Chapter Text
A fresh, crisp white shirt and a vile electrolyte beverage, at the insistence of the medical officer, went some way towards preparing Tal for his return to the crimson world outside the ultra max.
But not quite yet. He had determined that there remained one unseen point of interest in this universe’s DoD’s black site.
The General himself did the courtesy of accompanying him to the simple locked steel door of this first constructed, more makeshift lock-up for Kryptonians. They waited as a guard tapped in a code and turned the key lock.
The low ceilinged room contrasted with the vaults where the other cells had been installed. Tal’s focus though was the smaller glass panelled cell.
Squalid, steel sanitary fixtures and a plain table gave it a temporary air.
Which it had been. Before it became the place where his counterpart had been murdered.
Walking slowly forward into the cell, engaging the full scope of his vision, he found no detectable mark, nothing to identify the precise spot where that other Tal had been drained to power a merging of worlds.
What was visible was a subtle distortion extending through the cell in three dimensions, suggesting that the deep fabric of matter and space was itself damaged. It seemed à propos that such an intense transfer of energy would leave its fingerprint.
The General, who had followed without comment, gestured Tal to the cell’s door. Tal walked around, then held himself on the threshold, examining in further detail.
“You see something then? All our people have detected are “unexplained variances.”
Tal stepped in, then dropped to a crouch. “There are apparent changes in the nature of matter, perhaps space itself here.”
“Another portal?” the General asked, perturbed.
“Not that deep, but a disquieting phenomenon even so. Would that we had my mother’s instruments to scan here.”
“I could authorize a sample, perhaps one of the fixtures be removed so that it could be taken to the Fortress for analysis.”
“Let me consider the risks and implications of that if you don’t mind,” Tal uncharacteristically snappish, looked back to the General standing just outside the cell.
“It may be that separating any part of this scene could widen the impact. Or, the effect may induce harm on the people or technology undertaking the transport.”
Sam Lane nodded sharply. “I’ll leave you to it. Best to limit exposure for all.”
Tal barely registering his exit to the corridor, scanned the room and the cell again, slowly and intently. The effect seemed to have a fairly narrow transition boundary, well within the perimeter of the cell.
The people here would have to count on their own limited technology to track any growth or contraction, but he would make inquiries of the AI. The question of any parallel distortion in his own universe would need to be answered there.
Scientific inquiry as complete as it could be, Tal gave into emotion, barely held at bay since he approached the room.
Livid and grieving, he felt outrage at the injustice of two universes.
He who had fallen in with the world-dominating vision of his father continued, while the more fortunate and better version of himself had been the one sacrificed.
Tal could have no regrets whatsoever though that his own brother had been preserved. Yet, among all the ‘what ifs?” he had constructed in his own cell after the failure of the Eradicator, Tal had never imagined a world in which he and Kal had been raised as brothers, closeknit, only to divide in purpose to the death of both.
He remained there, silent, several minutes more, rising only when the General’s batman Gervaise presented himself inside the door of the outer room, to indicate that departure was imminent.
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Tabloid images scanned the previous morning had, if anything, under-conveyed the state in which this world’s version of his family had lived and travelled.
Tal was both bemused and offended.
Seventeen people to get one less-than-vulnerable Kryptonian safely in and out of a media event, spinning brief messages to protesters.
Even as a passing-for-human billionaire majority stakeholder in media giant Galaxy Holdings of his universe, Tal had eschewed such an entourage.
He counted four reinforced SUVs with alon windows. Two were security only. One for the camera operator, a sound technician and another bodyguard.
The last, to be driven by Gervaise, was the General’s car, where he and Tal were joined by a brisk military communications officer. Captain Aubrey had appeared in the corridor outside the final cell, and seemed to be affixed limpet-like for the duration.
Closing an antique flip-phone, Aubrey slid into a back-facing jump seat and strapped in while relaying the sitrep, “All major networks and cable news are on site. Domestic and international wire service stringers as well. This is expected to run as headline, not entertainment news.”
The General spoke into his own phone, “Go.” The final door of the car park rolled upwards as the motorcade moved out.
As they advanced to the gate, Tal tracked helicopters ahead. Years attuned to the business bottom line yielded the assessment that no world could afford the advantages of a heroic Superman on these terms.
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The 38 Celsius heat was pleasant, the bright red sunshine not.
Tal conceded the benefit of sunglasses, allowing himself to be hurried through a flying wedge of security to a small daïs and microphone. He registered the presence of military sharpshooters in position on a nearby mesa.
Aubrey stood on his left to manage the reporters, the General behind to his right. The security arrayed itself around them. Not the most de-escalating posture towards the crowd.
Scanning the media, not quite familiar people from not quite known organizations, Tal settled into his smoothest Morgan Edge persona.
Looking beyond to the volatile adherents to Allston’s cult, he reassessed, reaching instead for apparent vulnerability. Suppressed bitterness at the near tragic cost of the cult to his family required no performance.
Tal’s messages having been delivered as agreed with prisoner-Lana, then confirmed by the General, Aubrey stepped forward to indicate the order of media questions.
Responding with gracious care, Tal sidestepped anything that was a direct deceit, neither confirming nor denying that he was his counterpart.
Yes, he would be meeting with Rho industries. No, he did not intend to participate in a public tour of interviews. He affirmed his respect for judicial processes currently in train.
The protesters initially enthused, had grown solemn when he confirmed the failure of Allston’s movement, expressing his (sincere) dismay at the chaos it had brought to two worlds.
By the midway mark of the media questions, a Lana chant rose again. Security were showing stress, and the General was being signalled to move.
Tal caught a flicker of inconsistency in the movement of the supposed DoD sharpshooters.
He came fully alert.
Levitating up and forward he took the first bullets directly to the chest, obstructing their path to the General. Then turned, smart white shirt shedded, to give cover to Aubrey and DoD’s camera operator.
Security coalesced, pushing down their principals.
Excepting of course himself, the true target.
X-Kryptonite flechettes followed directly after the metal bullets, piercing Tal’s shoulder and back of his neck. There was unquestionably a clear intent to harm.
This however was not his world nor his Kryptonite.
Depletion from the red solar light enabled the flechettes to penetrate, the X-K itself had no recognizable effects.
Tal turned back into the fray.
Launching up to face the shooters, he reached back to pull X-K flechettes from his flesh with one arm while taking more to the chest.
On the point of accelerating forward above the panicked crowd, Tal traced the sound of supersonic flight masked by a trio of DoD helicopters bearing down on the shooters.
Diving from an approach beyond the mesas, this world’s Steel was upon the assailants before the rest of DoD’s team.
Hearing the General call him back, Tal landed back behind the daïs, scanning for other remaining threats.
Aubrey, unscathed, kept his focus on the optics, handing Tal a mic and subvocalizing “Cameras are recording. There’s three more flechettes on your back and two on your chest. Would you let our medic be the one to extract them?”
Tal called for calm, persuading the crowd to withdraw, all the while resolutely tolerating the performative public removal of the remaining X-K.
He caught the murmured confirmation by member of the the General’s team: 90 seconds to extraction.
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A decision had been taken to go forward to an Air Force station 200 American miles north east.
Seated on the netted bench along the side of the black helicopter, Tal grimaced at the shredded remains of his once crisp shirt, wishing for the half meter of space he needed to change into his suit.
(He was convinced his brother would have pulled off the change in the middle of the incident.)
The General was across from him suffering a medic to put a dressing on a crease on his upper arm.
The batman Gervaise lay on a stretcher between them on the floor. He had taken the bullets for the General that Tal had not. His arm had a tourniquet, but a bullet piercing his lung was of more immediate concern.
Simpson, head of the security unit was in the officer’s seat behind the pilot, Aubrey close by harnessed-in on Tal’s right, in an intense conversation with Ops.
Irons who had been on the General’s far side towards the rear, came forward and clipped in beside Tal, passing him a steel bottle.
More electrolyte solution. Tal allowed a twitch of his nose.
“Doctor’s going to insist on checking you out again.” Irons teased eyeing Tal’s bruised chest.
“I better appreciate my brother’s preference for his self-healing suit even at press conferences, secrecy aside.”
Tal raised a questioning brow. “I wonder that you were out of yours and into the helicopter so quickly. It’s made its own way back to base I take it.”
“You did know me on that other world,” Irons grinned. “That was the first time it got service here outside sims.”
“I admit I was on the receiving end of its counterpart’s arsenal at one point. I have a good deal of respect for that suit.”
Irons looked to Gervaise. “It didn’t eliminate casualties though, 7 injured, 2 severely, yet to be confirmed injuries in the crowd.”
Tal sobered, “Neither of us were sufficiently alert to prevent all harm.”
Head back against the netting, he concluded, “I sincerely doubt this Earth can afford its popular obsession with its Kryptonians. Better to follow our custom and keep the identities of those with powers secret, even powers from a suit.”
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The General had offered to come with them.
Tal had waved him off, comfortable with Irons silent presence.
It wasn’t a permanent grave. The marker was simple steel with an identification code.
Tal had been inclined to be offended that his counterpart’s body had been interred temporarily at a military cemetery not far from the Threat Assessment Center.
In the aftermath of this afternoon’s attempted assassination, it seemed merely one more indignity to punctuate the public fall of this world’s Kryptonians.
Having scanned the grave, finding the drained corpse distorted to the subatomic structures, Tal paced to the foot of of the mounded earth.
In the dim of a Krypton-like sunset, a long forgotten prayer of remembrance from the death of his maternal grandfather came to his lips unbidden.
Softly speaking the Kryptonian litany of his childhood, Tal thanked the gods that he had been given this moment of observance for his counterpart.
He prayed also that in his time there would be one of his people, his family, to give the recitation for and in remembrance of him.
Tal turned to Irons.
“Ready to move on,” the soldier inquired.
He shifted his head in silent reply, stepping into the advancing dusk.