“Lois, I think we need to have a talk when we get back to the office,” Perry suggested.
0 0 0
Perry set the pair in front of the computers closest to his office. “I’ll tell you what I told CJ. You can use their computers, but don’t change anything and absolutely do not delete or erase anything.”
Lois and CJ both nodded agreement. Perry had already noticed they each had sat down at the desks their namesakes had used.
“You two be good,” he warned as he went into his office and closed the door. He doubted closing the door would stop CJ from listening in if his suspicions were correct.
“Jim,” Perry began when the phone on the other end picked up. “Perry. Got a minute?”
“Sure,” Jim Olsen said. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, mostly,” Perry told him. “What have you told Lois about her parentage?”
Perry could hear Jim take a deep breath. “We figured it was too early. She’s only ten years old. I mean, she knows Lucy isn’t her biological mother, but we haven’t told her much else. And nothing’s happened yet.”
“I’m not so sure,” Perry told him. “A couple things happened today that make me think CJ is coming into his. And, for the most part, Lois was keeping up with him. I’m thinking it might be time.”
“But I thought we’d have at least until high school,” Jim said. “I thought that’s… I thought we had at least until puberty.”
“I’ve been wondering about that,” Perry admitted. “But I’m thinking that since CJ and his grandparents know that’s it’s going to happen, maybe we’re picking it up sooner. Also, CJ knows a lot of things that Clark knew. Things a ten-year-old from Kansas shouldn’t know.”
“Like what?”
“He recognized Lex Luthor when we ran into him at a shop near the park,” Perry explained. “He also wanted a book on reincarnation written in Hindi and I’ve no doubt he’ll be able to read it.”
“Perry, Lois has pulled some of the same things,” Jim said. “Not the language bit, even though I can’t believe how fast she picks up languages, but little comments on writing, crime. All the things Lois would comment on before… You said you guys ran into Luthor?”
“At a little metaphysical shop about half a mile from the Planet,” Perry told him. “And Jim, he has a display case with kryptonite in it.”
0 0 0
“Clarkie, what was Grandpa Perry talking about with my daddy?” Lois asked.
“Grandma says it’s not polite to listen to other people’s conversations,” CJ told her.
“Like you weren’t listening to Mister Alexander?” Lois challenged.
“That was different,” CJ defended himself. “That was Lex Luthor and he was looking at us funny. He also has kryptonite.”
“But that only effects people from Krypton, doesn’t it?”
CJ nodded his head. “But what if Superman wasn’t the only Kryptonian around? What if he had kids and they were sent to Earth to be raised?”
“Clarkie? Do you think that’s why I see colors Daddy can’t take pictures of? Colors that aren’t in any crayon box I can find?” she whispered.
“Like the color around things that are alive? And the color of things that are hot, even when other people can’t tell they’re hot?” CJ suggested quietly.
“And the color the sky gets then it’s cloudy and other people say the sun’s not out?”
“Could be,” CJ said. He looked worried.
“But that would mean my daddy’s not really my daddy,” Lois pointed out. Her eyes were starting to tear and she wiped at them angrily. Lois Lane didn’t cry in public. Her eyes widened as she regarded the boy sitting at the next desk. “Clark, we’re not brother and sister, are we?”
“No, honey,” Perry said, coming up behind them. “But I do have some things to talk to you two about.”
0 0 0
Lucy Olsen watched her husband close his cell phone and sit down on the sofa in their living room. He was taking a few days off from work to be with her during the tests and trying hard not to act as worried as she was sure he felt.
“What did Perry want?” Lucy asked. “And did I hear you mention Luthor?”
Jim nodded. “Perry thinks CJ is coming into his abilities and suspects Lois is too. Plus CJ seems to be accessing things Clark knew. That doesn’t surprise me, considering what he is. I mean Professor Hamilton was able to activate prior life memories in clones, so it’s definitely possible for CJ to have Clark’s memories. But our Lois seems to be accessing the other Lois’s memories as well, even though it’s just little things right now.”
“And Luthor?” Lucy asked. She remembered Lex Luthor’s obsession with her sister. Lois had always shrugged it off but Lucy suspected that it was more bravado than anything else. Luthor was one who didn’t take rejection well. She remembered his rants from prison after he was told that Lois Lane had died, accidentally, at the hands of Superman. The madman had sworn vengeance against the superhero, and sworn that Lois, ‘his Lois’, would return to him so they could be united forever. He’d even gone so far as to send agents to purchase the burial plots adjacent to Lois’s only to be foiled by the fact that Sam and Ellen Lane had already purchased them to enlarge the family plot.
“Perry said CJ recognized him and Perry’s real sure CJ’s right,” Jim told her.
“Jim, do you think the kids are in danger?”
“I honestly don’t know, Lucy,” Jim admitted. “I’d be less worried if they weren’t only ten years old.”
0 0 0
“Kids,” Perry began, closing the door to the office behind them. Lois climbed into one of the chairs facing his desk while CJ stood beside her. Their expressions were worried, expectant, even a touch belligerent – like they’re expecting me to cancel the investigation they’re on, one that isn’t panning out the way they wanted.
“There’s something I want you to hear,” he continued. He had a piece of cloth in his hand and picked up an object a little larger than a tennis ball, folding it into the cloth. He placed in on his desk. CJ and Lois both leaned closer to look at the round, soft green object. Perry touched it his bare hand and a man’s voice began to speak.
"This will be the last communication to Earth from the colony of New Krypton. I send this in hopes that the last two survivors have been retrieved safely because, by the time you hear this, there will be no sentient life left on New Krypton. There may, in fact, be no planet at all.
"As I'm sure you have surmised, the male child is the clone of Kal-El born of Zara. Our efforts to avoid that were not successful. His name is Ler-El. The female is his birth-wife, Lausa Gem-Ar, last daughter of the House of Ar, an old and noble house.
"Despite our best efforts to avoid conflict, Lord Nor and his followers attempted a coup against the Houses of El and Ra, making claims that the union of Zara and Kal-El was a subterfuge, that the child in her womb was not his. Civil war broke out. Many died. When it became apparent to Nor and his followers that they could not prevail militarily and relocating the colony to Earth was not an option, they attempted to coerce the population into accepting his rule by threatening to use weapons of mass destruction.
"I do not know how the weapons were deployed, if they were set off accidentally or deliberately, but within moments of launching the life pod to Earth, fusion devices were set off both on the surface and below ground. Zara is already dead as is most of the council of Elders, killed when the council chambers collapsed. By the time you hear this, the rest of us will have joined them.
"Please, take care of our children. They are all that are left of a once great people. They are our gift to you. Love them, as we should have done."
The recording ended and Perry put the globe back on the shelf. Even after all this time, Ching’s voice sent chills down his spine. The last message from a world that knew it was already dead.
“He’s talking about us,” Lois said quietly. “We’re the babies they sent to Earth.”
Perry nodded. He noted the speculative look she gave CJ.
“Kal-El was Superman, wasn’t he?” she asked. “That means… Clark was Superman?”
CJ nodded, watching Lois through the corners of his eyes, head bowed.
“I think I knew,” she murmured. It was uncanny to hear Lois Lane’s words coming out of the mouth of a child. She looked over at CJ. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “I knew the risks when I asked you to do it. It was an accident.”
Perry cleared his throat. “It may not have been an accident,” he said. They both looked up at him, eyes wide. “I’ve never said anything, not even to your dad,” he said, looking at Lois. “But after Clark died, one of my sources came to me. It was his contention that Lois’s autopsy showed that her body had been tampered with after she’d been frozen by Superman. Tampered with in such a way that made revival impossible. He also contended that District Attorney Grant Clemens had deliberately suppressed that evidence to try to get a conviction against Superman for second degree murder.”
Perry knew that the fact that Superman had confessed to involuntary manslaughter before Clemens could put together a grand jury had infuriated him. The fact that the judge in the case had also been convinced to be lenient made it even worse. Clemens had wanted to use Lane’s death as a platform for his bid for governor and a big showy trial would have been just the ticket for him.
“You mean Clemens let everybody believe that Superman was guilty of killing Lois when he knew all along it wasn’t true?” CJ asked. He actually looked pale. “He let Superman confess to a crime he hadn’t committed? Be punished for a crime he hadn’t committed?”
“Superman did put her life in danger by freezing her and we don’t know if he could have revived her,” Perry reminded him. “But it may be that someone made sure he couldn’t.”
“Do you think Jason Mazik knew who it was?” CJ asked.
“Impossible to say,” Perry told them. “Mazik was judged incompetent to stand trial for kidnapping the Kents, being an accessory in the death of Lois Lane and poisoning Nigel St. John. He was found murdered in his room at Belle Reve a little more than a year later, even though he was under constant camera surveillance and under suicide watch. My bet is that Luthor had him killed for killing Lois and St. John, but nothing could ever be proven.”
“And it’s too late to do anything, anyway,” CJ said. “Lois Lane has been dead twelve years. Clark Kent and Superman have both been dead for more than eleven years. Even if you could find anything, the statute of limitations has run out on whatever crimes Clemens may have committed.”
“We can clear Superman’s name,” Lois pointed out. “We might even figure out who really killed Lois Lane and Jason Mazik.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Perry asked. They both nodded solemnly. “Okay, you have my permission to try. Just don’t get me in trouble with child protective services, okay. I don’t think they’d believe me if I told them I thought you two were really twenty somethings hiding in ten year old bodies.”
0 0 0
“What did you find out?” Lex Luthor demanded as soon as Asabi came out of his trance.
“You were correct,” Asabi said. “Mister White’s grandchildren are, in fact, the reincarnations of the late Clark Kent and Lois Lane. But there’s something else going on with them as well, something the record keepers are blocking, aside from the fact that neither of them are actually biologically related to White during this incarnation.”
“I already knew that,” Luthor told him. “The boy is supposedly the son of Kent and some woman we don’t even have a name for since the one listed on the birth certificate is a fake. Same for the girl. The mother’s name is fake and there was no abandoned female newborn in the Greater Metropolis area that could possibly resemble that girl. So, tell me something I don’t know.”
“I was not able to completely access their records, sir,” Asabi said.
“You told me that the Akashic records were open to anyone with the ability to get to them?” Luthor demanded.
“They are,” Asabi told him. “Or at least they were. There is something very odd happening. Something the record keepers refused to explain except in riddles. I know they chose to return to Earth sooner than what would be normal. But I do not know the reason, and other information was blocked from me. Information concerning how they are linked to other members of their soul group, even information on other past incarnations was blocked,” Asabi told him. “It is almost as though… It’s almost as though the record keepers were on the lookout for someone who wishes to tamper with the records.”
“Is that possible?” Luthor asked.
“I don’t know,” Asabi admitted. “And I am fearful of finding out.”
