As I sat here deluding myself into thinking I'd actually get some work done tonight, it came to my attention that I might as well post the next part of Fidelity. Maybe someone will post some nice fdk that will inspire me to write my two papers that are due next week... Or maybe I'm just deluding myself even further...
As always, thanks to Nancy for looking this over. Parts outlined in *** are flashbacks.
PART FOUR
I looked over everything, making sure that I was ready for my dad to come over. My bathroom had been cleaned. Check. The fridge was recently purged of any dated take-out. Check. I had gotten lunch from the deli down the street. Check. I had removed any wrappers, labels, etc so my dad wouldn’t know I had gotten lunch from the deli down the street. Check. I was dressed respectably. Not too dressy, but still a step up from casual. Check. My fiancé was present. Check. He was dressed…
“I thought you were going to wear the blue tie,” I told Jon.
“What’s wrong with this one?” he asked.
“Nothing! It’s just that this one is a little… Oh, never mind,” I said as I saw his slightly wounded expression. “I’m sorry I’m being so obsessive. I swear, all it takes is for someone to mention my dad and I turn into an insecure little girl all over again. Forget about the tie, the one you have looks fine.” And yet, I couldn’t stop glancing at it as we continued last minute preparations for my dad to come over. It wasn’t like there was anything wrong with the tie he had on. Well, maybe it did look a little… different. Not bad, per say, but still not quite what I would’ve chosen. It didn’t take long for Jon to catch onto my pointed staring.
“Hold this,” he said as he passed the coffee pot over to me. I blinked, felt a flutter of a breeze… And he was standing in the exact same position as before, but I saw that he was pulling the blue tie into place around his neck.
“Thanks,” I smiled. “That was sweet.”
“Anything to make you feel more comfortable with this, Kaylie,” he replied.
The knock at the door prevented me from expressing my appreciation more thoroughly.
“Remember,” I whispered to Jon quickly on my way to answer the door, “He doesn’t work for the NIA. He’s a structural engineer with a small firm in L.A. And I’m just a teacher at Riverview. You’re not supposed to know any of the other stuff.” I swung the door open to reveal my father. Even though it had been a few years since I last saw him, he hadn’t changed much. He still wore the same military-style haircut and the no-nonsense business suit in charcoal grey with a conservative tie. He carried a briefcase in his hand and his jacket was draped over the other arm. Even though it was a warm, late summer day, he still carried the jacket to prevent being caught unawares.
“Hello, Kaylie,” he greeted me.
“Hi Dad,” I gulped. “Let me take your jacket.” I clumsily gathered his coat in my arms and hung it on a nearby hook. “This is my fiancé, Jon Kent.”
“It’s good to meet you, Mr. Stewart,” Jon said as he offered his hand. My dad nodded and they shook hands brusquely.
“How about we sit down?” I offered. “You came at just the right time, Dad. We just finished brewing a fresh pot of coffee.” My dad was always faultlessly punctual so I had been able to time the coffee exactly. I insisted on playing hostess for a while, getting everyone their coffee and serving food, all the while listening in on the conversation between my dad and Jon. From what I could tell, most of it was centered on Jon as my dad tried to get a handle of his character. It wasn’t long before I was able to sit down with them and fully listen to the conversation.
“And how do you like working for the newspaper?” my dad asked.
“I enjoy it very much,” Jon replied. “The pace is stimulating and you get to meet some very interesting people.”
“I would’ve thought that a person with your education would look for a job that dealt with programming and other more creative uses of your degree rather than simple technology management.”
“I enjoy the newspaper,” Jon said. “And the editor is a bit of a computer enthusiast so he’s actually incorporated some of my programming ideas for the newsroom and they’ve helped to increase efficiency exponentially.”
My dad nodded approvingly, and I was just starting to think that this meeting was going fairly well when a very familiar expression crossed over Jon’s face. I saw him fiddle with something at his waist, and then his cell phone beeped for a text message. He had faked the phone going off in order to provide an excuse to go be Supernova.
“I’m so sorry,” he apologized. “But this is the newsroom. Some kind of massive system crash. I need to get over there right away.” He stood as he was talking and was already putting on his jacket as he spoke. I could only assume it was something serious, otherwise he wouldn’t be in such a hurry to leave. I was extremely curious as to what the emergency had been, but with my dad in the room, Jon couldn’t tell me.
“Good luck,” I whispered into his ear before he took off out the door, leaving me alone with my dad. I returned to my seat across from him and picked at my macaroni salad.
“You know, he’s lying,” my dad remarked casually.
“Don’t do this, Dad. Please.” I frowned. The last thing I needed was for him to start looking into the Kent family.
“Very well. I’m not here to lecture you on your personal life, Kaylie.” There was an uncomfortable silence between us.
“I sent my final notes on the Sproxton case to your office, did you get them?” I asked.
“Yes. However, I have to say, they seem a little incomplete. You found complete records of his dealings with Intergang, yet you were unable to get any concrete information on Project Titan?”
I had hoped he wouldn’t notice. I had decided along with the Kents that the NIA didn’t need detailed information on how to track and eliminate Superman, Supernova, and Nebula so I had withheld that information from my report.
“That information was destroyed before I could send it to the agency,” I said. Of course I had been the one to do the destroying, but that point was completely irrelevant. But my dad wasn’t to be fooled.
“Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes, Kaylie,” he told me sharply. “I suspect what you did. Be glad that I’m not going to look into it too deeply. Just know that some of your methods in this last assignment were questionable to say the least.”
“Well, maybe if you hadn’t split me and Jay up, it would’ve been done to your standards.” I cringed inwardly at the juvenile tone. Two minutes with my father and I ended up sounding like a pubescent girl pouting because she couldn’t go to the school dance.
“None of your tactics were as bad as some of the results,” he continued. “To have the agency splashed across the Daily Planet the day after it happened-”
“Lois Lane was an invaluable source in that case,” I argued furiously, finally able to stand up for something. “I was repaying her for her hard work with an exclusive. She didn’t print anything that wasn’t available for the general public.”
“I’m just concerned that Ms. Lane’s fondness for Superman might’ve influenced your decision to hold back information from the NIA. And I have to say it’s extremely suspicious that this woman happens to be your future mother in law.”
I paused for a moment, shocked at the multiple implications he was bringing to me. “Do you really think so little of me, Dad?” I asked, upset. “Do you think I’d let personal interest interfere with making sure people are brought to justice?”
“I’m not really sure what to think about it, Kaylie,” he sighed. “I’m just trying to tell you what it looks like from an outsider’s perspective. But let’s leave that for the time being. There are more important things we need to discuss.” He reached down to pull a small laptop computer from his briefcase and pulled up a file for me to read. “It’s a memory erasure device,” he told me, as I quickly skimmed through the information. “It enables the user to target a specific set of memories and wipe them from the subject’s mind.”
“Any idea whose it is?” I asked despite myself.
“We’re not sure yet,” my dad replied. “So far all we have is a few unsubstantiated rumors. Jason’s been looking into some leads for the last month or so.”
“That’s great,” I said, remembering that I had decided to sit this investigation out. “But I don’t understand why you want to pull me in on this. It isn’t even in my usual area. Jay can handle it himself.”
My dad frowned. “Jason’s been pulled off the case,” he said.
“What? When?”
“As of three nights ago,” my dad told me. “He was dumped on the doorstep of the Metropolis NIA satellite office pumped full of drugs and with his memory so mangled you’d think it had been run through a food processor. He has no memory of ever working on this case, and even his personal memories are somewhat patchy. We can only assume that he had gotten to close and whoever it was decided to make an example of him. As a result, he’s been discharged from the NIA and is no longer authorized to conduct any investigations whatsoever.”
* * *
***She was waiting for him in his dorm room when he came back from eating breakfast.
“Ellie, what are you doing here?” he demanded, quickly shutting the door after him. “What would’ve happened if someone was with me?”
“I was looking through the door,” she replied. “I would’ve slipped out the window if anyone else came in. I do have some sense of responsibility.” She grinned cheekily at him.
“Great. Fine. Whatever.” It hadn’t taken long for him to loose patience with her. Maybe if he didn’t talk she would get the hint and leave.
“So I was thinking,” she continued, purposefully oblivious to his moody demeanor, “that we should go somewhere today. It’s Saturday, so you don’t have class.”
“Where were you thinking of going?”
“How about Brazil? I’ve never been there before, and it could be fun.”
Jon shook his head. “Brazil’s too far. If there’s an emergency in Metropolis that I can help with, I won’t be able to hear Dad.”
“Well, I’m sure Dad can look after Metropolis for a day. He’s been doing it himself for years until you started helping him.”
“I’m not going anywhere today,” Jon insisted stubbornly.
“Please, Jon?” his sister pleaded. “You haven’t taken a day off since…” She stopped, aware that she was treading on dangerous ground. “Since the funeral,” she finally finished.
“The funeral doesn’t have anything to do with it,” he replied stiffly.
“Jon, I know this has been difficult for you,” Ellie told him hesitantly. “But it’s been hard on everyone. And I really think you need to just take a day and blow off some steam-”
“You might be able to do that, Ellie,” Jon interjected, “but I can’t. Grandpa meant a lot more to me-”
“I loved him too!” Ellie cut in. “Just because you lived with him for four years doesn’t mean that you have the ultimate claim on grief. We’re all grieving, Jon!”
“Oh, really?” he remarked sarcastically. “Because for some people, a death in the family is more important than a day trip to Brazil.”
“It’s not about Brazil,” Ellie told him, deeply wounded. “It’s about spending time with you and actually getting to see you for once.”
“If you want to see me, then just turn on the news,” Jon replied snappily. “I’m out there making a difference every time. And now that’s where I’m going right now.” He brushed past her and shot out of the window, so fast that she didn’t have time to catch where he was going.***
* * *
“You lied to me!” I accused Jay later in the day when he had come home.
“Kaylie-”
“How could you possibly think that I wouldn’t find out?” I shouted. “What kind of imbecilic move was that to not *tell* me what happened? What was your plan, Jay? Just keep *illegally* investigating this and hope that Dad wouldn’t get around to talking to me?”
“Kaylie, I-”
“How could you keep me in the dark about this?”
“I was going to tell you!” he argued. “When I first came to visit you, I was going to tell you about the whole thing.”
I paused, breaking off my rant. “You were?”
“I was. But then you were with Jon. And you’re engaged. Kaylie, I only had to spend about two seconds with you to see how happy you are. I couldn’t just walk into your life with all my baggage and ruin it.”
“You thought I wouldn’t care about what happened to you?” I asked. “Because I’m engaged I’m going to turn my back on you when something awful has happened? Do you really think you mean that little to me Jay?”
“No, that’s not it, Kaylie,” he said. “I know you care about me. And maybe that’s the problem. Because what we’re dealing with isn’t just any old crook. These are *memories*, Kaylie. Look, I think we both know that I don’t have a lot going for me right now. But you… You have a whole life ahead of yourself. If you stumbled into trouble on this assignment… Just think about what it’d be like if they wiped your memories of Jon.” That stopped my anger in its tracks. Not because I was concerned about myself, but because I could really see the pain that Jay had gone through in the last few days.
“How much of your memories are gone?” I asked gently as I moved to sit beside him.
“Well, all the work I’ve put into this case, obviously,” he said. “And besides that… Just stupid stuff, really. Personal things. The name of our pet gerbil, what high school we graduated from, whether I usually take sugar in my coffee. It’s stuff I should remember, but now I just… can’t. Anyway, the NIA has no way of knowing what else they did to me besides mess up my memories so they’ve dumped me. They can’t risk having a loose cannon on board.”
“I can’t believe they would do that to you,” I fumed. “You gave them your whole life!”
“Well, I’ll still be financially provided for,” Jay said tonelessly. “I just won’t be of any use to anyone.”
“Jay, I’ll find the people who did this,” I promised. “And I’m going to make sure they’ll be made responsible for what happened to you.”
“You shouldn’t take the risk, Kaylie.”
“I’m taking it,” I said resolutely. “But I’m going to do it my way. Which means we’re bringing in the Kents.”
