I'm not sure why I'm writing new stuff.
But, I am.
Chlark, Superman, and the freedom of fan fiction.
Friday, April 29, 2011
the remainder
based on Moore and Gibbon's, "For the Man who has Everything."
part 1
.
How many years had it been?
I asked myself, counting the gentle footsteps that sounded so very shallow to my ears. They bounced from heel to heel, each against a damp cement stone that led me to where I had been going for a long, long time. These were the very same paths I'd taken before, in a different age and in different shoes. Mine walked slower now, for I had forgotten the way Metropolis influenced your direction. How the restless, city air sparked inspiration by moving your feet five steps with dance of busy pavement. It was blind determination that passed me by years ago. I, only now learning how to break away so that I could discover that I'd past up a very important thing along the way.
I walked a little bit slower, seeing and taking in all the places that I had been and where I was going. I saw everything at once, and for what it was. Defragmenting the parts of my life that were broken up and buried here.
And for everything, for everything that it was.
There wasn't anything that could take my breath away quite this place did. A living creature, a soul. Metropolis was always changing, growing, accumulating a collective wisdom that came from its living and past residents.There were the newer parts of town, those designed with the most avant garde of architects and engineers. Buildings spiraling so high, they would touch the sky if they only stretched at the end of their industrious day. I walked between them in alleys that acted as channel ways, the veins that supplied every corner with its people.There were even more than I remembered. All going somewhere. Someplace. Tracing the same paths I had traced long before.
Paths that I had searched up and down, and over again. Each and every sidewalk a channel I was crossed, and switched from, scanning through the different directions the city had taken me. I had searched for happiness inside the search for truth, but instead, had only found one. And I guess you never notice how far you've wandered until you realize how long it takes to get back home.
I walked in place, feeling as a ghost. I had lived through it all.
My eyes wandered above me to where the sky lit up with a honeycomb of amber twilight. Windows glowing with a late evening lamp. There were tiers of them, millions. So many lives huddled closely together that even the tallest skyscrapers of Metropolis leaned upon one another. My eyes glazed upon the brick and boulder, finding them alight with the strangely new, and smiling at the even stranger familiar.
But no matter the architect, no matter the age, there were windows. Windows looking towards the rest of the city.
Some high, some on the eightieth floor. Even some low, the long rectangular strip of glass that lined the basements of the very same. Small, framed opportunities that allowed even the most reclusive set of eyes to step up, and look out.
My feet crawled to a stop as I wondered,
What would they see?
I looked up at each one, waiting for someone to look back. Watching floor by floor, waiting for that one curious soul. Someone to lean down and peer out, and tell me what they saw.
Would they know this city the way I had?
Would they see everything as I had?
I turned another corner, my reflection in tinted, mirror finished glass. There, glass framed bronze, ornately covered doors, all the way up to eighty floors. It was the building where my cousin lived, and had lived for the past many years. A type of place I thought I'd end up living the rest of my life. Where I'd have everything. A building not far from Metropolis Park, and within a few blocks from the where I had once imagined building my entire professional career.
Its crown pierced the last fading colors of sunlight. A million refractions of rose bouncing from glass to glass and then finally to me.
In the glass I saw myself.
A deep amber surrounding my small body, outlining the exact shape of everything I had ever accomplished, failed and lost inside the small flecks of golden green that looked back at me.
Behind me, I imagined the tiers of eyes that looked on like mine. Another day in the world past, a small event written in the record books, and filed away with the rest.
The sky deepened to a humble blue, a quiet sound. A final whistle called to a cab, and then I was alone. Everyone left to a place that waited for them. The quiet stirred me, reminding me that I was late. That all of my stalling had come to an end. Eventually I'd have to go inside that building and come to face all of my, well... life.
I looked at the small gift wrapped box I held in my arms.
I looked at myself in the glass door.
I practiced my smile.
"Miss?"
I looked up, the doorman waiting for my attention. I smiled to him.
He smiled too, "Are you a guest or a resident?"
My smile broke, only for a moment. "Guest."
"Hmm." He opened the door for me, but then paused. He was a older man, no younger than his sixties. "You look very familiar."
I hid my laughter, and performed a blush.
"No really." He insisted, "I always remember a fresh, pretty face. Tell me, have you been in the papers?"
I didn't really know what to say, and looked down just in time to see the crest of the Daily Planet folded underneath his pressed uniform sleeve.
"Not in a long time." I said, patting his arm as I went past.
.
The elevators opened with only myself inside. I didn't need directions to find correct apartment door, only the same set of ears that listened to the way my heels crushed the freshly vacuumed carpet hallway, or how my evening dress whispered underneath the long coat I wore. I heard light conversation down the hallway, and the clinking of glasses.
I heard Lois' laughter.
My hands skittered across the crisps edges of the gift I had brought. I knew that I had walked far enough with it in my hands, the curbing indecision to give it away finally choosing its favored side.
I saw a last effort to ditch the silly thing, a mail drop at the very corner.
I walked to it and opened the trap--
"Chloe?"
I stilled, feeling as though caught doing something terrible. I turned ever so slightly, the trap door closing with a sound.
The young voice smiled to me, his eyes capturing mine.
"Jimmy?"
A red haired double walked towards me. "So you do remember me."
A smile broke my shock."Of course I remember you. You're a splitting image of your older brother. Right down to the dimple in your handsome smile." I reached out with a tentative hand, and patted his shoulder. Across it strung a camera.
"You still carry that old thing around?"
We exchanged a hug to which he smiled, and tilted his head in a familiar way. "Well, you know what they say, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree." He nodded to the thing I kept hidden under my coat. "What's that?"
Reluctantly, I surrendered it. "Just something I brought for the birthday boy."
"Oh." He said as he took it gently from my hands and smiled. "I'll put it with the rest. We're collecting quite a mass in there."
"I bet." I said, as I followed him to the door. It opened as we approached the threshold.
"Jimmy!" I watched Lois say between laughter, "There you are! Hurry, we're about to bring out the--"
I stood there in front of my cousin, hands in the deep pockets of my coat. "Hi, Lo." She didn't say anything then, only wrapping her arms around me and squeezing tight. We didn't say anything at all, the lingering tenderness saying it all.
I had missed my cousin, dearly. And she had missed me.
Lois pulled us apart for only a second, revealing the newly found lines around her mischievous smile. There was slight presence of age in her brown eyes. They looked at mine closely, saddened when she didn't find the same evidence in mine.
She took my coat. "It's good to have you home."
I nodded, and blinked away the slight warmth in my eyes. I saw the faces behind my cousin, all smiling as I entered the room. I knew everyone one of them, discovered them all down the paths I had talked about before. To my left was a handsome Arthur Curry, to my right a stunningly dressed Courtney Whitmore. These were names the world would never recognize, only knowing the ones we hand picked to print on paper, the masks we wore in front of our faces.
In every face, I saw a fragment of myself. I had drawn every corner of the room together at one point of my life, and now they had drawn me back to them.
"Welcome home." Victor Stone said beside me, the edges of his beard peppered and grey. Wordlessly, I captured him in my arms.
Behind him, I saw John Corbin grinning like the devil himself.
"Hi John."
His quiet wink surfaced the old joke between us.
"I've heard the work you're doing now is what's keeping you away." Victor said as he patted my shoulder. "I don't like it."
"Neither do I." I lied.
"Promise to visit me soon? I have new programs I've developed since we last talked. I'd like to run them past you. You might find them helpful in your research."
"I'd like that very much." I said, and skittered away.
I found myself gathered around the people who I built my life around, people who I had also helped build theirs. We greeted eachother warmly and passed around drinks. Casually, I walked around looking for some small corner to tuck myself away.
I found one, a comfortable looking chair and ottoman waiting for me.
Sitting, I enjoyed being a point detached from the rest of the party. I saw the gift I had brought sitting ontop of the mound of other presents Jimmy had stacked on a table. There were red balloons tied to it, blue ones near the kitchen.
I didn't see any gold ones.
"Chloe!"
"Lana."
"My god," her eyes widened, "You don't look a day over twenty five!"
I buried my grimace, already expecting this from atleast one person at the gathering. I should have expected it from Lana Lang. A woman whom I had always connected with beauty, youth and elegance.
She was still beautiful even today. But like the rest of the faces in the room, she was older. Her voice, strained.
Mine still had the same peppy, sardonic cheer it always did. I was cursed with it. Cursed or blessed, I'm not sure. My dry humor had saved me before. "Speak for yourself!" I tightened my smile, "You're looking as gorgeous as ever, Lana."
I frowned when she took no notice of my words, choosing to touch my cheek with a frail finger. "Your skin, your face. You look so young."
I tried to brush it off with one of my smirking, self effacing remarks. "I don't feel young."
"But you are." Lana exclaimed, bewildered by my strange youth. She emphasised again, "You look so young."
My heart crumbled in, crushed by the pain in her creased eyes. She withdrew her hand, and we were both quiet.
"It was nice seeing you again." I said, conveniently skittering away like I was so good at. I walked slowly away, the rustle of my dress bothering me. In the room, I felt eyes watching my every move, all of them with the same questioning look Lana's had.
And again the lingering question struck me.
Did they see me, the way I saw myself?
Across the room I saw Oliver. I saw the way he looked at me. And I knew.
I looked for my coat.
"Going somewhere?" I heard a gruff voice ask. I knew who it was before I turned around.
"How are you, Bruce? " I sighed, finding it finally among the pile of coats on a random chair.
"I asked you a question first." A tall, broad shouldered man said gruffly. A man who had the darkest hair I'd ever seen, and the thickest, most stubborn personality to ever match my own. I fumbled around for the sleeves. "What?"
He stopped me, holding the shoulders so I could slip in. "You look like you're running off already."
I thanked him once I was tucked in. "No, I'm ok."
"You sure?"
"Bruce," I said holding back on a nastier comment, "I'm alright."
"You don't look 'alright'." He said, and then added. "You look, great."
I raised a brow, almost surprised to see a smile on his rough face. Bruce Wayne had a dark beauty about him. A scar for nearly every encounter he had faced in his career. A long dark mar across his jaw from one of last I had fought beside him. There was a smaller scar on the corner of his chin. That one I had done myself after a long night of drinking. I noticed Bruce was still smiling at me, so I found some words and put them together. Almost. "Thanks."
"Dick, Jason and Tim are here." He pointed out, each name accented with a finger around the room. "Everyone's here actually."
I smirked, "Well if 'everyone' is here then who's out there saving the world?"
Bruce shrugged, "We sent Bart out to patrol."
I laughed. "Seriously?"
"No." He said casually, and then smirked. "We sent Bart down the street for more ice." He jiggled his glass.
I smiled.
"We sent GLC to patrol." Bruce added stiffly.
.
"Everyone, everyone please!" Lois sang from the middle of the room. "We're about to bring out the cake!"
Bruce weaseled his arm around mine and dragged me along.
"Where is the birthday boy?" I asked casually, eyes drifting around the room.
"I'm not sure." Bruce frowned, "After Oliver and Dinah showed up I haven't seen him around."
My eyes betrayed me, stealing another look towards Oliver and Dinah standing nearby. Their young daughter swayed around Oliver's lean legs, her head of hair even brighter than her mom's.
She smiled at me.
I smiled back, and waved to her parents.
Just another path, I reminded myself. Just another path I could have walked down, but didn't. For one reason or another. Considering the circumstances now, I was thankful that I hadn't. If I could divide all of the possibilities, what was left behind was myself.
The remainder.
I felt Bruce staring at me again, but I refused to answer him. His arm gradually let loose around mine, his hand disconnecting completely by the time I had swayed away. Bruce and I had our own path a while ago, but I didn't wander too far. It was for the best, really.
We watched as Lois lit the candles on the cake. Watched as she looked around the room, filing away our faces in candle light, and frowning once she never found the exact one she was looking for.
"Where is Clark?"
Jimmy snapped a picture. "I'm not sure."
"He's probably out with the GLC." I heard someone say.
"That or Kara."
"Diana left a while ago. Maybe he snuck out with her." Bruce offered crassly.
I bumped him with my elbow.
"I mean," he corrected himself with a smirk, "There's that crisis on Themyscira. I'm sure he's covering that."
Lois frowned. "But it's his big four-oh."
Compulsively, I started counting the candles.
They were all there.
"He hates birthdays." I said absently. Ofcourse, Lois heard me, and instantly I regretted it.
"Well," Oliver stepped in, his daughter on his shoulder. "No sense in wasting a good party."
"Or cake." His apple-eyed daughter provided.
The room rumbled in laughter, including my own. As everyone huddled around, I slipped through Bruce's supervision and found my way to the bathroom and shut the door.
In the mirror, I saw what they all saw.
Their past, their own youth, hidden within the captivity of my young appearance, a curse from my own blood. My elusive meteor infection choosing to resurface years after I believed it to be eradicated.
A younger woman peered back at me.
Short, blonde curls, full green eyes.
I looked as I always had.
The family I had built had grown, and grown older. All of them ready to pass on our traditions to the next generation after us. We had to. We wouldn't be around forever, Hawkman's death an early reminder of our mortality.
But not all of us were going down that path.
I leaned against the counter, rubbing the image of my face from my eyes.
.
I stalked out of the bathroom, finding myself bored with the idea of birthday cake. Instead I read the framed articles Lois had written over the years, hanging in the hallway next to the pictures of Superman. I imagined they were all taken by Olsen, the kid photographer that Clark gladly looked after like a little brother.
There were pictures of every one of us up there.
Even one of Jimmy.
My Jimmy.
A sound from the next room startled me. I hadn't noticed anyone come down that way, and I hadn't thought anyone had tucked themselves away like I had. I heard the noise again, and immediately my curiosity peaked. I cracked open the next room's door just enough for the crest of light to fall upon my face.
I saw Clark sitting inside, his back towards me. He was facing the window, looking out.
I smiled. Finally the curious soul I was searching for.
"Hiding out?" I said playfully, hoping to stir atleast a smile from him. "You know they've been looking for you out there. They're about to cut the cake."
He didn't say a word.
He didn't even move.
I stared at the back of his dark wavy hair, the memories of watching Clark at his parents barn reviving an old pattern of teasing. "I know you hate birthday's so I brought you a present to rub it in."
Still nothing. I saw his shoulder move, but it was slight.
I shrugged my own, making my way around the room, "C'mon, you got to give me some credit though. Superman is hard to shop for. There's only so much red underwear I can buy before--"
I saw his face.
His eyes empty and glazed.
For whatever reason, I didn't even notice the thing wrapped around his chest until I had wrapped my hands around his forehead, the coldness in his skin striking horror inside of me.
There was a black, tendril growth sprouting right from the center of Clark's chest, bursting from his dress shirt.
I shook him again.
"Clark!"
Lois ran in first, dropping whatever she had in her hands until it shattered against the floor.
I stepped back as the room filled with fellow JL, each face more confused than mine.
On the cushion beside Clark's motionless body was an box. One wrapped as delicately as I had wrapped mine.
Beside it was a note. I opened it.
I looked to Bruce, the terror resonating between us. In large, jagged cursive read:
For the man who has everything,
M.
tbc
Thursday, April 21, 2011
fragments and other things
.
eternal return
.
"Emil, please." A small voice whispered across the dark room. There were screens and cables, instruments and papers. A single cold desk lamp that illuminated a scientists journals, and logs.
There was a woman. Face pale and delicate except for the hardness of her eyes, so concentrated as they reflected the cold, fluorescent light of a hologram before her. She was opposite from another figure, a man. Eye glasses caught in the same glow, turning his eyes into iridescent rectangles.
They snapped to her.
"Chloe," Emil said in frustration, "You're asking me to give you answers for questions you and I both don't know how to ask." His hair was in knots and winds, a dark curly mass that escaped his ears.
"You're the only hope I have left." said Chloe. "Please."
Emil answered by squinting through his microscope again, his back turned over the table like it had for several hours.
The lab always held a constant hum of computers and processor, a dull white noise that settled underneath your mind once you were really submersed. Chloe barely recognized it now, the sound of Emil's frustrated sigh the only sound in the room.
The hologram flickered between them, a blue crystal suspended in a force field.
"It's looks alien. Space debris maybe." Emil said, throwing his glasses on the table, like a cornermen throwing in a towel.
"It has a memory." Chloe explained, her words more of intuition than fact. "It has recognition, an intelligence." She circled around the table, around it.
"Intelligence?" Emil frowned, "Then it is a computer."
"It's more than that." Chloe said once she reached Emil's side. "It's an archive. A portal."
He turned to her, "If you know all this, why do you need me?"
"I need you to unlock its archives so I can understand." Chloe explained vaguely.
A chorus hummed.
Emil lifted a heavy black brow.
She took a deep breath, "When I first came in contact with this rock, it was inert. Much like it is now." Chloe studied it closely, lashes fluttering in the blue light. "But I've seen the portal open. I've seen things--" She shook her head. "Some things I can't even start to explain."
"Try." Emil said evenly.
She turned to him, "This portal showed me another world. Several worlds. Days in the past, days in the future and some places I could never dream of on my own."
"A link to alternate timelines." Emil's eyes glasses over. He picked up his glasses and went to work.
"Please," Chloe followed him to his microscope, "Can you explain to me how this thing could possibly hold all this information, these realities. It felt so real. Please don't tell me I was hallucinating--"
"Take a piece of paper." Emil said from behind the magnified lense.
Chloe paused.
"Take a piece of paper." Emil said again, this time looking up from the instrument. He pointed to his notebook.
She followed his direction, tearing a sheet out.
"Take a piece of paper. Fold it, and the creases are there." Emil watched as she folded it in her hands.
"Unfold it, and the memory of that crease still exists."
She unfolded it as he instructed, and watched, the paper choosing to bend in the middle once more, craving to lapse back into its previous state.
"The universe, a simple piece of paper," Emil weighed the sheet of creased pulp in his hand, " practically everything under the sun has a memory." Emil compared the two objects, "This crystal, this paper..."
Emil smiled, and then folded the paper over again.
And then again.
Again.
Over and over.
Crumbled, and then crunched.
Finally, after Emil was finished, he had modeled his notebook paper into a very tightly wound ball.
He placed it beside the glowing blue rock, then stepped aside.
"Rock and paper are not much different." Emil's eyes brightened. "Imagine that each crease I made on that single sheet of paper is a time line, a memory. A collective memory. All wound up in this shared space, some creases touching, collapsing over one another so closely that they almost fall into a single line."
Emil picked up his ball of paper, and then flattened it out.
"Here, we try to erase what we have done. Deny that the past has happened. But universal law doesn't like that. Everything has a memory. Even this simple sheet of paper."
Ontop of the table, the crinkled white paper refused Emil's workings, puckering at it folds and modifications. It coiled and twisted in defiance, its message profound, and pure.
Chloe beamed inside, revelation washing over her. "It's so simple."
"Of course it is. Most things are."Emil continued, "But when we interfere... dimensions become confusing to us. So does our memory of it. The human capacity is imperfect. We're not able to recognize the varied existences of other dimensions, of time. Memory is displaced with us."
"De ja vu?"
He nodded. "Memories thought to exist before they were experienced. A common phenomenon."
Her eyes focused very closely, and then far off. "I felt this... strong connection. A bond almost."
Emil watched her carefully, another idea formulating to the surface. He spoke, "Keep folding the same paper, and you end up with a complex space. The connections between creases, the bond between the folds... their relationships are twisted and entwined. And you'll find it difficult, very difficult to break apart. There are some cultures that believe the mind isn't the only part of the human body capable of memory."
"The body?"
"The heart."
Collectively, the murmur of processors around the lab deepened.
The desk lamp dimmed.
Chloe looked over to Emil who had an equally curious expression.
The room blossomed into a deep blue.
eternal return
.
"Emil, please." A small voice whispered across the dark room. There were screens and cables, instruments and papers. A single cold desk lamp that illuminated a scientists journals, and logs.
There was a woman. Face pale and delicate except for the hardness of her eyes, so concentrated as they reflected the cold, fluorescent light of a hologram before her. She was opposite from another figure, a man. Eye glasses caught in the same glow, turning his eyes into iridescent rectangles.
They snapped to her.
"Chloe," Emil said in frustration, "You're asking me to give you answers for questions you and I both don't know how to ask." His hair was in knots and winds, a dark curly mass that escaped his ears.
"You're the only hope I have left." said Chloe. "Please."
Emil answered by squinting through his microscope again, his back turned over the table like it had for several hours.
The lab always held a constant hum of computers and processor, a dull white noise that settled underneath your mind once you were really submersed. Chloe barely recognized it now, the sound of Emil's frustrated sigh the only sound in the room.
The hologram flickered between them, a blue crystal suspended in a force field.
"It's looks alien. Space debris maybe." Emil said, throwing his glasses on the table, like a cornermen throwing in a towel.
"It has a memory." Chloe explained, her words more of intuition than fact. "It has recognition, an intelligence." She circled around the table, around it.
"Intelligence?" Emil frowned, "Then it is a computer."
"It's more than that." Chloe said once she reached Emil's side. "It's an archive. A portal."
He turned to her, "If you know all this, why do you need me?"
"I need you to unlock its archives so I can understand." Chloe explained vaguely.
A chorus hummed.
Emil lifted a heavy black brow.
She took a deep breath, "When I first came in contact with this rock, it was inert. Much like it is now." Chloe studied it closely, lashes fluttering in the blue light. "But I've seen the portal open. I've seen things--" She shook her head. "Some things I can't even start to explain."
"Try." Emil said evenly.
She turned to him, "This portal showed me another world. Several worlds. Days in the past, days in the future and some places I could never dream of on my own."
"A link to alternate timelines." Emil's eyes glasses over. He picked up his glasses and went to work.
"Please," Chloe followed him to his microscope, "Can you explain to me how this thing could possibly hold all this information, these realities. It felt so real. Please don't tell me I was hallucinating--"
"Take a piece of paper." Emil said from behind the magnified lense.
Chloe paused.
"Take a piece of paper." Emil said again, this time looking up from the instrument. He pointed to his notebook.
She followed his direction, tearing a sheet out.
"Take a piece of paper. Fold it, and the creases are there." Emil watched as she folded it in her hands.
"Unfold it, and the memory of that crease still exists."
She unfolded it as he instructed, and watched, the paper choosing to bend in the middle once more, craving to lapse back into its previous state.
"The universe, a simple piece of paper," Emil weighed the sheet of creased pulp in his hand, " practically everything under the sun has a memory." Emil compared the two objects, "This crystal, this paper..."
Emil smiled, and then folded the paper over again.
And then again.
Again.
Over and over.
Crumbled, and then crunched.
Finally, after Emil was finished, he had modeled his notebook paper into a very tightly wound ball.
He placed it beside the glowing blue rock, then stepped aside.
"Rock and paper are not much different." Emil's eyes brightened. "Imagine that each crease I made on that single sheet of paper is a time line, a memory. A collective memory. All wound up in this shared space, some creases touching, collapsing over one another so closely that they almost fall into a single line."
Emil picked up his ball of paper, and then flattened it out.
"Here, we try to erase what we have done. Deny that the past has happened. But universal law doesn't like that. Everything has a memory. Even this simple sheet of paper."
Ontop of the table, the crinkled white paper refused Emil's workings, puckering at it folds and modifications. It coiled and twisted in defiance, its message profound, and pure.
Chloe beamed inside, revelation washing over her. "It's so simple."
"Of course it is. Most things are."Emil continued, "But when we interfere... dimensions become confusing to us. So does our memory of it. The human capacity is imperfect. We're not able to recognize the varied existences of other dimensions, of time. Memory is displaced with us."
"De ja vu?"
He nodded. "Memories thought to exist before they were experienced. A common phenomenon."
Her eyes focused very closely, and then far off. "I felt this... strong connection. A bond almost."
Emil watched her carefully, another idea formulating to the surface. He spoke, "Keep folding the same paper, and you end up with a complex space. The connections between creases, the bond between the folds... their relationships are twisted and entwined. And you'll find it difficult, very difficult to break apart. There are some cultures that believe the mind isn't the only part of the human body capable of memory."
"The body?"
"The heart."
Collectively, the murmur of processors around the lab deepened.
The desk lamp dimmed.
Chloe looked over to Emil who had an equally curious expression.
The room blossomed into a deep blue.
fragments
**a place for scraps**
eternal return 11/2010
[a discussion between Chloe and Emil. Does paper beat rock every time?]
the first time she wore the coat 07/2012
[secret chlark exchange]
eternal return 11/2010
[a discussion between Chloe and Emil. Does paper beat rock every time?]
the first time she wore the coat 07/2012
[secret chlark exchange]
Friday, April 15, 2011
World, updated
Yay a new post! And only 3 whole months later! I'm sincerely sorry you guys :/
Part 6 / No ordinary world
Part 6 / No ordinary world
no ordinary world part6
6
The woman known as Chloe Sullivan stormed from the blackened steel doors that housed Luthor's private observation room.
As Dr. Emil Hamilton refered to his watch, the female reporter had been in there for a little under an hour. But now that she was free from its confines, it looked as if she'd been trapped there, her determined strides all but sprinting down the long steel encased corridor, high heels bruising the floor.
Dr.Hamilton, inpatiently waiting outside, followed her gait as she passed, noticing the fury in both her punctuated steps, and hard scowl.
"If I could have a moment of your time--"
"It's been made perfectly clear that my time is up here, Dr. Hamilton." She said between steps, never pausing to look behind her.
"Please!" Emil paced himself, carrying his clipboard, pager, and files against his chest. "I know you're a very busy reporter for the Planet, and I know you don't have a lot of time."
She slowed, only barely, allowing Emil to pace beside her. "You don't have time to waste when you're on a deadline, Doctor."
"I'll make it quick." Emil pushed up his sliding glasses and took the reporter aside. "Mr. Luthor implemented a suppression order the hour you arrived." He scanned the hall furiously for prying ears. He whispered, " No one is permitted to talk to you without risking criminal charges Leaking classified information about a government project is considered a felony."
"If there's been any 'leak' in your labratory," she retorted, " I've been fed it first hand, from Lex Luthor himself."
"That is exactly my point." Emil fixed his body between prying eyes/ears and the reporter. He leaned in, "It's a game. Lex wants to use you, limiting the fingers of information right to his palm. "
Emil scanned the hall again, this time noting several white coats starring in their direction, along with the pinch-nosed secretaty at the reception area.
"That's very nice to hear that the apple didn't fall far from the tree. I remember being manipulated by Lionel's distant puppet strings last time I was here. I was lucky enough to rip those away the first time, and I'll do it again if I have to." The brown haired journalist spun on her heel, turning the corner where the elevators where, "But you see I have enough for my story just from the teaser material. You can look forward to the incriminating expose on the front page tomorrow, Dr. Hamilton. I must have witness at least a dozen illegal scientific practices since I walked through those doors. It's been a pleasure."
"Wait!" He ungracefully caught her sleeve.
Several other white coats passed them down the hall, necks and glasses turned. All of them fellow cowokers of Emil, who he knew fed their shameless curiosity all too regularly.
The reporter looked at him just as curiously.
"What if I showed you something," Hamilton whispered, gathering his files in his damp palms, "something that would change your mind about that expose?"
Her brown eyes searched his, "After what you just told me about a federal gag order? Swap your highly regarded career for forty years in prison? Why?."
"If I don't do this," Hamilton answered gravely, "Not only will be career be over, the entire project will be over. The world can't withstand another failure of this magnitude."
They were alone now, the crowd of coats moved along.
"Another failure?"
He could feel her gauging him with her eyes, gathering the reasons why she should trust him at all.
"There's a reason why I brought you here." Emil fingered his plastic creditials and swiped it against a magnetic strip. "And it has little to do about this project at all. But about the one preceding it."
The reporter looked between themselves and the elevators down the hall. "These aren't the same elevators we took before."
"Not all doors lead to the outside here." Emil said carefully, pushing for the basement. "If you want the truth, you have to be willing to dig deeper."
**
As the sun perched on the crests of Smallville's ridgeline, like a crimson disk on a jagged high wire, Clark's mind teetered back and forth along with it, the ebbing of doubt and recount of the last hours causing the unrest in his heart.
Usually during that time of evening, Clark would have already been home with his wife, reading the afternoon edition of the Daily Star. But he wasn't home, and Lois wasn't anywhere around.
Clark wasn't going home. Not today. Not after Lois' glowing story that pitched Clark in a very bright, and unwanted spot light. Right now Clark needed to be alone, and away from his wife and the dozens of extra wide smiles that haunted him like wooden dolls.
Right now Clark craved to be left alone.
And he found it here, alone in his car, parked way out in the boonies of town.
Strangely, being in the middle of nowhere brought Clark closer to the center of truth. Here, he could think.
Here, he had solitude.
There was something strange about the fire. It had happened all too sudden, in a flash and then ashes. Everyone all to quick to sweep those ashes away without even questioning why or how. The community all too eager to carry Clark on their shoulders, ignoring the weight on his.
The truth.
Clark needed to know the truth. His stomach turned, an unusal feeling of unrest. There was something wrong, something off.
But out here, as the day died down, the fragments began to settle into place.
Tomorrow, he thought, tomorrow he would dig deeper, uncover what it was he was so sure the sherif was hiding from him.
Uncover why his own wife would lie to him.
Clark sat inside his small coupe, pausing for the imaginary cars that never came nor went from this place, lonely fields of grass continuing to bow back at him and then whisper among themselves.
It was a compact car; tiny, equipt with four doors, two pedals, one steering wheel and not much else. Clark had driven it to and from work for his entire tenure at the newspaper, and never once had he complained that maybe the fit was a little too snug.
But strangely today, like everything else, it just didn't fit.
His left shoulder had a way of rubbing against the door, and his right one always trapped against the seat belt. Clark always thought the seat itself was ridiculously small, and the headspace in the cabin awkwardly short. Clark hadn't complained when Lois picked out the car, realizing only now that he hadn't complained about a lot of things in his marriage up until now.
Beside him in the empty seat was the inconspicuous brown parcel he had received in the mail two mornings ago. Clark peaked from the side, casting a warm look to his passenger. His eyes lighted to the crisp brown color, so small, yet so significant.
This secret was the only companion that seemed to give Clark hope.
The fields whispered again.
His hair still smelled of smoke, and his finger nails were stained with ash, hands gripping the steering wheel as his father's black wrist watch laid exposed from his cuff. Its face glinted back at him, reflections of the setting sun and of the remainders of the day.
It incited an idea.
A tunnel of curiosity, his mind surfacing to that place he had only thought of in dreams. It was one of the few places where Clark felt his life completely private, where he had his this entirely different life, a different world entirely.
In his dreams, he had a different identity.
Since childhood it had been a game for Clark, creating this fanstical world beyond the one he knew. His imagination filling in the emptiness he felt, loneliness. He imagined tall buildings, and shooting planes. The ability to fly, traveling to more than one world, the possibilty that he could one day go to the stars. A place he was so naturally drawn to.
But all of this was kept secret, and no one knew.
For Clark had grown out of his boyhood shell, and it would be questionable if any one knew how a grown man still wished.
Still, his father's old watch reminded him.
He was awake now.
Searching for something that never quite surfaced, only continuing to linger on the cusp.
And now, Clark felt something disturbing. Something he had never felt before. Something he could only describe as reality crashing down. Overwhelmed by the crushing realization of how unfullfilling his life had become, of how trapped he felt.
The car's cabin shrank upon his massive shoulders, metal pinning him until he felt his chest swell with a painful lack of air.
Clark panicked, palms sweaty and chest hot. He extracted himself from the suffocating cage he'd strapped himself into for so many years, kicking open the driver door.
Outside of the car, Clark shook of his dark navy tie and breathed.
Warm streaks of crimson slashed into the hints of violet that bled into starlight. It was there in the darkest corners of the sky where Clark felt peace flood into his soul.
He waded through the forest of tall grass that he had neglected to cross for years. It was deep there, the unattended fields. Left untouched by the rest of civilization and wild. It seemed that even the crickets were absent, as it was so silent that Clark could hear his heart beating in his ear.
Just beyond the grass was a clearing, and then the small hangar that looked as much forgotten as it had been to Clark until now. The building's sqaured windows were smeared and dusty, lined up in rows at the very top of the structure and all around. Its bay doors were closed, and looked to be for some time. Between the cracks of the concrete were rogue dandelions and the long tendrils of scattered weeds. Abandoned air craft sat dormant on the side of the clay runway, their tires flat and dry rotted from abscence of sky.
Clark walked carefully around the retired behemoths, admiring the distant regality echoing between them. His palm touched one of it's rusted propellers, and spun.
"Can I help you, son?"
The caretaker, Mr. White, spoke from across the clay yard, one side of his mouth occupied by a healthy cigar. His grey hair was sparse, but fluffed out at the sides of his ears. He gazed at Clark with slit eyes, creased with lines that counted the many years spent under the red sun.
Clark remembered the man well from earlier memories, and more recently, at his father's funeral.
"Hi." Clark smiled and put out his hand, "Maybe you remember me? My father--."
"I know who you are." Perry puffed out with a fine white smoke, studying the vast outline of Clark's shape, backlit from the sunset.
Perry White was considered a hermit inside Smallville gossip circles. He always wore the same getup, faded button up along with the dated set of suspenders that held his rolled trousers in place There was a rolled up newspaper in his back pocket with today's date.
"You lookin' for somethin'?" Perry crossed his arms over his protruding belly, a detail Clark didn't remember Perry sporting years before.
"Yeah," Clark walked over fallen plane parts and clumps of clay and grass. "The truth."
"The truth?" Perry turned around, eying Clark's falling shadow. "Out here?"
The sun dipped below the horizon.
Night fell.
Clark paused, craning his neck to face the darkening sky. "No, up there."
The sky had changed to a swallowing violet.
Stars appeared.
"They say grounded men can only see the world from one angle at a time." Perry puffed from his cigar, gently dragging out the long seconds before he spoke again, "Leaves the rest of the world hidden behind the corners and turns that obscure the whole picture."
Clark looked again at the news paper rolled in Perry's back pocket. Something about the script looked funny, foreign. But there was something funny about Perry White altogether. Something about him that singled him out from the rest of the small population. Perhaps thats why he lived out he alone.
Perhaps that's why Clark felt so at ease beside him.
Perhaps Clark didn't belong either.
"And then man learned how to fly.See the world for what it was. Small." Perry glanced at Clark knowingly, "It changed him forever."
Clark casted a deep look at the man's profile, resting thought in his words. "Sometimes I feel like the world is so small its closing in on me. I wish I could just leave this place."
"Why don't you?" The older man said easily.
Clark smiled sadly, nodding over to the ridge of encasing mountains that blocked any travel other than by air. "I can't fly, Mr. White."
Perry smiled back before throwing out his cigar, ashes scattering with the slight breeze.
*
Emil Hamilton had led the reporter through a maze of tunnelways, lit by the occasional overhead flurescent bar.
After what seemed like the millionth unmarked, security coded steel door, Emil paused.
"Consider this a breaching of confidentiality." He said, turning towards the retinal scan.
"I thought we breached that four floors ago." She watched blue laser wash over Emil's dark skin and scan across.
"Actually," Emil said as he turned around smiling. "Your security clearance ended at the second level."
"Ah."
The door hissed, as the pressurized room behind it appeared.
A white room.
"What is this place?"
"This," Emil handed her a plastic suit, "well this is just the sterilization room."
She held the suit in her hands, the small oxygen tank that he next handed over.
"Careful," Emil said, stepping into the rubber boots. "Radiation is elevated in these next areas."
She looked both at the suit and him skeptically, and then put it on.
*
There was another pressurized door, vents shooting a smoky gas upwards from the floor in powerful jets.
It was obvious that not may were permitted this way. It was dark, and damp. Poorly lit.
Forgotten almost.
Through the plastic face guard of her radiation suit, she followed Hamilton to a doorway where a large vault rested.
Also steel.
"Emil."
He ignored her, his gloved hands punched in a code.
A sharp hiss from the door jumped her back.
"The temperature here is slightly lower. " Emil's voice was muffled by his plastic suit.
Black.
And cold.
Even through her suit, she could feel it. Her breath fogged the plastic visor, obscuring her sight. Ice particals formed, crystalized breath.
From her side, she felt Emil tap one of the controls of her helmet, the breath disappearing immediately.
"Hyper defroster." Emil gloated, "a side project of mine as a young intern at Luthor Corp."
"Very nice." She smiled, a creeping feeling that she might actually trust Hamilton afterall. "So, are you going to tell me where I am? And why you're helping me?"
He stopped, and tuned towards her, the small LED light attached to his helmet shinning in her eyes.
"I'm not doing this to help you." Emil explained, "I'm doing this to help Clark."
He turned back towards the tunnel they seemed to be walking into, the walls jagged and rocky.
A cave.
"I'm one of the last who still believe in the cause. Others are so sure that the experiment is over, but they're wrong. It's not over. The day we stop believing in Clark Kent, what he stands for, the day the world loses hope for everything."
The walls of the cave became tighter as they walked deeper, causing both of them to crouch.
"What were you saying before," her voice muffled behind her visor, "about the previous failed experiements?"
Strangely, she could hear Hamilton laugh up ahead of her, "It's no secret the government has been hiding covert labs for centuries. Area 51 being the commonly known. The higher ups tried so hard to cover up the truth but look what a mess they created! The lies and deception. All of it was a curtain for what was really happening."
Along the walls, their helmet lights illuminated carvings from the walls.
Foreign symbols, pictographs.
Journalistic curiousity willed her to stop, but Emil's lonely helmet light kept moving ahead.
She jogged along. "You're telling me that the government actually found alien technology? And that LuthorCorp is was subcontracted out to test it?"
"Technology wasn't all they found."
"What do you mean?"
"The first experiment." Emil turned around. "I'm sure you've heard of 33.1."
***
"I can't fly."
Clark looked down as Perry's leather boot snuffed out the reminding embers of his cigar.
"Well," the gruff older man spat finally, "and here I thought Kent men were born to fly."
The moon shone so still.
Clark was quiet, searching through the abandoned air field and the tired, rotted planes that sat as shored out ornaments.
"Y'know, in the war they used to call me 'Chief'. I flew a lot of missions across the backs of silver wings. Saw a lot of ocean, a lot of different land. Wrote all about it back home too, in a little column they kept for uniforms. When it was all said and over, later on, back when I was home, the name sort of stuck. I worked in a newspaper once, just like you."
Clark smiled. "My father never said you were a reporter."
"Not a reporter, kiddo." Perry drew out another cigar from his pocket, and lit it. Fire burning at once, and then a smooth smolder.
Fine, white smoke.
"I was the editor. 'In Chief' to be exact."
Clark frowned. "What made you leave the newspaper business?"
Perry smiled, for once. "Same reason you're the way out here, asking yourself the same questions I used to." He took out the bundled newspaper he'd kept in his back pocket. "I wanted to know the truth behind the world, the truth that was behind the twists and turns of the story other reporters were churning out. I knew there was something more, and I went after it myself." He grinned again, and winked. "I went undercover."
*
"I thought Level 33.1 was exterminated."
"It was." Emil replied, ducking through the turns of the cave. "After LuthorCorp shut down all of its projects, the lab was non existent. Over." Emil sighed, "But then the experiement sort of, reanimated."
"What?"
"They called him Davis Bloome. A subject much like Clark but a few more years developed. We based everything against Davis Bloome. His diet, his daily interaction with humans."
She frowned.
"In the early stages, everything seemed normal. Plausible, hopeful for a total integration of races."
"What are you saying? That this, 'Bloome' was affected somehow?"
"He started displaying abilities. Growths." Emil shook his head in horror, "Lionel had him terminated after two years and discontinued the experiment."
Their bulky contamination suits squeaked by low lying rocks, while the RMD's built into their chest consoles ticked with the rising radiation.
"Dr. Hamilton, you're not telling me everything." She yelled from behind her suit. "What's at the end of this tunnel? Why are we wearing these suits?"
He raised a hand, stopped, and whispered. "It's here."
Beyond Hamilton's shoulder, she could see it.
A dark, oblong shape, its surface as black as the air inside that very dark space.
"Is that--?"
"It's where everything began." Emil walked closer, the ticking of their radiation sensors hyperactive. "The experiment has expanded so far from the center of its origin, so obscured that people like Lex Luthor forget the consequences of letting another experiment fall through our fingers.Terminating the experiment is not possible. The only solution is containment."
She stepped closer, eyes widening at the glowing, jagged rocks that bound around the strange vessel like green, poisonous barbs. "It's a ship."
Emil looked to her, "We recovered more than one."
*
Lex massaged his bald temples in the middle of the dark room, the glint of his ring catching the reflection of the open door. "Has she left the premises?"
"Yes, Mr. Luthor." Emil shoved the large steel door closed, and joined Lex by the main camera console. "I escorted her out myself."
Lex didn't say anything more, choosing to watch the lonely screen in blackness.
Emil strained through his squinted eyes, taking notes on his clipboard. "I see the Clark is out in the southwest perimeter." Emil scanned the readings of the biological monitors. "His stress levels have risen twelve percent since this morning, and I would corolate that with Clark not adhering to usual daily behavior."
Lex pursed his lips, tilting his head to the side.
"Ofcourse why should he behave normally?" Emil led, "We haven't exactly been implementing the usual practices."
"A criticism, Dr. Hamilton?" Lex barely perked.
"No." Emil tucked the clipboard away, resting his hands against his chest, "A praise. Perhaps you're right. Clark's life may have been too structured. How could we ever learn how the control would react to real life situations and its complications. How will he react to chaos?"
A smile tilted Lex's lips. "How does anyone learn if they're not tested?"
Emil resonated in thought. "I just hope you've calibrated the boundaries of this testing. How far is too far, Mr. Luthor?"
"Clark will set his own boundaries as does every man."
Emil said nothing further, noting the dissonance within Lex as static aired in the surrounding speakers.
"Audio's a bit scratchy."
On camera, Clark Kent walked along side Perry White, a long time veteran of the experiment, and well known alcoholic. Luthor staffing had had problems with White lately, and were already thinking of cutting him loose.
It was strange, Emil thought, that Clark would venture out there in the abandoned sector now of all times.
"Microphones are in and out in that quadrant, Dr. Hamilton. Make a note to the engineers promptly. I want sound along with my visuals if I'm paying two million a day to float this ship."
"Yes sir."
Oh, and Hamilton?"
"Sir?"
"There is dirt underneath your fingernails."
Emil frowned. "I'm sorry?"
"The next time you go digging around, remember." Lex sat motionless in his chair, "I'm always watching."
The woman known as Chloe Sullivan stormed from the blackened steel doors that housed Luthor's private observation room.
As Dr. Emil Hamilton refered to his watch, the female reporter had been in there for a little under an hour. But now that she was free from its confines, it looked as if she'd been trapped there, her determined strides all but sprinting down the long steel encased corridor, high heels bruising the floor.
Dr.Hamilton, inpatiently waiting outside, followed her gait as she passed, noticing the fury in both her punctuated steps, and hard scowl.
"If I could have a moment of your time--"
"It's been made perfectly clear that my time is up here, Dr. Hamilton." She said between steps, never pausing to look behind her.
"Please!" Emil paced himself, carrying his clipboard, pager, and files against his chest. "I know you're a very busy reporter for the Planet, and I know you don't have a lot of time."
She slowed, only barely, allowing Emil to pace beside her. "You don't have time to waste when you're on a deadline, Doctor."
"I'll make it quick." Emil pushed up his sliding glasses and took the reporter aside. "Mr. Luthor implemented a suppression order the hour you arrived." He scanned the hall furiously for prying ears. He whispered, " No one is permitted to talk to you without risking criminal charges Leaking classified information about a government project is considered a felony."
"If there's been any 'leak' in your labratory," she retorted, " I've been fed it first hand, from Lex Luthor himself."
"That is exactly my point." Emil fixed his body between prying eyes/ears and the reporter. He leaned in, "It's a game. Lex wants to use you, limiting the fingers of information right to his palm. "
Emil scanned the hall again, this time noting several white coats starring in their direction, along with the pinch-nosed secretaty at the reception area.
"That's very nice to hear that the apple didn't fall far from the tree. I remember being manipulated by Lionel's distant puppet strings last time I was here. I was lucky enough to rip those away the first time, and I'll do it again if I have to." The brown haired journalist spun on her heel, turning the corner where the elevators where, "But you see I have enough for my story just from the teaser material. You can look forward to the incriminating expose on the front page tomorrow, Dr. Hamilton. I must have witness at least a dozen illegal scientific practices since I walked through those doors. It's been a pleasure."
"Wait!" He ungracefully caught her sleeve.
Several other white coats passed them down the hall, necks and glasses turned. All of them fellow cowokers of Emil, who he knew fed their shameless curiosity all too regularly.
The reporter looked at him just as curiously.
"What if I showed you something," Hamilton whispered, gathering his files in his damp palms, "something that would change your mind about that expose?"
Her brown eyes searched his, "After what you just told me about a federal gag order? Swap your highly regarded career for forty years in prison? Why?."
"If I don't do this," Hamilton answered gravely, "Not only will be career be over, the entire project will be over. The world can't withstand another failure of this magnitude."
They were alone now, the crowd of coats moved along.
"Another failure?"
He could feel her gauging him with her eyes, gathering the reasons why she should trust him at all.
"There's a reason why I brought you here." Emil fingered his plastic creditials and swiped it against a magnetic strip. "And it has little to do about this project at all. But about the one preceding it."
The reporter looked between themselves and the elevators down the hall. "These aren't the same elevators we took before."
"Not all doors lead to the outside here." Emil said carefully, pushing for the basement. "If you want the truth, you have to be willing to dig deeper."
**
As the sun perched on the crests of Smallville's ridgeline, like a crimson disk on a jagged high wire, Clark's mind teetered back and forth along with it, the ebbing of doubt and recount of the last hours causing the unrest in his heart.
Usually during that time of evening, Clark would have already been home with his wife, reading the afternoon edition of the Daily Star. But he wasn't home, and Lois wasn't anywhere around.
Clark wasn't going home. Not today. Not after Lois' glowing story that pitched Clark in a very bright, and unwanted spot light. Right now Clark needed to be alone, and away from his wife and the dozens of extra wide smiles that haunted him like wooden dolls.
Right now Clark craved to be left alone.
And he found it here, alone in his car, parked way out in the boonies of town.
Strangely, being in the middle of nowhere brought Clark closer to the center of truth. Here, he could think.
Here, he had solitude.
There was something strange about the fire. It had happened all too sudden, in a flash and then ashes. Everyone all to quick to sweep those ashes away without even questioning why or how. The community all too eager to carry Clark on their shoulders, ignoring the weight on his.
The truth.
Clark needed to know the truth. His stomach turned, an unusal feeling of unrest. There was something wrong, something off.
But out here, as the day died down, the fragments began to settle into place.
Tomorrow, he thought, tomorrow he would dig deeper, uncover what it was he was so sure the sherif was hiding from him.
Uncover why his own wife would lie to him.
Clark sat inside his small coupe, pausing for the imaginary cars that never came nor went from this place, lonely fields of grass continuing to bow back at him and then whisper among themselves.
It was a compact car; tiny, equipt with four doors, two pedals, one steering wheel and not much else. Clark had driven it to and from work for his entire tenure at the newspaper, and never once had he complained that maybe the fit was a little too snug.
But strangely today, like everything else, it just didn't fit.
His left shoulder had a way of rubbing against the door, and his right one always trapped against the seat belt. Clark always thought the seat itself was ridiculously small, and the headspace in the cabin awkwardly short. Clark hadn't complained when Lois picked out the car, realizing only now that he hadn't complained about a lot of things in his marriage up until now.
Beside him in the empty seat was the inconspicuous brown parcel he had received in the mail two mornings ago. Clark peaked from the side, casting a warm look to his passenger. His eyes lighted to the crisp brown color, so small, yet so significant.
This secret was the only companion that seemed to give Clark hope.
The fields whispered again.
His hair still smelled of smoke, and his finger nails were stained with ash, hands gripping the steering wheel as his father's black wrist watch laid exposed from his cuff. Its face glinted back at him, reflections of the setting sun and of the remainders of the day.
It incited an idea.
A tunnel of curiosity, his mind surfacing to that place he had only thought of in dreams. It was one of the few places where Clark felt his life completely private, where he had his this entirely different life, a different world entirely.
In his dreams, he had a different identity.
Since childhood it had been a game for Clark, creating this fanstical world beyond the one he knew. His imagination filling in the emptiness he felt, loneliness. He imagined tall buildings, and shooting planes. The ability to fly, traveling to more than one world, the possibilty that he could one day go to the stars. A place he was so naturally drawn to.
But all of this was kept secret, and no one knew.
For Clark had grown out of his boyhood shell, and it would be questionable if any one knew how a grown man still wished.
Still, his father's old watch reminded him.
He was awake now.
Searching for something that never quite surfaced, only continuing to linger on the cusp.
And now, Clark felt something disturbing. Something he had never felt before. Something he could only describe as reality crashing down. Overwhelmed by the crushing realization of how unfullfilling his life had become, of how trapped he felt.
The car's cabin shrank upon his massive shoulders, metal pinning him until he felt his chest swell with a painful lack of air.
Clark panicked, palms sweaty and chest hot. He extracted himself from the suffocating cage he'd strapped himself into for so many years, kicking open the driver door.
Outside of the car, Clark shook of his dark navy tie and breathed.
Warm streaks of crimson slashed into the hints of violet that bled into starlight. It was there in the darkest corners of the sky where Clark felt peace flood into his soul.
He waded through the forest of tall grass that he had neglected to cross for years. It was deep there, the unattended fields. Left untouched by the rest of civilization and wild. It seemed that even the crickets were absent, as it was so silent that Clark could hear his heart beating in his ear.
Just beyond the grass was a clearing, and then the small hangar that looked as much forgotten as it had been to Clark until now. The building's sqaured windows were smeared and dusty, lined up in rows at the very top of the structure and all around. Its bay doors were closed, and looked to be for some time. Between the cracks of the concrete were rogue dandelions and the long tendrils of scattered weeds. Abandoned air craft sat dormant on the side of the clay runway, their tires flat and dry rotted from abscence of sky.
Clark walked carefully around the retired behemoths, admiring the distant regality echoing between them. His palm touched one of it's rusted propellers, and spun.
"Can I help you, son?"
The caretaker, Mr. White, spoke from across the clay yard, one side of his mouth occupied by a healthy cigar. His grey hair was sparse, but fluffed out at the sides of his ears. He gazed at Clark with slit eyes, creased with lines that counted the many years spent under the red sun.
Clark remembered the man well from earlier memories, and more recently, at his father's funeral.
"Hi." Clark smiled and put out his hand, "Maybe you remember me? My father--."
"I know who you are." Perry puffed out with a fine white smoke, studying the vast outline of Clark's shape, backlit from the sunset.
Perry White was considered a hermit inside Smallville gossip circles. He always wore the same getup, faded button up along with the dated set of suspenders that held his rolled trousers in place There was a rolled up newspaper in his back pocket with today's date.
"You lookin' for somethin'?" Perry crossed his arms over his protruding belly, a detail Clark didn't remember Perry sporting years before.
"Yeah," Clark walked over fallen plane parts and clumps of clay and grass. "The truth."
"The truth?" Perry turned around, eying Clark's falling shadow. "Out here?"
The sun dipped below the horizon.
Night fell.
Clark paused, craning his neck to face the darkening sky. "No, up there."
The sky had changed to a swallowing violet.
Stars appeared.
"They say grounded men can only see the world from one angle at a time." Perry puffed from his cigar, gently dragging out the long seconds before he spoke again, "Leaves the rest of the world hidden behind the corners and turns that obscure the whole picture."
Clark looked again at the news paper rolled in Perry's back pocket. Something about the script looked funny, foreign. But there was something funny about Perry White altogether. Something about him that singled him out from the rest of the small population. Perhaps thats why he lived out he alone.
Perhaps that's why Clark felt so at ease beside him.
Perhaps Clark didn't belong either.
"And then man learned how to fly.See the world for what it was. Small." Perry glanced at Clark knowingly, "It changed him forever."
Clark casted a deep look at the man's profile, resting thought in his words. "Sometimes I feel like the world is so small its closing in on me. I wish I could just leave this place."
"Why don't you?" The older man said easily.
Clark smiled sadly, nodding over to the ridge of encasing mountains that blocked any travel other than by air. "I can't fly, Mr. White."
Perry smiled back before throwing out his cigar, ashes scattering with the slight breeze.
*
Emil Hamilton had led the reporter through a maze of tunnelways, lit by the occasional overhead flurescent bar.
After what seemed like the millionth unmarked, security coded steel door, Emil paused.
"Consider this a breaching of confidentiality." He said, turning towards the retinal scan.
"I thought we breached that four floors ago." She watched blue laser wash over Emil's dark skin and scan across.
"Actually," Emil said as he turned around smiling. "Your security clearance ended at the second level."
"Ah."
The door hissed, as the pressurized room behind it appeared.
A white room.
"What is this place?"
"This," Emil handed her a plastic suit, "well this is just the sterilization room."
She held the suit in her hands, the small oxygen tank that he next handed over.
"Careful," Emil said, stepping into the rubber boots. "Radiation is elevated in these next areas."
She looked both at the suit and him skeptically, and then put it on.
*
There was another pressurized door, vents shooting a smoky gas upwards from the floor in powerful jets.
It was obvious that not may were permitted this way. It was dark, and damp. Poorly lit.
Forgotten almost.
Through the plastic face guard of her radiation suit, she followed Hamilton to a doorway where a large vault rested.
Also steel.
"Emil."
He ignored her, his gloved hands punched in a code.
A sharp hiss from the door jumped her back.
"The temperature here is slightly lower. " Emil's voice was muffled by his plastic suit.
Black.
And cold.
Even through her suit, she could feel it. Her breath fogged the plastic visor, obscuring her sight. Ice particals formed, crystalized breath.
From her side, she felt Emil tap one of the controls of her helmet, the breath disappearing immediately.
"Hyper defroster." Emil gloated, "a side project of mine as a young intern at Luthor Corp."
"Very nice." She smiled, a creeping feeling that she might actually trust Hamilton afterall. "So, are you going to tell me where I am? And why you're helping me?"
He stopped, and tuned towards her, the small LED light attached to his helmet shinning in her eyes.
"I'm not doing this to help you." Emil explained, "I'm doing this to help Clark."
He turned back towards the tunnel they seemed to be walking into, the walls jagged and rocky.
A cave.
"I'm one of the last who still believe in the cause. Others are so sure that the experiment is over, but they're wrong. It's not over. The day we stop believing in Clark Kent, what he stands for, the day the world loses hope for everything."
The walls of the cave became tighter as they walked deeper, causing both of them to crouch.
"What were you saying before," her voice muffled behind her visor, "about the previous failed experiements?"
Strangely, she could hear Hamilton laugh up ahead of her, "It's no secret the government has been hiding covert labs for centuries. Area 51 being the commonly known. The higher ups tried so hard to cover up the truth but look what a mess they created! The lies and deception. All of it was a curtain for what was really happening."
Along the walls, their helmet lights illuminated carvings from the walls.
Foreign symbols, pictographs.
Journalistic curiousity willed her to stop, but Emil's lonely helmet light kept moving ahead.
She jogged along. "You're telling me that the government actually found alien technology? And that LuthorCorp is was subcontracted out to test it?"
"Technology wasn't all they found."
"What do you mean?"
"The first experiment." Emil turned around. "I'm sure you've heard of 33.1."
***
"I can't fly."
Clark looked down as Perry's leather boot snuffed out the reminding embers of his cigar.
"Well," the gruff older man spat finally, "and here I thought Kent men were born to fly."
The moon shone so still.
Clark was quiet, searching through the abandoned air field and the tired, rotted planes that sat as shored out ornaments.
"Y'know, in the war they used to call me 'Chief'. I flew a lot of missions across the backs of silver wings. Saw a lot of ocean, a lot of different land. Wrote all about it back home too, in a little column they kept for uniforms. When it was all said and over, later on, back when I was home, the name sort of stuck. I worked in a newspaper once, just like you."
Clark smiled. "My father never said you were a reporter."
"Not a reporter, kiddo." Perry drew out another cigar from his pocket, and lit it. Fire burning at once, and then a smooth smolder.
Fine, white smoke.
"I was the editor. 'In Chief' to be exact."
Clark frowned. "What made you leave the newspaper business?"
Perry smiled, for once. "Same reason you're the way out here, asking yourself the same questions I used to." He took out the bundled newspaper he'd kept in his back pocket. "I wanted to know the truth behind the world, the truth that was behind the twists and turns of the story other reporters were churning out. I knew there was something more, and I went after it myself." He grinned again, and winked. "I went undercover."
*
"I thought Level 33.1 was exterminated."
"It was." Emil replied, ducking through the turns of the cave. "After LuthorCorp shut down all of its projects, the lab was non existent. Over." Emil sighed, "But then the experiement sort of, reanimated."
"What?"
"They called him Davis Bloome. A subject much like Clark but a few more years developed. We based everything against Davis Bloome. His diet, his daily interaction with humans."
She frowned.
"In the early stages, everything seemed normal. Plausible, hopeful for a total integration of races."
"What are you saying? That this, 'Bloome' was affected somehow?"
"He started displaying abilities. Growths." Emil shook his head in horror, "Lionel had him terminated after two years and discontinued the experiment."
Their bulky contamination suits squeaked by low lying rocks, while the RMD's built into their chest consoles ticked with the rising radiation.
"Dr. Hamilton, you're not telling me everything." She yelled from behind her suit. "What's at the end of this tunnel? Why are we wearing these suits?"
He raised a hand, stopped, and whispered. "It's here."
Beyond Hamilton's shoulder, she could see it.
A dark, oblong shape, its surface as black as the air inside that very dark space.
"Is that--?"
"It's where everything began." Emil walked closer, the ticking of their radiation sensors hyperactive. "The experiment has expanded so far from the center of its origin, so obscured that people like Lex Luthor forget the consequences of letting another experiment fall through our fingers.Terminating the experiment is not possible. The only solution is containment."
She stepped closer, eyes widening at the glowing, jagged rocks that bound around the strange vessel like green, poisonous barbs. "It's a ship."
Emil looked to her, "We recovered more than one."
*
Lex massaged his bald temples in the middle of the dark room, the glint of his ring catching the reflection of the open door. "Has she left the premises?"
"Yes, Mr. Luthor." Emil shoved the large steel door closed, and joined Lex by the main camera console. "I escorted her out myself."
Lex didn't say anything more, choosing to watch the lonely screen in blackness.
Emil strained through his squinted eyes, taking notes on his clipboard. "I see the Clark is out in the southwest perimeter." Emil scanned the readings of the biological monitors. "His stress levels have risen twelve percent since this morning, and I would corolate that with Clark not adhering to usual daily behavior."
Lex pursed his lips, tilting his head to the side.
"Ofcourse why should he behave normally?" Emil led, "We haven't exactly been implementing the usual practices."
"A criticism, Dr. Hamilton?" Lex barely perked.
"No." Emil tucked the clipboard away, resting his hands against his chest, "A praise. Perhaps you're right. Clark's life may have been too structured. How could we ever learn how the control would react to real life situations and its complications. How will he react to chaos?"
A smile tilted Lex's lips. "How does anyone learn if they're not tested?"
Emil resonated in thought. "I just hope you've calibrated the boundaries of this testing. How far is too far, Mr. Luthor?"
"Clark will set his own boundaries as does every man."
Emil said nothing further, noting the dissonance within Lex as static aired in the surrounding speakers.
"Audio's a bit scratchy."
On camera, Clark Kent walked along side Perry White, a long time veteran of the experiment, and well known alcoholic. Luthor staffing had had problems with White lately, and were already thinking of cutting him loose.
It was strange, Emil thought, that Clark would venture out there in the abandoned sector now of all times.
"Microphones are in and out in that quadrant, Dr. Hamilton. Make a note to the engineers promptly. I want sound along with my visuals if I'm paying two million a day to float this ship."
"Yes sir."
Oh, and Hamilton?"
"Sir?"
"There is dirt underneath your fingernails."
Emil frowned. "I'm sorry?"
"The next time you go digging around, remember." Lex sat motionless in his chair, "I'm always watching."
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