Bloodlines

Chapter 4

Considering the situations that he'd been party to, Pete had little contact with the Justice League. When he did meet them, it was for ceremonial purposes only with little more than handshakes. Meeting them as an assignment, naturally, roused a greater response.

The three JL members arrived via their hotel room window. The first wore a red flack vest and half his weight in weapons. He immediately scanned the room with an intimidating gun-like tool. Only Lois' signal kept both Pete and Lana from attacking. A woman dressed in skin-tight black and fishnet stockings entered next, tumbling and flipping until she reached the door. The last one took forever to roll from his landing crouch and when he finally stood straight, he seemed taller than even Clark. Green Kevlar covered his head and torso. The Green Arrow. The unspoken leader of the JL himself had come.

"Consul Ross, Mrs. Ross. And Ms. Lane." His voice was deep and rough. "We have your safe-house ready."

"You're early," said Lois.

"We were in the neighbourhood." Green Arrow. He nodded to his teammates. "This is Arsenal and that's Black Canary."

Another set of handshakes came around.

"I had the pleasure of attending one of your presentations during the Metahuman Summit three years ago," the Black Canary told Pete. "I found it very thorough and fair in light of current events."

Pete's heated cheeks had less to do with Black Canary's uniform and more to do with the authenticity in her voice. "I'm glad you enjoyed it."

"She didn't just enjoy it," said Arsenal. "She made us all watch a vid of the lecture and come up with League policy amendments to reflect your theories."

"Successfully, I might add," said the Black Canary.

"What kind of changes?" asked Lana.

"The mentorship program for metapowered children for one. It was kind of implicitly there but I wanted it to be in black and white."

Now Pete couldn't stop grinning. "Well, I really don't know what to say to that other than thank you."

Green Arrow cleared his throat. "Now that we're all finished patting each other on the back, I believe we have bodies to secure. I'd like to propose a slight change in plans, however, Consul and Mrs. Ross."

Arching his eyebrows, Pete asked, "What kind of change?"

"It's with regards to your daughters," said Green Arrow. "I know you'd prefer to have them close but experience has taught us that unless the children are the main targets, it's safer to keep them in a separate hidden location--"

Lana was already shaking her head.

"-- where another team can concentrate purely on protecting the children."

"No," said Lana. "I want my girls with me."

"Mrs. Ross, I understand your reticence but trust me, it really is safer this way."

"Lana, you can trust them," said Lois.

Her arms crossed, Lana locked eyes with Pete. He released a puff of air through his teeth, jamming his hands into his pockets. Her eyes went wide. "Pete, you can't agree with this!"

"They are the Justice League," Pete said, wavering between the two sides. "Who'll be assigned with our girls?"

Arsenal lifted his hand. "I've got a kid myself. I'll take your girls to the same place where mine stays after school. They'll get security bracelets with tracking and certain security measures. I promise, my partners and I won't let anything happen to them."

Lips pursed, Lana stared Arsenal in the eye. "Has your child ever been kidnapped from this safe-house?"

Arsenal squirmed. "I can't answer that for my family's safety."

"That's a no comment."

Pete placed a hand on her arm. "Lana, please."

"I'm just making sure," Lana said.

"It's okay," said Arsenal. "I'd totally be the same way if it was my kid. It's standard procedure to separate targets though. If it wasn't for Superman's explicit instructions, your five would be in separate safe-houses, too."

In the end, Lana caved. Green Arrow, Black Canary and Arsenal whisked the three of them away through the fire escape to a waiting helicopter where they were blindfolded them before take-off. Less than fifteen minutes later, Pete felt himself led to a car which then drove for an indeterminate amount of time before he was led out again. This time, he recognised the roar of jet engines.

"I'm getting travel sick with all this obfuscation," said Lois as she buckled in.

"It's for your own protection," said Green Arrow. "Plausible deniability. But you can remove your blindfolds now. The plane cabin has no windows."

"Joy. Is Canary driving?"

A smile touched Green Arrow's mouth, softening the whiskered angles of his jaw. "You don't trust my piloting skills, Lois?"

"Not any further than I can throw your jet, Sherwood."

"Granted, it's not as natural as your usual mode of travel but the jet's temperature controlled and you can have an in-flight movie."

From the cockpit came Black Canary's voice. "Are you flirting with Lois again, GA? May I remind you that the Boy Scout can throw you into a wall with a bat of his lovely, long lashes."

"I love baiting him," Green Arrow said, completely unapologetic. "It helps straighten out his spit-curl. Hey, hold on. Since when have you noticed his eyelashes?"

"We had a poll. He won for best eyes, best tush and most likely to impress your mother."

"What did I win?"

"Most likely to regret current facial hair and runner-up for Over-Compensators Anonymous."

Growling, Green Arrow stalked into the cockpit.

"Ignore them," Arsenal told Pete and Lana. "They have unresolved sexual tension."

"Do not," Black Canary and Green Arrow yelled back.

Lois went off into paroxysms of laughter. Pete relaxed into the flight; a glance at Lana told him that she wasn't visibly angry at least. Maybe seeing the girls, no matter how briefly, would calm her down.

After half an hour in the air, Green Arrow reported that they would be meeting with another Justice League jet. Her daughters, Helene and Annabelle, were on that second jet and they'd all have a few hours together before they left again for their respective safe-houses.

Lana strapped into her chair. A roar outside announced the arrival of the second jet soon followed by a metallic clank of the coupling mechanism. Green Arrow opened the hatch. He'd told them that air-to-air transfers were perfectly safe and secure but Lana couldn't help worrying. They weren't transferring inanimate objects, after all; her baby girls could fall, get frightened, squirm enough to slip through the strongest hold--

"Mama! Daddy! Mama! Daddy!" Her two girls, Helene still in her uniform, reached out for them. Their guardians seemed to have a good hold on them though, smiles visible from under their hoods.

"Hang on, princess," said one of the Leaguers, a tall, dark man with a two lightning bolts arcing down his jacket. "Remember what I said about proper missions?"

Amazingly, Helene, who had turned wheedling into an art form, nodded and held stiff until the hatch closed. Lana had her belts snapped off before the Leaguers even put the girls down. Pete was right beside her.

"Mama, nous sommes rided on a plane just only me et Belle et aussi j'n'pleur pas even Bella pleur lots^[1]," Helene proudly declared in her usual mix of English and French.

Annabelle toddled into Pete's arms, tucked her head under his chin and sighed. Her thumb went into her mouth but Lana didn't have the heart to reprimand her. "Thank you for taking care of them," she said to the Leaguers.

"Mrs. Ross, Consul Ross, meet Black Lightning and Manhunter." Green Arrow clapped a hand on their shoulders. "They're experts in witness protection and parents themselves. They'll be with Arsenal in your daughters' safe-house."

"I was thinking of bringing my own kid over once in a while for playdates," said the silver-masked woman called Manhunter.

It took Lana's brain a while to compute the idea of a playdate with superheroes' kids in a highly armed safe-house. The scenario was a special type of ridiculous. "If you need anything or have any questions, just--

"Call me first and I'll pass it on," Green Arrow interrupted. To his teammates, he said, "Do your dodging; we'll meet up again in an hour."

"Just an hour?" Pete asked plaintively.

Green Arrow nodded but Lana could tell he felt badly about it. "The longer you're all together, the easier a target we'll be. As you can see, the cabin's fully equipped; feel free to use anything. Hey, Lois, want to see what the jet can do?"

"Sure thing." Lois unbuckled herself and quickly retreated to the cockpit with Green Arrow. Lana appreciated the thought; even without sinister goings-on, the four of them hardly had time together as a family.

She turned to Pete. Annabelle was already asleep in his arms. He'd always been able to calm them the best.

"Mama, pourquoi you have to go encore?^[2]" asked Helene.

"Well, remember my friend who passed away?" At her daughter's nod, Lana continued, "She was a writer and she wrote something that upset some bad people so they're protecting all of us until--"

"The Justice League takes care of everything," Pete interrupted. "You're going to a special secret hide-out just like a superhero. Black Lightning, Arsenal and Manhunter said they have kids too so you'll have playmates. I bet they can teach you all sorts of cool things."

Helene filled them in with minutiae of her days in pre-school, her nannies (transgressions and indulgences) and the many varied ways in which Annabelle continued to make much too much noise. On her part, Bella belied her elder's words by sitting quietly first in Pete's arms then in Lana's. The hour was over much too soon.

Lana squeezed Annabelle extra tight, breathing in that lovely baby-smell that still lingered in her plump toddler's body. Manhunter gave her an understanding smile even as she held a hand out for Annabelle.

"They'll have to drop a nuclear bomb to breach even the first wall of the safe-house," she promised Lana.

She blinked her tears back. Bella empathised heavily with adults; if Lana started crying, she'd cry as well, then Helene might join in and she'd never be able to let them go. "Annabelle hates peas and she can't sleep if there's even a sliver of light in her room. Also, don't let Helene take advantage of you; she's got the best pity-me look especially when it comes to baths. They... they usually like having something to read before bedtime so I'm pretty sure you'll be sick of Skippy John Jones by the end of all of this."

Pete kissed Helene once, twice, three, four and ten times on her cheeks, his lashes barely holding his tears in check. "Soyez obéissants pendant notre absence?^[3]"

Helene nodded solemnly. "Oui, Daddy.^[4]"

"That's my girl." He hugged her again and kissed both cheeks. "I love you, baby."

"Love you, Daddy. Love you, Mama."

"I love you, sweetie," Lana said as joined their embrace. Annabelle stirred long enough to pat Lana's cheek then they were gone, tucked away with the three Leaguers out the hatch and into the other plane.

Silently, Lana belted back into her seat.

"You shouldn't have told Helene about bad guys," said Pete. "You scared her."

"I wasn't about to lie to her," Lana said. "I didn't give her any details that would give her nightmares."

"It's not about the details, it's about giving them the responsibility for that knowledge. They're too young to be worrying about bad men finding their parents and hiding under protective custody."

"Spinning a yarn about secret hide-outs isn't going to make things easier."

Pete clenched his eyes closed. "Sometimes, honesty isn't the best policy, Lana."

"Forgive me for not wanting to build a truthful foundation with my children."

"You're always twisting this argument into this unreal dichotomy."

"And you always turning me into the bad guy! I can differentiate between adult and child appropriate information, you know."

Lois walked in and immediately translated their body language. Not that it was difficult. "Or, I can come back later when the tension doesn't threaten to cut me to shreds."

"No, please, come in, Lois," said Lana. "We were just worrying about the girls."

"They're cute. Really smart and, uh, pinafore-y. I predict a cuteness overload in the little pink safe-house," said Lois. As an attempt to lighten the mood, it failed miserably but Lana appreciated the gesture. "Canary says we'll be landing within the hour. Conner and Clark will meet us there."

"Did he say how long we'll be staying at the safe-house?" Pete asked.

Lois shook her head. Lana envied her self-possession. Her life with Clark must be full of danger; this was probably routine by now. Smallville's meteor mutants flashed through her memories. As much as she loved Clark once upon a time, Lana didn't envy Lois' life one bit.

Eyebrows arched, Lois took stock of their home away from home for the next few weeks. "I have to hand it to you, GA; you shack up your clients in style."

"I try to make the stay comfortable," said Green Arrow.

Although obviously old, the three bedroom apartment was well furnished. Antiques and rugs covered up the worse of the cracked plaster and worn floorboards. The kitchen had a narrow fridge common to most European homes and an electric stove. The few windows faced brick walls. Each room had a double bed and a chest of drawers. The sole bathroom had a mosaic floor, a shower and a damn fine bathtub along with the usual toileting amenities.

Green Arrow pointed out the security mechanisms. "We have the usual alarms on every exit and IR sensors that patch right to our HQ. There are also sensors on the roof, the basement, the fire escape and all five floors on this building. The corridors are all monitored. You have a few neighbours but all the residents have been here for at least three years." He took three plastic loops from a belt pouch. "These are tracking bracelets. After I weld them on you all, only Cyborg can unlock them."

"What if someone cuts them off?" asked Pete.

"They'll have an unfortunate surprise." There was no humour in the Green Arrow's smile.

It wasn't difficult to use his codename when he was in his colours. The voice-changer helped but, like Clark, his demeanour changed when he was in character. There was a reckless arrogance in the Green Arrow, only a fraction of which showed in Oliver Queen. His every move was silk-smooth where Ollie held himself stiff. Green Arrow cracked jokes while Oliver Queen barely cracked a grin.

"Superman, Green Arrow and I will be your primary bodyguards," said Black Canary. "Don't let anyone else in unless one of us accompanies them, even if they look like JL or have ID. There'll be two of us at any given time. I'm sure you all know the bodyguard drill by now: don't leave without telling us, stay away from the windows, follow everything we say when things go wrong, et cetera. Nobody try to be a hero, Lane."

Lois threw her hands up. "Come on, Canary, I saved your ass by taking that shot."

"I was talking about the time you drove a Hummer at the Joker's tank."

"It worked."

Rolling her eyes, Black Canary asked the others, "Has she always been like this?"

"From what I can remember, yes," said Lana.

Lois glared at her, only half-joking. "Thanks a lot."

Green Arrow interrupted the banter. "Superman's on his way with the rest of your--"

A knock sounded at the door.

"Show off," muttered Green Lantern. He opened the door. A blur of red, blue and yellow zipped in. As soon as the door closed, Conner hopped out of Superman's carry.

"If I bought a vintage Hog," he said, "would it even come close to being that cool?"

"Probably not," Lois said. "But you could always ask to borrow Clark's."

"You own a--"

Superman jerked his hand in a silencing gesture. "Ms. Lane, have you filled them in about names?"

Lois shook her head. "We just got here. I've barely got my land legs back. Do we have coffee?"

When Green Arrow pointed at the proper cupboard, Lois made a beeline for it. "The other identity is always referred to in the third person. We're safe from bugs here but it's better to get into the habit."

"We could always make it easier and ask Raven to do a memory wipe," said Black Canary.

"Not in hell," said Lois cheerfully. "When have I ever accepted that offer?"

Pete jumped into the conversation. "What happened to you? Conner, your shirt--"

"Are those bullet holes?" Lana exclaimed.

Superman frowned. "Someone was waiting for Conner and Clark at the condo. She was a meta-human, a chameleon of some sort. She demolished the place looking for Ms. Sullivan's document but fortunately, she was deterred."

"They didn't count on Mom's pure genius though," said Conner. "She had a back-up taped to the side of the fridge."

"Is it anyone we know?" asked Green Arrow.

Superman shook his head. "No."

"I took care of her," Conner said with obvious pride. "I dodged almost all her bullets. I even caught one and I totally would've run after her but S--Clark, uh, tripped on me."

Throwing Conner an admonishing look, Superman continued. "I detained her until Impulse and Aquaman came to take her into custody. Meanwhile, we have a lead on the article." He produced a memory stick. "Decode this and you can all go home sooner."

"Chloe was a computer genius," Lana pointed out. "Where would we even start?"

Lois waved a hand at Conner. "She must've taught you everything she knew, Junior. I'm sure the five of us would equal one Chloe."

Pete and Lois unpacked their laptops, Lana, her DVD player. Superman took that moment to go civilian so that Clark could also take his laptop out.

"Pete, what kind of security system do you have on your computer?" asked Lois.

"Foxtecha," Pete replied.

"How many password attempts before it kills the hard drive?"

"Six."

"Not bad. We'll use yours as primary. Conner, are you techie enough to link the rest of us up?"

"Not Mr. Ross'," said Conner. "That probably needs government clearance to add any sort of peripheral programs or hardware."

"Where's Cyborg when you need him?" Clark wondered.

"In Pakistan," said Green Arrow.

"Oh. Uh. Good for him."

"Can't we just beam the info?" asked Lana.

"We can try but I have a feeling that Mr. Ross' system would have a pretty strict firewall," Conner said.

"We also can't risk sending it by email," said Clark. "So it'll have to be by memory stick. Clunky and slow but safe."

"As long as no one gets the stick," said Lois.

Lois positioned herself beside Pete as he slipped the memory stick into the reader in his computer. A browser brought up a single word processor document. He clicked on it. A continuous paragraph of gibberish came on screen, spanning four pages.

"Code," said Lois. "Do you know what kind, Conner?"

"Right off the top of my head? Heck no. But maybe after I look at it for a while, some patterns'll come up." Conner pulled the computer closer to him. His eyes scanned the text with preternatural swiftness.

Something wasn't right. Inhaling coffee fumes for inspiration, Lois stared at the screen, not really reading the text but studying it overall.

"It's too short," said Lois after a few minutes.

"The article?" Clark asked.

She nodded. "If the expose was that big, it'd be longer than three pages, double-spaced in twelve-point font. Seven or eight pages is better. Plus, where's all the documentation? She has to have papers to back up the story or else it's worth less than the paper it's printed on. Check for any hidden files, Con."

Conner did as he was told but came up with nothing. "Maybe the rest of it was in the laptop."

"Doubt it. Remember: think like Chloe everyone."

After a few seconds of silence, Clark snapped his fingers. "She split the info up. The rest of the piece and the documentation are probably in other cards hidden somewhere else."

"In the condo?"

"Not secure enough. She would've placed them in different buildings." Lois jumped to her feet and began pacing; she always thought better on the move. "Her office?"

"Mom's a freelancer," Conner said.

"A colleague or a boyfriend."

"A best friend," added Pete.

Conner wrinkled his nose. "They'd all be on her contact list on her laptop or her phone."

"Both of which are toast," said Clark.

"The will!" Lois smacked her hands together.

"It's with the will?"

"No, the things she gave us in the will. Listen, Boutboul said that the five of us had to be notified at specific times in accordance to Chloe's will. That has to be a clue."

"But we don't have the will," Conner said.

"Time, it's all about the time." Snatching a sheet of paper from her notepad, Lois asked, "Clark, what time did you get Boutboul's call?"

"After dinner," he said. "About eight o' clock."

"Pete?"

"Lunchtime," Pete answered immediately.

"I got the call at ten in the morning," said Lana.

Lois scribbled furiously. "Conner?"

He rubbed his face roughly. "Nine, just before first period ended."

"And I got mine at four. Hey, Lana, there are twenty-four vids right?"

"Yes," Lana said.

"Okay, so check out clip numbers nine, ten, twelve, sixteen and twenty. Corresponding to the twenty-four hour clock," Lois explained to the four puzzled faces. Six, including Green Arrow and Black Canary.

"I want to check that storage facility where Chloe left stuff for Lana," Clark said. "She might have back-ups there, too."

"With that logic, we might as well check out Mr. Sullivan's desk and their old house in Smallville," Lana said.

"Absolutely!"

"I was joking."

"I'm not. I think I have Uncle Gabe's contact info somewhere." Lois thumbed through her cell-phone with one hand and clicked on her laptop with the other.

With a fond sigh, Clark said, "We might as well plan these missions."

Black Canary, who hadn't bothered to hide her interest in the unfolding mystery, asked, "How do you know something will come up?"

"We don't but once Lois gets an idea in her head, she doesn't let go. There's a reason why they call her Mad Dog Lane."

How events managed to spiral into a negative vortex was beyond Lois' understanding. Rather, she understood that Conner and Clark snapped at each other again but she didn't know why. One minute, they'd been planning retrieval missions and the next--

Clark drew himself up to full height, his hands fisted on his hips. "Do you honestly think after what you pulled in London that you'd be safe in the missions?"

Conner, a head shorter than Clark, bounced on the balls of his feet to angrily meet Clark's glare. His jaw jutted out and his body vibrated with tension. "You're just pissed off 'cause I got the job done."

"You compromised our identity. If we hadn't captured her--"

"But we did thanks to, wait, who? Me!"

"--she could have gone to her superiors and reported your powers. From there, it's only a short time before our identities--"

"Oh, come the fuck on! If my mom could keep my powers a secret by herself while travelling all over world--"

"I'm not your mother!" His own vehemence seemed to shake Clark out of his anger. His posture relaxed but it was half a second too late.

"The fuck if I want you to be my father either!" Conner spat over his shoulder as he stalked to his room.

Clark deflated completely, covering his face with one hand. Sliding off the arm of the couch, Lois tip-toed beside him to squeeze his forearm. Are you okay?

"Lois," he said, plaintive. What the hell just happened?

I'll talk to him. Lois' nod to the door said.

Conner crouched behind the door of his room, his knees pressed into his eyes. She slid down beside him.

"Y'know for the first three years that I knew him, Clark and I did nothing but fight," she said. "Everything he said or did pissed me off."

"But you eventually figured out that bickering was actually a grown-up version of pushing people you like in kindergarten and you all lived happily ever after with roses and shit," drawled Conner. "Mom made me read Jane Austen, too."

"I prefer to believe that Clark just doesn't know how to communicate verbally. He knows the words-- I think he memorised the dictionary in junior high-- but you have to ignore his words sometimes and look at his actions." Lois nudged the boy's knee. "What was he doing while he was yelling at you?"

"Posing."

She snorted down a laugh. "For the record, I don't think you should come either. It's hard enough faking a paper trail for two from here to France to Kansas."

He twisted his face into a grimace that she was already sick of. Did she ever carry a chip that big on her shoulder as a kid? She hoped not; that meant Clark had had good reason to be annoyed all those years ago.

"I don't like him ordering me around," he said.

"Don't take it personally, Junior. He orders everyone around. Actually," she tapped her chin, "he doesn't even order. He suggests and everyone falls into his spell and agrees. Irritating as hell, isn't it?"

He almost smiled. "If you guys argue so much, why do you stay with him? There are a lot of other cooler guys out here"

Lois turned around slowly, hands on her hips. "Are you hitting on me? No, no, stop blushing, kid; I'm teasing."

"You look like her," Conner blurted out.

Emotion choked Lois' throat. "Like Chloe?"

He nodded, eyes lowered. Slowly, afraid he'd bolt, she stepped closer until she could put both hands on his shoulders.

"Thank you."

He cried like Clark, gasps and shoulder-shakes but no tears. A memory of Jonathan Kent's' funeral flashed through her mind. Clark had been too stoic then, preferring to concentrate on righting his father's death than actually grieving. Not that she could be accused of dealing with death in a healthy manner but at least she let her emotions out.

"Has your mom told you about the time she saved my life during the second Smallville meteor strike? No? Okay, let me tell you."

With Clark and Lois headed for an untraceable drop in France, the rest of the detective work fell on Pete, Lois and Conner. Slapping imaginary dust from his slacks, Pete sat down on the couch. "Okay, what do we have?"

"Watch this." Conner clicked over the slow play button several times. Chloe's recitation of "Monday's Child" ground to a fifth of normal viewing time.

"What am I looking at?"

"That."

Pete squinted at the screen. "What?"

Lana rewound the clip. "Watch her hands."

The clip played again, slower. Chloe's voice became comically low and slow but Pete ignored it. Her hands were on the desk, fingers laced in perfect grade-school posture. Then her thumb snapped up.

"That!" said Lana and Conner, excitement obvious.

Pete raised an eyebrow. "So her thumb moved. I'm not seeing the huge revelation."

"Mom's kept her hands so still for all the rest of it," Conner said. "Look, they're clenched so tightly in some places that her knuckles are white.

"We wrote down the words where her fingers twitched. We think it might mean something." Lana showed him a sheet of paper.

Pete took it, skimming the words. "King, row, you, piper, Tuesday, of, spider. Wonderful. It's all becoming clear to me now."

"We were brain-storming and googling for a while but nothing makes sense."

Pete studied the words for a while, reading and remixing their order. Finally, he re-wrote them into a list. "Maybe we're trying too hard. If we list them in order, the first letters of these words spell 'kryptos.' Anyone have any idea what that means?"

"Maybe Chloe meant Krypton," said Lana as Conner's fingers flew over his laptop.

Doubtfully, Pete said, "I can't remember Chloe ever misspelling anything."

"It says here that kryptos is Greek for 'hidden,'" Connor said.

"That's helpful," said Pete. "We're looking for something hidden in Greece?"

"Mom's never been to Greece."

"That could be the whole point," Lana said. "Where better to hide something than a place that you're not connected to?"

"This would be so much easier if we actually knew what we were looking for," said Conner. "What if it's not in Greece but about Greece? Or what if it's about sororities and fraternities?"

"Chloe declared herself allergic to the combination of Greek and college after the Buffy Sanders piece way back in first year," said Lana. "Unless the story reveals millennia-old, cross-continental ritual homicide, I doubt it would be enough to warrant a hit on Chloe."

Conner threw her a puzzled look. "What do you think is worth a hit?"

"People kill for two reasons and two reasons only: money or sex. Leaving out certifiably insane people like the Joker, of course."

"Sometimes you scare me, Lana," Pete said, only half-joking.

Static crackled from one corner of the room where Black Canary stood guard. "The 'Tower just sent me a police fax from England that might interest you." She swivelled her monitor around so they could see.

It was a scan of a coroner's report for a victim of a possible homicide. Cause of death was drowning, facilitated by a blow to the head with a blunt object. The corpse's face, pinned to the front folder, was of a bloated, grey Ramir Boutboul.

By the time she left with Clark, Conner was in a better mood, almost cheerful. Unfortunately, Lois' good mood ended at Versailles where the storage facility was surrounded by police cars and fire trucks.

"Crud," Clark said with the vehemence usually confined to more vulgar swear words.

Lois pulled free of his handhold to approach a uniform. "Excusez-moi, officer. Um, qu'est ce qui est arrivé?^[5]"

"A fire, madame," said the officer just slowly enough that Lois could follow his French. "Please stay back to keep from being hurt."

Clark jumped in with his much better French. "We're reporters. Do you have a statement?"

"I will leave that to the Lieutenant, sir, madame. Now please, back away."

Lois bounced to the balls of her feet, ready to protest but Clark pulled her away. "It's not worth it. Whatever was in there is gone now to us and whoever was after Chloe can't get it either."

"Unless the other side got here before us and blew the place up so we couldn't trace it."

"Possible. The end result is the same: we have nothing more to gain and drawing attention to ourselves is counter-productive."

Lois sighed. "Double crud. So now what?"

"I say we head over to the States to visit Smallville or Mr. Sullivan."

"The house and the writing desk."

"Exactly."

"Be good. Remember he told me that he visited Smallville once in a while incognito and you went all quiet and growly with undisclosed disapproval?"

"He's in the Witness Protection Program," said Clark.

"Hey, I'd go apeshit too if I had to stay in disguise forever. Present company excepted. So do we fly commercial or private?"

Clark set his jaw in a grim line. "If they're going to cheat, I don't see why we can't use a few advantages ourselves."

"I love it when you pretend to break the rules."

Smallville never changed, not really. Stores exchanged hands, new paint was slapped on sidings but the atmosphere stayed the same. The city's population hadn't changed by much since she and Clark left; Smith Jr. replaced Smith Sr. and so on and so forth such that Lois , who'd never been good with names, could guess names with decent accuracy.

Time moved as slow as ever, too, with countless acquaintances wanting to greet Clark thus, by extension, Lois who was ready to crack.

"This really is the town that time and deductive reasoning forgot," she said. "Wait! A bubble-tea shop! I might have to rethink that 'time forgot' part."

"Chloe's old house is down on Singer Drive," said Clark. "Old Mrs. Kowalchuck said the new family that lives there is really ni--"

Grabbing his sleeve, Lois tugged Clark into the alcove of the flower shop. "Don't look now but the world's most over-rated cueball is coming our way. Stop! Don't look-- shit, too late."

"If it isn't the Dynamic Duo." Lex Luthor raised his travel coffee mug to his lips and took a delicate sip. His detail stood a not-so-discrete three feet away.

"Actually, that moniker refers to Batman and Robin, more specifically, the Gotham Star. You'll get in trouble mixing up branding like that." Clark fiddled with his glasses.

Lex threw him a glare. "Cute, Clark."

Clark shrugged and looked away.

Fortunately, Lois took the offensive for him. "What are you doing back here, Luthor? Did you miss a square inch of Smallville to dig up, poison or otherwise demolish? Please, tell all; we know you're just dying to have another convoluted reveal."

His mouth twisting into a smile, Lex said, "Hardly convoluted to people who see reason and logic."

"How can anything that comes out of your mouth possibly be reasonable?"

"My popularity is still in the high eighties. The polls don't lie, Ms Lane."

"Supposedly, neither do kids and photographs. I guess we all need to live with disappointment," Lois shot back.

"Is it so difficult to believe that I just wanted to visit?"

"Yes," Lois and Clark chorused.

Lex shrugged. "Nevertheless, it's true. I consider Smallville my spiritual birthplace. My experiences here made me the man I am today."

"And for that, we're heartily sorry," Clark said under his breath.

"But enough about me; what are Metropolis' finest mud-slingers doing here?"

"You're only angry 'cause you're coated in dirt," Lois said, her tone saccharine. "Can't stand your weekly bath?"

"Once again, you resort to mindless insults when logic fails to support your asinine ideas. Ms. Lane, you really should think about a career change." He snapped his fingers. "You know, you looked awfully cute in a barista's apron way back when."

Clark had to hold Lois's arm back. "Just one punch," she begged him. "The Planet's insurance can cover it."

Smiling, Lex took another sip of his coffee then said, "If you lay one hand on me, I'll have a lawsuit slap you so hard that even Superman will feel his teeth throb. How is our friendly, neighbourhood alien invader, by the way?"

"Taking care of problems," said Clark.

Lex spread his arms wide. "According to you, I'm public enemy number one and yet he's not here."

"Superman leaves the small-time crooks to us."

Lex glowered.

Clark held his hand out for Lois. "We better get home before Mom's lunch gets cold." Without bothering to say good-bye, he frog marched in the general direction of the Kent farm.

"I didn't think you had it in you to hit people where it hurt outside of the literal sense.," said Lois. "I'm so proud of you! Where are we going?"

"We might as well visit Mom while we're here. Luthor'll get suspicious if we don't do as we say."

The way Lana saw it, her current ethical-emotional stress was a direct consequence of high school naïveté. For all her earlier insistence on straight-forwardness and transparency in any relationship, she had to make convoluted lie to save a child's life. Unsurprisingly, it came back to bite her in the rear.

She couldn't bring herself to call Conner "her son". The words froze even as they formed in her mind as though she'd trained herself to associate those words as taboo. He was a beautiful child, handsome as Clark had always been but without the fearful hunch to his shoulders. No, Conner and "shy" didn't belong in the same sentence.

"What?" asked Pete.

She jerked upright. He and Conner had been intent on their respective computer screens when she began her musings. "I was just remembering when Clark was Conner's age."

Conner smirked. "Let me guess: chess club, glee club and voted Most Likely to Love His Cubicle?"

"honour roll, school paper reporter and eventually captain of the football team," said Lana. "But no, he was never that popular. He never really... joined in."

Conner hummed, pretending indifference, but she saw that his eyes were no longer scanning text.

"Clark's never been a joiner," was all Pete said. "Do you have anything yet?"

Shaking his hair out of his eyes, Conner refocused. "Yeah. I think it's a Vigenère, Mom's favourite like I said before. But you need a keyword to crack it."

"Hopefully, Lois and Clark have a lead on that," said Pete. He uncrossed his legs and stretched, good and hard with his fingers laced and his arms over his head. "I haven't spent this much time on the computer since college."

"What exactly is a Vigenère cipher? We need to understand it to know what we should look for," said Lana

Pulling on his ear in thought, Conner ripped out a sheet of paper from one of Lois' many legal pads. "You've got a Caesar cipher, right? It's just a shift code, y'know, where one letter's replaced by another a certain number of places down. So if your shift parameter is three, then D would equal A, E would equal B, F would equal C. And if I was going to write 'Hello' in a 3-shift Caesar, it's be spelled K-H-O-O-R. Get it?"

The two adults nodded.

"There's a lot of stuff you can do with it to make it harder, like using spaces and numbers in the shift. But it's easy enough to crack 'cause you just have to understand the letter distribution in a certain language and then just brute-attack it-- test every possible shift parameter. So for English, what a code-cracker would look for is the equivalent of E 'cause that's the most used letter.

"A Vigenère is like a Caesar on steroids. You chart out the alphabet in an X and Y plane--" Conner drew and filled in the chart, his pen a blur-- "so that in each, the alphabet is shifted down a letter. It's basically a table of all the possible Caesar ciphers. This time when you want to write out a message, you use a keyword to encrypt."

"My head's starting to hurt," Pete said.

Conner grinned. "Dude, I've been doing this stuff since I was eight. Okay, so for example, if you wanted to send the message 'Luthor is s noob', first you get rid of the spaces."

He wrote out LUTHORISANOOB in large block letters below the Vigenère chart.

"Then pick out a keyword smaller than the whole message and repeat it until so that line uses as many characters as the original message. Let's make the keyword SHINY."

Under the first line, he wrote SHINYSHINYSHI.

"Now what you gotta do is use the key line to figure out which row in the table you're going to use. So for the first letter, L, you gotta use the S row; that means L translates to D. Then for the next one, U uses the H row, T uses the I row and you keep doing that until the entire message is encoded."

He zipped through the rest of the encryption, resulting in the line DBBUMJPANLGVJ.

By this time, Lana's head was starting to ache as well. "That looks almost impossible to break. There's no way you could use letter frequency to decode it."

"You can but you have to use an equation that takes in probabilities and randomization to calculate the coincidence rate, and I am so losing you guys, aren't I?"

"Very much."

"It takes math," Conner said simply.

Just then, Black Canary's cell phone chirped. "Mac'n'cheese." That had been the agreed password with the reply, "Peanut butter celery sticks." So far, all Lana's expectations of spy games had been shattered.

The caller must have given the proper answer because Black Canary proceeded to give an update in short, nearly nonsensical points. "GA's perim and clear. Stock's put. Light on the package but we need your trip." There was a long pause then she held the phone out. "He wants to talk to one of you."

Lana jumped to grab it. "Hello?"

"It's me," said Clark. "How're things there?"

"Slow going. Conner knows what kind of encryption was used but he needs a keyword to crack it."

"We're not doing much better here. The old Sullivan place had nothing; we did a very thorough check. We're at Gabe Johnson's place now--" Lana wrinkled her brow until she remembered that Chloe's dad was living under an assumed name-- "He had what we needed at least."

"What'll you do now?"

"We keep on working on what leads we have. Hang on, here's Lois."

Clicking and shuffling noises came through the receiver before Lois's abrupt voice came on. "Can you put Con on?"

"Uh, yes, of course." Lana held the phone out to the boy who swung over the back of his seat in his rush to take it. It was a graceful move, almost gravity defying. Lana bit her lip.

"Hi, Aunt Lo!"

He already called her Aunt Lo? She herself barely warranted eye-contact never mind a "Mrs. Ross" and Lois Lane already got a nickname? Envy coated Lana's chest but she willed it away. Sulking was for kids; she was an adult who'd made adult decisions and if she didn't like the consequences, she could damn well do something about it.

Conner chatted animatedly for a few more minutes, the most she'd ever seen or heard from him. When he smiled, he looked even more like Clark with his dimples and moments of unguarded joy. It was with obvious reluctance that he hung up on Lois. Then the smile disappeared, the shoulders slumped and Conner was back to the sullen, sarcastic boy they were trapped with.

Lana had never done well as second best. She wasn't about to start this early in her life. "Conner, would you mind helping me get something out of my suitcase?"

"Why can't--" He just stopped short of being rude. "Okay."

He followed, slouching and dragging his feet, far enough away that Lana thought he wouldn't even come in.

"That was a lame excuse," he said, shutting the door behind him.

"What do you mean?"

"The whole getting something out of your suitcase excuse is lame. You could've just said that you wanted to talk to me."

Lana tilted her head to one side. "Would you have come?"

"Probably not."

"Hence the excuse."

He almost smiled, resisting the pull at the corners of his lips. "So what did you want to talk about?"

"I just wanted to make sure that you're all right. You've been thrown into all of this so suddenly. I'm worried that you might not have had time to really grieve." Lana found herself plucking at the sheets, a nervous habit that she couldn't break.

"I'm dealing all right."

"Are you really?"

"Yes!" Dragging a hand through his hair, Conner pushed off the door and started pacing. "Looking for Mom's killers is helping me deal with it."

"Well, good," was all Lana could say.

Suddenly, Conner stopped pacing. He faced her full on and Lana was aghast to see his resentment so baldly expressed. "I know what this is all about."

"I'm afraid I--"

"You're not my mom."

Ouch. Lana reared back, gulping at the lump in her throat.

"Don't get me wrong," said Conner, "I don't hate you for giving me up. In fact, I'm friggin' ecstatic about it. She's-- she was the best mom in the world and just because you're here now and she isn't, it doesn't meant that you get to magically fill in her place. It doesn't work like that."

"I never wanted that," she lied. "I just... wanted to get to know you."

He snorted. "I so cannot deal with that right now."

"You seem to deal well enough with Lois."

He looked away, no smart comeback. Encouraged, Lana inched closer.

"I can wait until you're ready, Conner. Don't you think I'm hurt too? By Chloe's death, by the fact that I had to give you up. I've always wanted to be a part of your life."

Conner shook his head, his mouth twisted into a grimace. "Y'know, I believed you until that last sentence."

He left, a blur of red and blue. Pete peered through the open door, one eyebrow cocked in a wordless query. There was disapproval there, too

"He's being unfair!" she blurted out. "It's not as if I didn't agonize over that decision. He acts like I threw him out with last season's accessories when..." Teeth gritted, she turned away, collecting herself. Her temples throbbed. She missed her girls. She missed them so much she could all but smell talcum powder and feel their springy curls under her hand. Chloe's twenty-four clues hadn't included Lana's favourite lullaby, "All the Pretty Little Horses." She sang it to the girls almost every night. She'd sung it to Conner the night before she gave him up.

Clark and Lois returned from the States, disheartened with their meagre find.

"Half is better than nothing," said Clark. "If we decrypt what we have, I'm sure we can re-create the rest of the piece."

"And the evidence?" asked Lana.

"We'll reverse-track it. Even one lead is good enough."

Pete saw Clark almost humming with excited energy. He liked this, the search and mystery of an investigation. It shouldn't have been a surprise considering how well the Lane-Kent team was thought of in journalism but the friend he'd grown up with reacted to situations rather than take a pro-active role. Pete was stuck once again with the changes life wrought on the old Smallville gang.

A little less than twenty-four hours later came the second breakthrough. No one was as surprised as Pete when he discovered the keywords. A simple online search for the word "kryptos" resulted in hundreds of sites about a sculpture on cafeteria courtyard of CIA headquarters, a three-dimensional puzzle which was so well encrypted that experts and hobby groups alike hadn't solved it all.

"But there's four keywords in the Kryptos sculpture," Conner pointed out. "How do we know which one to use?"

"Use the first keyword for the drive we found at your condo and the third one for the drive in Uncle Gabe's," said Lois.

"How do you know that?"

"I have a hunch."

Conner looked at the others. Pete could only shrug but Clark nodded.

"Lois has notoriously good hunches," he explained. Pete thought he heard an added, "When they don't get her nearly killed," in an undertone.

After the success of the first keyword, Pete pretty much felt superfluous. Clark and Conner decoded the documents with such speed that their fingers were blurs over the keyboards. He, Lois and Lana watched, interested, of course but he felt as though there was nothing left for him to do.

Pete snorted. Okay, Ross, you're allowed two minutes of pity party then you go ahead and thank God that your biggest worry is trade negotiations instead of the fate of the world.

"Do you think I could check my messages?" he asked Green Arrow, holding up his smart-phone. "I won't answer them; I just have to make sure there's nothing urgent."

"Sure. Let me just hook it up to our scrambler." Green Arrow attached several cables to the phone's ports then ran it through a peripheral on one of the bright blue Justice League laptops. "You have thirty minutes tops. After that, the encryption can be traced."

"Thanks. Hey, do you have a secure line for my girls to talk or write on?"

"We check in on the other team every three hours. I can request a short message between you and your daughters every twenty-four hours if you'd like."

"I'd really appreciate it."

Green Arrow nodded, stepping back to give Pete access to the computer. Thirty-one email messages waited in his inbox, a slow day. Pete skimmed through the subject lines, opening the handful marked with an exclamation point. Near the bottom f the list with the most recent was a message from the president's secretary.

Pete clicked it open. He knew what it would be about. Luthor wanted to push a bill that would let Prometheus Pharmaceuticals give experimental inoculations to Yuacic, a French-governed territory. While the inoculations meant a decrease in infant mortality, Prometheus would effectively own the territory in terms of millions of dollars of credit. And while it wasn't traceable on the surface, Pete knew the Prometheus was just a sub-branch of LexCorp. So much for neutralising conflict of interest.

"What's it like having Luthor as a boss?" asked Green Arrow.

"That's a tricky question," said Pete. "If I say something positive, knowing the JL's stance against the current administration, you'll jump down my throat. If I say something negative, I'm being unpatriotic and hypocritical about my job."

"That's not an answer." Green Arrow leaned back, resting his bow on the table. "I'll admit I hate Luthor's guts and I would do anything to see him out of the oval office ASAP. But as someone who grew up in the States, I know the country's bigger than the head honcho of the term. So you tell me how you feel as Pete Ross not as Consul Ross and I promise I won't try to snatch government secrets from your equipment while you're under my protection."

Pete leaned his elbows on the desk as he finished reading the president's message. "I got my position before Luthor was voted into office. Usually, that doesn't really matter-- I'm not the ambassador. I knew he had an issue with Clark; the Luthor I knew in Smallville wouldn't have forgotten that tie of friendship.

"He's never taken outright advantage of my connection with Clark. I've played it off as a half-forgotten childhood thing but he has this way of... wording things--"

"I don't think I need to tell you to be careful," said Green Arrow.

"I always feel like a pork chop in front of a starving pit bull around him," Pete said. "I like some of the initiatives of the current administration but I question the motives behind them. How's that for a diplomatic answer?"

"Pretty good. I'd hate to see you run for office."

"Good. I'd hate to run."

"Holy ever-loving blue shits, Batman." Lois said from the other side of the room. Clark was pale. "You guys have to read this."

Pete realised the danger was just beginning.