Disclaimer – No profit, no law suits.
A/N – This chapter is a mixture of material written in early 2011 and material removed from the first few chapters of an earlier version of 'Darkseid Cometh'
Chapter 3: Minor Revelations and Major Portents
After throwing the coffee in Kal's face at dawn on Tuesday morning, Chloe turned her back on him. Her eyes welled up as she stalked across the Terrace and re-entered the Amazon Consulate's main hall. She walked numbly back to her quarters. How many times is he going to wound my heart like that? Does he have no feelings for me at all? Inside her room, the newest Amazon stepped over to her mirror and looked at her face. Her hair wasn't plastered with sweat and grime the way it usually was at the end of a Mission. But then they hadn't found anything on the raid and there had been no one to fight this time. She looked into her eyes and saw a darkness there she hadn't seen in a very long time. It seemed to be growing and hardening.
A sound of voices coming down the corridor outside her door distracted her. Cassiopeia thought she recognized them from the Antiquities Section of the Consulate. She heard a knock as the voices passed her door and continued down toward the other end.
Turning from the mirror, Chloe walked around her bed and opened the door. No one was there, but sitting on a the occasional table outside was small, yet ornate box. It clearly looked like it belonged to the Antiquities Section. She picked it up and started after them. Recognizing two of them she called out, "Hey! Phillipa! Lonika! Did either of you set this box next to my door?" Cassiopeia stopped, suddenly sure it was for her, but unsure why she was now so certain. She felt a mixture of longing and foreboding.
The Amazons at the far end of the corridor turned and looked back at Cassiopeia and the box, then at each other. The brunette turned away from the blonde and the one with raven locks. "It's okay." she said. "Just don't be long."
Phillipa and Lonika walked back toward Cassiopeia's quarters to consider the box more carefully. The two Amazons examined the box, admiring its craftsmanship. Lonika replied first and then Phillipa echoed her, "No." They turned away and followed after Nike, quickening their steps.
Chloe took it into her room and set it next to her jewelry case. She realized that the ornate carvings on the sides and the top were glyphs in an ancient language called Enochian. Chloe had never learned this language in her Amazon studies. She realized that it was the language of the Angels. Some of the glyphs seemed to be warnings. Some seemed to be promises.
The newest Amazon shuddered as she opened the lid of the box. Inside it was a medium sized ancient coin sitting on a wooden stand. Chloe picked up the stand and used it to hold the coin up to the morning light. One side of the coin was scorched. The other had another Enochian glyph carved over the face of Hercules. The glyph was the symbol for Lasciel. Chloe didn't know anything else yet. And she felt puzzled and intrigued and she wanted to take the coin and hide it in her cleavage, what little she had.
Instead Cassiopeia took a kerchief from her dresser and used it to remove the coin from the stand and place it her jewelry case. She locked the case and placed the stand back in the box. Closing the box, she carried it to her closet, put it on the upper most shelf. Then she put the jewelry case next to it and closed the closet. She would have time for Lasciel's coin later; she could face the day after a couple hours' sleep.
-0-
Not far from Los Angeles, in Santa Monica, Kyle Rayner stared at a blank canvass. Yes, he felt refreshed after a few hours rest following the mission. No, he didn't have artist's block. It was just such a relief to be standing in his studio. In front of a canvass. With all his art supplies. And have time to paint. Setting the Ring on a side table, the artist picked up his brushes and began one of his two favorite activities: he painted. The other favorite favorite was flying jets.
He painted for hours.
-0-0-
Ting! The elevator chime banished the echo of screeching subway brakes from Clark Kent's mind as it announced his arrival at the Daily Planet's main bullpen. This was where the reporters of City Desk, the National Desk, and the Financial Desk had their assigned workstations alongside the offices of the Deputy Editor and the Editor-in-Chief. Once this bullpen had housed just the City Desk and the Editorial Offices. That was before the ascent of internet news and the inevitable cutbacks in the print media. With wifi enabled laptop computers and 3G smartphones, most reporters didn't need the bullpen. They could work from anywhere.
Clark felt fortunate to have his job. He checked his tie, straightened his glasses and slouched slightly as he picked up his satchel and overcoat to step out of the elevator.
Clark stepped into the bullpen. Just a quick check in with the Chief, the reporter told himself. Then he could be off to find Chloe and get back to Smallville. He still had one final repair to finish at his mom's farm.
"Kent! My office, now!" Editor-in-Chief Perry White bellowed from inside his glass-walled office.
Kent hurriedly set his satchel and overcoat in the chair at his cubicle as he passed by on his way to the Chief's office. Seeing thru the closed blinds that White had turned toward the humidor where he kept his cigars, Clark knew he had a moment, but he still hurried as a sign of respect. Yet he did not bobble his satchel or his coat. Gone was the stumbling, stuttering milquetoast. Since his cover for the absence during his trip to Krypton had been a walkabout traveling the continents, he could show that he'd gown some confidence.
Easing through the Chief's glass door, the reporter reached into his suit coat for a pen and note pad. But the dark glare from the blonde at the Chief's personal conference table froze Kent's hand in his inside pocket. Clark paused in the doorway, momentarily frozen in his friend's icy glare. Check off finding Chloe from the to-do list.
Keep moving, Clark, confidence and all that. "Afternoon, Mr White." Clark announced himself. "Chloe." He nodded curtly to his friend.
White still had his back turned toward the door of his office and appeared fairly relaxed as he reached under his humidor and slid a door to the side, "Come in and close the door." The older man pulled out some photos and what looked like a rolled up nautical chart. Then his back straightened as a certain resolve hardened in his mind, "Don't sit down just yet."
As the Chief spun in his executive chair, Chloe cleared her face. White set the charts and photos down on his desk and stood. He turned to Chloe. "Sullivan, would you excuse us for a moment?"
Clark sensed that something more than just a story assignment was about to happen here and he knew that he needed to demonstrate his trust and confidence in his friend. "It's okay, Mr. White. Anything you would say to me, you can say to Chloe."
White's gaze moved back and forth between the man and woman before him. He'd known them both very well years before. So much had changed since then in the world and in the lives of the two reporters before him. White saw tension and confidence play across Kent's features, while Sullivan appeared to be composing herself; he saw them searching each other's eyes. The right corner of her mouth turned up at the same time a tear formed in each eye. White had seen that look of happy and sad at the same time years before. In for a penny, in for a pound.
White scooped the photos and charts back up from his desk and laid them out across the table. The photos all showed the same constellation. Since some of them appeared to distort one of the center stars, they appeared to have been taken from different telescopes. The charts depicted sine waves and scatter plots. Clark and Chloe studied the photographs of the stars and the charts.
Chloe's face screwed up in a look that said 'ick, gross' as she scanned the printouts and picked up the photographs. She held one of them up to Clark and the Chief, "I don't recognize this constellation."
"It's the Southern Cross, from the Southern Hemisphere." Kent and White spoke together.
Kent picked up the chart-sized printouts and studied them for a few moments.
"Those are from a radio telescope array in Australia." White explained. "The astronomers can't make heads or tails of it, but if you look..." he tried to point out something in the charts.
Clark set the charts back down on the conference table and rearranged them under the lights. He took off his glasses, put them in an inner pocket of his coat, and leaned over to study the charts and photos more carefully.
Chloe's eyes grew wide as she saw Clark run his fingers through his hair, carelessly untucking the signature spit curl. "Mr White," she began hoping he would turn and look at her and away from Kal's trademark spit curl, "why have you brought these to us? Don't we have a science guy at the Features Desk and a NASA guy who covers the Space Centers?"
"Yes." the Chief replied, glancing up briefly at Chloe but remaining transfixed by a Clark who clearly knew exactly what his was looking at and who could even search among the graphs, charts and photos for particular details.
Chloe continued in an effort to distract the Chief, "I could take the photos to the Amazons. We have some talented astronomers who've been studying the skies for thousands of years. Literally. Perhaps, they could tell us-"
White gestured for quite, "Sure, do that," He leaned over and spoke to Chloe in hushed tones, "but I think Kal here knows more than he wants to tell us right now."
Clark tucked his cowlick back with a careful brush of his fingers and put his glasses back on. He continued to look at the papers although his examination was clearly concluded. "Of course the Australians and Americans can't figure it out, Mr. White, this kind of effect hasn't been discovered..." on Earth yet. It's a tachyon distortion caused by particles that travel faster than light and backward in time." He frowned for a moment. "Maybe Green Lantern..." he trailed off, apparently lost in thought. Though whether he was thinking about the charts or how to talk his way out of White's office with his alter ego's identity in tact wasn't clear.
"Son, are you saying the distortion in the photos of the Southern Cross isn't just lens imperfections from the telescope?" White asked. "How could you possibly know that?"
How indeed... Kent adjusted his tie, "Well, you see, Mr White, the telescope at Mount Stromlo Observatory in Canberra..."
Perry rested on the top of the conference table. His eyes narrowed. "I haven't told you which observatory took the photos. How do you know it was Mt. Stromlo?"
Chloe just looked on, speachless, completely aghast.
"Look we all know that Cassiopeia, here, became an Amazon while she was gone. But you didn't become anything while you were gone, did you?" The senior news man paused for a long moment and studied Clark's face. He saw his conclusions from earlier in the morning confirmed.
Clark started to answer, but the Chief had turned to Chloe whose face was an open book to.
"You already know," he said to simply to Chloe.
Clark, Chloe and Perry White all looked at each other. No one breathed or moved. The door to the office opened and Lindsey, the Chief's assistant looked in. "Mr. White, I've got ..." and then she trailed off. "It'll keep."
"Yes, let us finish this." White almost smiled and Lindsey retreated, closing the door firmly.
"My God." White moved to the chair at the head of his conference table. "Does Lois know? Does Richard?"
"What's going on here?" asked Chloe. They all continued searching each other's faces.
The Chief had made his living for decades not just by arranging words cleverly in a column of newsprint but also by searching the faces and tones of voice of sources and reporters to determine which words to put on the page and which to leave out. "She does and so does he, but you didn't tell me..." Wheels were spinning fast in the Chief's mind. A light turned on, in the his eyes, "That's why Richard took Jason to Kansas before the worst of the Bizarro incidents. He hoped the lad would be safe at your mother's farm."
Clark searched his mind for the cover stories he used to use. He'd been back for less than two months and the whole trip to and from Krypton had taken about five months or so ship time traveling so close to light speed. All of those stories should still be ready in his mind. But none of them included Jason or Lois. Clark started to speak, but Perry continued.
"No wonder Jason has such piercing blue eyes. No one in my family, that is to say Richard's family, or Lois's has eyes like that. They're yours, Kal. Jason has your eyes."
"Wait," said Chloe, "what did you just call Clark?"
"I called him by his name, didn't I?" replied the Chief.
"Yes, Mr White, it's all true. Lois and I had an affair while we were doing that story at Niagara Falls, and..." Maybe I can get out of this just admitting to being Jason's father.
"And you didn't know," White continued. "For a guy who can hear the clouds scrape together and ...see a fly on the back of a cow in his mother's cow pasture from beyond the orbit of the moon...you can be pretty dense sometimes. "
"That's pretty much what Br-" Clark reminded himself not to stutter anymore, "...what Batman said when I told him."
"So, you're not denying it?" White leaned forward.
"No, Mr. White. I'm Superman. Jason is my son. Lois and Richard and Jason all know. So does my Mom. So does Chloe. She's known longer than anyone else, besides my mom. That I'm Superman, anyway."
"And you two are..." The gruff editor made a vague gesture that suggested they were seeing each other.
Chloe's expression closed up. "No, Mr White, we're not."
White smiled. "Okay. If you say so." Then he turned to grab the photos and the chart from his desk. He signed. "I'm glad we got all of that out on the table."
"One more thing, Mr. White." Clark chose his words, tone and expression carefully. He wanted to instill confidence, not fear. "Now that you know, are you going to print this?"
"No Kal, I'm not." the Chief leaned on the edge of his table. "I'll still call you Kent in front of the staff. But maybe I can help with the cover stories for Jason; for his powers anyway. Most of them will figure out that Kent is his father, but we don't everyone putting together the whole Superman & Son thing. White paused and removed a cigar from his vest pocket. He savored it's smell for a moment.
Still holding the cigar in his hand, he continued, "The world changed while you were gone. Madmen now fly airplanes into buildings, release nerve gas in subways and try to blow up carbombs in Times Square. The same madmen who twist religion to justify killing innocents in the Middle East and Western cities, also hate journalism, and anything else that might expose their true face. We're a target here anyway. But I wouldn't paint a target on all your friends and relatives. I'd suggest you consider which of them deserve to know who you are, though." White put the cigar away.
The he gathered up the papers from his conference table. "I guess, it's a good thing I didn't give this particular astronomy story to Carl over at the Features desk."
Clark still needed to get to Smallville and replace his mother's upstairs window. It was mighty swell of Richard, Lois, Chloe, mom and Mr Hubbard to all pitch in with watching Jason and fixing up the damage from the Batzarro incident, but I said I would take care of that upstairs window, and … "Thank you for putting us on this one Chief."
Chloe held up her hands distancing herself from the assignment. "Hold on just a moment there, CK. I'm tech support around here. Mr. Wayne brought me in for that computer issue before the Bizarro Incidents."
"Chloe, I need you with me on this one." Clark's eyes spoke volumes, but Chloe needed to hear words.
"I can't keep doing this." A single tear meandered down Chloe's cheek and she looked at the Chief's office door.
"I know what you mean, Chloe."
"Oh, nonsense, Sullivan." White smiled and extended an arm, offering a half hug. "You've been family here at the Planet since I was Mediterranean Bureau Chief covering my nephew flying jets in the Air Force. You can have you old desk back. In the basement."
She answered, "Richard already gave me that desk. If you're making me a reporter again, you'll have to do better than that."
"Of course you can have desk in the bullpen." White gave a thin small smile.
"Chloe, can we talk about this on the way to my mom's farm?" Clark asked as he moved toward the door. "I still have to fix the second floor hallway window."
-0-0-0-
On Tuesday afternoon, while some journalists, like Clark Kent and Chloe Sullivan, had tried to sort their present relationship and some photographers, like Kyle Rayner, had contemplated their wide open futures with women they loved... others, namely Ron Thorpe and Jimmy Olsen had been earning their keep. By the end of the day Tuesday, the Coroners' Office had finished its work with the aid of Dr Klein and had issued a revelation of a statement. It was long, technical and complicated by a lot of biology and physiology. The statement boiled down to this: the body in the morgue had possessed the powers of Superman when it had been alive, but it was a clone and not by any means the genuine article. Genetic markers had indicated that it had been one of several clones, probably not more than twelve.
Jimmy had then scoured the Internet to find a photo of Superman in Judea and Samaria, more commonly known as the West Bank of the River Jordan, that was time stamped in the Cingular Wireless phone grid, to the second, for the same moment the woman had died spectacularly in blue arms while crossing the street Metropolis. Several matching photos also from the Cingular Wireless grid, showed the death of the poor young mother in blue arms followed by a red cape, on a busy street in downtown Metropolis. All had the same time stamp.
Ron followed up a suggestion from (who else?) Clark and discovered that NASA had asked The Man of Steel to handle a Mission for them offworld. NASA's transponder placed the Son of Krypton half a million kilometers away from Earth during the time that the Metropolis Police Officers had been burned by heat vision all the way through incident with the 10th Mountain Division. The transponder tracked Superman the whole time he was offworld, right up until a superpowered man dressed like the movie hero Neo had arrived at Ft. Drum to take on the Bizarro Impostor clone.
Thorpe and Olsen high-fived. This was page one above the fold and the headline would read Superman Innocent.
-0-0-0-
Rayner didn't even realize it when the horizon flared red as the sun began to set. He noticed that he was squinting and started to go turn the lights on. Instead, he decided to walk downstairs to Radu's coffeehouse. There he would meet up with Alexandra and watch from the patio with a mug of the Radu's cappuccino as the western sky blazed through the reds and golds to indigo and violet.
Starbucks eat your heart out.
As the last rays of violet faded to black, Kyle and Alexandra walked a few blocks to the beach and sauntered through the edges of the surf, holding hands, chatting and carrying their shoes. They meandered back to her place where they grilled fresh Alaskan salmon and asparagus on her balcony.
The moon rose.
Kyle and Alexandra picked out Orion and other stars and constellations as they finished dinner and washed the dishes. Painting could wait.
Alexandra was a growing passion. Kyle loved her. Painting and flying jets were activities that had defined his life for over a decade. But the last couple of years with Alexandra were changing his perspective. The warrior-artist wondered how adding another part-time job as a Green Lantern to his plate -already nearly full with the commercial art and photography he did for the Planet, the Air Force Reserve and his painting- would affect his and Alexandra's plans for the future.
Kyle and Alex had been visiting artisans (not jewelry stores) aw well as looking at second hand baby furniture. No one had mentioned the words Marriage or Wedding. Yet. He would probably, no definitely, use some of the money from his recent Gallery show and sale to buy an engagement ring.
-0-0-0-
SUPERMAN INNOCENT! Batman read tomorrow's headline in one of the monitors behind the main console of The Computer which was naturally located in The Cave. It was late. Or early. Must be nice to have a major news organization to carry your water for you, Clark. Some people say that your father was the contingency planner for Krypton. I've heard you tell the story yourself of how he had a plan to build giant space arcs and carry all of Krypton's population to other worlds in addition to Earth, places like Argo and Daxam and Rann. But you, Clark you can't see past the glasses on the end of your nose. You leave your genetic samples lying around in hospitals where any monomaniacal, evil scientist could slip in steal them to start making clones. Hell, Clark, Heinz Doofenschmirtz could have stolen you blood sample from Metropolis Mercy Hospital. Then you go traipsing off to ...what does it say here? You went to slow down a comet that's due to hit earth years from now, so that it would fall into the sun. Better get the orbit right, and not have it sling shot around and crack the Moon in half...
While The Computer was located in one of the caverns within The Cave it was not built into the rock and dirt wall of the cavern as the graphic novelists and Hollywood directors imagined. The Caped Crusader had constructed a sealed room within the cavern, with air lock style doors to keep out the rodents and insects that naturally made their homes in The Cave. The sealed room also had positive pressure to keep out the dust. It wouldn't do to have rats or bats chewing on the wires of the latest Cray supercomputer, or dust fouling its keyboards and displays.
He had removed his cape, cowl and gauntlets. Again contrary to the depictions in the popular media, Batman worked in relative comfort in his Computer Room as well as in his Lab. Besides it wouldn't do to have his cape or gauntlets knock over a testing device in the Lab and keying instructions into the Computer with his gauntlets on was...difficult at best. He could do it. But it slowed him down.
The Dark Knight's mind wandered back to his recent team operation with out his own personally trained team. It had gone remarkably well. The Space Cop, the Martian, Steel and 'America's Sweethearts' had all arrived right on schedule. They had breached the facility cleanly, with Metropolis PD and the Special Crimes Unit providing a cordon and 4th Amendment cover.
The only problem was they had been late.
All of them.
The whole facility had been stripped back to the studs in the walls and the girders in the ceiling. Some transformers outside and exterior air handling units provided no decisive clues. They could have been used in anything from infections disease research to hi-tech clean room manufacturing. The whole thing reeked of the Luthors.
Like father like son. Although to be fair, the old man seemed to have cleaned up his act in recent years. But Lex more than made up for it with maniacal schemes from his attempted thermo-nuclear redevelopment of the West Coast, to hiring the Joker and Metallo and supplying them with Kryptonite, to co-operation with the Kryptonian fiends who escaped the Phantom Zone, to his more recent attempt to grow a new continent in the North Atlantic from the Fortress's crystals. One Hundred Twenty Miles off shore from Metropolis. Far enough from Gotham that shock waves dissipated.
The whole recent mess with the Bizarros smelled of another of Luthor's schemes to do in the Man of Steel. Though this time by going after Clark's credibility, Luthor was demonstrating a degree of subtelty that would have made Lionel proud.
Batman dragged his mind back into the present. His news media combing bot had found reports on a new type of terrorism. He couldn't let this "Superman Innocent" headline distract himself. This new variation on an old type type of terrorism, this he could sink his teeth into. In a crowded outdoor bazaars in Baghdad, Iraq and Djakaarta, Indonesia, attackers had simply called out words at the top of their lungs and everyone within hearing distance had dropped dead.
The Caped Crusader was watching an amateur video taken with digital video camera by deaf man vacationing with his deaf wife in Indonesia. The survivor had been interviewed on Sky, CNN and Fox News. The interviews had caught the bot's attention. Batman had searched out the raw video, finding it in a server at Sky's Djakaarta bureau.
The video panned the market, recording the shopkeepers as they showed off their wares. It showed some buyers and sellers haggling over items' prices. Then it panned past a man walking alone through the bazaar. He moved slowly. People flowed past him. The video paned on to another haggler who gestured expansively. Then in panned back to the slow moving man who had now stopped in the very center of the bazaar. The man checked his watch and then the sun. He turned to face in a particular direction, apparently west.
The man spoke with his hands close to his chest and his lips barely moving. Batman zoomed the video in to read his lips."Allah hu akbar." Then the man spread his arms to reveal nothing under his lose outer tunic. He called the prayer out loudly the second time because he clearly spoke from his diaphragm and his lips opened much wider. The speaker removed a hand sized bound note book from and inner pocket and read from it continuing to speak loudly but his lips formed no discernible words.
When he finished his 10 second monologue, the speaker fell to the ground where he stood. Then those around him feel as well. The video followed up the bazaar as everyone fell over. Then the camera fell to the ground and panned toward the opposite end of the bazaar.
Everyone had fallen over down there as well.
The camera stayed at ground level until the emergency workers arrived. Judging from the way the video moved the man sat up and let the medic check him. The video then showed many of those on the ground with their arms crossed. The medics and police continued checking the rest of the shopkeepers and patrons and crossing arms on their chests. The screen faded to black.
Batman ran the death scene back and forth a few times and concluded that whatever words the speaker had called out had caused himself and everyone around him to drop dead. The Dark Knight Detective deduced that they had fallen over as soon as their minds had processed what the man had said. Strike monologue, Batman thought, that was some kind of incantation.
I'm going to need a consultant on this one. Not Zatanna either. She was good, but she hadn't faced down insidious, destructive Evil like this. I'm going to need a Knight of the Cross on this one, or... He reached for the phone, dialing Commissioner Gordon for a name. Gordon sometimes told stories of freaky cases his friend Murphy had worked during the Chicago years. Who was that consultant she called in? Tristian? Bern? Munich? He would ask Gordon if he ever answered his phone.