Chapter 19

Taking a day off from the Daily Planet, he had done his civic duty at the voting booth. For the weeks before the election Clark had prayed to whomever was listening that Luthor would never seen the inside of the United States' Senate chamber. The Meta-Human Registration Act had been at its lowest percentage of support since its first presentation to the public, but having Luthor in the Senate could only bolster that support again. The thought had only encouraged his voting and his vehemence in reminding everyone to visit the polls.

He then had flown to Smallville with a just as vexing purpose. For that reason he had moved barely any faster than the birds that had shared the sky with him. The slow pace had given him time to think.

Although he had visited Smallville often over the past few months, he had adamantly refused to go to one place in particular: the IHOP. Yet he found himself sitting in one of its cold metal seats.

In his defense, he knew it was stupid.

The whole town of Smallville had been affected by Zod's invasion, but what had happened at the IHOP had been more intimate than he would care to remember. Not only had it been embarrassing to have his ass kicked in front of a former bully, but it had been uncomfortable when he had looked into the eyes of Pete and realized that he was finally and utterly out. Pete had known enough beforehand of course, but to be wearing a blue skin-tight suit and cape, for Heaven's sake, probably clinched it for him in a very unexpected way. So he had dreaded going to the International House of Pancakes. Regardless of his feelings, no one says no to pancakes, especially free pancakes, and he needed to get Melissa away from the farm and alone so he could talk to her.

After talking with Melissa, Lois had expedited a background check on her, which had turned up nothing. Of course whatever she was hiding probably wasn't public record, but something felt off. This added to Clark's imploration of his mother to allow Melissa to stay at the farm, which he had included would allow them to watch her.

He could tell she knew Batman much more intimately than an blackmailer-blackmailee relationship. It was true she had worked for him in his company whatever that was, but their relationship was well beyond even that. How else could her candor with him be explained? He wanted to understand and he needed more information.

Confident though he was that he would be able to ascertain Batman's identity, whatever she was holding back could be extremely helpful to him. Also she needed to know what he had learned and what he planned to do about it. More than likely she would be reluctant about anything to do with Batman, but he had thought perhaps a more casual atmosphere would calm her. Batman knowing his secret was a large chink in his armor. He needed to show Batman that turnabout was fair play and teach him something about manipulating people. His conscience told him that perhaps bribery with food could be categorized as manipulation, but he justified it by reminding himself that the knowledge of Batman's identity could better help Melissa too.

Unfortunately for him, Melissa was no fool. She was suspicious the moment he had invited her to breakfast and the look on her face as they waited for their waitress to come made it clear her inkling had not waned in strength. Clark forced himself to stare at the menu and be as nonchalant as possible. Maybe she would relax and he could pull this off.

"So is this something you normally do with your workers?"

Clark sighed. Perhaps this was going to be harder than he thought.

"No. I just thought that you would enjoy a nice meal," he said in a friendly tone and placed a charming smile on his face for added effect.

"At IHOP," she deadpanned.

"Yeah. Who says no to pancakes?"

She cracked a smile."Well you have me there."

An awkward silence followed. Clark looked around and immediately his trepidation about eating there was justified. Everyone in the IHop was giving them sidelong glances, some of them less subtle than others.

"Everyone's staring at us," he whispered to himself.

"No, they're staring at you. I'm just around you." She smiled a little bit. "I guess I'm not the only one here who knows your secret."

Clark smiled awkwardly. He had figured everyone knew, but they could at least use some discretion. Even after months of this behavior, the openness with which people showed their knowledge, sometimes to the point of rudeness, was still something he was growing accustomed to. Deciding to ignore them, he ran through all the practiced conversational anecdotes he had thought of on the way there. His more important questions he would ease into the conversation once they had their food.

"Clark, other than for the pancakes, why did you bring me here?"

His eyebrows jumped a little. She was looking at him expectantly and he relented both annoyed and impressed with her shrewdness.

"I talked to... you know," he said raising his eyebrows significantly.

"You did? How did it go?" she asked urgently.

He winced. "It could have gone better."

"What happened?"

"We fought," he said a little awkwardly.

"What? Are you okay?" she asked with genuine concern.

He felt a twinge of annoyance. "I'm fine."

Melissa looked away embarrassed and Clark ignored his annoyed feelings. There was no reason for her to be that concerned, but it wasn't important.

"Anyway," he continued, "I learned a lot. And I just don't understand how you could get mixed up with someone like that."

She didn't take the bait. "I'm not gonna tell you what he blackmailed me with."

"You're just a kid."

"I know. Which is why the blackmail worked. I have no resources."

"Why you haven't spoken to the police?" he asked honestly befuddled.

She cast her eyes away for a moment. "I don't see how that would help."

"Blackmail is illegal; is what he has on you really that bad?"

She stared at her menu her eyes sorrowful. Again he was confused and not just a little suspicious.

"I just want to help you, Melissa," he said gently.

She smiled a little. "Clark, you are helping."

"Hi!" said the waitress as she appeared at their table. She was tall, a little thick, but curvy, and she had dark brunette hair that softly sat on her shoulders. Her mega-watt smile and big blue eyes were completely glued to Clark. Clark could feel himself blush a little bit.

"I'm Mary. I'll be your server. What would you like?" she gushed.

Clark couldn't help, but smile a bit. When he saw out of the corner of his eye Melissa rolling her eyes though he regained his composure.

"Hot cakes, please. With coffee."

"And I'll have-" Melissa started.

"Coming right up!" Mary chirped.

Just as soon as she had arrived, she vanished. Clark tried to flag her down, but she had moved with such speed into the kitchen that if Clark didn't know any better he would have thought her Kryptonian. Looking at Melissa, he could tell she was a little miffed by the waitress' ignorance.

"Wow. I didn't realize that your presence caused others around you to become invisible."

Clark shifted uncomfortably. "She'll be back. Besides we still need to talk."

"No, we don't," she said firmly and nervously.

"Melissa-"

"You know, I'm not that hungry for pancakes." She started to get up from her seat, when Clark reached across the table to stop her, gently.

"Melissa, sit. Please," he said his voice matching the strength of his action. Hesitating only for a second, she relented and sat back down.

Clark sighed. "Melissa, to help you, I need to know everything."

She stared determinedly at the table. It was time to switch strategies.

"I know how to find out who he is."

Her eyes became as wide as saucers with...excitement? "You do? How?"

Clark hesitated. "That's not important, but I wanted you to know that I will discover him and I plan on confronting him again. Before I do, I wanted to know if there was anything else you need to tell me."

She hesitated, then said, "I've already told you everything I know."

She was lying. It was plain now. He understood that she might be scared, but it was almost over. Why wouldn't she help him? He could tell that she wanted to. Clearly at war with herself, she wouldn't look at him in the eye and she shook her head at whatever thought she was thinking. What was holding her back?

"Are you sure?" he asked trying to hide his skepticism.

Melissa looked away again, but when she made eye contact they were full of regret, fear, and sadness.

"Here they are!" Mary had returned with a big stack of pancakes, complete with a small pitcher of syrup, and a little bowl of butter palettes. She placed them on the table and turned from Clark to Melissa with a huge smile, which faltered upon viewing the young woman.

"Oh! Where did you come from?" she said in a forced cheery voice.

Melissa ignored the waitress, giving Clark one last, unreadable look. "I'm sorry, Clark," she breathed out as she got up to leave.

"Melissa!" He sat up out of his chair attempting to stop her again, but she dodged his grasp.

"Just remember that I'm sorry," she said her voice cracking a little, then she turned and hurried out of the restaurant.

Disregarding that he was supposed to be off and all the odd stares he received for it, he rushed over to Lois' desk. However, he needed the advantage of having the total archived knowledge of the Daily Planet server at their disposal.

He leaned over and whispered, "Lois I need to talk to you."

"And I need to talk to you," she said urgently and quietly. Motioning for him to follow her, she grabbed her laptop and walked into the storage room.

When they were inside and Clark had locked the door he looked at her questioningly.

"We need to be alone," she said simply. "Everyone will just think we're making out."

"With your computer?"

"I'm never far from work, Clark," she said seriously. Clark nodded and leaned against a stack of old newspapers while she booted up her computer.

"How did it go with Melissa?" she asked.

"Not well. I tried to get Melissa to tell me more, but she wouldn't. She was acting very strangely." Clark had at first chalked her hesitancy up to fear of her secret being exposed, but her behavior was inexplicable. Why did she want him to remember she was sorry?

"It's about to get stranger."

Clark cocked his head in confusion.

Lois looked a little sheepish before she explained. "Okay. I didn't believe her blackmail story. I know we already ran a background check. But no one is that clean and considering everything..."

Clark nodded his agreement. Before his conversation with Melissa, he may have dissented, but with how it went and his own suspicions, there was no reason to be overly generous with trust at that moment.

She continued, "I talked to a cousin of mine who lives in Star City and who is also a wizard when it comes to all things hackable. When she looked into her files, she discovered that they were dummies."

Lois clicked on several files to show college transcripts, newspaper articles, birth certificate, social security number, IP address, and something that looked like a permanent record. Every document was detailed and seemingly genuine down to the letter. Clark felt hollow.

How could he have been so naïve? To believe a spy to be trustworthy was probably one of the stupidest, most juvenile things he had ever done.

"Melissa Banks doesn't exist," he said dumbfounded.

"Exactly. My cousin was able to track the IP address of the computer that did all the work."

"Which is connected to her most recent permanent address and her true identity," he said still astounded.

Lois nodded.

Clark sighed. "Who is she?"

Lois clicked on another tab. It was Melissa's photo. ...No, not Melissa.

"Her name is Barbara Gordon. She's the daughter of Jim Gordon, Gotham Police Commissioner. She was on track American Olympic gymnast team, until she dropped out of the running when she was 14 years old. When she was 17 she went to college at University of Maryland earning a bachelor's in Criminology. After three years, she went on to graduate school at MIT earning a Master's of Science in Computation for Design and Optimization. She also has a rap sheet. When she was a teenager she had a habit of hacking into the police department's mainframe."

She clicked on another tab to show an article featuring the headline 'Local Teen Tests GCPD's Firewall and They Fail'.

"This all explains how she falsified her records so easily," he said revealing little emotion. He was...it was difficult to describe what he was feeling. He felt like he did before the scout ship. Just wandering around, not really understanding or trusting anyone. Except now he had more than one person in his corner. And this time he was also very angry.

"And it explains her strange behavior," Lois added. "There is more to Barbara Gordon than meets the eye and she didn't want you to know about it."

They both shared a significant look. Lois was silent, but Clark immediately read her thoughts as his instincts were screaming the same thing to him.

"You think she's willingly involved in this," he said.

Lois grimaced. "She does like getting involved in things that aren't her business. And something was wrong enough to go through all that trouble of creating a fake identity. I think she's more connected to a certain someone than it seems."

"Batman," he said gravely. Everything was falling into place. The clincher was him. "That's what I needed to talk to you about. I know how to find out who he is."

Clark moved toward the computer and hastily exited out of the superfluous tabs as he spoke:

"During our fight, I scanned his body. The guy's been injured a lot and I saw that at some point he had his knee replaced. I was able to see a partial serial number before he punched me in my face."

Lois looked surprised. "He punched you?"

"He was wearing a suit so he could hurt me," he said a little embarrassed.

"Okay," she said sounding a little concerned.

He smiled at her reassuringly. "I broke it."

She let out a relieved sigh.

"Good job with the serial number. You'll make an excellent investigative reporter yet," she said with a proud smile.

"Thank you. Anyway, if we match the serial number to current records at Gotham General we'll be able to find him."

Lois gestured toward the computer. In his life, he had done illegal things. Countless falsified identities and papers, stolen clothes, even occasionally property damage, (accidental and intentional) but he had hoped that was all behind him. It had been a naïve hope. With every investigation, every measure he took to keep his secret he imagined he would have to do illicit things now and then and some fundamental hacking skills would always come in handy. This was one of those moments. Medical records weren't public records and he had to know. This was the only way to do that; no one would be hurt by this. Except for maybe Batman and he could live with that thought.

Clark successfully pulled up the files and typed the number into the search engine. The search generated 20 entries.

"I think we can rule out the elderly people," Clark said as he narrowed his search to people under the age of 50. The list became considerably smaller; down to only five entries.

"She mentioned that he owned a company in Gotham, right?"

"Yeah," he said absent-mindedly as he scanned the names until he came to one that stood out starkly against the rest.

"Wait, this one," he said pointing to it.

Lois' eyes widened dramatically. "Oh my God," she whispered.

What would he need with a new knee? Clark understood that he lived hard and fast, but he was in his early forties. He did a quick Google search of the other names. They were people who had been in accidents or were athletes.

No, that's not possible.

But it was. That was the only explanation. Of all the people in the world he was the last one that could be Batman...which was the point. In spite of himself, Clark was impressed with his ability to hide in plain sight. For his secret identity, he strove to blend in, while he stood out so much in such a flagrant manner that no one would think for a moment that he was anything greater or that he even cared about anything greater than himself. It all made so much sense. How else could he afford all of those toys? Clark wouldn't be surprised if he had manufactured some of them. He owned a large company. Few people would notice a few pieces of equipment missing.

"Are you sure you remembered the number correctly?" Lois asked in shock.

"Yes."

"What are you going to do? Confront him again? You know how that ended last time."

Clark shook his head. "I have to go about this differently. I've already confronted him in the cape. Maybe I should try it in the glasses."

Inexplicably she started smiling as she dove into her desk drawer. "How about somewhere there will be many witnesses and other reporters? Where talking to this person would make perfect sense from a journalistic standpoint?"

"That would be fantastic, but what-"

Lois whipped out two invitations emblazoned with the LexCorp insignia. They were invitations to a gala fundraiser for next Friday for the restoration of Metropolis and other places affected by the invasion.

"And you'll never guess who'll be in attendance," Lois said with a wicked smile.