregnable. Of course there was that matter of the space liner Titanic replica crashing through the very walls of the Tardis.

The Doctor legs were still a bit on the wobbly side, and he gripped the railing tightly for support. With the size and speed that the space freighter was moving it was logical that it had gathered enough momentum and contained enough mass that it was theoretically possible that it could have perhaps breached the Tardis' defenses. He shook his head. It wasn't just theory. It had actually happened, but that was a space freighter; built to withstand the pressures of the vacuums in deep space. It was created as a pleasure liner built to sustain life, and propel said life across the universe at great speed. Superman was just a single man.

The Doctor reeled a bit. He wasn't quite sure if it was because of the sudden uncharted trip they just took or if it was the sudden realization of exactly how powerful the man of steel actually was. He walked over to the data console of the Tardis and punched in a few button combinations.

"Ok beautiful, where did you end up taking us this time?" he asked aloud to the Tardis. There was no response, but that never really stopped him. They were in the future, several hundred years in the future to be more precise. Earth was on the far side of the universe from where they were. He silently wondered why the Tardis would have even brought them here to begin with. As far as he could figure it, it was a complicated chain of events.

The Tardis was being stretched pretty thin. Because the Tardis hadn't fully recharged it's 'batteries' back in Cardiff it wasn't running at optimum efficiency. Since the Doctor had it doing an in depth DNA sweep of the surrounding areas as well as breaking into the Cyber-Leaders encrypted data files its proverbial mind was concentrating on too many things at once. Moving to the location that was the triangulated source of the Cybermen strikes must have been the final straw for the old girl. It was when the Tardis was temporally shifting to its destination that it was ultimately at its weakest. That coupled with the fact that Superman seemed to be immensely strong, allowed this mere man who was apparently more than a man it to break through the door of his baby.

But why would she bring them here of all places? He clenched his jaw taking a deep breath. He came to the realization that he had to settle this thing with Superman once and for all. The only way he was going to be able to continue on unhindered by the man in tights was to bury the proverbial hatchet and help him find this person that he was looking for. In turn, perhaps Superman would even be willing to help him rescue Mrs. Hagen's daughter. Superman did in fact handle the Cybermen on the roof top with a certain level of expertise.

That was it; he had made up his mind. He gave himself a curt nod and headed toward the Tardis' entrance. The doctor threw open the door to the Tardis and walked out into a large dark room. The familiar sound of thrumming machinery could be felt all around him. The Tardis was neatly tucked away behind a pile of boxes and large metal crates.

"Some kind of storage facility?" he questioned himself. His eyes adjusted to the darkness and he maneuvered his way around the crates and bins looking for the man of steel. The sound of his footsteps echoed softly of the hard metal floor. He flicked open the sonic screwdriver and gave a wave in the air. It picked up the traces of Superman's unique physiology but they were weak. If he was here it was some time ago. No telling where he would be now. He would have to find him. Just then an emergency claxon filled the air with its shrill cries.

"Oh come on, I haven't even touched anything yet!" he shouted aloud. His pace quickened as he didn't know just what the alarm meant or who it was alerting, but he had the nagging suspicion that he shouldn't be where he was any longer. He only hoped that the repairs to the Tardis would be complete before anyone or anything found her and that she would be healthy enough to protect herself.

"Solar detonation in sixty seconds and counting." Came a disembodied metallic voice that seemed to resonate from all around him.

"Oh come on!" he groaned again. Now his pace turned to a full out run. He found the entrance to the storage facility and made it out into a sparsely lit hallway. He ran down the hallway trying to get some kind of idea of where he was and where he needed to be. From the look of the hallway it was some kind of military base, an interstellar space station of sorts judging from the thickness of the bulkheads. Blast shields had slid down encasing all the windows and preventing him from seeing out.

"Solar detonation in thirty seconds and counting." The doctor felt a wave of helplessness wash over him. The claxon continued to blare as he made his way to a window. He whipped out the sonic screwdriver and pointed toward the window. After a momentary trill the device clicked and the shutter opened. And just like that he understood.

"Solar detonation in three, two, one…"

xXxXx

Clark's eyes fluttered open slowly. He felt sore all over. His head throbbed, his leg and arm were wracked with immense pain, and he felt as if he went another nine rounds with Doomsday. The room was dark and the only thing he could see was the soft glow of a couple stray computer monitors. He struggled to sit up but it took way more energy than he was capable of mustering. As his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness he could tell he was in some sort of hospital room.

"Lois?" he called out. His voice a hoarse whisper. It took him a moment to recall the events of what happened. The last he remembered he was spiraling out of control in some kind of inter dimensional portal as best he could figure. He remembered losing consciousness, but that was it. He heard footsteps approaching.

"Take it easy there slugger." Came a soft female voice. "Lights." She commanded and the room responded to her. She was an older woman, in her late thirties if he had to guess. Her auburn hair was pulled back into a bun and her bangs framed her face. She was looking at a strange device that she carried that looked like a cross between a flashlight and a cell phone. She smiled softly at him, her green eyes soft and kind. The device made a slight chirping sound each time she tapped it. She pointed it toward him and shined the light at his chest.

He felt uneasy but was so weak he couldn't even try to move away from her. He looked down at his chest and was astonished to see that he could see right through it. Where ever the light from her device shown acted like an x-ray, not unlike his own x-ray vision.

"It looks like your ribs are healing nicely. It's nice to see you awake. My name is Thevia, chief medical liaison of SS27. You had us scared there for a little while. We weren't sure you were going to make it. Your… anatomy is amazing." She said with a slight smirk. "You aren't exactly from around here are you?" she asked.

Superman looked around a moment before shaking his head ever so slightly in the negative. He couldn't help but wonder where exactly he was. He tried to sit up once again but Thevia pushed him back down.

"You need to take it easy. You've been unconscious for the last week."

He looked at her with a shocked expression upon his face. He heard what she said but he couldn't quite understand it. A week? How could he have been unconscious that long? Where was he? There were too many questions for him to just sit here. He forced himself up into a sitting position. He felt relatively weak but otherwise in good condition. She shook her head slightly, a coy grin toying at the corner of her mouth.

"You are just bound and determined to destroy what little reserves you have left aren't you?" She went to a far cabinet removed a syringe and a small bottle of a light blue liquid. She walked back towards him filling the syringe with the blue liquid. "Here this will help stabilize you. It's like a combination of a pain killer, and a steroid. It should ease some of the pain that you're suffering and at the same time give you some of your strength back."

"I appreciate your efforts Thevia, but I don't think that's going to work?" He said, pushing himself to his feet.

"Oh? And you're a doctor from where ever it is you came from? Look, your physiology is downright weird I'll give you that, but I think I know what I'm talking about here." And with that she jabbed the syringe into his shoulder and pushed the plunger. Superman fully expected the needle to break on his harder than steel exterior but it didn't. In fact, the biting sting of the syringe came as a bit of a surprise to him. He could feel the warmth of the fluid radiating through his arm. Soon the warmth spread through his chest and to his legs.

"Do you have a name?" She asked him softly. He blinked back to his senses. He was caught off guard by the warm feeling. Even more so by her question.

"Yes, I'm sorry. This is all a bit strange to me. My name is Kal… Kal El. She smirked at his response.

"Well then Kal, I suggest you get your… ahem… clothes back on before you do too much more walking around. I'm sure the rest of the crew will be happy to know you're up and about." She gave a curt nod toward a small desk by his bed where his clothes had been laid. Just as he reached for them the blaring warning sounds of an emergency claxon rang out around him.

"Oh, and I would advise you to hurry. It's about to be very uncomfortable around here."

"Solar detonation in sixty seconds and counting." A loud metallic voice echoed throughout the medical bay.

xXxXx

The doors to the elevator shut with but a whisper. Lex swiped his card over the security pad on the elevator door. The entire elevator went black as two laser security grids swept the near empty box. As the vertical and horizontal lasers completed their sweeps a computerized female voice came over the loud speaker.

"Welcome Mr. Luthor. Please state your destination." the elevator finally responded. Lex stood motionless, his hands clasped behind his back.

"Floor 37" He barked unflinchingly. In response to his order the elevator began it's decent, the low hum of the machinery barely audible. Lex's mind was once again on the footage he had seen from Cartiff. Superman, the disappearing blue box, and the strange mechanical automations that confronted the man of steel on the rooftops, he tried to make sense of it all. His teams worked incredibly fast to get the robotic debris here. He had a Superman crisis and control response team on just about every continent in the world. He could have a team at any location on the planet with minutes. So it was literally a matter of a single call to make sure the scene was cleaned and any important discoveries were returned to Luthorcorp tower.

It was a rare opportunity indeed where they actually obtained anything useful. But with the blue Boy Scout pulling his disappearing act instead of staying behind and cleaning up the scene as he normally would, well that just let his troops do their job unmolested. The adage of a kid in a candy store came to mind, however he hadn't actually seen what had been returned. Ever a man of logic he knew better than to let himself fall into the trap of getting his hopes up. Nor was he pleased that Superman just vanished. He knew better than to think he was gone. No, the alien would return. He would find a way. This Lex knew for certain.

The doors parted and he stepped off the elevator. Right away he was greeted by two men in white lab coats. The first was a tall thin man. Greasy black hair and a pencil thin mustache. He gripped a data pad in both hands, obviously intimidated by Lex's presence. Good. As the way it should be. The second man was a bit shorter and balding. A ring of curly red hair adorned his head like a wreath. His grubby little hands were stuffed deep into the pockets of his lab coat. The last time he had met with Lex he made the mistake of attempting to shake his hand. To which Lex had threatened him with nothing short of the removal of his 'sweat laden meat mitts' if his memory served him correctly. Lex almost smiled.

"Where do we stand?" He said walking past the two. Despite their appearances the two were absolutely stunning when it came to the fields of robotics and cybernetics.

"It's honestly like nothing we've ever seen. The actual components of the machines were both archaic and yet at the same time… astonishingly complex. It's almost as if they were only limited in their creation by the materials they had on hand." Said the shorter one.

"There are definite traces of bio-organics within these machines. These Cybermen as you call them, while seemingly more machine than man, are actually comprised of actual living human tissue." The larger one said. Lex stopped without looking back. He replayed the battle in his mind and recalled the point where they had called Superman superior. His eyes narrowed. He wondered what kind of machine would assimilate humans into their own systems when they looked so strong and humans being ultimately frailer than they. What caused them to need humans to begin with? If this was the level of robots they were with regular humans, what level of fighting machines could they become with Kryptonian DNA?

"Could you reconstruct them?" he asked the pair of scientists. They looked back and for to each other and shrugged.

"I'm sure we could reconstruct them physically, but we don't know what kind of programs they are running. Even if we do put the pieces back together again, there is no way to tell if they will be operational." Lex let out the faintest of sighs. He turned to face the two.

"I do not care what 'programing' they were running. I wish to know if they can become functional once more. They are no good to me in pieces. The programing is arbitrary. Once they become functional we will download them with Luthorcorp programing, so their old programing is by far the least of my concerns. Is that understood?" The two scientists nodded their assent. He turned and looked through a window into a sterilization room. Inside were tables filled with parts from the metal monstrosities. His eyes gazed into the empty sockets of one of the lifeless heads. He would know their secrets. They would be his. He turned and made his way back to the elevator.

"Get it done. You have twenty four hours." He spat over his shoulder.