Well, this has just been a week of kittens and completed stories! We're finally looking into adopting kittens, so that's put me in a perpetual good mood all week.
As a result, I've been balls to the wall on Story 2 to get it finished and I did! I was up until 4:30 in the morning cranking out that final chapter, but I am proud to announce that Story 2 is now complete! I'm going to let it sit for a few days before I do some minor spell-check/editing, but that's technical stuff.
I may be able to shift to a weekly update schedule by the end of the summer. I can't make any guarantees just yet (Monranr, lookin' at you), since that depends mostly on how quickly Story 3 progresses. Given that the first ten or so chapters of Story 3 is going to be revision/rewriting of existing material, I might get much further than I'm currently predicting. Optimistically, I'm hoping to make that shift at the beginning of September.
Chapter Eighteen: The Answer to What's Out There
Planet Square was hexagonal shaped as opposed to square. The main entrance of the northwest corner was barred from vehicle traffic by three decorative Roman columns topped by a granite facade. With an old office building on one side and a bike rental shop on the other, the entrance only had narrow sight lines in between the columns. As soon as Lois heard the pop-crack of gunfire, she dove for the relative safety behind one of the columns. Next to her, Steve Trevor tucked and rolled for cover with such precision that his tactical instructor would have nodded proudly. He came up drawing a Smith & Wesson 910 from the pocket of his coat and flicked off the safety.
Trask was wasting bullets shooting at the columns, as he couldn't actually find a good angle from which to even nick either of them. But he was as automatic and mechanical as the rifle in his hands, mindlessly firing bullets as though someone was pressing a button on him.
Lois and Steve shared a look across the six or so feet of space that separated them. From Steve, it was a 'following your lead here now what' kind of look. Which was bad, because Lois didn't actually have a plan at this exact moment. But she knew the value of not letting that show and thought quickly.
Obviously, the first thing they had to do was get out of here. Boxed in on all sides, not many avenues of escape, and not much cover from gunfire. It was definitely a kill zone. One well-timed, well-aimed bullet each and they were laid out on a morgue slab.
They had to get out and it was starting to seem that there was only one good way to do that.
She caught Steve's eye again and looked meaningfully at the pistol in his hand, then tilted her head towards Trask and his driver, and then to the office building on her right, making tiny gestures with her finger to make sure the point was better made. Steve nodded and gave the gun a quick check. In the quick half-second in between Trask firing the rifle, the former sergeant spun out from behind the column and lined the handgun up on his sight, firing at almost the same instant.
Lois moved then, dodging out from behind the column to dive for the office building to her right. There was a second crack-pop when her back hit the thick stone wall. There was a third shot and this time Lois heard the crack of glass and the fizzle of electricity and sudden darkness fell over this particular corner of the plaza. Steve was scrambling to join her just a moment later.
"They ducked. I hit the door and took out the driver's window instead." he reported. "Damn, I think I only have a half-clip." He scowled. "Do you have a plan, Miss Lane?"
"The way I see it, there are two options. We can get out through the Daily Planet's parking garage and make a run for it-- No, I don't own a car, by the way. Or we can take down Trask and the driver ourselves and steal their car." Lois suggested.
"I don't think I like either of them."
"I didn't say they were good plans." She nudged him. "C'mon, army boy, which one do you think is the better option?"
"That's Air Force boy, Miss Lane. The car would get us mobile faster, but it's more likely to be lo-jacked and they could run us off the road. On foot, we would be more manueverable with better options for hiding, though we deal with the risk of being slower and easier to catch." Steve said, mostly to himself. "Either way, I do like the idea of punching Trask in the face on our way out."
"So do you want car or foot or do you want to steal some bikes from over there?" Lois questioned, nodding to the bike rental.
For a second, Steve got a sparkle in his eye that suggested he didn't mind the idea of swiping a pair of bikes and Lois wondered if he was one of those guys who just threw his fucks to the wind when the chips were down like this.
"No, I think we'll be quicker on foot." he said, which was somewhat disappointing.
Two cars doors slammed shut in succession and they both tensed. Steve hefted the Smith & Wesson up to his shoulder and held it ready.
"You take one of them. I'll get the other." Lois hissed to him.
"What?" The former sergeant frowned, looking her up and down from the concealer-caked bruise on her cheek to the tips of her snow boots and for half an instant, Lois saw him seriously doubting her ability to take a six-foot man in a fight.
She would be the first to admit that it was hardly a new reaction and no, she didn't look like she could take a six-foot man in a bout of fisticuffs. She acknowledged that quite cheerfully, because she liked seeing the looks of men's faces the exact moment they realized that they had underestimated her. She wasn't terribly strong, so speed and surprise were the best weapons in her arsenal.
However, a beat later, Steve nodded like he had just re-assessed and found her Mjolnir-worthy, and said: "Okay, which one do you want? Trask or the other one?"
"I'll take whichever one's uglier." Lois replied.
"I guess I'll take the driver, then." Steve shrugged, clicking the safety back on and stowing the gun into his pocket again. He gestured like he was holding a door open, inviting the reporter to go first.
Adjusting her satchel bag so it was snug against the small of her back, Lois darted around the corner of the office building like a dragonfly. Trask and his driver had only gotten just inside the columns, peering cautiously into the shadows around the plaza. He wasn't looking where he should have been. Between the shot-out light and Lois generally being small and swift, he didn't react in time to her charge.
"Aaagh!" Lois battle-cried, just as she leapt at the government agent.
"What the--?" was all Trask had time to say.
Her right leg lashed out in a nicely-arced kick and caught Trask just below the ribs. Her snow boot was nice and clunky, and it connected with the man's side very solidly. He lurched to the side, partially losing his grip on the assualt rifle. Lois swept it out of his slackened hand.
"This is for my face!" she shouted, and butted the end of the rifle into his nose. There was a satisfactory cracking sensation and blood started to dribble out of his nostrils.
The sound that escaped Trask was somewhere between a whine and a whimper, and he fell backwards, clapping hands over his face as the nosebleed started in earnest. Lois stomped a heel into his stomach for good measure.
"And that's for all the shit you're trying to put Clark through!" she added.
She hefted the rifle up under her arm and looked up to see if Steve had finished yet. He had laid into the driver, a swarthy and swole fellow with quite a prominent mole on his cheek next to his nose. With several wiry black hairs growing out of it, Lois knew, because she remembered that man from her rebel teenager days.
Steve drove his fist into the man's face for the third and final time, putting him down on the snow-dusted pavement. He snatched the identical assault rifle out of the driver's hand.
"Run!" he ordered.
Lois sprinted out into the empty streets outside the plaza, with Steve right on her heels. Downtown got quiet after midnight (there were only a handful of bars and late-operating diners and most of them closed their doors at midnight; it was the outer boroughs that kept thumping right up until four in the morning) or else they would have been hearing sirens by now. On the upside, it meant that no one tried to stop and ask them what was going on. On the downside, it meant there were no crowds to get lost in. Not until they got up into Midtown.
"Where are we going?" Steve asked, after a few blocks when they had slowed to something better resembling a jog.
"I'm not sure anymore. My usual bolt-holes might be busted." Lois admitted, shrugging. "Trask's driver? I've seen him before. He's this low-level thug with Sofia Gigante. Mostly works with the street gangs and he's been around for a long time. I hope he didn't get a good look at my face or we're in real trouble."
She could practically hear Steve bursting to inquire further, to ask her how much she had hassled the street gangs in the name of getting a story. Clark might have asked, she realized. No, Clark definitely would have asked, with some burning curiosity to know more about her past (why he wanted to know, she had no idea; it wasn't very pleasant). But Steve had more control and simply proceeded to look a bit worried instead.
"That's a Tec-9. Do you know how to operate one of those?" he asked, gesturing to the rifle under her arm.
"The boys at Ramstein got real enthusiastic about teaching me to fire an AK-47." Lois replied. They had been quite gleeful about it, like there was an element of rebellion to teaching the stern general's daughter how to pull off a headshot at one hundred paces. "Is it fundamentally different?"
"No, operation-wise, they're about the same." Steve assured her. "So, Ramnstein Air Base? I thought General Lane was Army?"
"He is, but Ramstein went joint operations in 1980 and General Dad became Brigadier not long after they made the announcement." Lois explained. Even though the base had gone joint, everyone still called it 'Ramstein Air' due to sheer force of habit. "You never got an overseas placement, did you."
"Not really. Beale after I got out of basic for more training and then I spent five years operating in the Middle East in war zones until the troop recall; I don't think that counts. Sent me to Mcclellen after that until my service contract was up." Steve explained. "I'm glad to be out, honestly."
Lois nodded. "What are you gonna do with yourself now?"
"I'll get a new job and give college another shot next summer. Maybe I'll take pilot lessons too, if I can find the time."
"Yeah, I saw that application. I also heard Lieutenant Sawyer offered you a job with the SCU."
"She did. And I think I'd get it too if I went right up to her tomorrow, but I'll be official and hand in the application and my resume first." The former sergeant shrugged and his tone resumed a more business-like timbre. "So, where are we going now?"
"We could hide out in Suicide Slums or we swing around east to Hell's Gate-- No, scratch that, Suicide Slums." Lois corrected. "I know a guy who winters there. He has a boat. We'll spend the night out on the water if we have to. It won't be a problem. He's done it for me before and he doesn't ask questions."
"Good. I think we should say something to the cops too. In case we conveniently go missing before anyone realizes that Trask was involved." Steve added warily. More than one person had 'gone missing' in his tenure as a field agent.
"We'll have to be careful with that. There's a few dirty cops in the ranks. Not very many, but we have no way of knowing who they are." Lois shook her head, only slightly against the idea. It was still a good one, but it required some double-checking. "Fortunately, I have a contact in the SCU--"
A distant squeal of tires, rubber against the road, sounded sharply several streets behind them. They shared a look that said 'shit' and darted down the next dark alley. They knew the attack would only net them a few precious minutes. They needed to get somewhere quiet and out of the way, where no one would think to look for them.
Getting out onto Lake Superior until they could think of something better was probably their best bet, reluctant though Lois was to drag Bibbo into this. He was good people and he wouldn't deserve to be gunned down, something Trask would surely do. The man didn't seem to believe in innocent bystanders. It seemed that if you were sharing the same square footage with the target, Trask considered you guilty by association.
Between Clark and Lois, that list could very well include their respective landlords, the people in their apartment buildings, and every single employee of the Daily Planet.
And she wasn't about to have that.
All the same, if Bibbo was willing to help, they'd be mad to turn away.
The problem was the distance. They were two and a half miles away from the Slums and there was no guarantee whatsoever that they could get there before Trask caught up with them.
"Do you think they're watching the train stations?" she asked out loud.
"Probably. It feels like Trask is treating this like an operation, so yeah, public transport would be under surveillance." Steve nodded. "We'll have to go on foot unless you have another friend we can trust implicitly."
Lois snorted. "Bitch, please. I don't have friends, I have contacts and stoolie canaries. Bibbo owes me just as many favors as I owe him."
"What about that Clark Kent fellow? You and him seemed pretty much like friends when I saw you earlier this evening." the former sergeant pointed out. He had seen enough fire-forged friendships in the military to recognize one between civilians and it had amused him greatly to see that one, mostly because they seemed completely oblivious to it.
"We're work-partners." Lois corrected. "Anyways, he doesn't own a car and I haven't seen him since that explosion by the SCU. He's not answering my calls either. God, I hope he's still alive..."
It was a feeling both maddening and terrifiying and Lois hated it because it reminded her of the weeks leading up to her mother's death; by the time Ella had developed pneumonia in one lung after the other and her asthma exacerbating it fiercely, there hadn't been much for the doctors to do except increase the dosage of pain medication. She could have gone at any time and Lois starkly remembered the gnawing sensation of fear that her mother would die while she was trapped in a classroom. Schrödinger's Death: not knowing if someone was dead or alive until you saw them again.
He's definitely alive. Lois thought fiercely, to make herself look on the bright side. I mean, Clark's pretty tough. He survived Trask's bullshit once so I'd say he knows how to do it twice. He's fine. He just can't get to his phone right now--
"Miss Lane!"
Steve's panicked shout brought her instantly out of her affirmations to find that she was in the middle of a crosswalk and there was a car-
The brakes screeched and Steve grabbed her around the waist and out of the way. Lois felt herself go "hrk!" like it was some badly executed Heimlich. The car fishtailed slightly, lurching on its front tires as though it was threatening to flip, and then came to a grudging halt. In the front seat, Lois saw a familiar face with large green eyes and the enormous 'fro of dark hair barely tied back in what was passibly a ponytail, all belonging to possibly the best person they could have run into right now.
"You!" she bellowed, jerking free of Steve's protective grip and marching towards the car. "You! You're going to help us! Right now!"
Colletta Kanigher lowered the passenger-side window and leaned over. "Lois, two questions. Why do you have an assault rifle and who is the tall, blonde, and handsome stranger who... I might have seen before?" she asked, lowering her voice to a loud whisper on the last part.
"Both questions will be answered if you unlock the doors and drive us over to the Slums." Lois said, yanking pointedly on the door handle. "I'm not joking, Colletta. This is literally a matter of life and death. Specifically, our lives. And you still owe me some favors."
"I thought we got past the barter system years ago." Colletta commented, unlocking the doors for them.
Lois climbed into the front seat and Steve got into the back, and then did a double-take.
"Hang on, didn't I see you done at the SCU earlier today?" he asked.
"Now that you mention it, yep! Colletta Kanigher. My friends call me 'Etta'. Not Lois, though. She doesn't think we're friends despite the fact we've known each other for like six years." the young police officer said, getting the car moving again.
"We were college house-mates united against the fuckery of the deadly sins of sloth, gluttony, and greed." Lois said.
"In other words, we had the fat lazy room-mate who didn't do any of the chores, ate everything in the pantry even when it was labeled, and tried to squeeze her fifty-inch butt into dresses cut for a twenty-inch butt. She ripped three of my best skirts right down the seams and then had the nerve to complain that my clothes didn't her curdled thighs. We called her the Kracken." Colletta elaborated, nudging Lois. "C'mon, we're practically sisters-in-arms for all we went through with her."
Lois shook her head. "No, I just bought the bedroom door locks and stopped buying groceries. You're the one who rounded up the women's kickboxing team and made her life miserable." she explained. "We were united, on the same side, but I wouldn't go so far as to call us friends."
Colletta frowned. "Does that mean we're still girlfriends then?"
"That was once."
"That was four times, Lois."
"Wait, did you two go on a date? Four times?" Steve asked, picking up on the fact that their shared history went beyond a slovenly house-mate.
"No, we had filthy sex four times." Colletta said cheerfully, making Lois turn pink and cover her face. "We actually did date for some of freshman and sophomore year. And then Lois concluded that she was definitely straighter than I was, it wasn't going to work, and we had to break up anyways because her dad yanked her out of school."
"Colletta... I haven't even told Clark any of this shit. Don't bring it up in front of someone I met five minutes ago." Lois grumbled warningly.
"You didn't tell him just so you could watch him twitch?" Colletta wondered.
"No. I thought it might injure his delicate small town farm boy sensibilities. Anyways, it's not like I'm going to end up dating him, so my past relationships aren't any of his business." Lois muttered.
She figured that Clark, coming from such a small town, hadn't really had the exposure to the various sexual identities and probably didn't know most of them existed. He might have been somewhat familiar with the idea of the "college lesbian", but he had also gone to community college. It was hard to say. So it would probably be much less of a hassle if she didn't bring it up at all.
Then she rubbed her face to try and chase the blush away. "Fine. Steve, meet the hella bi SCU officer Colletta Kanigher, my only lesbian sex experience and the only person I would call my ex. Yes, we dated for about eight months. Yes, we slept together four times. Yes, I found out I was a lot more into men than I thought I was. Is that going to bother you?" she asked, looking sternly over the back of the seat to Steve.
Steve blinked. "No... I don't think so?" He sounded unsure, like he had never actually encountered someone who was openly bisexual and had never given such an encounter any thought.
"Good. Colletta, meet former Air Force sergeant and government agent Steve Trevor. A.K.A. Agent Stoolie Canary, the reason why psycho Agent Trask is in the middle of attempting to hunt us down and kill us, so we don't spread his secrets, and that's why you need to get us to the Slums." Lois added.
"That doesn't sound like a good idea, hiding there. The Slums isn't the safest area and you know it." Colletta said.
"We're not going to hide there. I just need to find Bibbo and have him take us out onto the lake for the night. We'll figure out the rest of it in the morning." It was all Lois could think of doing right now. Her plan didn't go beyond that.
"I dunno if that's really a good plan. Trask is a psychopath and if he catches you on the water, the only place you'll go is down." the SCU officer said.
"We just need to get out of sight for the next few hours." Steve said. "I don't know the city at all, so right now, I'm open to any suggestions, sensible or otherwise."
"Hmm... I can't take you back to my place. My roommate would flip her shit. She thinks I'm into threesomes." Colletta said. She glanced at Lois. "I guess your place isn't even on the list. What about your friend, Clark?"
"Work-partner and no, he's in the same jam." Lois grunted, watching the streets as they passed them. Trask didn't know they were vehicularly mobile, but she couldn't shake the feeling that he would come roaring up the street to T-bone them.
"What about your usual hide-aways?"
Steve raised an eyebrow. "You have usual hide-aways?"
"They're compromised, or at least I assume they are. The driver working with Trask is one of Sofia Gigante's. Even if he didn't get a good look at my face, I'm positive my name's already come up." the reporter said. "I couldn't even begin to guess how or why, but I'm starting to think Trask might have opened good relations with Gigante."
"Trask? Cooperating with a woman on anything? Without coercion? Hah!" Steve howled with laughter. That was the funniest damn thing he'd heard all night.
"No, I'm sure coercion was heavily involved." Lois commented. "But even that one guy suggests she's lending him some support."
Colletta made a thoughtful face and then spun the wheel sharply around the next right turn, knocking her passengers into the doors.
"Etta!" Lois squawked, pushing herself upright.
"You called me 'Etta'!" the SCU officer cooed happily.
"Why are we going north now?" Lois demanded.
"Because I'm not taking you to the Slums."
"Then where?"
"Racine. We'll trip through Lafayette first." Colletta said, pressing her foot down on the pedal. The road was empty and a through-way, so she didn't have to worry too much about stopping. "Look, I know a Homicide detective who's been agitating to bring Gigante down for the last year and a half. He's had to play it quiet because of the Falcone connection, but he figures if he can pin a solid on Sofia, Papa Falcone won't touch him."
"Risky move, from what I know of the Falcone crime family. I hear they control most of Gotham." Steve commented. "How do you know what he's been trying to do?"
"He comes by once a month to see if we've got anything helpful. SCU gets the weird stuff, but we also run double duty on drug-busts and missing people and the occasional terrorists threat. You'd be shocked how often those three tend to entertwine. We're kind of a hodge-podge of crap, but this guy's really good at sorting through all that and finding the relevant stuff. Maggie's been pushing hard to get him into the SCU, but Homicide doesn't want to let him go and I guess he hasn't got much incentive to transfer anywhere else."
Lois smirked. "So you figure that if he helps us and succeeds, you can help the lieutenant make a better case for getting him into the SCU."
"No, it's nothing like that." Colletta said, rolling her eyes. "I'm going to show him that working in the SCU is way more exciting than boring old Homicide. Thereby making him think that the decision was really his own and not a carefully calculated spur of the moment plot executed by myself on Maggie's behalf."
"Devious little shit, Etta." Lois grinned. There was a reason they had briefly dated and still remained amiable to each other to this day.
"Is he really that good of a detective?" Steve wondered. It seemed to him that Lieutenant Sawyer was choosy about her recruits. When she'd turned right around to offer him a job immediately after Trask had fired him, the general gasp of surprise had said a fair bit.
"Yeah, he's bomb at sorting out puzzles. Makes the sort of intuitive leaps that you'd expect from a forty-year veteran who lived long enough to turn into a gumshoe." Colletta said. The guy had recently passed the five-year mark and already he had the track record of a seasoned veteran. "When you find a detective like that, you hold tight and don't let go. So we've gotta convince him to come over to our side. We get better health insurance and we have slammin' coffee anyways. Capain Jase says we shouldn't have to drink shit."
"Sign me up." Steve muttered, absently holding out a fist. Without looking, Colletta thumped her fist into his.
"Well, I hope Detective Awesome McBadass meets expectations." Lois said. Nine times out of ten, Colletta's rave reviews were on point. "What's his name?"
"Oh yeah!" Colletta snapped her fingers as the Eclipse Bridge came into view ahead. "His name is Jim Gordon."
Clark didn't regain consciousness slowly. He woke up like he was escaping a nightmare, adrenaline flooding in his veins and causing him to jolt. His brain screamed danger danger warning! and his fight-or-flight response tried to kick in before he was actually aware enough to coordinate his limbs and he just ended up flopping a little like a gangly-finned fish.
"Whoa! Clark! Clark, it's okay!"
A hand touched his shoulder and he threw an arm over his aching chest protectively before he actually realized who the voice belonged to. Clark pried his eyes open, wincing at the bright lights around him. Everything was a fuzzy blur, but only for a second, and he found Dr. Sullivan leaning over him with an expression that was both concerned and relieved.
"Are you awake? How are you feeling?" the engineer asked.
Clark blinked, wondering for a moment what kind of questions those were, because he was clearly awake and aware, and the pain in his chest had dialed back from "indescribably and volcanically hellish" to "skin peeled away by gravel" and his chest had been plastered with a flesh-colored bandage. Frankly, he was alive and that was obvious, so those were both dumb questions.
Then he realized he was expected to answer at least one of them.
"Ow." he said.
Dr. Sullivan smiled. "Good enough."
"That hurt." Clark said, rubbing his hand against the bandage. He could still feel some damaged skin underneath it, but it wasn't the molten charred hamburger he had envisioned.
"It sounded like it hurt." the engineer agreed.
"No, I mean it hurt. I've never been hurt by anything else before. I flipped the tractor once when I was driving it. It fell on me and we had to replace it. We had to tell the insurance folks that we accidentally hit it with the harvester combine." Clark informed him, the memory of the twisted tractor rising briefly to the forefront of his mind. "Dr. Essex had me by the throat three weeks ago and he left bruises. And now this."
Dr. Sullivan nodded. "It would seem that we are vulnerable only to what came from Krypton." he said. "You, me, Nam-Ek -- Dr. Essex, to you -- all come from the same place. In that sense, we're all equal."
"But... Shouldn't the invulnerability mean we can't actually hurt each other?" Clark wondered, his brow furrowing. He couldn't claim to know a thing about how it all worked, but if he was invulnerable to all things under the sun, didn't that include others just like himself?
"I'm a mechanical engineer, Clark, not an organic scientist." Dr. Sullivan said, crossing his arms. "If you want the scientific answer, you'll have to talk to Nam-Ek. Dr. Essex. He's the one who came up with the theory. I'm just repeating it."
"If it's all the same, I think I won't." Clark muttered, rubbing his chest again. He probably wouldn't make it through a third encounter, now that it was clear the mad scientist seemed bound and determined to kill him.
He looked around. "Where are we?" he asked.
He had been laying on a slab that felt more like sandstone than anything, yet oddly soft and warm. Around him was crystalline walls the color of pink quartz striated with the familiar foggy ivory. Bright sun-like light beamed from the wall sconces, but had no discernible source. There were no windows anywhere in the room. Just the smooth crystal-like walls that stretched up over their heads to meet in cathedral-like arches. It was no human engineering he had ever seen and it gave him no clues where he was. Quite, it seemed rather alien, if he had to apply a word to it. For all Clark could tell, they were on another planet.
"Ah, I suppose it's one of the last things left of Krypton." Dr. Sullivan said, motioning for him to lay back a little. He started to peel back the bandages. "It's old, though. From the Age of Expansion, which would put it... ooh, roughly seventeen hundred to two thousand years old. We're still on Earth, if you were wondering."
"But where on Earth?" Clark asked, and was faintly amused by the fact the question suddenly had much more weight than it normally did. It usually wasn't asked so seriously.
"Exact location? Inaccessible Island in McMurdo Sound."
"Antarctica?!"
"Yes, Antarctica." Dr. Sullivan assured him. He removed the bandage fully from Clark's chest, revealing the damage. It wasn't as bad as it had been a few hours ago. It was still reddened and blistered, but more like a bad sunburn than pan-seared steak.
"That looks much better!" the engineer said happily. "You'll be fine by morning, I think."
"It still hurts a little." Clark commented.
"This is an old Kryptonian research outpost." Dr. Sullivan said, picking up a small tub of some kind of cream -- it was colored light blue. "I checked the archived logs while you were out. It was used by anthropologists studying extremely primitive civilizations-- by Kryptonian standards, I mean. They must have thought Earth would be a suitable location for a colony; the records go on for a good seventy years. They used to call this place the 'Fortress of Solitude' because it was so isolated. That was back when we still had better senses of humor."
"When did they leave?" Clark wondered.
"Oh... I don't think they did, actually." Dr. Sullivan said. "If I've got the dates lined up correctly, then the last group would have been stationed here just before the start of the Contact Plague. It's exactly what it sounds like. Someone brought home a highly contagious plague that passed easily through physical contact. Our system was quarantined against all travel and anyone who was stuck outside it was shit out of luck. I don't think the last group of anthropologists ever left the planet."
Clark blinked. "Wait, you're saying they died here?"
"Not here, not in the Fortress. The last entry logs the shut-down of the Fortress's main systems. My best guess is that they spread out across the Earth and just did what they did best." Dr. Sullivan shrugged. He could only presume as much. Without another shipment supplies and food incoming, they would have only lasted so long. Their best chance to live long and full lives would have been to leave for the greener pastures (probably of Chile or Argentina).
He slapped the blue cream onto Clark's chest and started to rub it in, and the mild burning began to subside. Clark hardly noticed, too busy with absorbing the mind-numbing realization that Earth had been visited by an extraterrestrial race before! People from his birth planet had come to Earth before! Probably multiple times! And maybe even before that!
But not just visited... No, they had gone out into the world to live their lives and who knew what they had influenced along the way. Wouldn't it figure if the aliens-built-the-pyramids conspiracy theory actually had some credible weight to it? All those years of people swearing up and down about UFOs and little green men and the numerous unsubstantiated abductions and just the very concept of life elsewhere in the universe... The people who looked up at the stars and asked "What's out there? Is there anything out there?" And now there was something and it had come to Earth long ago and it had stayed.
But if the world found out about him, humanity would lose its collective shit.
There was that strange little ignorance humanity indulged in, where they wanted to believe they were right about life all the way out there -- that they didn't want to be the only life in the universe -- yet at the same time, they were scared of finding out.
And so was he.
It was a little silly to be scared of something like that, knowing that he himself was an alien. But it was a strange, almost atavistic sense that Clark couldn't shake. He barely thought of himself as an alien. It was familiar, much more comfortable to identify as human. He had been raised by humans, as a human, into the amalgamation that was American culture and it seemed that he had absorbed everything that defined the very nature of human beings. He used to look up at the night sky, wonder what was out there, and then wonder if he truly wanted to know. Even after finding out The Big Secret, his star-gazing thoughts hadn't changed much. 'What's out there' had become accompanied by 'Where did I come from out there?'
And he still wasn't sure he wanted to know.
Dr. Sullivan's ministrations slowed. "Are you all right?"
"It's a lot to take in." Clark said, shrugging in a half-hearted way. "I don't remember if I've ever actually thought about it. About... not being human."
"When we talked this past afternoon, you told me that your adopted parents, the Kents-- They didn't tell you that you weren't from Earth until you were thirteen." Dr. Sullivan started.
"That's when they told me I was adopted. They didn't show me the shuttle until I asked if they knew anything about my birth parents and that was when I was fifteen." Clark corrected.
"Do you know why they kept it from you?" The engineer sounded like he was gearing up for an argument, his voice taking on a defensive tone like he was ready to spout some vaguely xenophobic commentary.
"Because it's not something you blurt out over the dinner table. My parents," Clark deliberately deliberated emphasized that, glaring at the engineer to let him know that no argument would be made of this and if so, he would defend Johnathan and Martha to his dying breath. "The two people who raised me like I was their flesh and blood child meant the best and they weren't sure if telling me would help or hinder. They never gave me a reason to think I was unwanted or unloved, but they didn't know what learning that would do and they didn't want to take the risk that it would destroy me."
Though he had been grappling with the argument in the past, he understood it fully now in retrospect. It was a burden enough for a teenager to learn that they were adopted, but then to be handed the knowledge that they were from beyond the stars as well? Johnathan and Martha had played the adoption talk by ear, but there was no measuring stick for the second thing. There hadn't been a way to break it gently, no way of knowing how Clark would take the news. Revealing the knowledge would and had shattered nearly all of his conceived notions. Not a metahuman, but an alien -- the answer to 'what's out there, are we alone in the universe', and god knows why he had been sent to Earth.
In retrospect, Clark couldn't find it in himself to be mad, frustrated, or even slightly unhappy with his parents for being so hesitant to tell him.
But Dr. Sullivan didn't look like he was going to make an argument of it. He smiled and began applying the fresh bandage. "You're a fine young man, Clark, and I'm glad you were raised by good people. Lara and Jor-El do seem proud of how you turned out."
"Yeah..." Clark nodded in agreement until the statement actually sunk. "Wait, what? What do you mean 'do seem proud'?"
"Well, the external hard drives that I took from the shuttle contain a lot more than just four centuries of Kryptonian history." Dr. Sullivan admitted. He smoothed down the bandage and stepped back. "It's hard to tell, exactly, considering that they are computer programs and therefore, artificial constructs, so their opinions must be taken with a grain of salt-"
"Wait, what?" Clark repeated.
"Artificial intelligences." Dr. Sullivan said simply. He handed Clark a shirt. "Your parents live on in the programming of two A.I.s."
-0-
Steve Trevor? Jim Gordon? Colletta "Etta Candy" Kaniger? Oh yeah, I'm workin' an angle here.