25
Floating on a continuous wave of time, dizzy from the after effects... The loft counter-moved with her motion sickness, and Clark was the only strong pillar to cling to. He reached out to her in the floating thick atmosphere, the hotness from the day peeking through the wooden slats. There was heat remaining. There was heat.
The super trip ended at the Kent farm.
It was a place of comfort and home in her youth. And from the tone of the situation, Chloe keyed in that Clark brought her here for one of those reasons. Privacy, she thought a bit afterwards, being a probability. He had taken her from her security, from her boundaries and comfort zone. She rarely made appearances away from her console, the luxury of smoke and mirrors and holograms so easy to abuse. Chloe lost herself inside the false faces, the aliases and bits of data. She didn't face vulnerability. Not anymore.
But she was outside her cave now, and inside of Clark's. Either rudely or abruptly, he'd super sped her there in a passive aggressive whirlwind that didn't ask permission. He could too be everywhere at once and it left her powerless. The Kent farm was possibly the farthest from any technological outpost. Clark knew what he wanted.
Clark watched hungrily from across the loft. It was a look of objectification. She didn't know whether to be aroused or insulted. In either way, she felt threatened and so she chose to challenge, "What's the matter with you?"
The sharpness busted his bubble and all the confidence that went with it.
She watched him fidget with his torn shirt, and then jog down the stairs to mess around in some old tool boxes on a bench. She didn't know what was going on, but she realized that Clark too was vulnerable.
She took a breath and leaned against the big red couch. She'd heard and read about the ways Clark used to move. Heard and read, but never quite believed it. She'd seen the relics from all of Clark's saves, adventures, mishaps. Relics collected by envious men like Lex Luthor who thought that arranging bits of Clark's life would gather understanding of his true power. They had no idea at all.
She looked over the banister, his shirt still ripped across his chest and hanging from his shoulders. Clark was vulnerable in different ways now. His scars were barely noticeable. Healed, or headed that way. She'd seen him only earlier that morning, yet if any of her abilities were the culprit, she had no recollection. Or energy deprivation. Was it another evolution of her powers?
Clark rummaged through drawers in the loft, behavior anxious, angry. It wasn't atypical, compared to numerous observations made on Clark after his arrival on Earth. He'd always been angry, but never so focused. What he lacked before was purpose, but he had found it now. And he found his powers. That was his end of the deal, now it was her turn to cough up her intel.
She took a deep breath and went down the stairs. He was still preoccupied with toolboxes. It was an effort to ignore her when she came up beside him. His eyes were very different now.
"Clark," her voice was softer, "I have news about Doomsday."
Suddenly, she heard him laugh a little and turn towards the room. His eyes, focused on something and nothing all at once. When he had found what he was looking for he smiled, briefly. "All this time without my powers and I forget a thing or too."
Chloe raised a brow, "A thing?"
"X-ray vision."
She watched as he marched down the stairs, supersped to the tool box near the tractor and then reappear instantaneously in front of her. During all of this, she was still stuck on the reality that he could really see through objects.
Clark blinked at her, and held the thing he was holding closer to her face, "This is for you." When her expression grew cloudy, Clark's humor peeked out for a moment, "Don't worry. It's not a ring."
"It looks like a box."
"Yes," Clark agreed with some sentimentality, "It is. Lex gave it to me, a long time ago. Open it."
"Kryptonite?"
A green sickness and his newly found powers were gone. This sort of discomfort he preferred, over the Phantom Zone, any day. "I know it's nothing special, especially in these parts. But I want you to trust me, in what ever happens."
Chloe shut it immediately, "By having power over you? No, Clark."
"By us being equals."
This was the answer to her question. The why of him whisking her away to his home. Perhaps he had wanted it just as much as she did all these years. To reel in time and relive a part of their young past that laid unwritten for so long.
This was what they were protecting.
"I always thought we were equal. In every way. But I don't need a--"
He pushed back her hands, "Keep it. You never know," he looked at her and then added, "Maybe one day, you wont have to worry about little green rocks."
She knew he'd said it in jest but the reality of meteor rocks was wide spread and a part of her, forever. There was no getting rid of her infection, she'd been born with it. She continued to read his eyes and realized that perhaps Clark meant himself instead.
"There are others, Kryptonian's like me, here. They arrived when I returned to Earth," Clark explained, as she grew near, "I can't afford to fight them alone. Not them and Doomsday together. "
"You're not alone." She held out her hand, "Here. I have something to give you too."
"The Torch Key?"
"Yea, you lost it a while back. It may have lost some of it's meaning but, I think it still has some symbolism left. It's for good luck."
"I don't need luck, remember?"
She took him into her arms and buried her face into his chest. The vibrations of her voice heard through. "Just in case, Clark."
A rumble shook the old trusses of the Kent barn. A shake of the past into the present. The extremely present.
"Some thing tells me that wasn't an earthquake," Chloe eyed the sturdy wooden beams,. He shoved the small lead box back into her hands and went to the loft window. Another rumble rolled towards them, this time setting off car alarms at the neighbor's a few football fields away.
"Clark, what is that?"
His body tensed as sun beams outlined his body, "Chloe get out down!"
The trusses above exploded. The barn separating into splinters. Chloe dove underneath a tractor and tucked in as debris avalanched around her void.
"Clark?" she yelled, dust kicked up. She coughed, and called again. She kicked her way out from the piled wood, crawled through a skinny opening. Scratched, and splinters across her skin. They would heal soon.
She screamed his name again, crawling to the top of the barn. It was a mound of scrap wood around a single skeletal wall. It was the wall with the loft window. The part of their lives they were protecting.
Clark was no longer there.
Martha Kent and a large dog with equally red hair burst through the porch door. She shielded her eyes, seeing Chloe stand a top of the demolished barn.
The two women said nothing before another explosion of dust expanded into the sky behind Chloe.
Martha watched on as Chloe climbed from the rubble and towards the direction of the rising dust cloud. They made eye contact, briefly, but enough to fill in the blanks. Martha cupped her hands,"Take the truck!"
Another rumble, and an object ejected into the sky.
Chloe wasn't absolutely sure who until it eclipsed the bright sun, the tatters of a blue shirt whipping in the air and then crashing into the fields that were far back behind the barn.
Chloe sprinted away from Martha's yelling, and Shelby's fading howls
Deep in the thick of the back forty, stalks of corn crowded her like flimsy giants with stubborn persistence. The only gauge of direction was by the slowly rising dust above the stalks.
"Clark?" she screamed, her heart a drum. The rumbling had stopped, her heart counting the seconds. She smelled fresh dirt in the air. She was close.
Chloe was aware that she could stumble upon anything in those thick fields. And become just as easily lost. But she kept stomping through the thick, panting and whacking.
She found him. Dark, fresh dirt scored up like a fresh wound. And there was Clark in the middle of the crater; laid still, face turned away. Shirt torn open from the minutes before, but caked in debris and a new blood. She found a piece of bony thorn in his side. It was Doomsday.
Chloe knelt beside him and touched his face. He was breathing. A thin trail of blood trickled from his nose, which was also swollen. Over all, she'd seen him in worse conditions. He'd been nearly dead. But that was without powers. And they were out in the open. Doomsday was out there.
Chloe took one of Clark's arms and dragged him about two inches before she knew she couldn't possibly lift him alone. She tried two arms, and then his feet, but his preternatural size didn't cooperate with her petite one. She straddled Clark's chest, her bare hands against her patients face. She tried humor to dampen her emotions, "You're out after just one punch?"
Her fingers touched the bridge of his nose, a soft light appearing there. "I'm thinking we need a plan B, here. The part where I take you back to my lab and we research this thing... your super speed would help. But you have to wake up."
The ground shook and the corn stalks swayed. Doomsday was close.
Chloe looked over her shoulder as the stalks parted violently. She took other measures. She slapped him, "Hey! Wake up!"
Only, they did wake up. A nightmare towered above them, blocking all sunshine and leaving only its cold shadow. She felt its warm breath at her back, felt its growl through her spine. She'd wrote about it in the papers, seen the footage and the satellite images. But it was never quite the same, witnessing a monstrosity inches from your face.
She took a deep breath, shortened now with given fear. She reminded herself that she and the beast had one thing in common. They were both products of genetic manipulation. They were both freaks. Empathy, she thought, could buy time with a killer. Its eyes were blackened, and almost hidden completely behind the overgrown horns around them. Bravely, she turned towards Doomsday and plead for Clark's life. Once it didn't show any signs of response, she stumbled through what rough Kryptonian she knew.
Perhaps it had no language. Perhaps it had no soul to bargain with. It was the grueling truth of what humans could create; a creature bred without any humanity at all. Doomsday was born a Kryptonian nightmare, but only humans had cultivated it against their own kind, and unfortunately against their only hope.
Chloe held tighter onto Clark.
She felt someone take her hand, looked down at his dirt covered fingernails holding onto hers. She felt his low voice rumble through his chest and into hers. . It was sublime, and sad all at once. But it was right.
"I'm alright," he told her, in a cracked, unconvincing voice, "It was a lucky punch."
"Clark," she heard herself say as Doomsday raised one of its arms over their heads.
"Close your eyes," is what she thought she had said. But after sudden heat from a local sun briefly blinded her, she realized it was Clark who had said it, not her.
Clark shot beam after beam of red stringed plasma into Doomsday's flesh, stumbling it back several yards. Stalks of corn lit aflame.
It was enough time for Clark to get to his feet. He glanced towards Chloe, about to speak when he was pummelled backward by returning plasma fire. Shot backwards into the stalks yards away,a trail of fire followed Clark, along with Doomsday thrashing forward.
Chloe heard another loud crashing coming from the side fields. A pair of headlights, and then the bright red paint of an old pickup truck.
It was Martha Kent. Speeding forward with all the truck could handle, straight towards the horned monster. Chloe ducked out of the way and saw Martha ditch out the driver side. Doomsday caught the truck in the lower extremities and toppled over like a domino.
Clark, recovered by then, super dashed, tackled, and dragged the carnal beast out of sight.
Chloe went to Martha who was sitting up in the fallen corn. She asked for her son, kept asking for her son while the violent thrashings were loud in the unseen distance. The peaceful green stalks did little to guise the violence that led beyond it.
"Help him," Martha whimpered to her.
Chloe stared at the woman, so dedicated to protecting her son. Innate in all beings to protect their own, Chloe touched the cheek of the mother who's son would die trying to protect all of them. She left Martha in Shelby's guardianship and turned towards the burning trail.
She would do whatever it took to help Clark.
And so she began her journey, following the downed, smoldering corn along a jagged pathway of mud and unearthed dirt. It looked like Clark had been thrown and dragged along the way. It was hunting Clark now, Doomsday after his blood and his alone. There was a connection between them, innate and unbreakable. Chloe prayed that her bond was stronger.
She walked faster, her thoughts and strategies running at a faster pace. She pulled out her cellphone, her first good idea of the day. She called for back ups, "Oliver! It's Doomsday, it's here in Smallvi--"
Her signal fizzled out. Damn cellphones. Damn rural Kansas.
She shoved the phone back in her pocket and started her trek again. But then she stopped. Or was stopped, by another nightmare.
It was the man in all black.
*
It was about the same time that General Sam Lane opened the door of his helicopter, a fresh landing on top of Metropolis PD Head Quarters. The man was in his fifties, and looked it. Salt and pepper hair, a shadow of a beard peaking out. Dark circles under wise eyes. Upon the helipad, Chief Adams limped along proudly, her cane part of her Lowell County history. It had been a long road since anyone had called her Sheriff, but the arcane killings and happenings in Metropolis brought back old memories.
The military was called upon days ago to intervene with the menace, Doomsday, as all the media were calling it. But bullets, and rockets didn't stop it. From the video footage, it absorbed whole arsenal like it nursed hell for nourishment. And it was becoming stronger by the minute.
Lane, the state governor and even the President had exchanged calls throughout the week about this villain. But it was only Chief Adams who was in the front lines of its wake. And she refused to surrender.
The Chief shielded her eyes from the helicopter, her other hand holding up a tablet. In all her years of law enforcement, she'd seen more meteor related crime than she could count. But this, this was different. And this, as she handed the tablet to the General, was why she was bringing in the big guns.
Lane looked over the documents briefly, and then handed them to one of his aides. He didn't say much, but his thoughts wandered back to one of his earlier briefings before they left for Metropolis. One of the government's secure research facilities broken into over night. Cyro labs ransacked, and frozen specimen stolen. It all very sensitive information as of now, but Lane had a feeling that this was all connected. Everything came back to the green meteor rock.
"The question is," Lane turned to Adams on the windy rooftop, "are we willing to destroy ourselves, before this thing does the job for us?"
"You're not talking about nukes?"
"I don't want to talk about nukes, but if we're on the topic; There's a good chance other unfavorable nations will strike at us if they think they could stop this thing from spreading to their gates..." Lane posed, "The fear this is creating... the public thinks we have lost all control. They're losing hope. They're calling it Doomsday."
He saluted her before departing, "Let's make sure there's a tomorrow."
*
26
Amid the arctic circle, a man in black robes awaited Kal-El's arrival. It was the place of the midnight sun, the solstice, the end where all points met. It was the place Jor-El intended his son to be. The place where Kal-El could finally take his destiny.
And now, as Brainiac looked across the ice where Kara Zor-El laid out in a stoney pose, he held the four stones of the Veritas movement. Everything was brought to a head, all pieces in place. To his side were the remaining phantoms that escaped Jor-El's passage. One a general, the other a soldier. It was enough to start a new civilization, a new Krypton. And like all pieces posed on a board, their fates waited for all of them.
Including the human.
Brainiac walked over to where the Chloe laid. She was more susceptible to the cold climate, and gone into a type of coma once Brainiac interfaced with her mind. He absorbed all her thoughts, all her memories. Her fears. Her hopes.
It was that last part that kept Brainiac thinking.
Zod, a scavenged version of the strong military leader he once was, stood over Chloe's body. His bones showed through blackened skin. Hardened by the lifetimes of confinement, the promise of death always on the cusp. Only here was death real, and his weakened state proof of that. "How can you be sure this human is the healer?"
Brainiac shrugged off his thick leather robe and laid it across Chloe's body. It would preserve her for some time, until she was needed. Brainiac lifted a brow, "I've seen it. I've seen her fate. She will bridge the two races."
Zod lifted his chipped cutlass and held it to Brainiac's throat, "Bridge?"
Calmly, Brainiac thrusted the blade down with a single finger. "It would be wise to remember that you are the weaker of the races on this realm while in your perilous state of health."
His gaunt, ghostly face stared back at the insubordination, "You forget that I am your rightful leader."
"Enough!" Aethyr piped from beside them, lifting a makeshift blade of her own "Let's cut open the human and find our cure. Our time is wasted here if we do not survive. There are portals to open, people we left behind." She looked to Zod for permission. "Think of Faora."
Zod swallowed and thought on this. He looked to Brainiac, "There will be no opposition to Zod."
"The human means nothing to my own personal survival."
Zod grinned very slowly and then nodded to the soldier.
Without another word, Aethyr struck down her blade against Chloe's chest, the metal shattering with force. She was stuned, and proceeded to study the human with intrigue. "She is impenetrable!"
"Nonsense!" Zod bent down, tore open the robes and tore away the fabric of her clothes. There he found a little lead box. The General bent down and lifted it from her chest.
He opened it.
*
A single hand appeared beneath a bank vault door. The thick alloy was crumpled, blackened with heat, and the edges still red with embers. There was a crater in the side of a bank that laid outside Little Rock, Arkansas. A ways from Smallville, Kansas. Nevertheless, it was a short trip provided by a heavy punch from Doomsday.
Clark lifted the vault from his head, to the amazement of all the bewildered pedestrians peeking outside. To them, a man emerged from an explosion that rocked the whole center city. A man, partially clothed, of blue cloth around his shoulders.
All across the country bystanders and witnesses stopped their lives and snapped photos of the mysterious man who fought the beast. Clark had been knocked into Colorado, Texas, even parts of Mexico and then back to Texas. There were bruises, and cuts. Maybe a few broken ribs. But as Clark tossed the vault away from him, he stood among the dust and debris. He stood proudly.
When he reached the outside of the bank, a kid took a picture of his face.
His face, no disguises, no attempt to hide who he was.
No one asked for his name, although many asked if he was ok. One woman gave him a bottle of water. Clark took it, sipped it, and thanked her. It was the first kind gesture a stranger had shown him in sometime.
He handed her the bottle and told all to get to safety. He could hear Doomsday coming. It was miles from here, but he heard it. Clark had been lucky so far that every placed Doomsday had tossed him rendered no causalities. The sheer weight alone would crush someone, but given the momentum and force that Doomsday was capable of, Clark's body was a wrecking ball.
He was hanging on for as long as he could. Even with his powers, his strength was not a true match. For every ounce of power Clark possessed, Doomsday had more. Much more. Perhaps, Clark thought, an endless amount.
Exhausted, he took a knee in the middle of the street. Several bystanders stood around him despite his warnings. He needed to remain in the rural parts. Perhaps the mid-west. Preferably away from Kansas and the heavily populated lands of Kryptonite. And anywhere but the populated areas that Doomsday was drawn to. He was playing with Clark. Toying with him more like. Back in Kansas Doomsday lifted a full school bus and tossed it like a paper air plane. Clark caught it of course, but it was one thing after another that bore him down.
The destruction, the unnecessary destruction. Bent on unraveling any meaning in the world. It's purpose was to eradicate human civilization itself. And it started with deconstructing Clark. Never before had he witnessed something without a weakness, without shortfall. Without hope at all.
Clark shouldered what was left, still on one knee and his fists against the cold concrete. He closed his eyes, drowning out the murmurs of the crowd around him. The street went away and so the sunlight. His mind carried to where he heard Doomsday, miles away from here. He was still hunting. Smelling Clark's blood. There would be no end.
Endless, and at no end. There was a place for people of that kind. A place where Clark had been before.
He tightened his fist and braced them against the ground. His liftoff created a shock wave strong enough to toss people off their feet. Up and away Clark soared. Those who saw it claimed he leaped over hills, while others swore he flew. Either way, Clark was gone in a single bound.
*
"They're calling him Superman!" No one exactly knows who coined the moniker, but every media bullpen roared across the nation and trickled around the world. The Daily Planet however was empty except for Lois and Jimmy, the two who volunteered to stay behind. The rest of the crew flocked over to little old Smallville where Lois and Jimmy knew they'd be too late. She had gotten the phone call from Oliver first, and hours ago. Chloe had been in Smallville, presumably with Clark Kent. And now both were missing.
But, Doomsday wasn't and neither was the mysterious hero, Superman, who travelled across the continent, and television screens, duking it out.
As Lois watched the television screen shots of "Superman" run back to back, she went through all the ramblings Oliver unloaded over a hot wire. It was Clark, he said. He kidnapped Chloe, he said. Oliver and his team already cased the area, and found Chloe's cellphone abandoned in the Kent farm fields. Martha Kent had no idea.
Lois swiveled back to her desk and sipped her very strong cup of coffee one last time. There was no point to traveling to Lowell County, the speed Doomsday and Superman were hopping around. It would just be a lottery to have them land outside their doorstep. Lois took a deep breath and let the dozens of phones continue to ring with no one to answer them.
She looked at Jimmy Olsen, a man who had become more entwined with her life than she ever thought. He was married to her little sister now, and had known Chloe in some ways Lois never would.
"Any ideas, Olsen?"
Jimmy looked up from cleaning his camera lens, "I'd wait here. I heard government is sending in the black birds. You know, the big guns. Right here, in the middle of the city."
She had meant about Chloe, but she had to remember that up until this point, Jimmy Olsen thought his best friend died a long time ago. He glanced at Lois with a sort of resentment for not telling him all these years. She'd have to ask for forgiveness later. "With my connections, I bet we can catch a ride on one of those birds."
Jimmy smirked, "I'm sure you could."
Lois smiled back and picked up her phone.
"One other thing," Jimmy added before preparing to leave. He turned to Lois and winked.
It was all he needed to say for Lois to know it would all be okay.
*
27
By the time Zod fell to his knees, Chloe jumped up to hers and not without kicking him in the teeth. The chunk of Kryptonite rolled into her hands. She wielded it against Aethyr, and then Brainiac.
Aethyr went down, but it was Brainiac who lifted his hands in white flag, "I am not your enemy."
Realizing the rock had no effect on him, Chloe threw it in between Zod and Aethyr where it did the most good, and started back peddling.
Brainiac read her movements, "Survivability in these climates is not probable, for a human."
She ran anyway. Lips blue and stuck to her teeth, Chloe sprinted across the frost and snow, slipping among the chunks of ice. She didn't feel the bite of the arctic cold, not yet. And she wasn't convinced she would perish because of it. A hidden benefit from her meteor abilities allowed for her body to repel outside forces, within reason of course. But she didn't have the ability to teleport like she was so used to doing with her digital self. She was just a stick in the mud, figuratively speaking. Feet stuck in the ice, her out of season boots became water logged after a few hundred feet.
Exhausted, she took a knee, panting white clouds from her mouth. Ahead of her, Brainiac stood without any signs of stress, ice or breathing at all.
"But you're not the typical human, are you?"
Chloe swallowed dry air, "You're the man who killed Lex Luthor."
"The fact that I have not killed you, should grant some trust."
"You want something from me. What is it? If I don't mean anything to 'your personal survival' then why keep me alive?"
"You," Brainiac observed the blonde carefully, "you would give anything to see your world prosper."
"Of course," Chloe said back.
Brainiac nodded, "My point exactly."
Brainiac paused in reflection, "Survival, pushes every civilization into chaos and violence. Sometimes, violence is necessary. Killing those who fear you, and wish to control you. That is also necessary."
"And that's why you killed Lex."
"Lex," he repeated smartly, "wanted to rule this world just as much as any Kryptonian god would. He planned to use our technology for his sole advantage. You on the other hand, protected it."
From his hands, several crystals materialized. She had seen them before, once with Lex in the Kawatche caves. They were all together now. Veritas, and now the abscene of the supervision that all meant. Which brought to mind the intentions Lex had when he had them in his possession so long ago. In a flash, the crystals merged and formed into one, long, translucent stone. It was Sunstone she had studied from Swann's journals. She realized she was experiencing something that Lex Luthor had only dreamed of.
" That stone... What do you plan to do with it? Why kill Lex for it, and what makes you so different from him?"
"I'm impartial," he wielded the sunstone in the sunlight, "I'm neither man nor the being that once was when man created me. Adaptability is stronger in the game of survival than any other strength. I believe your recent findings strike similar genetic explorations with a creature you call, Doomsday."
"How would you know that?" Chloe said.
"I can read your thoughts, Ms. Sullivan," Brainiac smiled, "There are many, but I can see them...
I can read deeper into a human emotion than humans themselves," Brainiac tilted his head, "Comparing those expressions of Lex Luthors and yours, I can tell that you are not truly afraid for yourself. But that of those you care about. You have many that you care about on this world. And you know that you cannot possibly protect them all. You are depending on one man to full-fill his promise to help you do that. But even that, you doubt."
"You're wrong," she replied.
"Ah," Brainiac enlightened, "perhaps its that you do not think he will survive his promise?" He looked closely, "Or you do not think he will survive without your help?" He handed her the Sunstone. "You've a great connection to one another. It would be foolish to believe that neither depended on another's survival.
Do you want to survive?"
In the distance, Zod and Aethyr stir, finding a way around the paralyzing radiation. They were on their feet now, and sprinting towards the other couple. Chloe turned back to Brainiac. She knew that once they got far enough away from the radiation--
"Do you, Ms. Sullivan? Because they do. They fear what will become of them if exposed to the yellow sun's radiation for too long. Matrixing will kill them, as it killed Zor-El's daughter."
Closer.
Brainiac handed her the stone.
But it was too late, Aethyr blurring right into Chloe's face. She ducked out of a swinging blow and weaved through the soldier's body and countered with reverse kick. Just because Chloe spent time in the lab didn't mean she didn't learn a thing or two from the boys.
But the attack didn't stick. Aethyr came at her again, this time no games.
Surviving, is what she thought of when she drove the Sunstone into the ice. The ground fissioned and cracked apart, opening all doubts to what she had just done or what the blinding light from underneath meant.
A living structure emerged from the ice, taking Chloe with it, rising into the sky in a crystalline spiral. And it didn't stop spiraling upward. Chloe clung on to one of the ridges, while the world shrank beneath her. Zod, Aethyr and Brainiac scattered among the crevasses.
*
Meanwhile in another continent Clark hauled a telephone pole by its end through one of the deserted industry towns that was once owned by Lionel Luthor. A place promised for prosperity and economic growth, but then abandoned into poverty. It was the same fate that once rested over Smallville, but this town lacked the green fields that held its own individual wealth. It never bounced back.
A large trail traced itself to Clark dragging the massive pole towards an unknown destination. The area was gray, blackened by soot and remnants of coal. Just miles of blackened sand that sent him back to a place where he had been before. This was a place of misuse and hopelessness. A landscape once pure and misshapen and sculpted into profit. It's what Smallville could have been if the Luthor's hadn't left. This place wasn't so lucky, and the claws sunk deep into its soul long ago. A micro encounter of what could be.
Before him, was the black devil. Clark stared into the eyes of the man he could have been. If this was his Kyptonian brother he was facing, if they had travelled and crashed at the same time...
Doomsday was this place. Shaped and sculpted. Hardened and then abandoned. He was a true monster of what negligent greed could do.
Clark screamed at the top of his lungs with forceful winds that rattled the windows and kicked up the sand. This was it. There was no more.
Wind picking up around Doomsday's feet. He had seen this foe before, in his dreams. In his fears. This was the thing that could take away everything. Everyone.
And while they stood facing each other in the ghost town of the north, Clark drew up the extension of himself. He swung it with great force, thirty feet of solid oak whipping through the air. Doomsday tumbled backward and then again. And again.
No more, Clark said grinding his teeth. The wind picked up again, this time supernaturally and strong. Sunlight, bright light shone down upon his head. He looked up and saw two black helicopters circling above him. He heard their radio frequencies, he heard their orders.
Doomsday struck first, throwing the shard of pole left into the blades of the chopper. A small explosion and then a large one when it crashed into the warehouse beside them. Fire and black smoke. Doomsday leaped from the flames and took aim at the second one.
Military missile fire. Then a second, a third.
An array rained down upon them. Time slowed down just enough for Clark to squeeze around the missile heads as they whirred by.
Flame, more explosion. More force.
The smoke whipped clear and Doomsday emerged holding a caught missile in his hands. It was a game he played, and won very effectively.
The chopper pulled away quickly and retreated.
Doomsday threw the missile after them, sailing away into the big blue.
Clark wasn't sure if it ever touched ground, but it gave him an idea.
*
Chloe felt her way down from the top of the Fortress with very carefully. Footing on vertical ice crystals was slippery to say the least, but stealth was even harder. She heard voices from beneath her. It was Brainiac, Zod and Aethyr. All found their ways inside and reunited like one big family.
Except they were arguing.
Chloe climbed through a small opening to where they were. A large cavern, a center crystalline console. There was Brainiac at the center with Zod over his shoulder.
"We should have killed her!" Zod said.
"Kill your only chance of survival?" Brainiac said.
Aethyr stepped forward, "her blood would have been sufficient."
"And if it wasn't?" Brainiac asked.
It was then that Chloe saw Kara's body resting just beyond the group upon an altar. A crystal catacomb of sorts.
"If you are afraid of one human, this will not be a welcoming place for your new army." Brainiac said and then added, "The one question you are not asking is how the human opened the fortress at all."
Zod looked at Aethyr and then back.
"She has an unusual connection to Kal-El, and the Fortress recognizes it. That in itself is more powerful than all else."
Zod glanced at Kara, "We have El blood here now. Zor-El's child will be efficient to reopen the portals. Aethyr will capture the human, and bring her back here. Alive."
Aethyr grunted.
Chloe crouched down.
Zod cornered Brainiac with the edge of his cutlass, "Less you forget that it was us that brought you the last crystal. The pain I've suffered for it. To see a human no less build the last standing Kryptonian fortress over the blood of my kin. My people."
Brainiac saw that Aethyr had gone, and turned towards Zod. His voice resonated. "Just as you have your pawns... so do I."
Brainiac stood very still and said something so low she couldn't hear. But she heard the blood drip to the ground, saw Zod's face cringe as Brainiac twisted one of his metallic appendages into his chest. He withdrew it and stepped away.
"You will bow to me, now."
Chloe gasped, her footing slipping from her small perch. She slid down ungracefully and came to land straight on her back. The fall knocked her breath away. When she sat up, Brainiac was dragging Zod ontop of a separate altar.
He looked at her, unsurprised "Seen enough to trust me yet?"
She hobbled down the ice steps and regained herself. "What are you going to do with him?"
"Sadly, I respect him too much to just kill him." Brainiac looked over Zod's body, "I will send him back to where he was, and had been for sometime. That is his rightful place now. With the remainder of his people."
He looked to her and smiled, "There's one left."
Chloe stopped him, "You promised me you were going to help Clark."
"I am," he said, "Sending Kal to the Phantom Zone was the best training any mentor could provide. He knows what's to come. He knows what he is do to. He knows who he really is. Now, it's your turn."
Chloe stepped up on the center podium, an array of circular crystals speaking to her. He was inside of her head, she could feel him there. He was reading her mind. Speaking to it.
She placed her hand ontop of the console and closed her eyes.
"You traitor!"
She opened her eyes. It was Aethyr, running towards them. But it was too late.
Brainiac opened the portal. Or had it been her? She took her hands away to defend herself but was encapsulated by a blue, protective light.
Like a body purging an infection, space opened and a force began to expel the unwanted occupants.
It sucked Aethyr first, she disappeared in a bending blackness. Zod and his mangled body dragged away while Brainiac clutched his hold on a pillar of ice.
Brainiac only smiled, "I will survive even this."
She would not be touched. She knew this. Somehow she had known. It took years for her to understand that moment. That he did in fact depend on her for his own survival. That his plans consisted of more of what she understood about the Kryptonian technology she had studied her whole life.
Zod fell next disappearing the same dark hole his soldier had.
And as the portal narrowed into a barely passable mouth, Brainiac smiled to her and said, "Tell Kal-El, I will be waiting for him."
The portal closed, and the fortress went silent.
Where they had went, she did not know. All she did know was that they left Kara behind.
*
28
There were voices inside his head. Telling him to get up. Telling him to move.
First, it had been his father's voice.
It was raining.
Clark removed chunks of concrete from atop his body. He found himself inside of another new crater. The day long battle still going...
He lifted his eyes to see that he was inside Metropolis now. The tall buildings full of faces peeking out. He heard sirens coming and there were screams.
He heard his father's voice.
Clark opened his eyes. It wasn't raining after all. Just a busted hydrant that was spewing water everywhere. Outside, it was bright blue and shining.
He heard voices from the buildings.
"Don't give up!"
"Keep fighting!"
Clark closed his eyes and just listened, his skin recharging in the sunlight. This was where it was going to be. This was the end of the road.
Now if only he could tell his body to get up and move.
Far across the street he heard people scream. It was enough to jolt him to his knees, but what he saw was impossible.
It was him.
Clark rubbed his eyes and looked again. But it was him walking towards a fast approaching Doomsday.
Perhaps, I've died, he thought.
But then his image split apart, and then there was two. This confused Doomsday as much as it confused Clark and everyone else. Doomsday swung at the imagery and then missed. Missed again. He was fighting with an invisible foe.
"Chloe," Clark smiled and then crawled from his knees. Suddenly, she was there.
"You rang?" She smiled, but he was seeing two of her too. He shook his head and readjusted his eyes. No, it was just one of her. She was real, too.
"What took you so long?"
She was pushing him back down, searching his injuries. He had several broken ribs, a cracked jaw and bruised everything. His eyes were swollen and there was a neat little cut above his nose.
"Listen, I have an idea--"
"Shh," she cooed, "in the state you're in, you need to rest. Let my holograms do some work for once. "
She looked over his bare body, his clothes for the most part burnt away. The people were watching a fallen man fight to his bare skin and bones. But it would take a greater man to defeat this. He needed a new skin to become something else.
She touched his chest, her hands so cold compared to the heat he expended. A lattice of metallic fabric expanded from her palm and coated his body. When it cured its temperature, it was a navy blue. Upon his chest was a crest.
He tore the rest of his rags away, and looked down at his new fabrication. He looked at her, surprised.
"To them you are no longer a man," Chloe said, "you are the uniform, the hero, the hope of us all."
"And if I am just a man?"
*
Superman stepped out into the street. It was the first time anyone had seen the suit, the man as we remember him today. He stood in the sunlight, his eyes were closed. He seemed to be listening to something. Something just below the cusp of the silence that stopped everything in the world.
Every moment was televised. Every gesture of his jaw memorized. He looked out upon Metropolis, among the crowd of faces that watched on. And smiled at just one as she parted it to stand at the front.
An older man later identified as General Sam Lane of the U.S. Army stepped out from a tank and went to shake Superman's hand. A moment later stamped in history with a single photograph.
Historians say that Doomsday's measured strength was that of ten times the strength of Superman. No one knew how Superman did it, or how it was physically possible. Believers and optimists say that it was strength of the crowd that pushed the limits. It was the support of Superman's people who made the difference. It was the believers who knew that hope was stronger than all.
Superman walked to where Doomsday was waiting for him. A walk that turned into a jog and then a sprint. Then faster than a sprint. And faster. Soon, there was only a blur.
And then there was a roar, and they were up in the sky. Both of them, just going. They were going upwards with no sign of coming down. Into the big blue and past the sun.
It was up, up and up... and then no one spoke a word at all.
*
epilogue
Year one without Superman yielded a bounty of headlines that ranged from the hope that he would return, to the fear of when he did. There were still those who feared him, more so than they feared what Doosmday ever was. They feared his intellect, his free will. His ability to overcome the odds and physics. Even worse, they feared his perception of good. These groups continued what they did even before they had realized him; building taller and bigger research facilities and vaster, more expensive projects to protect themselves from anything more powerful than them.
For those who didn't, they built a bronze statue of him in the middle of Metropolis. It stood three stories tall, and gleamed every day as a bronze man looked upwards into the sun. Always looking for a higher purpose, a greater good. For the hope that maybe one day we might all make it.
Chloe never went back to Metropolis after that day. She remained at the Fortress searching for signals or signs. Discovering her new found abilities made her life much more complex as it ever had been. Brainiac introduced a new type of infection into her makeup, a type of boost to her intellect. The ability to immerse herself in the construct of technology itself. She had become, adaptive, in Brainiac's words. And as he promised, he did live on, through her.
In her years of study, Chloe became the last historian of the Kryptonian culture. She created libraries of knowledge deciphered from Jor-El's teachings, and even developed a cure for Kara's sickness.
Forgiveness, she learned was the hardest of all. Harder than patience and endurance.
But Kara didn't stay long, instead promising to find Clark, where ever he was. She left, into the sky. Much as Clark had.
The vacuum Clark left behind gave more freedom for the other heros of the world to step in and take a turn. They created the Justice League and other groups similar to it. Chloe played a minor part, but became more consumed with how to lengthen life spans, how to cure disease. She harnessed the knowledge of Kryptonian culture, but left out all the restrictions. Earth was an open world. A boundless place of growth and expansion. Years later, humanity reached out to the other stars beyond. It was the next frontier of existence, of exploration. Some searching for that mythological superman. Some, just adventure.
It was survival, she thought, her ideas spanning back to the reasons why she and Clark ever met at all. The random possibilities. The power of a small little rock. The gift it turned out to be, the change in all their lives. Their lives longer than ever imagined and now, what to do with all that time?
*
It was longer than ten years this time.
She had been deep in research in what power she did have in manipulating spacetime. It was very little power in fact. But what she discovered was that most of the power anyone had in the world was purely self possessed. It's what she learned back in her younger years of masquerading as Zatanna Zatara. Perception was in the mind.
She found what Clark was looking for. A different outcome, a different life with different choices with somewhat similar outcomes. Just a small change. Just to relive a small moment. A smile, or even a hello. But the closest she ever became was when she closed her eyes.
There was an alert from the holosphere.
Chloe lifted her head and read the information that spiraled in a hollow, giant globe that expanded in the Fortress.
"There," she said stopping the construct, "Take me there."
"As you wish." said Jor-El .The master programmer and her mentor these days.
*
Across the frozen waters, two drones sailed in accelerated speeds. They were elongated and flexible, buoyant if needed. The pilot steering pushed them to their mechanical limits.
They approached the target area and slowed. There was a break in the ice sheet. There was impact.
The drones hovered until their targeting measures were precise. Then they dove.
Below the ice where there was still free water, they motored down deeper.
There was no way of telling what had entered Earth's atmosphere. Millions upon thousands of meteorites crashed into its orbit everyday. Only this one had a resonance. This one, Chloe had hope.
The drones retrieved it from the water and brought it back to the Fortress.
It wasn't Clark, but a man. A pale greenish tint to his skin. A tattered blue cloak. In his frozen hand, a key. This man had known Clark. So she revived him to find the answers.
He said,
"He has done what he has promised."
It was the only thing that J'onn said for weeks until he finally came to. When he did, he told of his story and how Clark eventually saved him. He told her why he couldn't come back.
*
"But what will do you?" J'onn said.
"I will find him," Chloe said, as she pried open the rusted, frozen door to Pete Ross' old garage. It was still there. Right where Martha promised it would be so many years ago.
J'onn helped her drag the ship into the open clearing. The winter so much longer these days with the dying, red sun.
"This world, this different time and place you speak of," Chloe said, "I can't guarantee I will find him there. And I've found no evidence of another life other than this. All I know is that this life is very special. It may be the only one I have and as long as it is, I have to survive with it as long as I can. I can't chance what the next life will be. There may be none, or worse, there may be none other like him. "
She held up the old key he had kept for so long. But he had also sent it to her. It was the only sign she needed.
She collapsed her palms on the surface of the ship, the very one that started all of this. The shell rippled and then stretched to her calculations, her whim. She reconstructed it for her travel.
J'onn shook her hand and wished her luck in her journey.
But she didn't need it.
That day, another lone ship travelled into the interstellar space. Speeding past all the big blues and into the darker ones. Faster than light and through the murkier blacks and into the space where there was no color at all.
There was stars though. Countless stars so big and bright that you could never forget. Countless hopes and dreams, all scattered but united upon the single idea that they too would live on.
