“Well, STAR Labs or Jennings next?” Lois asked when they got back to the car, guard in tow.
“STAR Labs,” Clark answered. He leaned close to her ear. “If it turns out I’m a fourteen day wonder, then I want to know about it as soon as possible,” he murmured low enough that only she could hear it.
“You really think Mamba would have done something like that to Luthor?” Lois asked, keeping her own voice low.
“What other explanation is there?”
“I don’t know.”
The car stopped and Clark looked around at the traffic. It was at a near stand still. They’d be faster getting out and walking the several miles to STAR Labs
“Look, Jenning’s office is just over there,” Lois said, “We may as well get it over with. By then the traffic should be clear and we can go to STAR Labs.”
“Yeah, I guess an hour or so won’t make much difference,” Clark agreed reluctantly.
Jenning’s office was as Clark remembered – understatedly elegant. A perfectly groomed receptionist ushered them though as soon as they announced themselves. Bob, their security man, settled into one of the leather chairs by the reception area door.
Jennings himself hadn’t changed much since Clark had seen him last either. He was a little over average height with dark hair brushed with gray. His gray suit was impeccably tailored, silk tie done to utter perfection. The tie cost more than one of Clark’s suits – former suits. No doubt his mom was already packing them up for charity.
Clark brought his attention to the matter at hand.
“Inspector Henderson told us you were handling Luthor’s estate,” Lois was saying. Jennings simply nodded, seemingly unworried by Lois’s flat statement.
“Mister Luthor contacted me while he was still in prison. In fact, it was just a few days before his release on the bogus pardon,” Jennings explained. “I’m not a criminal lawyer but I went to see him mostly out of curiosity. He gave me a copy of his newest will to be notarized and registered and gave me instructions on where to find certain items and documents he wanted held and passed on to his heir.”
“And in return, you got?” Clark prompted.
“In return I was given the location of certain personally important documents that I had been looking for,” Jennings said.
“So, now what do we do?”
“I need to verify that you are who you say you are,” Jennings said. “He gave me certain questions to ask based on information you would have gotten only from him.”
“So, what are the questions?” Lois.
“The first question is: what were the names he wanted for his children?”
“Isn’t that the same question Jaxon Xavier wanted answered?” Clark asked. “Before he fried his brain and ended up in a nursing home?”
“Yeah, that’s the same question, the pass code to the LexCorp mainframe,” Lois said. “The oldest would be named Alexis, then either Roxanne, or Alex, and the third would be named Lynx. He liked X-es. He wanted his kids to have an X in their names.”
“And the fourth one, assuming there was one?” Jennings asked.
“I think that depended on who the mother was going to be,” Lois said. “But since he was already planning to kidnap Lois Lane… Clark. The fourth child would have been named Clark.”
Jennings nodded but Clark couldn’t tell if he was pleased with Lois’s answer or not. “Did he have any other children?” Jennings asked.
“Supposedly Jaxon Xavier was his, but Luthor never acknowledged him,” Lois answered. “Other than that… Luthor once said he’d had a child, a boy, but he and the mother were killed in a car accident when the child was very young.”
Jennings nodded once. “One final question. What was Missus Cox’s first name?”
“Missus Cox?” Lois repeated. But this question Clark knew the answer to.
“Josephine,” Clark answered. “She was an actress at one time.”
Jennings nodded again and stepped over to one of the modern paintings on the office wall. At his touch, the painting slid aside to reveal a wall safe. After a moment, the safe opened and Jennings pulled out small case about the size of a shoe box and a manila envelope.
“I don’t know what’s in the box,” Jennings said. “And I don’t want to know. The envelope contains dossiers on both of you as well as a list of overseas properties in various names.”
“He had dossiers on us?” Clark asked.
“Mister Luthor was a rather disturbed individual. Apparently he had dossiers made up on everyone he came into contact with, including his less savory liaisons. Which, by the way, included Mister Xavier’s mother. As to Xavier’s claim that he was Luthor’s illegitimate child… I’m not breaking any confidences by telling you that it’s extremely unlikely that Luthor ever fathered any children, at least not naturally. He was sterile, probably due to exposure to chemicals during his early career.”
“Then how do explain that he claimed me as his son?” Lois asked.
Jennings actually smiled. “Wishful thinking?” He held out his hand and Lois shook it. “If you need any assistance in setting up legitimate companies, just call.”
Clark followed Lois out of the office. He could tell she was just itching to open the box to see what was inside it. But the hallway outside Jennings’s office wasn't the place for it.
“How did you know about her?” Lois asked, tucking the envelope under her arm and cradling the box to her chest.
“I saw her at the Lyceum in London,” Clark answered. “Her name was Josephine Leslie-Cox then. My high school French club managed to raise enough money for a group of us to visit Paris and London for two weeks.”
“You never told you knew about her,” Lois commented.
“I never made the connection until I saw her after she turned state’s evidence against Luthor,” Clark said. “By that time it was a little late to mention that I’d seen her play Mary Magdalene just before her husband was killed.”
Once in the car, Lois opened the box. Clark watched as she went through the box. A few old photographs of a young boy and a younger girl, a lock of reddish hair, a worn baseball, a few newspaper clippings.
“It looks like a keepsake box,” Clark said. “Like a kid keeps his treasures in.” He took one of the photos from Lois. There was something eerily familiar about the boy. He turned the photo over and read the back. “Lena and Lex,” he read. “No date.”
Lois picked up the clippings. “Girl’s death ruled accidental,” she read aloud. “Lena Alexa Luthor… Lex’s sister. I didn’t know he even had a sister. According to this she died of injuries sustained in a fall when she was ten.”
“Somehow I doubt it was that simple,” Clark said. He picked up a different clipping. “Tragedy strikes family again,” Clark read. “Exactly one year after their daughter’s accidental death, a fatal car accident on Highway 57 claims the lives of Jules and Arlene Luthor… They are survived by their son Alexander, age fourteen…”
“We knew his parents died when he was young and he’d always admitted that their life insurance paid for his education and gave him the seed money to start his first business,” Lois said. “But it’s kind of sad that this is all he had left of his family, his childhood. Do you think he would have been a better person if his parents had lived?”
“Only if you think the sister really died of an accident. Or his parents,” Clark responded. He put the photos and clippings back in the box and closed the lid.
“What do you think we should do with this?”
“Keep it somewhere safe,” Clark said. “Who knows, it might be important someday.”
The traffic had cleared so it took little time to get to STAR Labs.
Security was at an unusually high level due to a break-in and attack on lab employees less than a week before and the fact that Superman’s body was still undergoing post mortem examination at the facility. STAR Labs management didn’t want to take the risk of the body disappearing or being tampered with.
In fact, it took the offer of a million dollar grant and information on the break in to get Bernard Klein’s attention.
“You said you knew something about the two items that went missing during the break in?” Klein began. He didn’t even bother to introduce himself.
“Two metal canisters about a foot in diameter and about two feet tall,” Lois said. “They were in the main vault, even though they probably shouldn’t have been.” Lois looked around the lobby. “Is there somewhere more private we can talk?”
“My office,” Klein offered, leading the way.
Klein’s office was just as messy as Jenning’s office had been neat and elegant. The desk – in fact every flat surface – was covered in papers and books. Clark looked for a place to sit but the one ‘guest’ chair was loaded with scientific journals of all sorts.
“Do you know where the canisters are?” Klein asked. “They contained potentially dangerous biological material and it’s important we get them back unopened.”
“The canisters came from Isaac Mamba’s cloning lab and contained genetically modified human embryos. One male and one female,” Lois stated. “They were stolen by Lex Luthor with a little help from someone working here.”
“Do you know where they are?” Klein repeated.
“You’re looking at them,” Clark said.
Klein’s mouth dropped opened as he looked them up and down. After a moment he found his voice. “And you’re healthy? No gross physical defects, nutrition issues, cravings for frogs, anything like that?”
“Only unusual strength and hearing so far for me,” Lois answered. “And she heals unnaturally fast.”
Klein’s expression turned thoughtful. “Would you say ‘super’ strength?”
“Maybe,” Lois admitted.
Klein’s eyes seemed to focus on some point far away. “That might explain the odd mitochondria and unusual organelles… I thought they looked familiar…”
“Do you think maybe Mamba got hold of some of Superman’s DNA and incorporated it into… us?” Clark asked.
“DNA alone wouldn’t do it,” Klein said. He seemed lost in his own world. “He had to have had complete cell samples and…”
“And what, Doctor Klein?” Clark prompted.
“And the only known cell cultures where here,” Klein said slowly. “Only I think some of them disappeared about six months ago.”
“And you didn’t tell Superman?” Clark asked.
“I couldn’t be sure at the time,” Klein admitted. “My lab assistant claimed that two of the samples had become contaminated and so he destroyed them. At least that’s what he said.”
“But now you think they were stolen and he was trying to cover it up?” Lois asked.
Klein gave her a perplexed look. “You know, you sound a lot like someone I know…” He shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. “But it makes sense… Copies of Mamba’s research notes were turned over to us for analysis after his arrest. Now don’t get me wrong, Mamba was a brilliant scientist, but his notes were a little on the cryptic side. Even Hamilton had trouble making sense of them and he was first one I know of to clone a human and bring it to maturity at an accelerated rate. But Mamba seemed to have licked the accelerated cellular breakdown problem by using something he called ‘X’ which he acquired not long after the Superman cell samples disappeared.”
“So you think he incorporated Superman’s DNA into his clones to make them live longer?” Clark asked. “But Superman was an alien. Would that even work?”
“Well, Superman’s DNA isn’t really all that different from a human’s,” Klein explained. “The main difference is in the rest of his cell structure. He has – had – an extra type of organelle that I think acted as a battery or energy convertor. And I’m not altogether convinced it wasn’t artificially engineered. But this little bugger was what I believe created his bioelectric field which gave him some of his special abilities, including accelerated healing.”
“And so the accelerated healing created by these organelles could counter the accelerated cellular breakdown?” Clark asked. He wasn't completely sure he understood what Klein was saying, but that did seem to make the best sense.
Klein bobbed his head in agreement.
“Now, if we can just get down to my lab so I can get some cell samples from you, then I can confirm my hypothesis,” Klein said, heading for the door. He seemed to expect them to follow him.
With a sigh Clark trailed after him and after a moment Lois hurried to catch up with them.
Klein swapped the insides of their cheeks and then they watched as he prepared slides and put them under a microscope. He mumbled to himself as he examined the slides. “Yes… ah hah, yes…”
“And the verdict is?” Clark asked.
Klein looked up as if surprised they were still there. “Oh, yes. It looks like you both have the same extra organelles I found in Superman’s cells. I’d have to sequence your mitochondrial DNA to see if it matches his mitochondria, which I suspect it does…”
“So my accelerated healing is not because I’m one of Mamba’s short-lived versions?” Clark asked.
“Oh no,” Klein assured him. “It’s because, functionally, you’re related to Superman on his mother’s side. But what I don’t understand is how you have a fully developed personality. I’ve met Mamba’s other creations and they all seemed rather… childish, if not downright disturbed. You seem more like one of Hamilton’s clones.”
“You’re saying that Dillinger and Capone weren’t ‘disturbed’ when they tried to take over Metropolis last year?” Lois asked.
“Oh, no,” Klein protested. “I’m simply saying that Dillinger and Capone and the others all appeared to have fully developed personalities, unlike the president’s clone or Miss Lane’s clone. In fact, the Dillinger and Capone clones had personality structures uncannily similar to the originals, as near as we could tell.”
“And how do you explain that?” Clark asked.
“I can’t,” Klein admitted. “Although Doctor Hamilton claims that since all his creations had originally died violently, their disincarnate consciousnesses were drawn to their recreated bodies so they could finish the work they had left undone on Earth due to their violent demises.”
“Do you believe that?” Lois asked.
“I don’t know,” Klein admitted. “As a scientist, I believe that any workable theory must be able to present viable methods to allow it to be tested and possibly disproven. His hypothesis cannot be tested in any rigorous fashion. But then, Emil is drawn to more esoteric ideas than I am. Maybe it’s because he spent so much time around those mystic mumbo jumbo types at LexLabs while he was working there.”
“You wouldn’t have a name for any of those mumbo jumbo types over at LexLabs, would you, Doctor Klein?” Lois asked sweetly. Again Klein frowned as though trying to place a memory.
“Ashcroft? Asia? …Asabi. Yeah. Gupta Asabi,” Klein said, scratching his ear. “Emil said he was an expert on soul transference and past lives. He claimed that this fellow could even exchange consciousness with anyone he came into contact with.”
“Is that even possible?” Lois asked. Clark knew she had to have been asking the question for effect – they both knew perfectly well that it was possible. They were living proof.
“Well, I admit that Emil is sometimes a little more gullible than the rest of us here,” Klein said with a smile. “But there was something uncanny about those clones of his.”
