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Clana Episode 9.09: "Harbinger"

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  • Clana Episode 9.09: "Harbinger"

    Harbinger

    By Carolus

    Summary: Rewrite of episode 9.09, “Pandora.” Tess kidnaps Lois to find out where she went after she disappeared for three weeks, and discovers memories of a future where Zod rules the world under a red sun with the help of a surprising ally, while Chloe and Oliver lead a resistance group against the Kandorian army.
    Rating: PG-13 for violence and sexual situations.
    Spoilers: Everything up to and including “Power,” serious spoilers for “Pandora.”
    Author Notes: This story is set in my Clana-friendly season nine, which ignores the events of “Requiem” in season eight and follows “Reign,” which contains links to previous stories in the series, “Synthesis,” “Frenzy,” “Surprise,” “Roulette,” “Vicious,” “Genesis,” and “Image.” The Kryptonian TrueType font will be required to read certain symbols.
    Disclaimer: Smallville doesn’t belong to me, unfortunately, but to Tollin/Robbins Productions, Millar Gough Ink, DC Comics, and Warner Brothers Television. I’m just having some fun here.

    * * * * *

    Early September, 2009
    Metropolis, Kansas


    “And I told you, Lois doesn’t have that kind of time,” Oliver Queen argued into his cellphone as he paced back and forth in his office at LuthorCorp Plaza as the reddish light of dawn shone in through the windows. His ex-girlfriend had lapsed into a coma after collapsing at the Daily Planet the previous day, and he was very upset with the lack of progress in her case. “You get Dr. Weiss on a helicopter and get him to Met Gen now.”

    Clicking a button on his phone to end the call, Oliver turned at the sound of rapid footsteps to see Clark striding into the office with a sheaf of papers in his right hand and a concerned look on his face. He was a bit thrown by the fact that Clark was wearing black horn-rimmed glasses, but decided to wait until later to ask about them.

    “Clark, I got three of the country’s best neuro MDs on their way,” he told the Kryptonian.

    “It’s too late,” Clark reported. “Lois is already missing.”

    “What do you mean, she’s missing?” Oliver replied, shocked. “You took her to the hospital, Clark. You’ve been with her all night while your cousin and Lana patrolled.”

    “I was, until I stepped out for a few minutes to see if you called, and when I got back, she was gone,” Clark replied. Glancing over the papers in his hand, he said, “There’s nothing in her chart, no releases, and no witnesses.”

    “The hospital said someone called and requested a copy of Lois’ test results,” Oliver informed him. “It was Emil Hamilton.”

    Puzzled, Clark asked, “Why would Emil care about Lois?”

    “He wouldn’t,” Oliver replied before going to say, “But maybe the person he’s working for would.”

    It only took a second for Clark to realize who the billionaire was talking about.

    “Chloe,” he grimly concluded aloud.

    It certainly fit with the clandestine way of operating that his best friend had adopted over the last few months, Clark thought. But why would Chloe have her own cousin kidnapped from a hospital?

    * * * * *

    Elsewhere, two dark-uniformed men carried an unconscious, hospital gown-clad Lois between them as they marched down a dark corridor of a supposedly abandoned wing of Belle Reve Sanitarium. Entering a room filled with advanced computer equipment, they secured to her to a metal-framed plastic operating table tilted to a vertical position in the center of the center.

    “Thank you, that’ll be all,” Tess Mercer told the men, dismissing them.

    “Spying on Lois’ computers and hacking into her therapist’s files wasn’t enough?” Stuart Campbell questioned as he attached two glowing green kryptonite-infused circular electronic leads to Lois’ temples, then activated a servomechanism that tilted her table to a horizontal position. “Did you really have to escalate to kidnapping her from a coma ward?”

    “There’s a mystery surrounding Miss Lane, and I intend to solve it,” Tess replied as she read through Dr. Evans’ computerized notes of her sessions with Lois.

    “So, what, all this is because she told her shrink she has headaches and sees weird, futuristic flashes?” Stuart queried as he began typing at a nearby terminal.

    Seeing the sharp look that Tess gave him as she turned away from the monitor, the hacker defensively replied, “What? I can’t hack into these files and not read them.”

    “They’re called ‘boundaries,’ Stuart. Find some,” Tess ordered him sternly. Turning back to the monitor, she mused, “And these futuristic flashes may not be imaginary. Besides, Lois was investigating Zod’s Orb when she vanished for three weeks.”

    “What, you think these are repressed memories that she’s already been through?” Stuart asked.

    “This technology will tell us,” Tess replied as she walked over to look at the monitor at Stuart’s terminal. The system was a blend of the memory retrieval technology developed by Project Starhawk and the neural interface that LuthorCorp had created via Project Intercept to link minds.

    As Stuart continued typing, the screen showed a rotating wireframe image of a human brain in red next to a three-by-three grid of onscreen buttons labeled “CALIBRATE,” “CHANNEL 1,” “CHANNEL 2,” “EEG AMP,” “BIO AMP,” “BAND COUP,” “RECORD,” “STOP,” and “PRINT” above the words NO SIGNAL and a depiction of Lois’ gently waving electroencephalograph.

    Stuart clicked on “EEG AMP,” then “CHANNEL 1” and “BIO AMP,” and the NO SIGNAL turned to the words HOST ENGAGED. A moment later the screen changed to display a series of blurry images: a ragged black flag, droplets falling into a puddle of blood, a man with a white “Z”-like symbol on his shirt landing in front of two joined towers…

    “Can’t you get more than just fragments?!” Tess cried, frustrated at the poor quality of the images that they were seeing.

    “I’m sorry, Tess, but her mind is like a mental mosh pit right now, okay?” Stuart replied apologetically. “Only a human--”

    “Pause it,” Tess suddenly ordered, seeing something familiar in the images. Stuart complied, and the redhead stared for several seconds as the screen froze on the image of two towers with the red Kandorian flag hanging from the bridge joining them.

    “That’s Zod’s solar tower -- exactly as it’s designed to be built. But the plans haven’t even gone public yet,” Tess stated. She stood there, silent for a moment before realizing aloud, “Lois did go to the future.”

    “Okay, well, we better pop some popcorn, because she’s remembering something,” Stuart replied.

    As Tess glanced over at the unconscious Lois on the table, deep inside the reporter’s mind, Lois flashed back on their fight in May, which had culminated in her picking up a strange gold ring that had fallen out of a box that had been knocked off Clark’s desk, then a bright violet burst of light…

    When the violet light faded away, Lois found herself lying flat on the floor of the basement bullpen of the Daily Planet, still clutching the ring. Absently dropping the ring on the floor as she leapt to her feet, the brunette warily looked around the bullpen for any sign of Tess Mercer, but saw no one.

    “Tess, where are you?” she loudly asked before she contemptuously added, “Don’t start what you can’t finish.”

    Taking a better look at her surroundings, Lois saw the bullpen wasn’t just empty; it looked abandoned -- a conclusion that was reinforced when the brunette ran a hand over some papers on a nearby desk.

    “What the hell?” Lois murmured as she saw the thick coating of dust that came away on her fingertips.

    She knew she’d been out for a while, judging by the fact that it had been nighttime when she’d fought Tess and the amount of light coming into the bullpen indicated that it was day now -- a fact certainly supported by the blood that she felt at her left temple where she’d hit her head. But this much dust indicated that the bullpen had been empty for months, at least.

    And there was someone wrong with the color of the sunlight that was coming in, she realized as she turned and looked in the direction of the stained glass window near the ceiling. It was too red.

    Walking up to the front exit of the Daily Planet and going out the revolving door, Lois noted a multitude of flyers taped to the glass, each of which depicted red stylized sunbeams radiating from a black clenched fist, with the words FREE EARTH stenciled over it in a semicircle.

    “Free Earth”? Lois thought, puzzled. It sounded like some new environmentalist slogan -- or maybe the name of a radical movement, she thought, based on the clenched fist in the design.

    The reporter’s thoughts were pulled away from the meaning of the flyers to other matters as she walked through the revolving door and saw what had become of Metropolis. The outside of the Daily Planet building was grimy and scorched. Stone, wood, and metal debris littered the streets, including streetlamps that had been torn from the ground and cast aside. Abandoned vehicles were either burned out or covered with massive dents, some of which had been inflicted by dropping pieces of shattered masonry the size of a public mailbox on them. Various storefronts had been smashed in -- some of them covered with plywood decorated with larger versions of the same “Free Earth” signs that she’d seen at the Planet -- and most buildings had sustained damage, including a few that were missing a story or two.

    Most ominously, Lois could neither see nor hear any sign of people about. It was as if the entire city was abandoned, just like the Daily Planet.

    “Hello? Is anyone there?” she called out, but received no answer. What had happened here, some kind of war? And what was with the weird red tone of the sunlight shining down on her -- even though it was bright enough to be the middle of the day?

    As she turned to look down the street to her left, Lois’ attention was seized by the sight of the sun -- huge and red as it hung high in a cloudy, reddish-orange sky.

    Standing there staring at the red sun and wondering how the hell that had happened, Lois heard a loud whoosh behind her. Turning in the direction of the sound, she beheld two large, majestic towers half a dozen blocks away connected by a bridge from which hung a red flag decorated with an angular black quatrefoil design inside a white square whose corners pointed north, south, east and west. A scarlet beam lanced from the top of the left tower into the sky, and as Lois watched, a dark form whizzed through the sky, coming out from behind the tower on the right.

    The object’s flight described an arc as it turned toward her, then accelerated, Lois only realizing that it was a man a second before the figure touched down feet first, briefly raising a cloud of dust on impact.

    Lois flinched, startled as much by the figure’s identity as she was by his mode of arrival -- because it was Clark Kent, dressed very differently than she was accustomed to. Her coworker wore black pants and boots with a long, dark red leather coat over a black T-shirt that had a white “Z”-like symbol on the chest made up of a diagonal slash with a knotlike figure in its center that extended from the lower left of the design to its upper right and was framed by two rotated “L”-shapes, one on the upper left and one on the lower right, with a large white dots above the left L’s corner, and another below the right L’s corner. He also wore a metal dogtag on a chain around his neck that was stamped with another symbol: an irregular pentagonal diamond framing the same diagonal slash with the knot in its center as the design on his shirt.

    Most disturbing, however, was the cold, assessing expression on Clark’s face and the steely look in his blue-green eyes as he looked her over.

    “Lois Lane,” he said, his voice further unnerving Lois, as his tone held not a trace of friendship or warmth. “Curious to find you here, after so many months. This zone is off-limits to your kind, after all.”

    “‘My kind’ ?” Lois echoed, momentarily indignant at Clark’s words despite the situation and his reference to the passage of time. “What crazy pills have you been taking, Smallville?”

    Gesturing at him and at their surroundings, she asked, “What’s the deal with the sun? What happened to Metropolis? And how the hell are you flying, Clark?”

    Clark cocked his head slightly, the right corner of his mouth quirking up in a brief, contemptuous half-smile before he answered her, saying, “It’s no longer Metropolis, but New Kandor, capital of New Krypton -- and the birthplace of the new Kryptonian empire.”

    He paused briefly, his expression turning utterly serious before he told her, “And do not call me Clark Kent. My name is Knor-El.”

    Okay, he’s officially lost it, Lois decided. Her friend had turned into just another crazy meteor freak. She brought her right leg up in a roundhouse kick, aiming for Clark’s head. To her dismay, he effortlessly caught her leg with his left hand a foot away from his head, then casually pushed the limb away, sending her sprawling backward onto the ground.

    Realizing that she was in over her head as Clark slowly began to advance on her, Lois got up and ran away. The Kryptonian coolly watched her go as she ran around the corner, then superspeeded after her, Lois skidding to a halt as she suddenly found Clark standing in her way with his hands clasped behind his back.

    “I don’t care what crazy powers the meteors’ve given you, Clark,” Lois declared as she glanced at a nearby phone booth, confidently adding, “The Red-Blue Blur will stop you.”

    “Not under a red sun, he won’t,” her former friend refuted with a smile of cold amusement. Glancing over Lois’ shoulder at something behind her, he added, “Look around you, Lois. The Blur… is as good as dead.”

    Turning and looking in the direction indicated by Clark’s gaze, Lois saw a makeshift wooden flagpole from which fluttered a tattered black shirt with a silver-white emblem similar to the one on his dogtag, only with a serpentine “S” shape inside the pentagonal diamond:


    !

    Lois had never seen the emblem before, but if what Clark was saying was true -- that the Red-Blue Blur was gone -- what hope was there for the world?

    * * * * *
    Last edited by carolus; 09-11-2014, 09:20 AM.

  • #2
    Well Carolus, what a great start to episode 9.09 Harbinger. I was a little surprised to read that it was Clark who greeted Lois instead of Basqut. It also raised some questions like how does Clark have his powers unless he is wearing blue kryptonite which may grant him powers under the red sun. One other question is what are the fates of Lana and Kara. Maybe they joined the resistance with Chloe and Oliver. I'll just have to wait and see. God bless you, Nick!

    Comment


    • #3
      Love the description of Lois' mind. Spot on there. And as usual, she is the one causing trouble by some way, shape or form. In this case it's the information Tess thinks she may have. Great descriptions of a post-disaster Metropolis. Another great start to continue this series.

      Comment


      • #4
        “Hey, Tess, tuning the TV to Channel Lois is one thing,” Stuart Campbell said as he affixed a set of electronic leads identical to the ones attached to Lois to Tess’ temples, the LuthorCorp CEO grunting slightly in pain as the sharp points of the leads dug into her skin, “but synching your brainwaves to hers?”

        “All we’re seeing on the screen are jumbled images,” Tess reminded Stuart as she reclined against a metal-framed plastic table like the one that Lois was lying on a few feet away. “To get the answers I’m looking for, I need to plug in.”

        “Look, I-I didn’t build this technology, okay?” Stuart stammered as he walked over to the computer terminal controlling the apparatus that Lois and Tess were attached to. “Don’t you think that we should have someone from Summerholt here?”

        Not that he liked Tess Mercer all that much, given the way that she threatened him every damn time that he put so much as a toe out of line, but he didn’t want to be on the hook for manslaughter if this thing went south and she and Lois Lane ended up vegetables.

        “Zod said that his tower is going to change the world,” Tess mused aloud. “Lois’ memories of the future should show me how.”

        “Okay,” Stuart acquiesced.

        “How hard can this be?” he said to himself as he began entering commands at his terminal. Behind him, a monitor behind him that displayed two wireframe images of the human brain -- one in red, for Lois, and the other in blue, for Tess -- displayed the words HOST ENGAGED, and the servomechanisms attached to Tess’ table whirred to life, lowering her to a horizontal position next to Lois.

        A moment later there was a loud hum and Lois began shaking slightly as the machinery made a neural link behind her and Tess, and the redhead was plunged into Lois’ memory…

        “Put… me… down!!!” Lois screamed, struggling against Clark as he flew through the air with her body slung over his shoulders like she was a sack of potatoes.

        It probably wasn’t the smartest demand, considering that they were at least a couple hundred feet off the ground at the moment, but Lois didn’t care. All she wanted was to get away from Clark or Knor-El or whatever he was calling himself now -- and what the hell kind of name was Knor-El, anyway? It sounded like a soup mix or something.

        “As you wish,” Clark coolly replied as he suddenly changed course, turning in flight to zoom toward a nearby building.

        Lois barely registered that her onetime friend was heading toward a balcony near the building’s summit before he hurled her bodily through the balcony’s open doorway into the apartment beyond. Surprised, the brunette emitted a brief yelp of fear as she sailed through the air before hitting the floor -- which, fortunately for her, was heavily carpeted, softening her landing.

        “Oof,” Lois grunted as she rose to her feet, then turned and glared at Clark as he walked inside the apartment. “I said put me down, not throw me.”

        “Mere semantics,” Clark dismissed as he shut the glass double doors behind him, then stripped off his long red leather coat before absently tossing it onto the couch next to the doorway. The action revealed a metallic bracer made of a bluish alloy on Clark’s left wrist that had been hidden by the sleeves of his coat, but that wasn’t what got Lois’ attention. It was the red plush semicircular couch that Clark had thrown his coat on, not to mention the balcony behind him; she’d seen them before, on numerous occasions.

        Taking a quick look around at their surroundings, Lois mentally confirmed that they were standing in Oliver’s penthouse in Queen Tower -- only a certain someone had apparently done a little redecorating. In addition to the thick Persian rugs that now covered much of the apartment’s tile floor, she also saw a large red banner on the walls on either side of her. The one that hung on the wall next to the couch was imprinted with the same angular black quatrefoil symbol made of four-sided diamonds inside a white square as appeared on the flag hanging from the joined twin towers that she’d seen outside, and the one on the wall next to the elevator bore a large black diagonal slash with a knot in its center set inside a diamond-shaped pentagon, just like the symbol on the dogtag around Clark’s neck.

        Those weren’t the only changes to the décor, either. Turning to face the rear wall, Lois saw that the doors composing the large semicircular clock face that had concealed Oliver’s arsenal now stood open, and the walls of the room inside were a reddish hue instead of their former green. Furthermore, Oliver’s bows and quivers of arrows had been replaced with an array of weapons more suited to close combat.

        There were short, long, and two-handed swords with single-edged, curved blades reminiscent of Japanese blades, but with hilts more akin to the elven weapons in the Lord of the Rings movies. There was a dagger with a long, leaf-shaped blade engraved with strange symbols in gold and a grip that seemed to be made out of a faceted piece of opaque white crystal. There was a six-foot polearm equipped with a square, hammer-like metal head like an oversized meat tenderizer on one end and a vicious-looking barbed hook on the other.

        There were a number of odder-looking weapons as well, like a weapon that looked like an oversized, asymmetric boomerang, about three feet long and made out of metal with a sharpened outer edge, very sharp-looking ends, and several leather-wrapped grips cut into the dull inside edge. There was a pair of large, heavy knives, each with a blade resembling that of a bearded battleaxe, and each set with finger holes in the rear edge like brass knuckles. The most unwieldy-looking one was a ten-foot length of metal chain whose ends each culminated in a semicircular blade like the one on that weapon that Mr. Spock had tried to slice and dice Captain Kirk with in the old Star Trek episode where they’d been forced to fight on Vulcan.

        And speaking of Star Trek, there was also a combination spiked mace/gauntlet that reminded her a lot of a weapon from that early episode of The Next Generation where the security chief got herself kidnapped and then was forced to fight the pissed-off wife of the ass who’d kidnapped her. Whoever wrote that piece of garbage should’ve been shot.

        “Ollie’s really gonna be pissed off by what you’ve done to his place,” Lois commented dryly as she turned back to the Kryptonian, waving a hand in the direction of the weapons room as she added, “Especially since you replaced his gear with a bunch of stuff that looks like you ordered it out of a fantasy weapons catalog.”

        “Oliver Queen’s opinion is of no consequence to me,” Clark replied, choosing not to respond to Lois’ disparagement of his collection of replicas of ancient Kryptonian weapons. There was something damn familiar about his icy demeanor that she couldn’t quite place at the moment as he said, “This residence is mine now, as commander of this city.”

        He stripped off his T-shirt and dogtag and tossed them onto the couch next to his coat before stalking toward Lois, and the way he advanced on her was so threatening that the brunette unconsciously retreated until she was backed up against one of the open doors to the weapons room.

        “Humanity has proven itself to be an unfit steward of this planet, so it falls to we Kryptonians to save it from the neglect and abuse that your kind has heaped upon it for centuries,” Clark pronounced harshly as he stopped a few inches from Lois, so close that she could feel his breath on her face when he spoke. “So understand this: we suffer your existence for only as long as it is convenient to us.”

        He paused briefly, his gaze raking up and down her body before his eyes fixed on hers and he made a simple but shocking request: “Take off your clothes.”

        Though part of Lois had almost been expecting this, she was still taken aback. “What?”

        His expression turning to one of frustration like he was talking to a difficult and dimwitted child, Clark carefully enunciated each word as he repeated his order -- and his tone made it more than clear that it was an order. “Remove your clothes. All of them.”

        Lois shook her head defiantly. Yeah, she’d slept with a number of guys in her time, and her current position reminded her of a very faint memory of nearly getting it on with Clark on Valentine’s Day here a couple of years ago, but she wasn’t about to strip naked for him just because he was on some kind of meteor-induced power trip. “No.”

        The look of irritation on the Kryptonian’s face visibly increased before he reached out and took hold of the collar of Lois’ white jacket with both hands, the silver ring with its inset opalescent pinkish-white stone on his left ring finger glinting as he did so -- and then, with a quick, savage jerk, he ripped the jacket off of Lois, the sturdy material of the garment tearing like tissue paper as he rent it in two.

        “Now,” Clark calmly said as he looked into the brunette’s eyes, “submit to me.”

        Lois’ irises momentarily fluoresced with a pinkish-white glow as Clark voiced his command, and her outrage over the situation abruptly melted away, replaced by a certain complacency.

        “Hey, no need to wreck my wardrobe, Smallville,” she replied with a seductive smile as she unbuttoned her short-sleeved blue-green blouse and shrugged out of it, dropping it on the floor next to her ruined jacket. “All you had to do was ask.”

        “I told you, call me Knor-El,” Clark reminded Lois as the brunette reached behind her back with both hands and unhooked her lacy black bra before removing it as well, leaving her naked from the waist up.

        “Whatever you say, big boy,” Lois replied, her smile widening as she stepped into Knor-El’s embrace, pressing her bare breasts against his chest.

        The Kryptonian crushed her to him, his mouth and Lois’ meeting in a deep, hungry kiss before the two of them turned and made their way to the apartment’s bedroom, shedding the rest of their clothing as they went. Once they were there, Knor-El tossed Lois onto the bed before pouncing on her, the brunette’s hands clenching fistfuls of the bedclothes as he took her.

        Knor-El felt absolutely no compunction about using Lois in this way or that he had used the unique mind-affecting properties of the jewel kryptonite in the victory ring given to him by General Zod to obtain her compliance. After all, his own ancient relative Vad-El, great-grandson of Kal-El the First, had made it his practice during his dictatorial reign over the Kryptonian continent of Urrika to take concubines from the ranks of his female subjects. That is, until Vad-El had fallen in single combat to the blade of his younger brother Hyr-El, the direct ancestor of the modern House of El.

        He and the Kandorians were clearly the humans’ superior both in strength and in morality; why not then act on his attraction to Lois Lane, who struck him as more direct and straightforward than Clark Kent’s more emotionally manipulative consort Lana Lang?

        The two of them coupled throughout the rest of the day and into the night until Lois fell asleep from sheer fatigue induced by their sexual activities.

        Lois was still fairly tired when she woke up the next morning in the Kryptonian’s bed. As the brunette sat up in bed with a sheet wrapped around her naked body, she blushed as images flitted through her mind of all the positions they’d practiced during the course of much of the last day: Clark on top of her, kissing and exploring practically every inch of her body before screwing her into the mattress; her straddling Clark as he kissed her throat; her on her hands and knees as he did her from behind, doggy-style…

        Lois winced slightly as she got up, then went out into the main area of the apartment with the bedsheet still wrapped around her. God, Clark had been like the Energizer bunny during their little sexual marathon. It was a wonder she could even walk at the moment, as sore as she was in certain areas. Not surprising, considering the look she’d seen on Lana’s face on numerous occasions over the last six months or so.

        But why had she let him have sex with her, was the question that floated through her mind as she gazed out the balcony at the red sun in a crimson sky -- or more accurately, why had she responded so eagerly, Lois thought, flushing as she recalled riding her former coworker like a two-dollar hooker, encouraging him as he had his way with her.

        That train of thought was abruptly derailed when Clark superspeeded into the room and reminded her that he wasn’t through with her yet. A fog settled over her mind as she dropped the sheet and began to respond to his attentions -- only to suddenly lift as a male voice intruded.

        “Colonel Knor-El,” the voice spoke, and she and Clark turned to see an unfamiliar black man with close-cut hair and beard standing in the open doorway of the balcony. He wore the same kind of outfit that Clark had, only his coat was black instead of red, and the dogtag around his neck bore a different symbol than Clark’s: a trapezoidal figure shown on its side, with an oval and a line inside it that ran parallel to the trapezoid’s parallel sides.

        “Basqat,” Clark greeted the newcomer evenly, apparently unconcerned by the fact that he was naked in front of the guy, and it reminded Lois of where she’d seen him copping this Vulcan-like attitude before: way back when she’d first rolled into Smallville about five years ago and found him standing naked in a cornfield.

        “We received word of the unaccompanied human that you discovered in the restricted zone yesterday, Colonel,” Basqat disclosed. “General Zod wishes to see her.”

        “Of course, Captain,” Clark nodded. He issued a curt command as he turned to Lois: “Dress yourself.”

        Lois complied, if only because she had the feeling that if she refused, they’d have no problem dragging her in front of this Zod guy while she was in her birthday suit, and enough guys had seen her naked today, thank you very much.

        “So when did you join up, Smallville?” she shot at Clark as she gathered up her clothes and pulled on her underwear and slacks, having noticed Basqat referring to Clark as “Colonel.” As she donned her blouse, she paused to ask, “And who’s Zod?”

        She wasn’t about to dignify someone she’d never met with any kind of military rank.

        “General Zod is the master of this world, and I am a loyal soldier in his army,” Clark replied as he donned his own clothing.

        “Yippee for you, Clark,” was Lois’ acid reply as she finished buttoning her blouse. She’d considered making a run for the elevator, but between what she’d seen of Clark’s speed and the keypad with the funky symbols on the buttons that she saw next to the red metal door, she had a feeling she wouldn’t get very far.

        Clark’s expression hardened as he said, “As I have said before, my true name is Knor-El. The weak, human-raised sentimentalist that was Clark Kent is no longer a part of me.”

        He had taken a new Kryptonian name after joining Zod, as a praenomen that meant “child” was not worthy of one who helped shape the future of Kryptonians and humanity alike. Now he was Knor-El, meaning “star’s fury” in ancient Kryptonian -- a fitting name for one who helped enforce Zod’s vision upon the world.

        That said, he and Basqat each took one of Lois’ arms and marched with her onto the balcony before flying off into the crimson sky.


        * * * * *
        Last edited by carolus; 10-06-2014, 08:48 AM.

        Comment


        • #5
          I don't mind seeing a tougher "Clark" - he could always be a bit too soft on aholes in my opinion (yeah, I know, we love him for that too) but this guy is ... a bit too far the other way. What has happened to turn him totally heartless Kryptonian? Is it the stuff he is wearing? And the bits with ... her ... well, I could have done with not reading that. Eww. But it's the alternative future, right? And it didn't happen.

          Thanks for this update, looking forward to more.

          Comment


          • #6
            You think it was hard reading it; it was way hard to write. But I think there's a development in the next part that'll answer your question about what happened to "Clark."

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by carolus
              You think it was hard reading it; it was way hard to write. But I think there's a development in the next part that'll answer your question about what happened to "Clark."
              I KNOW how hard that must have been to write. The mental pictures ... what to mention without throwing up ... I can imagine.
              Even though there's not much traffic here these days, I do appreciate your perseverance and I'm definitely looking forward to the next installment.

              Comment


              • #8
                Over at Watchtower, Chloe was poring over Metropolis General’s computerized medical file on Lois, which she’d obtained by hacking into the hospital’s database. She was looking at Lois’ PET scans on the main monitor when Clark arrived with his customary whoosh.

                “Where’s Lois?” the Kryptonian curtly demanded after sparing a nanosecond to glance at the information on Chloe’s screen.

                “Last I heard, you dropped her off at the hospital,” the blonde replied, flummoxed by the coldness of Clark’s tone and the way he was glaring at her through the lenses of his glasses.

                Someone moved her, and I know that you had Emil look into her records,” Clark stated as he put both hands on her desk and leaned toward her.

                “She’s my cousin, Clark,” Chloe defensively reminded him, hurt by his accusation and wondering why he was so worked up about Lois.

                “Chloe, you’ve been hiding things from me for months,” the Kryptonian shot back as he leaned closer to her. “Now I think you’re hiding Lois.”

                Taking a moment to think, Chloe coolly replied, “Right accusation, wrong girl.”

                Rising from her chair and leaning toward him, she said, “Clark, I may not have been sharing my deep dark secrets with you lately, but someone else has been playing hide-and-seek a lot longer than I have.”

                It only took an instant for the Kryptonian to realize who the blonde was talking about.

                “Tess,” he concluded, his anger at Chloe dissipating as he straightened up.

                “Yeah,” his friend confirmed, pointedly adding, “We can work on your apology later,” as she came around the desk and headed for a printer that sat on a wooden desk situated a few feet away.

                “Tess has been keeping more than just an editorial eye on Lois for the past few months for the past few months,” Chloe commented as she picked up a sheaf of paper from the printer.

                “Lois can’t answer any of her questions; she’s in a coma,” Clark argued as he turned toward Chloe, still trying to make sense of why he felt so possessive of Lois at times, especially in light of the flak that Lois had given him over not showing up for those filming segments for Good Morning, Metropolis a few weeks ago.

                “She doesn’t have to talk to Tess for her to run tests on her, and we both know how obsessed she’s been with the fact that Lois vanished for three weeks,” Chloe stated.

                “You think this has something to do with her trip to the future,” Clark realized.

                “I think it’s possible,” Chloe admitted as she walked over to Clark and gave him the printouts. “Emil gave me the hospital workups on her. She suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.”

                “So every time she has a memory, her body relives the trauma,” Clark deduced after a quick look through the papers.

                “And her heart can only take so much,” Chloe added, confirming the grim outcome predicted in the hospital records.

                “We have to find her,” Clark stated.

                “Tess is never gonna admit that she took Lois. Let me try something,” Chloe told him as she walked over to her desk and picked up her cellphone, then dialed a number. “Fortunately, we have someone on the inside.”

                * * * * *

                Inside the secret lab at Belle Reve, Stuart Campbell’s cellphone just rang unanswered where it lay next to the tech’s workstation as its owner stood between Lois’ and Tess’ unconscious forms.

                “Okay, ladies, we’re a little touch-and-go right now, but we are stable again,” Stuart told his unhearing audience before directing his next comment to Tess. “And you should have a front-row seat to the Lois matinee.”

                Suddenly an alarm went off as both Lois and Tess began twitching convulsively.

                “No, no, no. No, no. No, no, no,” Stuart murmured in panic as he dashed back over to his monitor. His anxiety increased as he saw the readings on the screen, which indicated that the women’s brainwave activity was becoming more erratic as Tess was plunged into more of Lois’ memories…

                Standing in the main study of the Luthor mansion with her hands shackled in front of her, Lois studied the changes to the room. Lex’s glass-topped desk and wet bar were gone, replaced with several small ornate wooden tables laden with food, and the stained glass depicting the Luthor family crest in the large window behind her had been replaced with clear glass that let the crimson light of the red sun in.

                In addition, there were a multitude of red banners decorating the walls, the wooden railing of the study’s balcony, and the top of the study’s stone fireplace. Some bore the same angular black quatrefoil in a white square like she’d seen on the bridge connecting the strange new towers in Metropolis, but most bore a black version of the same symbol that she’d seen on Clark’s shirt and that of his buddy Basqat: two rotated L-shapes framing a diagonal slash with a knot in its center, with a black dot on the upper left and the lower right of the design.

                Speaking of the Kryptonian, he stood next to the small wood-and-glass door set in the wall to her right, near where the wet bar had once stood, and Basqat stood near the foot of the staircase. There were also two women stationed at the study’s stained-glass double doors who wore black coats and shirts similar to Basqat’s and Clark’s. One of them had dark brown hair and resembled the ex-Peacekeeper chick from Farscape, and the other looked like a thinner-faced Xena.

                “I guess membership has its privileges,” Lois murmured as she turned toward the table nearest to her, her mouth watering at the sight of the food heaped upon it.

                She was practically starving after the mattress mambo marathon that Clark had put her through last night -- and how had he gotten her to give in so easily, she wondered with a frown as she reached with her manacled hands towards some of the food. Some kind of mind-control meteor power to go with the flying, strength, and speed that she’d already seen?

                That train of thought was derailed by the sound of an unfamiliar male voice with a vaguely British accent that came from behind her.

                “Try the truffle,” it suggested as Lois whirled to face its source -- a dark-haired man in a plain black shirt, trousers, and boots who stood on the balcony above her with his hands on the railing. “It’s my favorite.”

                Turning back to the table of food, Lois picked up a truffle and brought to her, only to hear a whoosh of air just before a strong male hand plucked the candy from her grasp and she found the man standing right in front of her.

                Stepping back, Lois noticed that Clark, Basqat, and the two women had all dropped to their right knees in some kind of a salute, their heads bowed and their right arms crossing their chests with their fists by their left shoulders.

                “To think,” the man mused, turning the truffle over in his hand as he looked between it and Lois, “a few of these could mean the difference between life and death for your kind.”

                Smiling slightly, he took a bite out of the truffle before lowering his hand to his side and leaning toward Lois. As he chewed the morsel, Lois noticed that the symbol stamped on the dogtag around the man’s neck was the same as the one on the shirts worn by Clark, Basqat, and the two women by the double doors.

                Momentarily turning his attention away from Lois, the man addressed Clark.

                “You should have brought this woman here as soon as she was discovered, Knor-El,” he said in a reproving tone.

                “Yes, General. I… succumbed to my base desires,” Clark replied, his head still bowed. “It won’t happen again.”

                “See that it doesn’t,” the general commanded before turning his attention back to Lois. “I am General Zod. And all of this is mine to give… if you give me the names of whoever snuck you into the restricted zone.”

                “So you’re the big kahuna, huh?” Lois replied, regaining her usual poise. “Well, my dad’s a general, too, and he still couldn’t get me to spill how I got an M1 Abrams tank to take me to homecoming -- so I’m definitely not telling you anything.”

                She tried to walk away, but Zod grabbed her shackles and effortlessly pulled her toward him.

                “Then you hear this,” he hissed. “No matter how many times you break into the restricted zone, you will never, ever… take… down… my… tower.”

                Lois was wondering what the hell that tower had to do with anything as Zod abruptly released her and shoved her away when she heard a familiar and decidedly unwelcome voice.

                “Lois?”

                Astonished, Lois turned to see Tess Mercer walk into the room through the study’s double doors. Tess’ shoulder-length red hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was dressed in an olive drab tank top over a gray T-shirt, military web belt, and khaki trousers with black army boots.

                “You!?” Lois murmured in shock.

                Seeing Tess’ decidedly military garb and remembering what the LuthorCorp CEO had said during their throwdown about some alien orb, the truth suddenly became abundantly clear to Lois. Whatever had happened to the world with this Zod guy and Clark, Tess was involved up to her eyeballs.

                “You redheaded rat,” the brunette muttered in disgust.

                “Do you know her?” Zod asked Tess.

                “She used to work for me -- but then she disappeared,” Tess commented as Clark and the others rose to their feet.

                As Zod popped the remainder of the truffle in his mouth and chewed, Lois suddenly struck Tess with her shackled hands.

                “Traitor!” she shouted angrily, deriving the tiniest bit of satisfaction when she saw that Tess was more vulnerable than Zod and his compatriots.

                “I am this planet’s savior,” Tess retorted as she grabbed a fistful of Lois’ blouse. “I helped General Zod take power to ensure Earth’s survival.”

                “Tess Mercer, the ultimate eco-terrorist,” Lois spat as she pulled away from the redhead.

                “And what are you?” Zod inquired harshly, prompting Lois to turn back toward him. “Another member of the Resistance?”

                “The only thing I’m resisting is the urge to kick your collective asses,” the brunette informed him archly.

                “And if Clark was in his right mind instead of being your lapdog, he’d be backing me up,” she added with a contemptuous look at her former friend.

                “You appear to be laboring under a misconception,” Zod deduced. “Let me enlighten you. Faora, Alia -- fetch the prisoner.”

                The two women stationed by the double doors nodded, disappearing in a blur of superspeed motion -- and then reappeared an instant later, dragging a dark-haired man in a filthy blue jacket, T-shirt and jeans into the room.

                Lois gaped as the man that Alia and Faora held between them looked up at her and the others wearily. His face was bloody, his hair was shaggier, and he was thickly bearded, but his features were otherwise identical to those of the well-coiffed individual standing across the room -- the one that she’d assumed was Clark when he accosted her in Metropolis.

                This is Clark Kent,” Zod stated unnecessarily. “The only reason he is alive is that I hoped he would join us as Knor-El has -- to bridge the gap between our two peoples.”

                “Trust me, Zod. No one has worked as hard as I have to get Clark to see the good that we’re doing,” Tess interjected. “But I think we’ve fooled ourselves long enough. He’ll never come around.”

                “Which is why,” Zod intoned as he stepped toward Lois menacingly, “neither he nor you are any good to me alive.”

                “Excuse me?” Lois whispered, horrified at his implication.

                “A double execution will send out a strong message to anyone who would dare defy me,” Zod snarled.

                His contemptuous expression resolving into a look of arrogant triumph, the general added, “But take heart -- at least the two of you can enjoy a glorious last meal,” before he stalked out of the room through the double doors.

                Tess turned and followed Zod out, with Basqat, Faora, and Alia trailing close behind, leaving Lois and the very battered Clark in the study under the guard of Clark’s stolid doppelganger Knor-El.


                * * * * *
                Last edited by carolus; 10-03-2014, 09:33 AM.

                Comment


                • #9
                  A couple hours later, after the two of them had eaten, Lois looked Clark over again before declaring, “God, Smallville, you look like crap. When was the last time you took a shower? I could practically smell you coming when they hauled you in here.”

                  “Good to see you too, Lois,” Clark replied with a humorless smile, not bothering to argue with her assessment of his appearance.

                  In sharp contrast to the more well-groomed appearance and spotless uniform of his sinister double Knor-El, who stood about a dozen feet away, Clark’s blue jacket, T-shirt, and jeans were worn and stained, his unwashed hair was long and shaggy, kind of like the younger of the Winchester brothers on Supernatural, his beard was rough and untrimmed, there were bags under his eyes, and his features were pale and bruised beneath the blood that streaked his face and clotted in his facial hair.

                  “And to answer your question, I haven’t had a chance to freshen up since they caught me about a month ago. I’ve been locked up in the mansion’s wine cellar since then, except to eat, use the toilet -- and when they want to ‘interrogate’ me, of course,” Clark commented as he motioned to the bruises on his face.

                  “A month?” Lois repeated, dumbstruck. Recalling the dusty condition of the Daily Planet, the war-torn appearance of Metropolis, and Tess’ reference to her having “disappeared,” she asked, “Clark, what’s the date?”

                  “Well, it’s been a while since I’ve seen a calendar,” her colleague began, “but best I can figure… May or June of 2010.”

                  Lois’ jaw dropped at that. “Clark, I swear, I was throwing down with Tess in the bullpen at the Planet yesterday. How did a whole year go by since then?”

                  Before her colleague could answer, Zod, Tess, Faora, and Basqat filed back into the study through the small side door to the left of the windows. They were followed by four male Kandorians wearing the same basic military-style outfit that Tess did: O.D. green T-shirts or tank tops, in some cases worn over a gray long-sleeved crewneck shirt; web belt; and khaki trousers with black army boots. Zod had changed into a similar outfit, but wore a khaki field jacket over a black tank top.

                  While Knor-El and Faora grabbed Clark and Lois and forced them to their feet, forcefully gripping their prisoners’ upper arms to hold them in place, Basqat and the other soldiers took up positions on three sides of the study. In the center of the room, Tess slowly got down on one knee before Zod, bowing her head as she tucked her left hand into the small of her back and held her right arm diagonally across her chest with her fist by her left shoulder in the Kandorian salute.

                  “Today, two lives end, but another begins,” Zod intoned as he raised his right hand, then let a dogtag imprinted with the angular four-lobed symbol of Kandor dangle on a chain from his fist in front of Tess.

                  As the redhead slowly raised her eyes to meet Zod’s gaze, the Kryptonian general took the chain in both hands and draped it around Tess’ neck before issuing the solemn command, “Rise, soldier.”

                  Tess glanced down at the tag which now marked her as an official member of Zod’s army before rising to her feet with her arms by her sides.

                  “So you betrayed the entire human race to an army of meteor freaks for some crappy dogtags. Way to go,” Lois sarcastically spat as Tess went to stand next to a shaven-headed Kandorian named Quex-Ul in front of the study’s large multi-paned window.

                  “Oh, her membership in my army consists of more than that,” Zod smirked.

                  Turning to one of his men, a man with longish dark hair that was parted neatly in the middle, he asked, “Is Tess’ Project Thetis proceeding as scheduled, Va-Kox?”

                  The corpsman -- who in what would be Lois’ future would masquerade as Dr. Coates of the CDC as he unleashed a Kryptonian ‘zombie virus’ upon Metropolis -- nodded as he replied, “The nanotech will be ready for implantation in human subjects within twenty-four hours, General.”

                  “Excellent,” Zod pronounced with satisfaction. “Then by this time tomorrow, Tess Mercer will be the first of the humans wise enough to join us to receive their reward, increasing the ranks of our army more than a dozen fold.”

                  His tone turning harsher as he shot a fulminating look at Lois, the Kryptonian general growled, “And do not mistake my kind for your pitiful ‘meteor freaks.’ We are the last, proud sons and daughters of Krypton -- a bright, shining jewel in an otherwise dark universe.”

                  Just then, a short Kandorian soldier with the Asian features common to the inhabitants of the Kryptonian continent of Twenx entered the study through the double doors, bearing a curved short sword in a sheath in his hands. Walking over to Zod, he silently held the weapon out to the general.

                  “Zod, let her go,” Clark argued as Zod took the weapon from his subordinate. “Take my life -- let her live!”

                  “Clark,” Lois whispered in horror, realizing that she was about to see her friend and colleague be decapitated right in front.

                  “Your bravery is commendable,” Zod commented with quiet respect as he turned to face Clark. His expression became sterner as he added, “But by defying me, you have forced my hand.”

                  The Kryptonian general nodded to Knor-El, who forced Clark to his knees, the young Kryptonian’s face twisting in agony as his double’s fingers dug painfully into the juncture between Clark’s shoulder and his neck.

                  “I wanted you to join me on the new Krypton that we are building on this Earth, as your twin has,” Zod remarked, his tone of voice carrying the slightest hint of regret as he unsheathed his sword, “but now I must bury you beneath it.”

                  Raising his sword, the general pulled his arm back to deliver the stroke that would sever Clark’s head from his body, Lois crying, “No!” as he did so.

                  Zod could have easily taken Clark’s head in a nanosecond, but he wanted the younger Kryptonian to see his death coming. The dramatic gesture saved Clark’s life, as an instant later a metal canister came crashing through the window behind Tess to land between Clark and Zod, spewing a billowing cloud of green mist as it hit the floor.

                  Zod suddenly wavered, he and his soldiers paling as they felt the effects of the kryptonite-laced gas that was rapidly filling the room. The green kryptonite in the aerosolized solution was too diluted to completely incapacitate the Kandorians, but it was concentrated enough to rob them of their powers. A moment later there was the sound of breaking glass as several dark-clad figures came through the skylight, rappelling down into the room on ropes. They wore black jackets and stocking caps with masks over the lower halves of their faces, and all of them carried sporting crossbows with attached mini-quivers stocked with shafts whose arrowheads glowed green.

                  One of the intruders aimed and fired their crossbow, and the soldier who had brought Zod his sword collapsed, having taken a kryptonite-tipped arrow in the heart. Another member of the group fired their crossbow as they touched down, and Tess gasped as Quex-Ul suddenly grunted in pain before crumpling to the floor with an arrow in his chest.

                  Seeing the tide turn against Zod’s people, Lois and Clark moved against the people holding them captive. Lois turned and slugged Faora in the face with her manacled hands, and Clark reached back and grabbed hold of Knor-El’s ankle before pulling his double’s legs out from under him. Scrambling to his feet, he hastily escorted Lois to a corner of the room away from the fighting.

                  Seeing three more of their people fall to the intruders’ kryptonite arrows, and seeing a green-tipped shaft miss Zod by mere inches as it thudded into the banister, Faora headed straight for her commanding officer.

                  “There’s too much kryptonite,” she warned Zod as she pushed him toward the staircase that led up to the balcony. “We have to retreat and regroup.”

                  Having narrowly avoided being shot point blank with a kryptonite arrow himself already, Knor-El had similar thoughts as he headed for the open double doors. As he briefly looked back, a soldier named Orn-Zu warded off an intruder who’d tried to club him with the stock of his crossbow, then made to grapple with another intruder in an attempt to take their weapon, only for the first to come up behind him and cut Orn-Zu’s throat with the long, glowing green blade of a kryptonite knife. Clutching at his throat as he bled out from the injury, the soldier fell heavily to the floor.

                  Seeing no reason to linger, Knor-El exited the room, but not before shooting a pointed glare at Clark.

                  Back inside the study, Basqat moved to attack the intruder who’d nearly shot Zod, pushing their weapon up as he pulled his fist back to punch them, but a fourth intruder who’d come in through the side door stabbed the dark-skinned Kandorian in the chest with an “Assassin’sCreed”-style hidden blade made of kryptonite that jutted from his sleeve.

                  Standing in the corner with Lois, Clark glanced up to see Faora and Zod standing on the balcony. Zod glared down at the younger Kryptonian, his grip tightening on the hilt of his sword before Faora grabbed the general’s wrist and superspeeded the two of them away.

                  Briefly glancing over at one of his compatriots as they went after Va-Kox, the last Kandorian that was still standing, the intruder who’d cut Orn-Zu’s throat leaned down to retrieve the crossbow that he’d dropped before looking over at Clark and Lois as he removed the mask that he wore over the lower half of his face.

                  “Oliver,” Lois breathed in surprise as she recognized her ex-boyfriend, who now wore a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee.

                  “Hey, Legs,” Oliver greeted Lois as he pulled out a lockpick and began working on her shackles. “Long time no see.”

                  As soon as her hands were free, Lois threw her arms around Oliver in a fierce hug.

                  “Am I glad to see you and your band of merry men,” she whispered in his ear.

                  “Thanks, but, uh… it’s not my band,” Oliver admitted.

                  “It’s theirs,” he continued as he pulled away from her to indicate Clark as the Kryptonian embraced the member of the group who had just finished Va-Kox off with a blue kryptonite knife to the heart -- and who had removed their mask to reveal Lana’s face.

                  “What?” Lois murmured in surprise, shocked at Oliver’s revelation as she watched Clark and Lana practically devour each other’s mouths in a passionate kiss. He was the one who was Green Arrow, the hero of Metropolis who was second only to the Blur; what were Clark and Lana doing leading the group?

                  Still, it explained why Zod had assumed she was a member of what he’d called “the Resistance”; he must have thought she’d been sent to contact Clark.

                  “I think there’s someone here who’d like to see you,” Oliver commented, gesturing toward the member of the group that Basqat had tried to kill. As Lois watched, the member in question removed their mask and stocking cap to reveal long, shoulder-length blonde hair surrounding a very familiar face.

                  “Chloe,” Lois murmured happily as she rushed over to embrace her cousin.

                  “I didn’t think I was ever gonna see you again,” Chloe quietly confessed. She’d assumed that Lois had been another casualty of Doomsday’s final rampage through Metropolis until they’d briefly hacked into a video feed from Knor-El’s penthouse and seen her cousin’s image on the screen.

                  “You almost didn’t,” Lois said as she released Chloe from the hug. “Those crazed space invaders almost killed us.”

                  “Good timing, Oliver,” Clark commented from where he stood with Lana.

                  “Well, big guy, we were planning on hitting the mansion to get you out anyway after we heard chatter that Zod was planning on making an example of you,” Oliver shrugged. “Lois’ arrival just forced us to move our timetable up a little.”

                  Hearing a whimper of pain nearby, Oliver walked over to where Tess Mercer lay sprawled on the floor with an arrow embedded in her stomach.

                  “You always were a good shot,” Tess observed between gasps of pain as Oliver gently took her in his arms. Judging by the almost-black hue of the blood coming from the wound, the arrow had hit her squarely in the liver, meaning she’d be dead within a few minutes from internal bleeding.

                  “I didn’t do this to you,” Oliver refuted with a shake of his head as he gently stroked the side of her face. Despite everything she’d done, he still had a soft spot for Tess. “I couldn’t.”

                  “No, I did this to myself,” the redhead tearfully admitted. “It was a risk, choosing Zod over my own people.

                  “But someone… had to… save the Earth,” she continued, her breathing growing more labored. “I couldn’t… give up… on that.”

                  Tess’ breaths slowly became shallower, and then they stopped, her gaze becoming fixed on Oliver as the light left her eyes.

                  Fighting back a sob as a tear ran down his cheek, Oliver gently closed his ex-lover’s eyes, then pressed a kiss to her forehead before sensing a presence close by and looking over his shoulder to see Chloe standing there.

                  “I had the shot,” she admitted, her cold expression betraying not an iota of regret. “I had to take it.”

                  With that, she turned and walked out of the study after Clark and the others, leaving Oliver alone with Tess’ body.

                  * * * * *

                  An hour later or so, Oliver had dug a grave for Tess in an abandoned field near Smallville. He had wrapped the redhead’s body in a white shroud, pausing only to remove the Kandorian dogtag from around her neck, then placed her in the grave.

                  As Lois watched, Oliver picked up his shovel and began heaping earth into the grave, slowly covering Tess’ shrouded corpse…

                  In the secret lab in Belle Reve, Tess suddenly bolted upright on her table as she surged back to consciousness.

                  “Whoa,” Stuart commented, his eyes widening as he saw the look of utter panic on Tess’ face.

                  Breathing heavily, Tess fought to regain her composure as she came to grips with everything that she’d experienced secondhand via Lois’ memories of the future. The sex with Clark’s double Knor-El had been exhausting but incredibly satisfying -- and in a way it had fulfilled a private fantasy that she’d entertained ever since she’d met Clark.

                  The feeling of being unable to resist him had been unnerving, however, and it had her wondering if Clark possessed the same power to influence minds. If so, it might explain why Lionel Luthor had ultimately chosen to side with Clark against Lex.

                  The experience of seeing herself through Lois’ eyes had been more than a little surreal, though hearing Zod’s mention of a Project Thetis that would “reward” all humans loyal to his cause had been very intriguing. She understood the reference to Greek mythology well enough; Thetis was the mother of Achilles, who she had dipped in the river Styx to render him invulnerable -- except for his infamous heel, which was where she’d held him.

                  Considering that Kryptonians had their own Achilles heel in the form of kryptonite, Thetis had to be a way of giving humans the same powers as Kryptonians, and Tess found the notion of having the same powers as Zod and his army irresistible.

                  But seeing herself die had been very upsetting, especially when she considered the identity of her killer -- someone that she had until now utterly dismissed as a threat to her or Zod’s plans.

                  “Chloe kills me,” she said, shaken.

                  “I’m not sure what you saw in there,” Stuart replied as he walked over to a bank of controls and hit a switch, “but out here, you are still alive.

                  “So I guess I did okay, right?” he queried as Tess’ table whirred back to a vertical position and the redhead pulled the leads from her temples, wincing as she did so.

                  “You did your job; now finish it,” Tess ordered as she grabbed the table’s metal frame and stepped off onto the floor. “I don’t want Lois waking up with the memories I just saw; that would be too dangerous. Use the device to wipe them out.”

                  “Tess, if I make a mistake, she could come out of this catatonic,” Stuart protested.

                  “Don’t argue with me, Stuart,” the redhead told him sternly.

                  Stuart mulled over what to do as he walked over to his terminal. He’d done a lot of things for Tess that could be considered unethical, even illegal, but he couldn’t endanger an innocent woman’s life and sanity for her master plan. Still, to refuse Tess right to her face…

                  Sighing, the tech came to a decision as he turned away from the terminal to face Tess across Lois’ table.

                  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Okay, I won’t do it. I won’t.”

                  “Excuse me?” Tess indignantly replied, unable to believe that this peon had the gall to disobey her.

                  “I’m pulling her out, Tess,” Stuart informed her. “I’m sorry, but we are literally messing with someone’s mind here.”

                  He turned back to his terminal to enter the command to disengage Lois from the machine. Before Stuart could so, however, a shot rang out, and the tech fell to the floor, bleeding from where he’d been shot in the back of the head.

                  “I’m sorry too,” Tess commented as she lowered the still-smoking semiautomatic pistol in her hand before walking over to the terminal.

                  Nudging Stuart’s body out of the way with her foot, she was about to perform the procedure to erase Lois’ memories of the future when she heard a loud whoosh behind her and turned around to see Clark standing there.

                  When Stuart didn’t answer his phone, Chloe had activated its built-in GPS, which in turn had led him here, to Belle Reve. As soon as he arrived, he began to feel weak as radiation reached him from the containers containing the kryptonite solution that fed into the leads attached to Lois’ temples.

                  “Clark, Stuart went rogue,” Tess hurriedly improvised with a brief glance at the computer tech. “He took her; I had to stop him.”

                  “What did you do to her?” Clark growled, not believing a word of what Tess said. Whatever that machine was that she’d rigged Lois to, he had to disconnect his coworker from it before it did any more damage.

                  Tess moved to intercept him, but despite the presence of the kryptonite, Clark was still strong enough to shove her aside with one hand as she came toward him, throwing the redhead against a nearby metal cart and knocking her out. Weakening further as he approached the table that Lois was resting on, the Kryptonian grabbed its metal frame for support as he reached out to remove the leads from the brunette’s temples.

                  As Clark pulled the first lead, it unexpectedly turned in his hand, and the Kryptonian grunted in pain as the sharp metal points on the lead dug into his palm. A moment later he collapsed against the table’s supports, his eyes closing as the lead began transmitting information from Lois’ brain to his…

                  “We may have won the battle, but Zod will come back harder now,” Chloe stated as she unrolled a map on a table in the Resistance’s headquarters, an old lead-lined fallout shelter a few miles outside of Granville. The walls were decorated with several large versions of the same poster depicting a black fist with red sunbeams radiating from it with the words “FREE EARTH” that she’d seen in Metropolis before Knor-El had grabbed her.

                  Besides Chloe, Clark, Lana, and Oliver, the group also consisted of a fortyish-looking black man and a guy in his mid-twenties with short reddish-blond hair who was eyeing Lois with very thinly veiled distaste.

                  “Speaking of that one-name wonder, I think I know where he and his posse came from,” Lois interjected, drawing everybody’s attention. “Before I fought Tess, she went on and on about some orb. She called it alien technology, said there was life inside of it.

                  “She knew about this invasion -- she helped them.” Her expression hardening as she emitted a snort of disgust, the brunette said, “And just when I thought she couldn’t sink any lower than following in Lex’s filthy footsteps.”

                  Lois’ expression abruptly turned to one of confusion as she reiterated the question that she’d asked Clark before their near-execution, “But I still don’t get I managed to skip right from May of 2009 to now.”

                  “What’s the last thing that you remember?” Chloe prompted.

                  “Well, when Tess and I were having it out in the bullpen at the Daily Planet, there was this gold ring that got knocked off a desk during the fight,” Lois related. “I picked it up, there was this purple flash of light, and I woke up in this nightmare.”

                  “The Legion ring,” Lana realized aloud as she exchanged glances with Clark and Chloe. They’d looked for the ring for months, but ultimately came to the conclusion that it had been destroyed by Knor-El to keep them from preventing his creation. But if it still existed…

                  “You time-traveled here,” Chloe concluded.

                  “I’m pretty sure I didn’t walk a whole year into the future -- not in these heels, anyway,” Lois replied. “The thing is, I dropped the ring after I woke up.”

                  “Where did Knor-El find you?” Clark asked. Since his twin had been spawned from him by black kryptonite, Knor-El knew about the Legion ring, and if he found it first he’d likely destroy it -- or worse, give it to Zod.

                  Thinking for a moment, Lois finally said, “Maybe a block or two from the Planet. What’s the deal with your evil twin, anyway? Is he some kind of half-alien clone or something?”

                  “Not exactly,” the Kryptonian replied vaguely. “He’s a product of black meteor rock.”

                  He shifted uncomfortably as he recalled how his reaction to the appearance of Zod’s army had been hindered by Knor-El -- or Kal-El, as his black kryptonite-created double had initially called himself then. After they’d dug themselves out of the rubble under the LuthorCorp geothermal where they’d buried Doomsday, they had gone chasing after Kal-El.

                  The pursuit had gone on for more than three months, and toward the end of that time the two of them had separated in an attempt to cover more ground in their efforts to find Kal-El. It proved to be a disastrous decision, as Kal-El had caught Lana alone and nearly beaten her to death before destroying the black kryptonite that they’d hoped to use to reabsorb him back into Clark.

                  By the time Lana had recovered and they found evidence of the Kandorians’ presence on Earth, Jor-El had been murdered by an unknown assailant, robbing Clark of a chance to meet his biological father. Moreover, Kal-El had thrown his lot in with Zod shortly thereafter, using the knowledge that he’d gained from the Fortress to speed the construction of the major’s solar tower.

                  Returning to the more salient issue at hand, Clark said, “Then we still have a chance of getting the ring back. Then we can send you back to the past and prevent Zod’s tower from being built in the first place.”

                  Just then the guy with the reddish-blond hair spoke up, shooting Lois an ugly look as he said, “Not a bad plan, chief, but why should we trust this chick to help get us out of this mess? We saw Knor-El banging her last night in Oliver’s old pad on the video feed that we hacked, and she didn’t exactly look like she was telling him to stop.

                  “If anything, she looked like she was screaming for more,” he concluded in disgust.

                  “Roy…” Oliver interrupted his old protégé in a warning tone as Lois flushed at the reminder of how she’d given in to Clark’s double.

                  Undeterred by his mentor’s rebuke, Roy Harper forged on, his dislike of Lois visibly increasing. He didn’t really believe this crap about time travel; he wasn’t even sure that the Kandorians were actually aliens like the rest of them said.

                  “C’mon, Ollie, just because she doesn’t have a Krypto’s tramp stamp on her doesn’t mean she’s not a whore,” he commented, referencing the Kandorians’ habit of tattooing their family crest on the lower backs of human women who willingly serviced their sexual needs. “I mean, seriously, what kind of skank screws the same guy who killed her father?”

                  Taken aback by that information, Lois numbly replied, “My… my dad’s dead?”

                  Roy nodded. “Headed up an armored division that moved against Zod about five months ago, just after the tower went online. Knor-El trashed every tank in the bunch a mile outside of Metropolis. Word has it that Sam Lane emptied a couple belts of 7.62mm machine gun ammo at Knor-El before the bastard lit him up with his heat vision.”

                  “Oh my God,” Lois murmured in dismay before she turned and vomited up what she’d eaten a few hours before.

                  “That’s enough, Roy,” Oliver told the younger man severely before turning to Lois.

                  “Sorry about that,” he apologized. “Roy’s lost a lot because of the Kandorians’ invasion. His daughter Lian was killed when they razed Star City a few months ago, and his ex-girlfriend was murdered by a pretty sadistic Kandorian sergeant named Pre-Us.”

                  “Murdered” was putting it lightly, Oliver thought; as a measure of his contempt toward what he saw as the “clear inferiority” of human females, Pre-Us had used his superhuman strength to literally rape Jade Nguyen to death. Though she’d operated as an amoral assassin named Cheshire for the better part of a decade before Zod’s coming, she hadn’t deserved her fate.

                  “I tried to stop Pre-Us when he was having his fun with Jade, but Knor-El crushed most of the bones in my left arm before leaving me pinned under some rubble,” Roy added with a glare as he removed the glove from his left hand, then pushed up his sleeve to reveal that the limb was a mechanical prosthetic. “Docs had to amputate.”

                  “If I may,” the black man spoke up, having remained silent up until this point, “previous events have shown that Knor-El may possess the ability to influence others into following his commands. With your permission, I can use my own abilities to determine if this was done to Lois Lane.”

                  “John’ll need to enter your mind to do it, Lois,” Clark told her.

                  “What, like a Vulcan mind meld?” Lois queried with a furrowed brow, wondering where they’d had gotten this guy.

                  “Something like that,” John Jones replied neutrally.

                  Lois took a deep breath before she replied. “All right, do it.”

                  Stepping forward, the Martian laid a hand on Lois’ forehead, then closed his eyes as he concentrated. The brunette felt a distinctly alien, indescribable something in her mind as John probed her memory of the night before -- then that something was gone as he removed his hand and stepped away.

                  “As I thought,” John reported as he opened his eyes. “He subverted her will to obtain her compliance with his physical desires. A rather capricious use of a limited ability, in my opinion.”

                  “Now that that’s settled,” Clark stated, “you shut down that tower and bring back the yellow sun, and I’ll hold Zod off while you get the Legion ring back.”

                  “So what’s so important about the tower?” Lois inquired.

                  “The towers are the key to the Kandorians’ power,” Chloe replied. “They collect all the sun’s radiation, turn it red, and then beam it up to the LuthorCorp satellites.”

                  “And those satellites take the radiation and beam it back down to Earth, giving those alien SOB’s all their superhuman strength,” Oliver added, silently adding that it had taken away Clark and Lana’s powers in the process. The only reason that Knor-El possessed powers under the red sun like Zod’s people was that he’d been given a piece of technology that allowed his body to process red sun radiation in the same way that the Kandorians’ mutated physiology did.

                  “Now, we take the tower down, we shut them down,” he concluded.

                  “Guys, I’ve seen Zod’s troops. We are seriously outnumbered,” Lois argued. “We’d never reach it.”

                  “We don’t have to,” Chloe informed her. “We have a secret weapon -- Watchtower. I powered it down so that the Kandorians couldn’t find it, but I can use the computers there to hack into Zod’s big red flashlight and unleash a virus that should shut it off remotely.”

                  “We need to do it soon,” Clark stated. “When I was Zod’s prisoner, I heard confirmation of the rumors that we’ve been hearing. His people are almost ready to implant their human collaborators with nanotechnology that’ll alter their DNA so that they’ll be powered by the red sun just like the Kandorians.”

                  “And when that happens, we’ll be facing an army of thousands instead of just a few hundred,” Lana added.

                  “I just have one question,” Lois interjected. “How does turning the sun yellow make Clark our number one draft pick for taking on this Zod guy?”

                  Unwilling to mention his alien origins to Lois, Clark simply said, “Let’s just say that Zod and I have history.”

                  Changing the subject, he said, “We’d all better get a good night’s sleep. We need to reach Metropolis before dawn if we’re going to find that ring before Zod starts expanding his army.”

                  Watching the way Clark and Lana were hanging all over each other as they walked off to their room in the shelter, Lois was sure that sleep wasn’t the first thing on their agenda when they got to bed. Not that she could blame them; hadn’t she read something years ago in high school that went something like, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die”?

                  Feeling a hand on her shoulder, she turned to see Oliver.

                  “Come on,” her ex-boyfriend said as he indicated a doorway with a nod of his head and a smile. “We’ll get you cleaned up.”

                  “Thanks, Ollie,” she replied with a smile of her own.

                  * * * * *

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Wow, that was one hell of a read. I don't know if I've taken it all in, you're so comprehensive! Wonder if Tess will change after seeing what her fate might be ... following Lex's evil footsteps no less. Yay for the green gas which enabled the archer band to save future Clark. Scary about his evil twin though. So, Zod's tower has to go down or there will be total disaster for humanity and now Clark knows all this in the present - but what will happen when he manages to get the lead unhooked? Will Lois remember all this or not?

                    Stunning job, as usual mate.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      This is indeed another fantastic chapter. So, the reason Lois was having those flashes of Clark was because it was his Kryptonian alter ego having his way with her. Kryptonite certainly does come in handy on occasions. There are just two things I'm curious about in this particular future. Why would Zod willingly empower other humans such as Tess? I know that she had allied herself with him, but Zod generally has nothing but contempt for humans. He said that he was rewarding Tess for her loyalty. Maybe he prized her obedience over his general disdain for humans. The second point of observation involves Kara. I assume in this future, she's still out in deep space searching for Kandor. Her absence is keenly felt. Anyway, seeing how this future turned out to such a disaster for everyone involved, certain events need to be changed. The tower has to go of course, but perhaps this time Kara can help Clark reach most of the Kandorians.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Kirk, One explanation for why Zod may want to empower other humans besides Tess is simply that he may want to add more troops to his army. In regards to Kara, I have to agree that her absence is felt in this dark future and that she could definitely aide Clark in finding more of the Kandorians. Finally, I am truly glad that Lana joined the resistance and that she was not killed after all. Looking forward to the next update. God bless, Nick.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          I am loving this version of season 9! When's the next update?

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Sorry, folks, but it looks like I won't be able to post the next update until after the long weekend. Have a happy Thanksgiving!

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              That's quite alright Carolus, I completely understand and it's great to hear from you regardless. Hope you have a happy Thanksgiving and God bless, Nick!

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