Previously...
“Let’s see what you’ve been doing,” Kal spoke, sitting up straight to get a better view.
“Let me just get the clasp…” Brian fumbled with it for a moment, and then it clicked open. “Here it is!” he announced, opening the case, and displaying the contents.
The only thing Kal was aware of was a flash of green as he felt a hot, sickening pain shoot through his entire body. The floor tilted to the side, and he heard muffled voices speaking although he couldn’t understand them.
Then everything went black.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The door flew open and Lois was put face to face with a very frantic looking pregnant woman.
“You’re Lois,” she guessed. “Thanks for coming.”
Lois stepped through the doorway. “Sorry it took me this long. Traffic, you know. Is he-”
“I’m fine,” came an irritated voice from the sofa.
“You passed out and now you don’t have any powers,” the woman snapped. “We have reason to be concerned.”
Kal was stretched across the sofa, and Lois sucked back a gasp. She had never seen him look this pale and weak. No one looking at him no would believe that he could possibly be Superman.
“Oh, I’m Marli, by the way,” the woman introduced. “Brian’s wife.”
“Hi,” Lois replied distractedly. She had already guessed the woman’s identity. “Where’s Brian?”
“Putting Adam in bed,” Marli explained. “He was pretty upset when Kal collapsed, and although he’s calmed down now, we figured he didn’t need to be here while we were talking about this.”
“So what happened exactly? Are *all* of his powers gone?”
“Please don’t talk about me as if I’m not here,” Kal complained.
“Get some rest,” Marli commanded. Then she turned to Lois. “We think it had something to do with the stones I’ve been working with for a new client. I’m a jewelry designer. As soon as Brian opened the box, Kal collapsed. And although Kal didn’t exactly bounce back when the box was closed, he did look a lot better.”
“But nothing’s supposed to hurt you, Kal,” Lois spoke with concern. “Of all things that would, I wouldn’t think exposure to a rock would be the thing to hurt you.”
“Well, they were pretty strange rocks,” Marli commented, chewing her bottom lip. “Which makes me beat myself up even more. I should have asked more questions about where they came from, but it was such a good opportunity-”
“You’ve never seen rocks like those before?” Kal asked, cutting into her guilty speech.
“Glowing green rocks?” Marli’s forehead crinkled. “I don’t think there’s anything on Earth that glows all by itself like that. I think anyone would find them pretty weird.”
“I don’t,” Kal spoke quietly. “I don’t find them weird at all. They were as common back home as concrete is here.”
That sentence landed heavily in the small room.
“Kal, how did rocks from Krypton end up in my living room?” Marli’s voice was high and strained.
Lois had to ask the obvious question. “Who gave them to you?”
“A new client,” she replied. “His name was… something Newtrich. He never gave me his first name. I have a phone number… But it’s uh… in the case.”
“You can get it out when Kal leaves,” Lois decided. “We don’t want to expose him again.”
“Oh God, do you think those rocks would have hurt the baby?” Marli asked suddenly, turning a shade paler and placing her hand on her belly.
“No one else seemed to feel it at all,” Kal replied. “They seem to only affect me.”
“Did those rocks ever hurt people back on Krypton?” Marli asked, still concerned.
“No,” Kal shook his head. “They were never a problem. In fact, they were often used as a power source.”
“Maybe they changed somehow when they came to Earth,” Lois speculated.
“I certainly did,” Kal shrugged. “Of course, now I appear to be as normal as before.”
“Kal, I’m sure that this is just temporary,” Lois told him, not really sure if it would be a reassurance to him or not. After all, not having any powers would definitely help him have a normal life on Earth.
Brian came into the room from the hallway. “Adam’s asleep,” he announced quietly. “What’s going on out here?”
Marli quickly filled Brian in on what they had discovered.
“So you don’t know anything about this Newtrich guy?” he frowned. “He just handed over some strange rocks and you got right to work without asking any questions?”
“I was stupid. I know,” Marli admitted, guilt written plainly on her face. “I guess I was just so excited about the possibility of getting some solid, paid work that I didn’t ask as many questions as I should have. I hear about all the dangerous things that happen in Metropolis from you and Kal, but I never expected to face it myself.”
“It’s okay, Marli,” Brian comforted. “There’s nothing wrong with trusting people.”
“There is if my friends get hurt in the process,” Marli grumbled, refusing to let it go.
“I am fine, Marli,” Kal reassured her. “A little sore, maybe, but that’s all. I’m grateful you both figured out quickly enough that it was the stones that were hurting me.”
“Trust me, it was pretty obvious that those things were what caused the pain,” Brian grimaced.
“Do you think Newtrich knows that?” Lois pondered.
“What do you mean?” Marli asked.
“Well, let’s assume that he knew that the rocks came from Krypton. Would he have known that they would hurt Kal or did he just think that he could make some decent money selling Superman memorabilia?”
“It would be one way to get around the copyright guidelines set out by the Superman Foundation,” Kal mused. “You can’t copyright rocks, and they would sell for even more than the toys the Foundation makes.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Marli decided. “He never told me the rocks were from Krypton. Assuming that he knew their origin, he would have told me the truth, maybe hoping I could incorporate that into the designs somehow.”
“What exactly did he tell you to design?” Brian asked his wife.
“At first, all he wanted was a simple pendant,” Marli replied. “But the stone he gave me was interesting. I started to get ideas of other designs. I told him I would be interested in doing some more work with them, and although he didn’t seem very interested at first, he called me a couple days later asking if I could design some more things for him. He gave me the stones I have now, and told me to design anything I wanted.” She frowned miserably. “I thought it was a dream job.”
“We need to find more about Newtrich,” Lois decided. “And about how these Kryptonian rocks came to Earth. I’ll have to go the Planet.” She checked her watch. “It’s not too late; I’ll head over there right now.”
“I’ll come with you,” Kal announced, standing up.
“Kal, maybe you should be resting,” Marli suggested gently.
Lois silently agreed. He had been unusually quiet while they were discussing all this. He was probably more tired than he was letting on.
“I have a headache, but I’m not critically ill,” Kal replied. “I may not be entirely used to feeling this way after months of invulnerability, but I’m more than capable of helping Lois. This is ultimately my responsibility, anyway.”
Of course Kal probably wouldn’t rest until this whole situation was taken care of. Reluctantly, she nodded her head.
“We’ll need the number for Newtrich,” Lois reminded the couple. “We don’t know what kind of range those rocks have, so maybe wait for a few minutes before opening the box and then leave me a voicemail at work.”
“Okay,” Marli nodded.
“Keep us updated,” Brian requested. “And if you need anything from the MPD just let me know.”
“Thanks,” Lois replied. “I think you’re going to be a lot easier to work with than Henderson.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Brian remarked grimly. “I’ve got a personal stake in this, Lois. I’m going to be riding you pretty hard.”
Lois looked at the young couple. Marli was still clearly distraught at what she had found herself in the middle of, and Brian’s arm was gripped firmly around her shoulders, as if he could protect her from all the harm in the world just by standing next to her.
“Don’t worry,” she told them. “They don’t call me the best for nothing.”
* * *
“The Daily Planet has one of the best search databases in the country,” Lois bragged to Kal. Sure, he had been to the Planet a couple times before, but he hadn’t ever worked here yet, so she was giving him a brief professional overview of the newsroom. The city section was empty, so they had all the privacy they wanted. “When Franklin Stern bought it last year, he did a complete technical overhaul. Everything here is state-of-the-art. The best available.”
The corner of Kal’s mouth twitched as he sat down at an empty desk close to Lois’.
“What?” Lois asked.
“Nothing.”
“No, it’s something. You’re laughing. What are you laughing at?”
“*This* is the best computer technology available on Earth?” He ran a few fingers across the keyboard.
“Yes,” Lois replied defensively.
“Okay,” Kal nodded. The corner of his mouth lifted higher, stretching his face into a pronounced smirk.
“Let me guess, Kryptonians had mindreading holographs or something.”
“You saw the globe,” Kal shrugged. “That should give you an idea of what Kryptonian technology is capable of. Let’s just say that to me, this looks like something Frank Flintstone would use.”
“Fred,” Lois corrected quickly, happy to jump on something he had gotten wrong.
Kal seemed unperturbed. “Luckily, I’ve been reading up on computer systems. I’ve needed to in order to write my stories. I shouldn’t have a problem using them here.”
“Okay, so we need to find any information that might lead us to finding out how those rocks would have gotten to Earth. You said you don’t remember them being at the site where you landed?”
“Not that I know of, but you would have to ask Jonathan and Martha. I was extremely weak and barely conscious when they found me. They took me and the ship back to the farm house, and waking up in their spare room is the first thing that I remember clearly.”
“So there might have been rocks there that could have gotten left behind and found there by someone else.”
“It’s possible,” Kal shrugged. “I haven’t been back to the spot since. It’s also possible that the rocks landed somewhere else. If debris from Krypton got caught up in the blast of the ship, it could have been taken along to Earth, and scattered when it reached the atmosphere.”
“Well, how about we split up tasks?” Lois suggested. “You can search for news articles dealing with any sort of cosmic activity around the time of your arrival, and call Jonathan and Martha. I’ll see if I can dig up any information on a guy named Newtrich.”
“Okay,” Kal agreed, pinching the bridge of his nose and squinting his eyes shut.
“Are you okay, Kal?” Lois asked with concern. “Maybe you should go home and rest.”
“I’m fine,” he replied. “I have a bit of a headache is all, and it’s been a while since I’ve had to put up with something like that. And I think… I think I’m hungry,” he finally decided, frowning as if it was a difficult thing to decide.
“You’re hungry?” Lois blinked. “I thought you got all your energy from the sun.”
“The sun has set. I must need the extra energy right now.”
“The Kryptonium really took it out of you,” Lois sympathized.
“Kryptonium?” Kal asked.
“Well, it needed a name,” Lois defended. “What did you call it on Krypton?”
“You wouldn’t be able to pronounce it,” Kal told her. “Anyway, it’s more of a meteorite than an element. Kryptonite would be a better word.”
“Fine. Kryptonite,” Lois agreed. She took two steps over to her desk, and pulled open her takeout drawer. She grabbed her collection of menus and brought them back to the desk where Kal was sitting. “What do you think you want to eat?”
Kal shrugged. “I haven’t eaten enough food here on Earth to really know.”
“That’s true. This is going to be your first meal here that really counts.” Lois shuffled through the menus, determined to find the perfect thing. “What do you think about Thai?”
“I think it sounds just as good as anything else does. Maybe I’ll just go down the street to that diner. They serve food there, right?”
“You really are hungry, aren’t you? Trust me, you don’t want your first meal to be from there. I know, we’ll order pizza! It’ll be fast, traditional, and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like it.”
“How fast?” Kal demanded.
The pizza came in record time, and soon Lois and Kal were sitting in the borrowed conference room looking over what they had managed to dig up while waiting for the food to arrive.
“Martha said that they might have seen something like we described the night they found me, but they can’t be sure.”
“And they didn’t do anything about it?” Lois frowned.
“I think they were a little distracted by the alien and spaceship. Rocks probably weren’t high up on their list of priorities.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Anyway, they said they’d take a walk out there tomorrow to check.”
“Good,” Lois nodded.
“It would be good to know if the rocks are still there, but it doesn’t give us a concrete trail.” Kal took another slice and tore off a big bite. “There were several news stories talking about unexplained meteor activity around the time I arrived. It seems that chunks of ‘Kryptonite’ landed in many different places around North America, and possibly even elsewhere.”
“How would that even work?” Lois asked. “There’s no way the rocks would have been able to travel as fast and as far as your spaceship.”
Kal scratched the back of his head. “I don’t understand enough of the science to really explain it to you,” he shared. “But it is completely possible for the rocks to get caught up in the wake of the ship and travel all the way to Earth. They would only slow down when the ship was about to enter the atmosphere, which would explain the different locations and times that they fell.”
“So there’s no way to tell for sure where all the pieces of Kryptonite are. Newtrich could have gotten them from anywhere.”
Kal sighed and kneaded his forehead.
“How are you feeling?” Lois asked sympathetically. “Any sign of your powers coming back?”
“No,” Kal replied. “But I’m fine. It put me a little off balance to suddenly be back to normal, but I’ve adjusted now.”
“How’s the pizza?”
“It’s good,” he smiled. “Food on Earth is much better than what we had on Krypton. You take a lot more pleasure in making it than we ever did.”
“There isn’t a lot of articles about Newtriches, but I did manage to find out a couple things about a Gene Newtrich,” Lois shared. “He’s got a doctorate from Met U in Geology, and had a research position at the university for a couple years before he was fired.”
“Why?”
“His funding was cut,” Lois shrugged, glancing at the article that told the story. “Apparently he wasn’t getting good enough results. The only reason it was publicized was because he made a big deal about it. He threatened the Dean and vandalized his old lab space. Any chance of him being hired at another university would have died with this article.”
“He sounds dangerous,” Kal frowned. “I don’t like to think of Marli being mixed up with that man.”
“Me either,” Lois agreed. “I couldn’t find much else about him. We’ll have to wait until Jimmy comes in tomorrow. I’m sure he can dig up some information about what Newtrich has been doing since he was fired.”
“Okay,” Kal agreed. “I suppose it can wait until then.”
“We should probably call it a night,” Lois suggested, more for his benefit than hers. Despite what he said, he still looked exhausted and he probably wouldn’t take a rest unless she forced him to. “If you want to meet me here again tomorrow, we’ll talk to Jimmy about looking up Newtrich.”
“We should call the number Marli gave us,” Kal remembered. “He might not answer because it’s late, but we should at least try.”
“Okay.” Lois grabbed the sheet that she had written the number on, and punched the digits into the phone, setting it on speaker.
The phone rang several times, but there was no answer.
“He must be away from the phone,” Kal guessed.
“Or he’s got some type of caller ID and isn’t going to pick up the phone for us,” Lois added.
She was just about to hang up when the ringing stopped abruptly and a gruff voice came through the line.
“Hello?”
“Is this Mr. Newtrich?” Lois asked, sitting forward in her seat.
“Who’s calling?” he demanded.
“I…” Lois hesitated. If Newtrich was a dangerous person, she did not want him to know that Marli had been the one to tell her about him. Yet she had to explain how she got the number somehow. She probably should have thought this through before she called.
Her brief hesitation was too much time for Newtrich.
“I don’t know who you are, but don’t call this number again,” he demanded shortly, and then hung up.
“Wow.” Kal’s eyebrows lifted. “He really didn’t want to talk to you.”
“Yeah,” Lois agreed. “I don’t know who he is, but he’s definitely got something to hide. First thing tomorrow, we’re finding out more about this Newtrich guy.”
