"Are you crazy?! No way! It's enough that you brought an innocent woman into the matter, it's enough that you made Lana Luthor notice you! You're not taking Lois there! No way!" Bruce stood in the center of the cave, seething with rage.
Lois sat quietly next to Mr. Wells while he installed his window to other universes, the window he had created with the help of Chloe Sullivan that helped him find Lois. Clark stood in front of Bruce with a guilty but uncompromising look.
"I didn't know Lana would be there."
"What about all your millions of keen senses? How did you miss a limo?!"
The argument has been going on for fifteen minutes. Wells had been trying to connect the window for over an hour and finally succeeded. He looked at Lois with a smile and started playing with the buttons until an image focused on the window.
"Mr. Wayne, Mr. Kent. There is something you need to see." He said quietly, his voice cutting through the angry voices of the two.
In the picture they saw the farm of the Kents, both alive and surrounded by children and people who looked like mutants and what surprised Bruce more than anything Clark and him and Lois and a few other people. Wells cleared his throat.
"In this universe, the Kents didn't leave the farm the day Kal El's spaceship landed. Instead, an Amish couple found him."
"Who are these mutants?" Lois asked.
"It was hard to understand, the voice was a bit garbled. Lex Luthor found the spaceship and used it to get Kryptonian DNA and create these mutants with it. The place where these mutants were raised was not far from Smallville. The Kents gathered home the people who managed to escape, not much different from you, Mr. Wayne. When the Justice League of this world confronted the main villain who was endangering the entire world with his madness, they found Kal El, on the Amish farm. He decided to help them against the orders of his adoptive parents. Mr. Wayne and Ms. Lane were the first to accept him. He lives with the Kents now." Wells turned to Bruce, "Martha Kent hid a child from the stars for nearly thirty years. There is not a single universe where the Kents are not good, reliable and decent people."
"That's not the point." Bruce said. "Every time Lois leaves the mansion, she puts her life in danger and Lex may not know that Kal El and Clark are the same person, but Milton Fine does."
"Enough!" Lois stood up. "I'm not a little girl, Bruce. I'm capable of making my own decisions. And Clark, it was a completely stupid thing to go into the farm without checking the place out first, I hope you understand that. You two have more important things to do than fight over me."
"I forbid you to go there!" Clark who saw her face retreating step back. Lois turned to Bruce.
"You what?"
"You are not allowed to go there!"
"Who the hell died and turned you into a god? My father couldn't stop me from doing something, what makes you think you will?"
"This is my house..."
"If your next words are going to be 'under my roof I make the rules!' I'll shove your batarangs so deep down your throat they'll see sunlight!"
"Lois..."
"You're not forbidding me anything! Otherwise, I'll very nicely ask Mr. Wells here to start his little clock and take me home and I'll take every bit of information I've brought with me."
"I think we can do without you." Bruce crossed his arms over his chest.
"Really?!"
"Yes. I appreciate your help so far but by the minute you are becoming more of a risk." Clark felt his heart freeze. Before Lois could answer it was Wells who answered.
"Mr. White will never cooperate with you, Mr. Wayne. Ms. Lane is the only one who can present you all in the right light to him, the only one who will convince him that you are the good guys. And without Perry White you won't have the support of the underground or the sympathy of the public."
"I have my own connections in the underground."
"With all due respect, Mr. Wayne, the impression you created in the underground is not the right one. When we realized where Mr. Kent and Ms. Lane left, when we realized who the ally they were turning to, we turned to the underground for information about you. After all, you are known to them. They think you are a spoiled businessman who is helping because he feels guilty and wants to hurt Lex. They'll never believe that you're one of the people at the head of a resistance movement. And if Mr. Kent's identity must remain a secret, the same goes for you. Ms. Lane is an unknown entity indeed, but she knows how to speak a language Perry White understands. It's not for nothing that she won the Pulitzer, she knows how to talk to the people on the street. In fact, only the Clark Kent of her world is better at it than her. In the world she comes from, people trust Lois Lane because she exposes corruption on behalf of the person in the street. That's how they see her. A lot of her sources prefer to talk to her precisely because of that and because she will fiercely defend them no matter who against. It may not be the same world and she doesn't have the same reputation here, but she is the same person. She convinced you after all. She got him out of the padded room he was locked in within a quarter of an hour after her arrival. And there is another reason."
"Another reason?!" Lois said in surprise.
"I honestly believe that something went wrong in your universe. Something should have happened and didn't. In all the universes Superman fought with Domesday and died, he was resurrected after a few weeks. We tried to reach many universes, but the door only opened to your universe. I think the barriers between our universes and yours weakened, someone allowed us to move from universe to universe because..."
"Something went wrong in both universes." Clark said suddenly. "One has only Lois and the other has only Clark."
"So, what does that mean?"
"I'm not sure we can get you back before we fix this universe or find a solution to your universe's problem. It's easier to solve this universe's problem. We need to find Lois Lane and we can't do that before we deal with Pine and Luthor."
"But you can't solve my world's problem. You can't bring my Clark to life."
"It's done in other universes." Wells said. Clark looked thoughtfully at Wells and Lois's window.
"How did they do it in those worlds?" he asked softly. All three looked at him.
"It wasn't one thing. It was a combination of events, but the important elements were that he wanted to return and that a creature called the Eradicator kidnapped his body and placed it in some sort of artificial womb in the Fortress of Solitude."
"And that brought him back to life?"
"Yes, it took a while for him to return to normal physical condition, his abilities took a few weeks to return, but he returned."
"We don't have an Eradicator." Lois said, "And the only one who could operate the fortress was Clark."
"But I will be able to activate the citadel."
"It's not safe," Wells said, "and do you really want to take that risk before we face the immediate danger in this universe?" Bruce looked at Wells, he understood on his own what Wells didn't say that when the problem in this world is solved Clark will not be able to move to Lois' universe. Lois met his gaze and he realized that the same thought had crossed her mind.
"No, I guess not." Clark didn't notice the silent conversation between Bruce and Lois.
"It doesn't solve the current problem." Bruce returned the conversation to its original topic, "Martha Kent is at risk right now."
"Why don't we turn this problem into something positive?" Wells said. "Smallville is a pretty remote town in Kansas. It barely has ten thousand residents, and the Kent farm is one of the more isolated farms. Why don't we use it?"
"How?"
"Hamilton's pocket universe is a flexible thing. Why don't we create another opening, near the farm? We'll turn the farm into a place of refuge and with quick access to the pocket universe, people could disappear from Luthor's eyes. The pocket universe could be the base and hiding place of the resistance and underground movement. Right now, it's just agricultural fields and pastures but it can be expanded enough to accommodate living and training areas. A clinic. A printing press."
"Hamilton has already moved her real lab there." Clark said.
"Besides, it would make a lot more sense now that Clark is coming home. Lana must have already spread the word that he's back in town." Lois said. "And who better than him to protect his mother?"
"Ok." Bruce said. "I'll have to talk to Hamilton, but we'll create another opening. One at the farm and one here. And only a very limited number of people will have the opportunity to open these openings. The four of us, Hamilton, Martha Kent, Perry White, and maybe all of Lois's geniuses, the ones we can recruit and trust completely. Lois and Clark will go to talk to Mrs. Kent, Wells and I will talk to Hamilton. If they both agree to the plan. Lois as Joanna Clark will go to Pry White but not alone!"
"J'onn J'onzz will come with me."
"Who is J'onn J'onzz?" Clark and Bruce asked together.
"Oh, he's a nice Martian I met yesterday in Gotham." Lois said with a smile.
Lois, sitting in the Kents' kitchen, looked at Clark in astonishment.
"Habitat for Humanity?! Did you tell her you were at Habitat for Humanity?"
"That's the only thing I could think of." Clark rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment to Lois' laughter. Martha smiled.
"Good to know that no matter what universe you're still a bad liar. Bruce will love that."
"What did you want me to tell her? That her husband imprisoned me for almost two years, tortured me and experimented on me?" Lois suddenly got serious.
"Experiments?" Martha said weakly.
"You didn't tell me he experimented on you." Lois said. Clark looked at them both uncomfortably, "What experiments?"
"To test how strong I am, how fast I am, my immunity, my endurance."
"Did he take samples?"
"Yes. Blood and hair and skin." He swallowed and looked out the window. He didn't want to remember it.
"Did he force you to kill someone?" Lois said quietly and Martha looked at her sharply. Clark nodded.
"He tried. Several times. That's how I got those scars. In the end, that's what allowed me to escape. I didn't kill anyone." Lois approached him and turned his face to her. "I'm not lying, Lois."
"I know." He bowed his head, not looking at her. "I'm asking because Lex will use it. Lex will use it against you, he's always trying to upset Smallville. He enjoys hurting his self-control. I doubt this Lex is any different from the Lex of my world and he knows way too much about you."
"He doesn't know everything, and I cheated in his experiments. And it's not like I was at my full strength. I'm still getting stronger, I feel it. He doesn't know I can fly."
"But he has the samples, Clark. He'll try to clone you. He'll try to do what Wells said he did in that parallel universe."
"Will he succeed?" Martha asked.
"To clone Clark? No one has yet succeeded in cloning a Kryptonian. The closest experiment that has succeeded is Superboy and he's half-human."
"Superboy?" Clark asked in amazement.
"Yes, in my universe an institute called Project Cadmus hijacked Superman's body and somehow managed to obtain partial DNA. After the battle when they tried to revive him, his body stiffened, somehow his immunity came back on even when he was dead. They failed to penetrate the skin. Anyway, they tried to clone him. They thought the world needed a Superman."
"Which is good, isn't it?" Clark asked. Lois smiled humorlessly.
"They also planned to program him to be obedient to their agenda. He escaped the labs before they could get to that stage. He looks and acts like a sixteen-year-old. He fights the other usurpers more than he saves lives."
"The usurpers?"
"Yes, his body hasn't cooled yet and already Metropolis is filling up with heroes who want to take his place. But no one really can. Metropolis has become much less safe." She shook her head. "My universe is not the problem now."
"I am..."
"Clark, you have to take a giant leap now. You have to create the mental fortitude of Superman or Lex will win before we've even started."
"You don't think after two years of torture I have it?" She looked at him.
"No, I don't think so. If you had that resilience, I wouldn't have found you locked up in Hamilton's lab. You would have escaped from there too. Lex risked your life, your morality and he did it to your face with aggression. Hamilton wore you down emotionally, mentally. You were beginning to think you deserved to be locked up in her lab."
"This is not true!"
"No? Then why did you stay there?" Lois looked at Martha, "He's been in there for two months, Martha. I arrive and he's sitting in a cell with kryptonite like he's catatonic."
"There was kryptonite in there!"
"And Lex didn't have kryptonite? And you managed to escape from him."
"Clark," Martha interjected, "Lois isn't saying it wasn't hard for you, she's saying you didn't even try. You accepted the situation, you gave up, you lost hope, faith in yourself."
"And I'm not saying you can't do it, Clark, on the contrary. You proved you could do it, you made Bruce get off his ass and do something and it wasn't easy, right? You want to tell me it didn't feel good? That it didn't feel right? To be the one who light The fighting spirit in Bruce? That makes him use his abilities, his potential to the end."
"It felt good. It felt better than any physical struggle." he said quietly.
"Because that's who you really are, that's Superman. He makes people aspire higher. He awakens in them hope for a better future. One of the nicknames the press gave Superman is 'The Man of Tomorrow' and that's because he makes people look to the future, aspire to a better future. How can you do that if part of you believes you deserve to be locked up in a prison cell with kryptonite?"
"I don't believe it."
"Then why did you stay there?" Martha asked, "Why didn't you come home?" Clark didn't answer.
"One of the reasons I agreed to Bruce's invitation was because I didn't want you to trade one cell for another." Lois said.
"I do not understand."
"I understand why you didn't escape from Hamilton's lab. What happened to you before you escaped from Lex was hard, especially if your whole life before that was the farm. You managed to escape, and you collapsed in the street and when you woke up you found yourself in the lab. You weren't even sure you weren't caught again but this time except to try to find out what happened to you, they left you to your own devices and you were content to sit in the corner like a wounded animal and lick your wounds. And when the days passed and nothing changed, you got into a routine, you thought that maybe it wasn't so bad to stay here, the world outside is so dangerous and here at least they don't torture me." From his eyes Lois realized that she had accurately guessed his thoughts. "There's a name for it, Clark, it's called Stockholm Syndrome." He sat down on one of the highchairs, looking at nothing. Martha approached him and hugged him. Lois played with her bracelet, looking at them both. "If we stayed in the lab," she continued softly, "we would've stay in the lab."
"Maybe you're right." Clark finally said, "Maybe that's why I didn't notice Lana was here, maybe somewhere I want to get caught again."
"And you want to get caught again?" Martha asked.
"No! But as soon as I was alone, I made a mistake. I..."
"You learn from mistakes, Clark." said Martha, "Do you think you will make such a mistake again?"
"No."
"That's good enough for me." Lois said and Martha nodded with a smile. "And it's not that bad. You showed a lot of maturity by admitting your mistake instead of trying to hide it and by admitting that you don't know how to fix this mistake. We turned to Bruce for things like this, that's why we don't do it alone."
"The solution Wells came up with is better than anything I could think of." Clark admitted.
"And better than anything Bruce could think of." Lois said with a smile and Clark smiled back at the mischievous twinkle in her eyes.
"So how do I get over this Stockholm syndrome?"
"I don't know. My Smallville went through a lot before he was able to leave the farm and become Superman. Maybe Jor El has a solution. Maybe you should drop by the fortress before anything else?"
"No, we'll organize this part of the pocket universe first, assuming Mother agrees to make the farm part of the resistance movement. I want to make sure you're both safe."
"I think this farm has been part of the resistance movement since we found you, Clark." Martha said smiling, "If your father was alive, he would be the first to agree."
Marta handled the additional responsibility that came with joining the resistance movement as if she was born for it. She and Mr. Wells got along great, and it was decided that the entrance to the pocket universe would be placed in the barn. Martha and Lois went to the farmers' fair with piles of cakes and cookies for the baking contest at the first opportunity and Martha introduced Lois as Joanna Clark, a distant cousin from her side of the family, who came to help Martha turn the farm into a place of rehabilitation for people who have experienced traumatic events. J'onn J'onzz, from the moment he arrived was introduced as a counselor and therapist who would help the people who lived on the farm, a description that brought a mysterious smile to his face. Within two weeks all the people in Lowell County knew about the changes Martha was making and now if someone came to visit the farm, they would not be surprised by all the people who lived on the farm. Clark looked on in shock at the speed with which it was all done.
"You'll run out of excuses soon." Lois said one morning in the kitchen. Why wasn't she surprised that Martha Kent was the only person in this universe who knew how to make normal coffee? She thought as she took a sip of her coffee, smiling.
"Excuses? I'm not looking for excuses." He said defensively.
"Aha. Whatever you say. I'm waiting for J'onn J'onzz to get acclimated enough so we can go out looking for Perry White. He promised we'd set out at the end of the week."
"I don't understand the guy."
"Are you J'onn J'onzz?" Clark nodded, "Have you tried talking to him?" Clark shifted uncomfortably.
"He was busy most of the time. With you."
"This is the problem?" she smiled. "I thought we talked about that."
"No, it's like he sees through me."
"Most likely because he really sees through you. He's a telepath, Clark. He won't invade anyone's thoughts if that's what you fear. He's a good man and he likes you. And since you're not rushing to the Fortress, maybe you should talk to him. I think he can help."
"Telepath."
"Clark, he's a gentle man who lost everything. His family, his race. He was a poet on Mars and here he is a cop in Gotham. He's afraid of the world just like you but he's in the world helping as much as he can. You need to talk, both of you."
Perry White bought his third bad coffee mug of the day and went back to what when he was in a generous mood, he called a newspaper. He was stuck in some small town in Montana. One of the few places in the world, maybe in the universe, that Lex Luthor hasn't bought yet. He sighed and looked for the office key only to find the door open. He went inside.
"Gwen? Are you here? Why is the door open?"
"Because we wanted in." said an unfamiliar female voice cheerfully from inside his tiny office. Perry hurried inside.
The office was small, barely three-square meters, the table, chairs and filing cabinets filled almost the whole. Perry hated this office, but it was his office, which gave him the right to decide who entered it. The two people who allowed themselves to enter managed to upset him before he even looked at them and when he noticed that the girl was sitting in his chair with her feet on the table he was about to launch into an angry speech. was about to. The girl interrupted him before he could even get a word out of his mouth.
"We brought coffee. Not the cesspool water they sell around the corner. Real coffee." The black man who came with her opened a thermos, placed the glass on the table and poured into it the magical black liquid. When the aroma of the coffee reached his nose, Perry threw the cup of coffee he bought into the trash. But he didn't touch the extended coffee cup.
"I learned a long time ago that there is no such thing as a free cup of coffee. At least not in the journalism business. Who are you? What do you want?"
"The price of the first glass is to listen to us." When he didn't move, she spread her hands to her sides, "Come on, Perry! When was the last time you had real coffee?" Perry took the coffee hesitantly.
"Get off my chair!" The girl got up with a smile and Perry pushed himself next to her and sat down in his chair. She sat down on the edge of the table, a pair of long, shapely legs slipping out of the narrow skirt that exposed her knees. She wore a jacket over a button-down shirt with a neckline that kept her dignified and professional. Something in her called to Perry and told him that she was a member of the profession, a journalist. "Start talking." she giggled.
"My name is Joanna Clark..."
"And I'm also sure that's your real name." Perry said sarcastically.
"I'm an investigative journalist." She completely ignored his interjection and Perry grumbled, "This is J'onn J'onzz, he's a Gotham police officer."
"I haven't heard anything about you, Ms. Clark."
"Not surprising. J'onn?" She looked at the black man and he smiled in approval. "Are you sure?"
"There's no one in the area."
"What about mechanical eavesdropping?" He shrugged. "I'll take care of that." She said with a smile and touched a beetle pin on her jacket.
"What the hell...?"
"We had to make sure we could trust you, Mr. White. The number of people who know about Miss Clark's identity is very limited. Currently there are seven people, you are about to become the eighth." Perry looked at the girl in shock and she smiled back at him.
"My real name is Lois Lane, and I am a parallel universe." Perry looked from Lois to the cup of coffee he was drinking from.
"Is this a prank?" Lois sighed and pulled out of her handbag a handheld computer of a design Perry had never seen.
She pressed buttons and then handed him the device. The pictures that appeared there surprised him and intrigued him. He looked at the pictures of the Daily Planet building in a grandeur he had never seen, at the pictures of him shouting in the center of the newsroom, at the pictures of the girl next to him sitting at a magnificent oak table and looking at him with a smile as he looked at her with a scolding look and from this he realized that she used to sit in his chair in every universe, he saw pictures of all the members of the editorial staff, most of them people he knew, he saw the girl holding a special edition of the Daily Planet smiling from ear to ear and a photo later she was standing with a tall man with glasses who kissed her cheek while she was holding the Pulitzer Prize and he saw himself in the background with a huge smile. He handed her the PDA.
"Did you win the Pulitzer?"
"Yes."
"And the guy in the picture?"
"My fiancé, Clark Kent," Perry noticed the tremor in her hands as she put the PDA back in her pocket, "he's also a journalist at the Daily Planet. He was killed eight months ago."
"I'm sorry to hear."
"He lives in this universe only that he is not a journalist, among other things because there is no more Daily Planet."
"Even when the building was standing it wasn't exactly a newspaper where you could find many Pulitzer winners or anything like that." Perry said bitterly, "It wasn't like that when I started working at the paper."
"I'm here to change that, Perry. Dr. Hamilton contacted me through a friend, and I agreed to come help."
"You have no life in your universe? Relatives, friends? Is this how you quit your job?" Lois was not offended by the rudeness of the questions.
"Ever since my Clark died, I've been fighting a massive war against the despair and darkness that began to take over my universe. You see, Clark was killed during a battle with a monster that destroyed large parts of the city. He wasn't the only victim. To me, he was the most important victim. The week I got here I learned that Lex Luthor bought the Daily Planet. I hope that with your help I will find a way to help in my world, to make a significant impact, to find a way to save the Daily Planet in my universe."
"And how are you going to do that? Eliminate Lex Luthor all by yourself?"
"Oh, believe me, nothing would make me happier than to see that bold maniac in an orange prison overall. But I can't do it alone. J'onn J'onzz here is a representative of some of the people who want to do something about Luthor. We want to contact the underground."
"And let's say I had an idea what you're talking about, I'm supposed to trust you both because of some pictures you can fabricate on the computer in five minutes' work?" Lois and John exchanged smiles that made Perry feel very uncomfortable.
"He's even sharper than you described. Life in this remote place hasn't softened him." J'onn said and Lois took out an article from bug and placed it on the table in front of Perry then said
"I know who Kal El is and where he is right now. I also know why Lex Luthor wanted him and what he did to him since Kal El turned himself in. I can also tell you that Kal El managed to escape four months ago and what he did since then. And what I assume will interest you the most, I can bring you together."
"Kal El? Is there really such a person? We thought he was just a figure meant to scare the masses."
"Kal El really exists, Perry, and he's not a monster. He didn't come here to conquer. He has no one to conquer for. His entire race is extinct."
"So, he really is an alien."
"Yes, from a planet that was destroyed long before he got here. I promise you he's not a monster."
"He exists in your world too?"
"He died fighting that monster." Lois took out a newspaper clipping and handed it to Perry. "He saved my life countless times, Metropolis, the world. My world's Perry White considered him a friend. The whole world mourned him when he died. And even though there are differences between my world and yours Kal Al is still a good man. He's less experienced than the Superman I know, more innocent in certain things and needs more guidance but he has this big heart that made him give himself up to prevent unnecessary death."
"And I guess Luthor didn't show him the consideration he promised."
"No. Far from it." Perry handed her the newspaper clipping back.
"I think I want to meet him before I have another cup of coffee."
"J'onn? Ask him if he can come here, dressed accordingly. Please?"
"Are you sure this is the right place?"
"This is Montana. I think there's some law that forbids building a building taller than three stories in this state. He can get here without showing."
"Ok." J'onn's eyes turned red for a moment and Perry flinched back. J'onn's eyes turned brown again and he looked at Lois with a smile, "He'll be here soon. His brain felt different, stronger, your idea must have worked."
"His mind?" Fry almost choked on the words.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't introduce J'onn properly. J'onn is from Mars, among other things he's a telepath he's also a shape-shifter."
"And he's a cop in Gotham?" J'onn nodded, "I'm sure these abilities are useful in interrogating suspects." J'onn smiled at Perry's words and there was a knock on the door. Lois looked at Perry and raised an eyebrow.
"The door is open." Perry stood as the tall man in the blue suit and red cape entered his office. Lois looked at Perry with a smile.
"Perry White, meet Kal El. Superman, meet Prey White. Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Planet." She looked at J'onn smiling, "This is even more fun than I thought." J'onn and Superman smiled back.