Richard watched as Maggie Sawyer checked her watch once more. “I should never have listened to you and your buddies,” she muttered. “I should have sent in a negotiator. And what’s with those get-ups, anyway?”
“Do you honestly think Luthor would negotiate with the cops when he’s looking to kill Superman?” Richard asked. “If there’s anyone on this planet capable of coming in under Luthor’s radar, it’ll be them.”
“And how do you know them?” Maggie demanded.
“Like I told you before, Mags, it’s complicated,” Richard said. He looked back at the Special Crimes Unit team that had been assembled to backup Jerome and Joanne. He was there out of sufferance – Lois Lane’s fiancé – even though he had admitted to Maggie that they were no longer engaged.
“Superman?” she had asked by way of an explanation.
“Jason’s father, Clark Kent,” Richard had replied.
“It’s the quiet ones that sneak up on you,” Maggie had commented. “Can’t say it surprises me.”“It’s always complicated with you people.” She stopped, listening to the voice in her headset. “We have a signal… Let’s go.”
* * *
“You are not Zod. Who are you?” Luthor demanded, glaring at Jerome as he climbed to his feet.
Joanne set Jason on his feet with the whispered instructions of “Run away as fast as you can.” He ran.
She caught Lois’s eye and jerked her head toward the open doorway. Lois looked over at Clark, who shook his head ever so slightly. Then Lois ran after Jason, baby Esperanza clutched in her arms.
“You’re right,” Jerome stated. “I am not General Zod. If I were, you would already be dead. He would not have taken kindly to your attack on a Kryptonian royal house, even if it was the House of El.”
Clark had secured the other three men, lashing their hands behind their backs. He used the extra cable ties to secure them to the legs of the table that was set against the far wall. Then he started toward Luthor.
“Hey, we can work something out,” Luthor began again. There was sweat running down the sides of his face. “I know where Kal-El’s little home away from home is… I know things… I can give you the world.”
“You cannot bargain with what you do not have,” Jerome repeated.
Clark grabbed one of Luthor’s arms and began to loop one of the cable ties around his wrist. Luthor tried to break away, grabbing for Joanne. Joanne backed away then she saw fear in his eyes as Clark’s arm snaked around his neck. “Please give me reason why I should not break your neck right now?”
“Clark,” Joanne spoke up. “You don’t want to do this.”
“On the contrary,” Clark said softly. “There is nothing I want to do more.”
“Clark, don’t lower yourself to his level.” It was Richard standing in the doorway, wearing a Kevlar vest and helmet. He had a black motorcycle helmet in his hand. Maggie Sawyer was standing beside him with other officers in battle dress behind them.
Clark pulled his arm away from Luthor’s neck and reached down to grab Luthor’s other wrist, pulling the man’s hand out of his jacket pocket. Joanne and Jerome moved aside to allow several officers enter the chamber to arrest and Mirandize Luthor’s henchmen. Then Joanne saw Jerome’s head swing around, eyes widening.
“Out!” he yelled, grabbing Clark and Joanne and shoving them both out the open doorway, knocking Richard and Maggie to the ground. Joanne felt the whoosh of air as Jerome flew back into the room, the hood of the cloak covering his head. She saw him grab the three police officers as the roof started to cave in on them. Then, he and the officers were standing in the doorway, pulling Maggie and Richard to their feet.
“Run!” he ordered. Joanne didn’t need a second warning. She grabbed Clark’s arm and ran hard, hoping the SCU team was following.
“What the hell just happened?” Maggie demanded as soon as they were on the street outside the Wincote building.
Jerome didn’t speak but gestured for Joanne to take the heavy cloak off his shoulders. The cloak was covered in green and gray dust. Kryptonite? She eased the cloak away from him, folding it so that the dust remained inside the material as she took it off him.
“Are you okay?” she asked. He nodded and she saw that he was holding his breath. She hurried it away from him and she heard him take a deep breath.
“The lead surrounding the bomb limited my exposure,” Jerome explained. “I was damn lucky.”
Joanne took the cape over to the officer manning the SCU van. “This will need to be cleaned,” she told him as she handed it to him.
“What the devil is this made from?” he asked, hefting it in his arms. Joanne knew it weighed well over fifty pounds.
“It’s a new experimental fabric,” she told him. “Radiation proof and bullet proof. It’s for Superman. Sometimes he’s the one who needs rescuing.” She grinned at his astonished expression then undid her leather belt and unclipped the miniature transmitter that had been hidden inside. She handed that to him as well then turned to make her way back to her husband.
“Luthor set off the second part of his trap for Superman,” Jerome was explaining to Maggie and several others, including Lois, Clark, and Richard. “A bomb laced with kryptonite hidden inside the lead lining of the chamber. The trigger must have been the little LED thingy he had on his key chain.”
“Could we be so lucky that he got caught in his own trap?” Lois asked.
“I doubt it,” Clark answered her question. “Rats always have bolt-holes and Luthor’s no exception. I should have killed him while I had the chance.”
“Believe me, you don’t want to darken your soul that way,” Jerome said softly. “He’ll be caught and brought to justice. In the meantime, we still have things to do.”
Clark gave Jerome a speculative look. “Such as?”
“Getting you and Lois and the kids checked out, and then seeing what we can do about that little virus Luthor cooked up to take out Superman,” Joanne said.
“I’m okay,” Clark insisted.
“No, you’re not,” Lois contradicted, looking into his eyes. “You’re coming with me and the kids to the hospital. No arguments.” She grabbed his arm and led him away toward the waiting ambulance.
“I just want to thank you for helping out, for getting Lois and Jason out of there,” Richard began. “And Clark and the baby, of course.”
“Richard, I know it doesn’t look…” Joanne started.
“No, don’t,” Richard said. “I broke it off. I realized that although I’m sure she loves me, she isn’t in love with me. She never was. And as much as I love her, I’ll never be number one in her life, or even number two, and that’s not fair to any of us.”
“Richard, do yourself a favor and don’t walk out on Jason,” Jerome told him. “Just remember that it doesn’t matter who his biological parents are, he’s still your son too.”
“You sound like my Uncle Perry,” Richard commented.
Jerome chuckled. “Perry’s a wise man. You’d do well to listen to him.”
Maggie stood watching them. She cleared her throat to get Jerome’s attention. “I’ll catch up to Lane and Kent later and get their statements. But now you can tell me what happened in there.”
“I assume you have recordings from the wire my wife was wearing,” Jerome said.
“Yeah. Luthor was talking about having killed Superman,” Maggie told him. “Some sort of bio-weapon. He was also saying Lane’s little boy is Superman’s kid?”
“Jason Lane, or White or whatever, is Clark Kent’s son and a paternity test will prove it,” Joanne told her. “Besides, Luthor is nuts. A couple parlor tricks and he thought Jerome was a Kryptonian warlord.”
Maggie just shook her head, but Joanne couldn’t tell if it was from disbelief or something else. “Come down to my office after you’ve gotten yourselves into some proper clothes and we’ll get your statement.” She glanced at the rescue workers who were coming out of the building shaking their heads. “Pity that killing his own people won’t stop him from putting together another gang.”
“At least you know he’s still in the city,” Jerome reminded her.
“Oh yeah, Luthor’s in the city, but where’s Superman?” Maggie asked.
“I’m sure he’s around,” Jerome assured her. “And even if he isn’t, Metropolis got by without him.”
“Sure we got by, but it’s kinda’ like having a man around the house,” Maggie said with more than a touch of sarcasm in her voice. “We don’t need him, but sometimes he’s nice to have around.”
* * *
Lois stood with Clark and Jason in the examining room as they waited for the doctors to finish checking over a screaming Esperanza. Lois and Jason had already gotten clean bills of health – despite Jason having been kidnapped from the ICU. Lois had been given from a recommendation to take some time off and get some sleep. She’d been going for nearly forty-eight hours straight and hospital coffee wasn't helping. I’m just not as young as I used to be.
Clark had simply refused to be examined.
“Clark, please be reasonable. Nosebleeds are not normal,” Lois found herself saying.
“I have an idea about that,” Clark told her, keeping his voice pitched low. “It happened when Luthor had the crystal out. It was making me sick and then Jerome made contact. He had no way of knowing what was happening with me. I didn’t tell him and I think he pushed too hard.”
“Are you really okay?”
“I’m okay. Not super, but okay,” Clark told her.
The doctor who was examining the baby turned to Clark. “She’s got a good set of lungs, I’ll tell you that. But aside from being hungry, wet, and annoyed as all get out, she’s a perfectly healthy baby girl.” One of the nurses picked her up and handed her to Clark.
“You’re sure?” Clark asked.
“Positive,” the doctor said. “But there is a flag on her chart. Doctor Banks up in genetic counseling would like you to stop by her office.”
* * *
“You’re sure you’re okay?” Lois insisted. She was carrying Esperanza again. A bottle of formula had calmed the baby and she was now asleep, finally. Clark had Jason on one hip. The hospital had managed to locate Jason’s clothes and he was now dressed in something more than the loose hospital pajamas he’d been wearing.
“I’m fine, really,’ Clark told her. “I should probably be dead, except I think Luthor miscalculated. He thought the virus would be virulent enough to kill.”
“Lucky he was wrong,” Lois said. “You worried me, you know. I saw your face when that thug came at you. It was like when Jerome was fighting the assassin. No emotion, no nothing. It wasn't you.”
“If it wasn't me, then who was it?” Clark asked.
“Maybe I misspoke,” Lois said, her voice low as she picked through her words. “All this time I thought I had you pegged. The farm boy in the big city. It has occurred to me that the reason I didn’t make the connection was that I couldn’t see you outside of that box I put you in. Even when I knew that you had that other job, the one in the blue suit, I couldn’t see you outside of the boxes. The one where Clark Kent is an old-fashioned, nerdy fellow who shouldn’t be out on the streets without a keeper and the other one. The one that does impossible things every day.”
“And now?”
“And now, I’m not so sure,” she admitted.
They arrived at Doctor Banks’s office. The door was open and Clark stuck his head in. “Doctor Banks?”
A dark skinned woman with gray hair looked up from a cluttered desk. “Yes?”
“I’m Clark Kent. You flagged Esperanza Kent’s chart?”
“Yes, come in,” the woman urged. “Take a seat.” She typed a command into her computer and then rummaged around the top of her desk for a file. “A request went through last night for a paternity test for you and a female infant prior to issuing a birth certificate for the child.”
“Yes, but I thought those tests took more than a week to process,” Clark said, settling into one of the two chairs that faced the desk. Lois took the other one.
“The full analysis takes a few days, but we already have some preliminary results. You happen to have a very rare blood type, and so does the baby. In fact, your blood type is rare enough you should consider banking some blood,” Doctor Banks told them. She handed Clark a business card. “That’s for a blood bank,” she explained. “But, given that Superman publicly stated that the child is yours, and the rareness of your blood type, I’m quite confidant that you are in fact the child’s father.”
“So there shouldn’t be a problem getting her birth certificate?” Lois asked.
Banks nodded, looking to Clark. “Unless something completely unexpected shows up in the DNA tests, and I seriously doubt it will, you’re a daddy.”
* * *
“You’re sure there’s nothing else you want to add?” Maggie demanded. Jerome and Joanne were wearing their street clothes again and looked far less intimidating and bizarre.
“Captain, you have the recording off the wire my wife was wearing and we’ve both told you what we observed,” Jerome told her. “We’ve also told you that I seriously doubt we’ll be around to be called to testify at Luthor’s trial, once you catch him.”
“But you won’t tell me where you’ll be?” Maggie stated. Jerome shrugged. “Who are you, really? Your ID wasn’t issued by the state of New Troy, even though it looks damned authentic.”
“It is authentic,” Joanne stated. “But I doubt you’ll believe the explanation.”
“That Metropolis is a city in the Twilight Zone?” Maggie said with a sardonic grin. “Yeah, I believe it. Heck, we’ve got an alien who flies hanging out here. Once you buy that, you’ll buy anything.”
“I’m sorry we can’t be of more help,” Jerome said, getting to his feet.
“Just tell me one more thing,” Maggie said, getting up from her desk. “Is Superman okay?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Jerome told her. “I’m reasonably certain he will be okay. But I don’t know how long it will take.”
“So be prepared for anything?”
“That’s always a good bet, Captain,” Joanne said.
* * *
“How much of the clumsy nerd is an act?” Lois asked as they got into her car in the hospital parking garage.
“Probably less than you think,” he said. He sighed. “I try so hard not to be too ‘different’ at work I tend to over-compensate. Sometimes it’s even fun, in a perverse sort of way.”
It was Lois’s turn to sigh. “Richard is going to Paris with Penny because he thinks I chose you over him. He thinks I chose Jason’s father over Jason’s daddy.”
“Have you?”
“Eight years ago, I fell in love with an illusion, a character, someone who wasn’t real,” Lois said, staring off into space. “He was bigger than life and unobtainable. He was safe. He knew who I was and I knew that he knew I was his biggest fan and I knew that no matter how hard I wanted it, how much I tried, he would never be anything other than perfectly out of reach.”
“And then?”
“And then I discovered that he wasn’t out of reach,” she said. “I also discovered he had fallen for me, too. I was delighted. Prince Charming was real and he had a palace. He could give me anything. But I didn’t know him.”
“Lois, I’m not sure where you’re…”
“I’m saying that maybe Jason isn’t all wrong when he pointed out that a kid needs his father around. And you still need a place to live. And it will be a lot easier for you to do that other job if you have somebody around to help with Esperanza,” Lois said. “I’m also saying that we have some things to work out and we shouldn’t rush into it. I said I was in love with all of you and I meant it. I just need to get to know you.”
“I just hope I’m not too disappointing,” he said softly. “Lois, what happens if Luthor wasn't wrong? What happens if he really did kill Superman?”
“Then, Clark Kent will still be the second best reporter on the Planet,” Lois said.
“But I won’t be…” his voice trailed off.
“Clark, you know what your biggest problem is?” Lois asked, raising one eyebrow at him.
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
She chuckled then allowed her expression to become pensive. “You’re so concerned about the other person that you don’t consider what you want, what you need.”
“I did that six years ago and look what it got me,” Clark reminded her.
“It got you me,” she reminded him. “And it got you a son.”
“And it got me nearly six years missing out of my life.”
“So maybe now’s a good time to start making up for lost time,” she told him.
* * *
Richard, Jerome, Joanne and an older man Lois assumed was H.G. Wells were all waiting at the riverside house when she, Clark and the two kids rolled in.
“The kids check out as okay, and the preliminary tests show that Clark really is Esperanza’s father,” Lois announced as she walked in.
“That’s great,” Richard told her. Lois noted the suitcase sitting on the floor beside him. He followed her gaze and gave her an embarrassed smile. “I figured it might be better if I moved out now, instead of waiting. Then you and Clark can figure out what you both want to do.”
“Where will you be?” Lois asked.
“The downtown Hilton,” Richard told her, picking up his suitcase. “Penny offered to put me up, but it wouldn’t look right. I’ll call you later and we’ll work out me taking Jason to the zoo tomorrow.” He ruffled Jason’s hair. “You be good, kiddo. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He started for the door.
“Richard?” Lois said. He stopped and looked back at her. “I know it sounds weird, especially right now, but I think you and Penny can be very happy together.”
“You mean that?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” Lois assured him. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”
Richard nodded then walked out. Jason watched after him. “Daddy’s leaving?”
“He’ll be back, Jason,” Clark told him crouching down to be on his level. “I’m sure of it. And remember, you have two daddies now and they both love you very much. But, right now the grownups need to talk and you’ve had a hard night, so why don’t you run upstairs and take a nap?”
Jason looked over to his mother for confirmation and she nodded her head. He pouted, but headed up the stairs anyway.
“So, what’s going on?” Clark asked. “Is everything going to be okay?”
Wells looked surprised at the question. “Oh, yes, quite,” he stammered. “The future is pretty much back to they way it was originally. Before the tempocane messed things up. In fact, I suspect things may be even better than they were.”
“And my powers? Luthor is still loose, you know.”
“Ah, yes…” Wells began.
Jerome shook his head and Wells snapped his mouth shut. “Originally, Luthor’s virus took away your powers for several months, and you recovered with no other ill-effects,” Jerome explained. “But the baby was infected with a New Kryptonian virus. When she was brought over here, you and Jason were also infected. Jason survived, being half-human but you and the baby died. That left Luthor free to do whatever he wanted.”
“But they’re not dead,” Lois reminded them.
“Very true. Like I explained before, Lois and I tend to get called in when things like this happen,” Jerome said with a wry smile. “The drugs we brought with us were not available in this universe – although you might want to check with your AI. It might have some information on them. But, just keeping you from dying wasn't enough. Luthor still had to be neutralized. My Lois and I managed to do that, with some help from you, the Daily Planet, and the MPD. I make a fairly convincing New Kryptonian, if I say so myself.”
“So now the future is safe?” Lois asked.
“The future is never completely ‘safe’,” Wells told her. “But the damage this incident created has been repaired.”
“So, what happens now?” Clark asked.
Joanne chuckled. “Now we all get on with our lives.”
Wells started keying instructions into the ‘PDA’ in his hand.
“But, will we see you again?” Lois asked.
“Who knows?” Jerome said as Wells pressed one last button. The three shimmered and wavered, then vanished.
Lois put her arm around Clark’s waist, pulling herself close to him. He put his arm around her.
“Luthor’s still out there,” he reminded her.
“But Lane and Kent will find him, and take him out,” she promised.
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