Two

Before she even got into the car, her nerves sought to sabotage her.

I can't do this, she thought to herself as she grabbed her purse and her keys, then turned back around and headed to her bedroom to pack warm clothes. She'd seen snow in the vision, a large base obscured by snowy mountains. What am I supposed to do? She'd never been a superhero, had never used her powers except to heal those in need, and she'd never sought them out before. Working in a hospital meant all of her patients came to her.

As she drove into the night, straight to the city limits, she tried to keep her mind off of the one power she had that might offer some protection against whoever would be at that facility to stop her. But she'd never used it before, and every time she remembered that she had it, it made her nauseous.

"I'll just go and… see," she told herself quietly, white-knuckling the steering wheel. See, and do what? Storm a secret military base, some real-life Area 51? (Not that Area 51 wasn't real, but surely the conspiracy theories about aliens there was false… or was it?) She would only be captured and probably taken somewhere to be secreted away herself, just like he had been. She did not want to think about what advanced tech the United States military had in 2024 that the general population knew nothing about. Would they erase the memory of him from her mind? Would they erase all her memories and leave her a drooling mess at some insane asylum? She shook herself, knowing that she was letting anxiety get the best of her. But, really, what was she doing?

Memories of his pain and sorrow, his fear and urgency, washed through her.

She kept driving, and turned on the radio to distract herself from her thoughts. It was going to be a long drive.

###

It took three hours to reach the base, and Kate stopped well short of it, knowing that there was no way they'd simply let her in at the gate. Now that she was here, it really dawned on her how much of an idiot she'd been. Even with all of her good intentions, her desire to save the being locked somewhere inside this place, there was no way she could fight off dozens of armed men, not even if she used the power she didn't want to think about. She had no superstrength, or superspeed, or power of flight, or anything. They would overwhelm her in seconds, and then what?

She sat in the car, staring out the windshield for a long time, mulling it all over in her head. Could she somehow get into contact with a superhero who could successfully break into this place? But even as she asked herself the question, she knew there was no point. If she didn't help him soon, she knew he would wither away and die. Or the invaders he had warned her about would come and wipe out the Earth, and him along with it. She gave a long, heavy sigh and got out of the car, which was stopped in the trees along the road.

Immediately, she began to shiver, and was grateful that she'd packed some warm clothes. She got her coat and scarf, beanie and gloves, and left her car where it sat. She'd put on a pair of thick boots before she'd left, though they'd made her feet sweat on the drive up. Though she wrapped gratefully up inside the coat and scarf, and pulled the beanie onto her head, she only stuffed her gloves into her pocket to save them for later. She had a feeling she'd need her hands free for whatever was to come.

She walked for a long time up the road in the dark, and stuck to the trees on one side of the asphalt so that hopefully no one would notice her. Her boots crunched in the snow. She had to go slowly or risk tripping over rocks and things in the dark, but she couldn't stand how long it was taking just to reach the base. She could see the lights in the distance, though they came closer with every step. Her breath released in puffs and continuously warmed and then cooled her face as the condensation stuck to her and froze. She picked up the pace.

And then she ran out of trees to hide in. The pine forest on either side of the road gave way to an expanse of snow-covered field, which looked strangely bright in the mostly-dark night. And against that strangely bright snow, she could see odd shapes dotting the field on both sides, all the way to the perimeter fence around the base. Not knowing what they were, and expecting to hear shouting at any moment as a guard spotted her, she stopped and closed her eyes, and listened. She heard absolutely nothing. Nothing but a breeze rustling the evergreen trees behind her. She'd been so focused on getting to the base that she hadn't realized how spooky it was out here at night, all alone.

And she really was all alone. Unsure as to what the best approach was, she released her empathetic powers and reached out across the base to feel for any sign of life. She found nothing. No, not nothing. There, all huddled together in one building, she found a mass of human heartbeats, all so slow as to be concerning. Their beats were steady, but only about 40 beats per minute—not slow enough to kill, but enough to be worried about. Unless, of course, every single person on this entire base was a well-conditioned Olympic athlete, who tended to have slower heart rates due to performing massive amounts of exercise. Also, she couldn't sense their emotions at all. Her best guess was that everyone on the base had been trapped together and then knocked out, maybe with some kind of gas. Her medical training made her want to go and find them immediately, to help, but she was here for someone else.

Feeling a bit better about moving closer without being spotted, Kate opened her eyes again and kept walking, this time on the asphalt. When she was nearly to the gate and still hadn't sensed anyone nearby, she stopped again and sent out her powers farther, searching for him. It wasn't difficult. Compared to the sluggish heartbeats and lack of emotions from the people in that one corner of the base, his quicker heartbeat and present, if sluggish, feelings were easy to find. He seemed to sense her, though she did not feel any fiery tendrils in her brain this time—only that his heartbeat quickened and that ever-present sense of urgency grew stronger as she brushed her empathy link against him. She also felt excitement and gratitude.

Now, she ran.

But she did not get more than five steps before something flew over her head at top speed and landed in front of her.

She screamed, the sound piercing the deadly quiet of the night, and stood there, cowering. Then she saw in the faint lights of the base a tall, muscular figure dressed in red and blue. His whole front was in shadow, his back to the light, but she could see the skin-tight costume around his form. Her jaw dropped open. "S-Superman?" She had never in her life come into direct contact with any superhero—at least, not that she knew. She'd seen them run or fly past on their way to save the city from some evil plenty of times, but none of them had ever stopped right in front of her like this.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, coming toward her. "It's not safe for civilians. You must leave!"

She was shaking her head before he was even done speaking. "No, I can't. I came to save someone." She hesitated. "Is that why you're here, too? Did you hear him?"

Superman was close enough to her now for her to see his face somewhat clearly in the dim light. He looked surprised… and suspicious. "He called out to you too?"

"Yes," she said firmly. "We don't have time to talk about this. I know exactly where he is." And she marched right past the hero and straight up the road.

"Wait," he said, and grabbed her by the upper arm. "I really can't let you go in there. It's dangerous."

"Let go of me!" she said, with more force and emotion than she would've expected. She tried in vain to pull out of his grasp, then realized how stupid she was being. There was no way she could outmuscle Superman. "Let go of me!" The second cry seemed to tear itself out of her throat, and suddenly she was overcome with emotion. "He's in there! Please! I have to—"

Superman let go of her arm.

She'd been pulling, straining against him without realizing she was still doing it, and fell to her knees on the asphalt. She gasped, staring at her freezing fingers against the dark road, then got up and ran.

She screamed when he picked her up and lifted her off the ground, and threw her arms around his neck automatically. For one terrible moment, she thought he was carrying her away and her heart squeezed inside her chest, but the base grew larger with every passing second. Frigid night air tore at her face and she closed her eyes tightly. Then it was over and he'd put her down before she even knew what had happened.

She bit her tongue to keep from screaming again when he punched a hole in a nearby wall, big enough to walk through. He looked around afterwards, tall and imposing, head swiveling this way and that. "Where is everyone?"

"Over there somewhere," she said, waving a hand in the general direction in which she could feel several slow heartbeats. "Something's wrong with them." But her voice was distant as she spoke of all those humans locked away in one section of the base. Right now, she could only focus on the one who had drawn her here.

"Something's definitely wrong," Superman agreed as he stepped through the giant hole in the wall. "There were tanks scattered all over the field."

She remembered seeing dark blots scattered across the expanse of snow as she'd walked up the road. Now she knew what those had been. But she couldn't worry about that. She followed after Superman, sticking close to him.

Soon enough, after smashing through several more walls, they came to a large metal door with no discernible way to open it, save for the handprint scanner in a recess in the wall. Kate ran past the hero and stared down at the scanner. She glared at the big metal door. "How thick do you think this is?"

"Not thick enough to stop me," Superman replied. "Stand back."

She did, and watched as he whaled on the door until it slowly began to sink inward. She kept her ears plugged with her fingers against the noise, impressed at this show of strength, though it did not surprise her. But, really, all she could think was that whoever had brought her here was behind this door. Come on, hurry up, she thought. And then, realizing, she sent out her empathetic powers again, past Superman—in whom she could sense a strangely calm heartbeat for everything that was going on, as well as curiosity, worry, fear. She wondered if he was afraid of what they'd find, or of something else.

No matter. She went past him, into the room beyond, where the being was held.

At her touch, his heartbeat, already quick in the knowledge that they were coming, sped up even more. But she also sensed exhaustion and more of that world-weary sorrow she'd felt even six months before—

Something dark flew past her and her empathetic link snapped in surprise. She let out a gasp, wondering if maybe a guard had come to detain them. Then her eyes narrowed on the batarang lodged in the wall beside Superman. Even Kate knew what a batarang was; Batman, while mysterious, was very popular in the city. She looked over her shoulder and tried not to gape as he stepped through the hole in the wall.

"Hold it, Superman! Destroying government property isn't your style. What's going on?"

Superman had stopped punching the metal door. In the space between Batman's question and Superman's response, Kate's ears rang as she removed her fingers.

"See for yourself," the Man of Steel said, and lifted the destroyed door away, throwing it off to the side of the hall.

Kate cringed at the loud noise, then made a move to follow Superman into the room. His back was taking up her center field of vision and she could not see the one trapped inside.

Batman lay a heavy hand on her shoulder. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"Kate Stanton," she said, and wrenched her shoulder out of his grasp, sprinting after Superman, who had just punched through yet another door. Worriedly, she wondered just how many doors they'd have to go through to get to him. But she needn't have worried, for this had been the last one.

She skidded to a halt upon seeing the man she'd come to rescue. He was obviously not human (something she'd suspected all along, though she'd mostly been ignoring the thought because she had no idea what to do with it). Her eyes snapped from place to place, taking him in: green skin, hairless, tall. His chest was broad, though his figure tapered as it reached his stomach, to the point that she wondered where his organs were—if he had any, other than a heart and a brain… He had strange ridges along different parts of his body, most obviously on his chest, almost like armor. Something about his skin and—well, all of him, really—reminded her of an insect.

His body was trapped inside a machine that held his arms, legs and head in place. She noted longer-than-human fingers and strange feet. She also noted that he had no obvious nose, nor any outer genitalia that she could see.

"What is it?" Batman asked behind her.

"Mankind's only hope," Superman replied, moving closer to the creature. In front of the machine holding him in place was a set of levers in a tall metal box. The Man of Steel put his hands on the levers and pushed them both up. There was a loud metallic booming sound, then the machine began to hiss as the hydraulics worked and slowly slid away to release the creature's feet. Then the clamps holding his arms in place also released, and he fell forward, his head slipping out of its hold, eyes still closed.

Without thought, Kate rushed toward him, Superman doing the same. They each caught one side of him. And as her hands touched the creature's bare skin, his emotions—and thoughts—became clear, muddled as they were by his exhaustion.

"He's been trying to reach out to me telepathically," Superman was saying, "but that stasis field interfered. When his message finally broke through, I came to rescue him. It seems he called out to Kate, as well."

Kate could barely hear Superman over the sound of the Martian's thoughts—for, indeed, he was a Martian. She knew that now, her mind flooded with thoughts and memories and feelings come unbidden, though she could only make sense of some of them. (Really, the fact that he was a Martian should've been obvious from the visions he'd sent her, but she'd barely entertained the thought, too busy wondering how she was going to get him out of here to worry about exactly what he was.)

She did not understand what was happening. She'd never been able to read thoughts before, which meant he must've been sharing these with her himself. But why? These were private thoughts from long ago, memories of his wife and children, memories of life on Mars.

The Martian lifted his head and looked at her. A pair of deep, pumpkin-orange eyes—bigger and more oblong than human eyes, and surrounded in black markings—captured her. They bulged just slightly from his head and lacked iris, pupil, or sclera. You are telepathic, came his voice in her mind, sonorous and captivating.

She started but did not otherwise move.

You always have been, he went on, but your powers were not fully matured. Coming into contact with me must have sped up the process.

I'm sorry, she thought back, and it came as easily as breathing. I didn't mean to read your mind.

In time, you'll learn to control it, he replied, though she sensed no irritation, no desire to guard himself from her.

Then he looked away from her, up at Batman, who had spoken a moment ago, though Kate hadn't heard him. The invasion, he said, and somehow she could tell that he was speaking to all of them now.

Batman's head jerked back in surprise at the sudden mental intrusion.

I came to warn you, but I was captured and imprisoned here, the Martian went on. They wouldn't listen.

Superman helped him stand, still holding him round the middle, just as Kate was. She stood with them, then tightened her grip as the Martian swayed for a moment. As he got his balance and found the strength to stand on his own, she dropped her arm and backed up a step, though some part of her wished to continue as she had been doing, to continue holding him.

"Big surprise," Batman said, and Kate saw the suspicious frown on the hero's face.

Something in his look, the emotion behind it, made her incredibly angry. She found that her fists clenched at her sides of their own accord.

I sense you do not trust me, the Martian said into all their minds, and his voice held inflection for the first time, just a tiny amount of irritation and challenge. Before now, everything he'd said had been strangely flat, lacking all emotion, though she knew he did feel things.

Kate saw then that his head was a stranger shape than all the rest of him, a very tall, pointy affair, though wide enough even at the top to end in more of a knife blade rather than a spike. It looked so sharp, in fact, that she wondered if it could cut her. Not for the first time, she was reminded of some kind of strange green insect. A praying mantis, or a beetle, perhaps. His wiry muscles and odd ridges made her think of an exoskeleton.

Perhaps this will help, he went on, and suddenly transformed before their eyes. The ridges along his collarbones rippled and pushed upward; even those along his chest—that thick armor-like plate—shifted and changed shape. His sweeping, pointy head grew shorter and shorter, more rounded. It all happened so fast that Kate could not take it all in. She blinked and he was fully transformed into a costumed superhero. A pair of knee-high blue boots covered his feet, something that looked a lot like a blue speedo now wrapped around his crotch, and a voluptuous blue cape trailed from his shoulders. He wore a red harness over his bare chest, which seemed to be held in place by two enormous shiny yellow buttons pinned to his cape.

Along with all of that, his face and head had changed. While still alien, he did look a lot more human than he had before, now with a proper nose, and a mouth that had lips. His brow line protruded several inches, which might've made someone else look a bit like a caveman, but somehow, it worked for him. Those orange eyes had stayed orange, though they'd changed their shape to look more human. He'd kept the black markings, too, though now they surrounded his eyes like thick liner and shadow. It made her think of an 80s rock band, though that might have been too messy an analogy. These black markings perfectly encircled his eyes, drawing the viewer into them.

In fact, Kate stood slack-jawed, staring at him.

He took two steps towards Batman, holding out a hand to shake, and she wondered vaguely how he even knew to do that. Did Martians shake hands the same as many humans did? "I am J'onn J'onzz," he told the Dark Knight, aloud.

Batman didn't move an inch, only continued to stare at him silently.

"J'onn," Kate repeated quietly, liking the taste of the J on her tongue, which sounded like a Zh.

Superman stepped between Batman and the Martian. "Don't take it personally, J'onn. He doesn't trust anyone."

"A wise policy," J'onn said, then turned to face Kate.

She stared up at him.

His hand was still extended. Blinking, flustered, she reached out and grasped it. He put his other hand on top of hers, holding it between both of his.

"Thank you for rescuing me," he said.

She nodded jerkily.

He gave her a brief smile, then turned to face the other two.

"Wait," she said suddenly, tightening her grip on his hand.

He turned to face her again, brows furrowed—or, rather, the skin where his eyebrows would have been were furrowed.

She took a breath and said, "Give me your other hand."

He did, without hesitation or question.

She stood and held both his hands in hers, then pushed into his wrists, as well as his ankles, and healed the skin there. Though there'd been no visible bruising or chafing, due to his natural skin being much tougher than a human's, she could feel the aches inside from the machine that had held him in place for two years. There was muscle strain in his shoulders, his neck, his back, and a constant headache he seemed to have had since… forever. She took a breath and began to heal him. This is why she'd come in the first place—not just to rescue him, but also to heal his pain. Right now, he was her patient, same as any other patient at Metropolis General.

He closed his eyes for many long seconds, and through her empathetic link, she could feel his muscles relaxing, feel some stress in his mind releasing. Then he opened his eyes again and gently pulled his hands from her grasp. "That's enough for now. Thank you." Before she could respond, before she could ask if he was sure, if he wanted more healing, he turned to the other two. "All of you, thank you."

Kate stared down at her hands. His skin did not quite feel the way human skin felt, but it was closer than it had been in his natural form. Then, it had felt strangely hard and slick, and again, she was reminded of an insect.

Superman acknowledged J'onn's thanks, and then said, "Come on. We need to get out of here."

The three men began to walk away.

Kate stood there, still staring down at her hand. None of this had felt real until just now, and, as she stood there, she began to replay the entire night. Her long drive, walking through the trees in the snow, how empty the base had seemed… Meeting Superman, and then Batman, and now a literal alien from another planet… Was this really her life? Was this what it was like to be a superhero? You just casually broke into military bases and made friends with aliens?

She realized, all of a sudden, how tired she was. She'd never gotten proper rest after her shift at the hospital—that nap in the bath hadn't counted—and then she'd driven three hours to get here. She'd just expended more of her energy healing some of his aches and pains, as well. She swayed on her feet.

"Kate."

Her head whipped up at the sound of her name on his lips.

Orange eyes stared at her from the destroyed doorway of the room. "Come."

She did as she was told on shaky legs.