"Lionel." Professor Cornellius said. Surprise registered in his face, in the inflection of his voice. "I didn't expect..."

"That I'd come all this way."

Lionel Luthor's flowing mane was more grey than the copper red of his youth. Despite the oh so expensive Saville Row suit, there was something of the aged hippy about his long hair, and buccaneer beard. Like Sir Francis Drake, Luthor was a State Sanctioned Pirate. The United States turned a blind eye to his less than legal activities as long as he kept his end of the bargain. Part of that was farming out his more exotic research to far away places. Preferably not American Soil. Like the Yukon.

"The adult is dead?"

"Yes." Abraham responded. He led the old man into the laboratory. The deceased woman's body was suspended in an amber liquid, her naked body covered with deep lacerations.

"I find that puzzling." Luthor looked at the crib with the healthy infant. "However her desperate actions makes sense, she was a mother protecting her child." Lionel stroked the dark haired infants head. "Incredible." he said. "Alien and yet outwardly human." He looked at Abraham. "And you're sure that neither are homosuperior?"

"They both possess the most incredibly complex genome."

Luthor picked up a scalpel. "Adamantium." He said as he inspected the razor edged blade.

"I bent six needles against the baby's skin before I concluded only Adamantium was going to be up to the task." Cornellius replied.

Scalpel in hand Lionel pressed it against the plump baby thigh, he pressed harder, the baby kicked. The old man fell back angry. Blood welled from the wound he had made.

The babies cry was deafening.

Abraham closed the translucent perspex like lid of the cot. The wail was muffled as the seals engaged electronically.

"The cut is healing before my eyes." Lionel observed.

"As I reported."

"Then surely this is but another example of an aggressive healing factor – a mutation?"

"No." Abraham shook his head. "A highly evolved metabolism."

Luthor stroked his beard. "However this factor is not as aggressive as subject zero." Lionel gestured to the corpse of the baby's mother. "He would have regenerated."

"There was another force at work that night." Cornellius explained.

Luthor waited expectantly. The Professor opened a sealed container. "This is a sample of a radioactive material found in and around the crash site."

"The fuel?"

"I thought so at first, but the dispersal pattern of the fragments suggest the material accompanied the capsule to Earth, rather than was contained within."

Luthor took the glowing green crystallised rock from Cornellius. "Pretty." He said holding it up to the light. "Does it do anything."

Abraham opened the cot once more, the baby had stopped crying, now it sniffled and kicked, it's face twisting in fear. Luthor turned to the crib, and as he did so, the old man saw at once a change come over the infant. "So sudden." Lionel purred. "His skin looks ashen." He brought the rock closer, the kicks all but stopped, the child's breathing became laboured. "Fascinating. The wound has begun to bleed once more."

"Whatever this is," Cornellius said, "it's as alien as they are, and it has an immediate effect on the child." His hand grasped around Luthor's. "Too much exposure would, I think, be fatal." He closed the lid of the crib once more.

He did not need to spell this out to his boss. "I see." Lionel said returning the shard of green rock, so Abraham could return it to the sealed container. "You're telling me the mother was actually weakened when she attacked my men – when she punched a helicopter gun ship out of the air?"

"I believe so." The Professor said. "And it was her exposure to the rock at the crash site, followed by her extensive injuries that resulted in her death."

Luthor watched as the cut he had cruelly made disappeared for as second time as the childs skin and flesh healed.

"A tragic loss." He said looking at the dead mother.

"Under the circumstances, I'm not so sure."

"Whatever can you mean man?" Lionel spat. "The explosion destroyed the vehicle, and with the adult dead too, any hope of finding out the truth, of learning about these people – about their technology has been lost. Where do they come from, how come they look human?"

Luthor's stare demanded an explanation.

"Solar radiation."

"What?"

"They metabolise solar radiation."

The older man thought about this. "Then the female would have what? Gained even more strength – power, in daylight?"

"I think so. From the adult alien samples I have observed her cells contain more developed type of unknown organelles, and that these react to radiation."

"Positively to Solar radiation." Luthor concluded. "Negatively to the green rock's."

Abraham nodded. "I'm sure it's more complicated than that."

"Of course."

"But yes, that's the short of it."

"And so the child?"

"Has them, but comparing his cells to his mother's, the child's solar reactive organelles appear underdeveloped. I assuming that as the infant matures so will the efficiency of these secondary mitochondria."

"So you're telling me his metabolism might be as good as subject zero?"

"Better even."

Lionel grabbed Abraham at the shoulders. "Ye gods man, this makes a trip to the back end of beyond worthwhile." He smiled broadly. "You've finally made up for that fiasco!"

Beside them the baby cried in the sealed crib.

"This child could prove to be the ultimate weapon-X"