“I’ll give you a call if there’re any changes,” Klein promised. “We’ll be keeping him sedated, so you won’t have to worry about him escaping, at least till later tomorrow.”
“Thanks Bernie,” Lois said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. He blushed.
Outside the hospital, Kal-El picked Lois up while Lois held onto the carrier with baby Martha. It was a quick flight to the Kent house, but Lois noticed he was distracted.
“What do you see?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted with a frown. He landed on the deck, setting Lois on her feet. It was nearly dawn.
Lois opened the deck doors and walked into the living room. She heard voices in the kitchen and followed the sound. Wanda and Martha were sitting at the breakfast table having coffee.
“How is he?” Martha asked.
“The blade was poisoned. They were able to stop the bleeding, finally,” Lois said, making herself a cup of herbal tea. She wanted coffee, but caffeine and Kent babies didn’t mix. It was going to be a long year until this one was weaned. “They got him stabilized and Doctor Klein was having him transferred to the isolation ICU when we left.”
Lois sat down with the other two women. “I’ve never felt so helpless, watching them work on him. They were working on Superman, for God’s sake.” The day’s events finally caught up with her and she began to cry.
Wanda put her arm around the other woman. “Believe it or not, I really do understand. Kal-El, my Superman, fell out of the sky less than a week ago. There wasn’t anything our doctors could do for him except wait.”
“I’m not sure how long I was unconscious,” Kal-El said. He was standing in the kitchen doorway. “I don’t remember falling.”
“They managed to keep you in the hospital for all of about twenty-four hours,” Wanda told him. “You know, there might be a story in who is paying for your hospital stay and the equipment they wrecked trying to work on you.”
Kal-El chuckled. “They should know by now if they can’t stick a needle in me, they shouldn’t expect anything else to work right.”
His head came up, eyes focused on the outside as he listened to something in the distance. “I think the storm’s back.”
Clark I
Kal-El saw the sudden worry in Wanda’s face.
“We need to leave,” he said.
Wanda stood up, giving Martha and Lois hugs. “Thank you for everything,” she said.
“Good luck,” Lois said. “Remember, be gentle with each other.”
Kal-El went to the living room and grabbed the case with the Kryptonian baby. Wanda opened the doors to the deck, then allowed Kal-El to take her in his arms. They floated up, away from the house, then headed for the storm.
‘Lois?’ Kal-El thought at her.
‘Clark?’ she responded. ‘This telepathy thing is going to take some getting used to.’
‘The AI in the new Fortress of Solitude said we needed a beacon from our home time-frame to guide us back.’
‘How are we supposed to do that?’
‘If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to find our Jason, Richard, and Perry. I’m hoping we can identify a time-frame with the proper ones, then we can home in on them.’ He knew he didn’t have to tell her how unlikely it would be for them to find exactly the right combination. “Praying might help, too,” he added aloud.
They could see the black clouds in the distance, coming at them. Again, the gale winds whipped at them. Again, the piercing wail, the sound driving through their skulls.
‘Think about Jason, Lois, think! Find Jason! Find Richard!’ Kal-El thought at he above the storm.
He cast his mind out into the vastness of universes, searching for a mental signature he recognized, a mind that knew him and Lois. He saw Jason and Richard through Lois’s mind as well. A Jason and Richard who were worried that their Lois hadn’t come home last night. He had a path through the storm and dove for the center, following the traces of mental energy that would lead them home. They had their beacon.
Earth I
The storm vanished as suddenly as it had before. Lois Lane and Superman found themselves in Metropolis, in Centennial Park, beside the crater Superman had created when he fell to Earth only days before. The sun was already high in the sky.
“Are we back?” Lois asked.
Superman looked around. “Looks like it. We should check in with Perry. He’s probably worried.”
She put out a hand, placing it on his chest. “We’re going to have to come up with some excuse for showing up with a newborn. Something convincing.”
“I know,” he admitted. “But I’m all out of ideas right now. And I’m not sure why you agreed to take this on.”
“Do you trust me?” Lois asked.
Superman considered the question for a long moment. “Do I have a choice?”
She didn’t answer his question. “I’m going to the Planet, give Perry some sort of excuse for you and me being gone. We need to find a village in South America that was destroyed or evacuated in the past week or so. Considering the drug wars happening down there, you should be able to find someplace like that.”
“Why South America?”
“Because that’s where Clark was for the past five years, isn’t it? Give me about an hour. Then, assuming the baby’s okay, bring her in, as Superman. Then follow my lead.”
“I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“Probably not. But I can’t think of any thing else, can you? By the way, what’s your blood type?”
Earth II
Lois Lane-Kent walked through the front doors of Metropolis General Hospital. She’d managed a few hours sleep.
She made her way to the tenth floor, to the ICU, to the isolation room where Superman was. Bernie wasn’t there, but one of the ICU nurses recognized her and instructed her on what she needed to do before entering the hospital room. Thorough hand washing, a surgeon’s cap for her hair, a long-sleeved gown over her clothes.
Clark looked like he was asleep, but Lois suspected he was still unconscious, whether from his ordeal or from the sedation she knew Klein had ordered she wasn’t sure. She took one limp hand into her own, taking care not to dislodge any of the myriad tubes and wires that were attached to his body. He was off the respirator and Lois assumed that was a good sign.
“Clark, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I miss you, and I want you back.” She kissed him on the forehead. He was warm, a little too warm, maybe. His body temperature was normally a little higher than Earth normal, but kryptonite exposure gave him a fever.
‘Lois,’ Zara’s mental voice sounded in her brain. ‘I can’t find Clark, is he all right?’
‘He was injured by the assassin, but we’re hoping he’ll be okay,’ Lois responded. ‘You might want to let Xon know that his assassin and his spy lasted about ten minutes on Earth.’ She sent a brief mental image of Clark’s battle with the assassin, and Richard’s help in defeating him, then her own actions in taking out the New Kryptonian invader.
Lois felt a stab of astonishment from Zara. ‘That was Xon himself. He must have wanted to watch Clark die, to make sure the job was done right. Lois, with Xon dead at the hands of Kal-El’s consort, an Earther no less, I doubt we’ll have any more problems with his people. And I can almost guarantee no other New Kryptonian will ever visit Earth without the express permission of you and Clark.
‘You did very well, sister,’ Zara thought at her. Lois could feel the pride in Zara’s thoughts.
“Lois?” Lois heard Clark’s voice. He sounded weak and hoarse, but she’d never heard anything more beautiful. “What did Zara want?”
“She wanted to be sure you were okay,” Lois told him. “Now, you just relax and let us take care of you. I love you, you know.”
“Love you,” Clark replied with a faint smile. “When can we go home?”
