bagheera_san (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bagheera_san) wrote2007-08-03 02:21 pm
bagheera_san) wrote2007-08-03 02:21 pm
New WIP: The Light And The Silence
Since I've gotten past the major hurdles (plot, worldbuilding, first few sex scenes, coming up with a fancy title - and 30 000 + words!) I've decided to start posting the first chapter of my new epic. The first nine chapters are already written, but I assume that the story will be about twice as long when it's finished. It's also, incidentally, the response to the AU prompt ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladydey gave me:
I know that someone already asked for Star Wars Clex, but I'm thinking: Clark as an Interstellar Bounty Hunter/Retrieval Expert hired by Lionel to rescue/find his wayward son Lex in various space ports.
Other than that, it is strongly inspired by the Man of Steel Annual #3, an Elseworlds Superman story called "Unforgiven", of which I posted scans here.
Title: The Light and the Silence (1/?)
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Clex, but there are other pairings, slash, het and...um... other.
Fandom: Smallville, a couple of DC characters
Genre: AU, science-fiction, action/adventure
Warnings: some violence
Summary:
One
The dim light and warm, stale air gave the impression of being in the burrow of some small animal, safe and cramped while predators roamed above ground. Immediately upon entering, Kal-El had been welcomed and led back to the part of the counter that could be curtained off from the rest of the room to provide a separate drinking booth for Kryptonians. He was the only non-human guest, and judging from the surprise on the barkeeper's face, the first in a long time. Nursing a bottle of sterile water, Kal-El waited for his heart-beat and breathing to settle down.
Should he take the mission? The pay was certainly good, and Kal-El needed the money. But everything in him rebelled at the notion of working for a human and this man in particular. His father would be furious if he knew, since the house of El, poor as it was, still was a proud house. Do never forget the past, my son, for we have a long and noble history. How many times had Lara said these words? And Jor-El himself, although he never spoke a word to Kal about money or status, had once or twice even taken the time to come down from his laboratory and chide Kal as a boy when he had come home whining about the insults and jeers of his classmates in preparatory school.
You are a Kryptonian, Kal-El. One day you too will know what that means, Jor-El had said to him. Kal was no longer a boy now, but twenty-one Terran years old and a student in the Archives, and he knew well what it meant to be a Kryptonian. Even as beggars, they were still be lords on Earth, masters even of the richest of humans. Working for the servants of Krypton – what more demeaning task could there be?
Quite apart from the fact that Lionel Luthor was human, he was also a very suspect individual. Nanny Kent and her husband, Jor-El's driver Jonathan, the human couple who had fulfilled a parental role all through Kal-El's childhood, would have frowned on him. Lionel Luthor was corrupt in every way Kal could imagine. The thirty minutes he'd spent in the man's house made his skin crawl and itch for a thorough sterilization procedure. He'd have to burn this body suit once he could afford a new one and a private darkroom where it was proper and safe to undress. He could go home, of course, but the suit was new and Lara would question him where he had been and what he had done.
He had seen the man touch his secretary, bare human skin on skin, his fingers lingering on her hand as she passed him a data pad. Kal-El's body tingled with nausea and he bent lower over his drink, but his thoughts and memories jumped faster than he could reign them in. The Kents would never have dared to behave so primitively in front of their masters, not after that one time Lara had nearly fainted after seeing Martha Kent wipe Kal-El's cheek. The offence to Lara's sensitive nature had been double: Kal-El had been crying, openly showing bodily fluids, and Martha had touched them without covering her hands with sterile gloves.
Kal-El remembered, like a lasting brand, the warm, calloused feel of her fingertips on his wet cheek. Sometimes, in the dark, he trailed his own fingers, shamefully free of their black gloves, over his face, searching for an echo of that haunting touch. The morning after he always performed the rites of Rao with special fervor.
And the way Luthor had talked to him, his drawl crawling into Kal's ears, so raw and wantonly physical, perverting the noble Kryptonian language that was meant to be smooth and cool like a piece of polished steel. Kal-El shook himself, trying to dispel the memory. He had fled from Luthor's villa in the first district, near the Science Palace, to this tiny bar in the seventh district, eager to put as much distance between him and his potential employer as possible. The seventh was inhabited mostly by free humans, and while many of the tall houses were old, they were clean and well-kept and the streets were narrow, offering a constant comfortable twilight. Kal felt safer here than in the first district with its immaculate white houses and broad, empty streets and the high spire of the Science Palace looming over it all like a spear raised in warning. Kal himself had grown up in the third district, a mixed neighborhood in the outskirts of Metropolis with small one or two-storied houses, most of them built by humans before the liberation and outfitted with Kryptonian comforts on the inside.
He had fled to the little bar to forget rather than to think and for a while the soft din of human voices and the dark curtains that separated his booth from them had been comforting. But he needed the money. The false prediction of Krypton's demise had destroyed Jor-El professionally. His father was sinking lower and lower in the ranks of the Science Council, and his meager income could no longer sustain the El household. He stayed in his laboratory most of the time, and when he walked through their house, wordless and grim, a dark shadow seemed to hang over him. The position in the Archives that Kal's studies would eventually lead to wouldn't bring in much money either. He needed to work on the side, and if he finished this one job to Luthor's satisfaction, he wouldn't have to worry about money for a long time.
There were all kinds of horrible rumors about Luthor. He wouldn't have been tolerated in Metropolis, the finest city of the Terran colony, the seat of the Council of Science and the Council of Law and the Archives of the Kryptonian People, if he had not married a Kryptonian wife of old nobility: the widowed Lady Jan. Having married a human, she was as infamous as her husband, but she was of oldest nobility, and her father a most respected and powerful man within the Science Council.
Kal would take the job Luthor offered. There was no other way. But he would have to keep it a secret. He could never tell the Kents or his father where he had gotten it from –
A rustle disturbed Kal's line of thought. The dark silver curtain separating his drinking booth from the rest of the bar was lifted and someone bowed inside. Kal jumped to his feet, incensed and embarrassed to be disturbed while he drank and ate, but relaxed when he realized that of course the intruder was human. While it would have been a grave insult to eat or drink in front of a fellow Kryptonian like an unrestrained animal, it was not improper to let the natives see your bodily functions. Before the liberation, humans had been barely civilized. They had lived in a world of constant violence and pollution, indulging in every imaginable form of sexuality, flaunting bare skin whenever the weather permitted it, living without direction or order, brutal and savage.
The stranger was unmistakably human and in him, the contrast between culture and nature was jarring. No cowl covered his head, even his pale neck was bare, the impression of nakedness enhanced by the fact that he was entirely bald. But still there was something graceful about him, an economy of motion and a proud restraint that would have befitted any Kryptonian. His clothes were a mix of both cultures as well: he wore the black jacket of a member of the city guard, the only humans allowed to carry weapons, but all the insignia had been removed or covered with patches, probably to avoid conflict with the human law-enforcers, who did not like the increasingly popular practice of ordinary citizens appropriating their status symbols. The jacket was unzipped, revealing a faded grey bodysuit that some Kryptonian must have discarded a long time ago when it ceased to offer full protection, and a heavy utility belt worn low on his hips. Fingerless gloves and calf-high boots completed the picture.
The human moved smoothly and silent, but when his eyes fell on Kal, he froze and his lips moved in a silent curse. There was a tiny scar on his upper lip, a minor flaw that nonetheless caught Kal's attention.
Then the human's face went blank except for his eyes, which flashed with sharp surprise and calculation. They were a nearly grey blue. Kryptonians and humans were very similar in their range of skin and hair color, but almost all adult Kryptonians, except for a few families with Daxamite blood, had bright green eyes.
"A frill-head," the man said, somewhere between a mutter and a sigh.
"Huh?" Kal-El involuntarily reached up to touch his cowl and feel his frills; often Mrs Kent or Lara had chided him for looking so ruffled all the time.
For a second the bald man looked apprehensive, then disbelieving and finally his expression melted into a smirk. His lashes dipped low and he inclined his head as if to hide the amused smile lighting up his face. "An affectionate title for our beloved overlords, Sir. Nothing more. You're 'Clark Kent', then?"
Kal nodded before he remembered that his alias wasn't supposed to be connected to a Kryptonian. He'd done a few runs under the human name of Clark Kent, borrowed from Nanny Kent and her maiden name. Apart from Lionel Luthor, none of his employers had realized that a Kryptonian was working for them, since all his transactions with them had been done via the Wired. Now he was busted.
The smirk brightened a notch. "You're new in the business."
The tone of that voice was as uncomfortably intimate and soft as Luthor's had been, only instead of making Kal's skin crawl, it made him want to hear more. He felt himself flush with embarrassment.
"Yes," he said, trying not to show how nervous he was. He was new in the business, but he was a Kryptonian. There weren't many in this line of business and none that would admit to it, but naturally they were the best. At least Kal-El assumed they were: he hadn't actually met any of the Kryptonians who worked as bounty hunters.
"How many?"
"I – what?" Kal fumbled with his bottle, nearly spilling the water.
The question was repeated patiently, as if he had just hatched from his birthing matrix, but apart from Lionel Luthor, Kal had never heard a human sound more commanding when speaking to a Kryptonian. "How many have you brought in?"
Oh. He meant how many bounties Kal had collected. "I. This. Is my first time hunting. I've done other things before."
Rao, what was up with him today? He couldn't form a proper sentence. We must always be dignified, Jor-El's voice in his head nagged, for we must set an example to those we rule.
The human slunk closer and pulled up a chair to sit at the high narrow counter where Kal was having his drink. There wasn't much space in the curtained-off drinking booth, but there really was no reason to sit quite this close. The proximity was overwhelming. Kal felt his whole body go into overdrive, his nostrils widening, his heart hammering in his chest, the blood rushing in his veins and heating his cheeks – then Kal yelped and scrambled backwards, nearly tipping over his chair. Their knees had touched! As if nothing had happened, the bald man leaned even closer. His eyes seemed to pull Kal apart, layer by layer like an onion, until his very core was uncovered.
"I can see why Mr Luthor thought you'd need a partner to find his son."
"Partner? Luthor didn't say anything about – "
"Of course not. We do not talk about these things in the business," the answer came slickly smooth as oil as his new partner reached for the bottle, picked up the straw with two fingers and discarded it, and lifted the bottle to drink, all the while holding Kal's gaze, daring him to object. The mere idea of their spittle possibly mixing should have made Kal sick, but in truth his mind had stopped dead somewhere at the sight of those scarred lips stretched around the mouth of the bottle and then the flicker of a tongue over the little scar as he set the bottle down. He couldn't even have said what was so obscene about it, only that it happened, right there in front of him.
"Well, Clark – "
"Kal-El," Kal corrected quickly, because dishonesty made his skin crawl worse than Lionel Luthor's voice. He hated nothing more than lying, and the few times he had had to, he had been abysmal at it.
The human stilled, and for a second, his eyes narrowed in suspicion, then he regained his smooth calmness and leaned back to speak, his voice sweet as honey on the blade of a dagger. "We don't go by our names in the business, Kal-El."
"We don't?" So far, Kal hadn't been aware that there were rules. It was a human line of work, and humans tended to be chaotic and undisciplined and all those things Jor-El often complained when it came to Kal's work ethic. But if there were rules, he guessed, it probably was a good thing that Luthor had sent him this man. It was no shame to be tutored by a human, after all it had been Nanny Kent who had taught him to read and write English, the primary language of Earth. Jor-El had encouraged it, saying that knowledge could never do harm and since writing was not translated by universal translators, it was a useful skill to have.
"Sorry," Kal said lamely. The damage was done, of course, he couldn't take his name back now that he had divulged it.
The sharp smile softened somewhat, becoming less predatory. "You were on the right track calling yourself 'Clark Kent'. I go by Lex." Mischief gleamed in his eyes. "It means 'law' in one of our ancient languages."
Kal blinked. Human humor often eluded him, although there were a few times Jonathan Kent had made him laugh as a young boy, to Lara's great consternation. He was positive that this was some kind of joke, though, and then he got it.
"We're not working for the law, so this is ironic," Kal said with a nod to show he had understood. He even smiled, proud of himself for having figured it out.
Something entered Lex's smirk then that did not fit, something that was harsher and clearer, a hard twist to his humor.
"No. We work for justice."
Confused, Kal lowered his eyes and they fell on the data pad that lay in front of him on the table, the holographic screen still showing the single image of his quarry that Lionel Luthor had supplied him with. A photograph of his son: a soft and fragile looking little boy with a sullen frown and a shock of fiery red hair, almost the same shade as Nanny Kent's. Kal had always wondered what her hair felt like if you touched it without gloves. Justice. Yes, he supposed it was just to bring back a kidnapped child. The boy could not help that his father was such a vile man, after all.
Lex took the data pad from him without asking for permission, just as he had done with the bottle, and studied it for a moment before tossing it down onto the table again. His smirk became a more serious and professional expression. "Whether it were criminals or rebels who took him, he's not on Earth anymore."
Kal didn't follow that logic. Luthor had told him that Alexander had been kidnapped, most likely to extort a ransom, and he wished to deal with the matter on his own, without involving official law-enforcement. "How can you be so sure he's off-planet?"
There weren't a lot of places to go within the closer vicinity of Earth. There were penal colonies on the Moon, and a couple of space stations and shipyards in orbit around Earth, and a few mining sites and laboratories on the various moons and asteroids of the solar system. Interstellar travel from Sol to other stars was prohibited because of the quarantine.
Lex raised his brows. "Thanks to our beloved overlords, Earth is safe and free of crime, Kal-El. Don't your people learn that in school?"
*
Kal-El would not have been able to afford even a hoverbike, and normally he walked where he needed to go in Metropolis or used the public transport system. At twenty-one, he had only left the protectorate Metropolis twice – on educational school trips to the farming belt, where only human workers, robots and a few free human overseers lived, and to the Quebec Reservation, where a small community of humans was allowed to live in their natural state for the education of future generations.
They had flown in huge airships then, and Kal had always envied the families that owned their own hoverjets and bikes. But Lex procured money from somewhere – according to him, Luthor paid for all their expenses – and suddenly, with Kal's Kryptonian license that permitted them to buy a craft capable of interplanetary travel, they could afford a small space glider. Kal eyed the shipyard and the seller suspiciously, for they gave the vague impression of not operating entirely within the law, but Lex dealt so smoothly and efficiently with everything that Kal barely noticed the exchange of money.
There was a moment of perfect companionship, boundaries of species and culture transcended, as they stood side by side and touched the gleaming golden hull of their new acquisition. It was shaped like a swallow; a repainted fighter hailing back from the Kandorian war, with a cockpit just big enough for two and thin, sickle-shaped wings. Its belly had once held massive quantum warheads, but had been redesigned as a cargo bay and bunk space just big enough for one person to lie down and have a nap on long flights. On small distances it was capable of faster-than-light travel, but it would barely carry them out of the Oort cloud of comets that surrounded the solar system before its engines would need to be recharged.
Lex walked around it, examining the polished flank, and found the Kryptonian inscription on the left wing.
"Sunrider," Kal-El translated helpfully, since a human would be illiterate in Kryptonian, wondering at the fact that a military vessel had a name at all, and such a fanciful one at that. Today, Kryptonian military put function over form.
The spell of understanding between them broke just like that. Lex cast him an unreadable glance before wordlessly heading for the cockpit. Kal didn't understand what could have set off the sudden change in mood, but he followed Lex's example and folded himself into the luxurious co-driver's seat. It embraced him almost like a second body suit, and Kal felt doubly safe, right until Lex powered up the engines and, without warning, accelerated and shot out of the hangar like a speeding bullet. Kal's breath hitched, but he had to admit that while Lex flew like a maniac, his take-off maneuver was far more graceful than Kal could have managed: a perfect half of a parabola, slow start and then sudden steep ascent into the sky, racing deeper and deeper into the blue.
*
"First we must go to Arkham," Lex decided once they floated in orbit, darkness and stars enfolding them while Earth shone fat and round beneath them.
"Arkham?" Kal gasped.
Arkham had started out as a small military facility during the early stages of the liberation, but now in the golden times of peace, it had become a penal colony. Most offenders against the law were merely sent to a short stay in Belle Reve, where all aberrations of behavior were gently corrected, but human repeat offenders and those deemed dangerous to society would be shipped-off to the lunar prison colony Arkham. All sentences were for life, and the prison's staff was almost entirely human to ensure fair treatment. But still an aura of dark mystery surrounded the prison, its location on the edge between near and far side of the moon and its hellish appearance thanks to the fact that it got its energy from Apokoliptian fire-pits.
Kryptonian troops had defended Earth from Darkseid's Apokoliptian troops fifteen years ago, only two years after colonizing Earth and without aid from Krypton. Even so they had sent the invading army back to Apokolips in shameful defeat, while their technology had remained behind, and all over the solar system and the greater Kryptonian realm, firepits and boom tubes were now in use. Kal had seen the message from Kandor praising the valor of the Terran colony many times – it was televised every year on the anniversary of the victory. It was also the most obvious proof of how beneficial the presence of Kryptonians was to humanity: without them, Earth would not have survived.
It had to be clearly written on his face how much Kal dreaded going to Arkham, because Lex smirked, "You're not terribly adventurous for a bounty hunter, are you?"
"I'm doing it for the money," Kal stated stiffly, unwilling to let the man think he did this for fun.
"Your family doesn't support you?"
"They would if they could," he sighed. "But my father earns just barely enough to live on and I think he's going to sell one of our two servants to the farming belt. They're husband and wife, and I think it'd kill them to be separated… I can't just sit by and watch!" He fell silent when he realized that his voice had risen embarrassingly. Kal's teachers had often reproached him for being too passionate in his arguments and not maintaining the composure and distance to the subject matter suited for a Kryptonian.
Lex of course was human and had no such concerns. It was hard to tell what he thought of Kal's reasons for needing money or whether he cared at all. However, the mocking tone was gone from his voice when he explained, "There are people we have to talk to, if we want to find the boy."
"In Arkham? How are we even supposed to get in there?"
Lex looked up from the flight controls to give Kal a considering once-over. "What's your profession?"
"I'm a bounty hunter!"
"Your official profession."
"I'm a student," Kal admitted.
"Science?" Lex asked. There were only to choices for Kryptonian students: science and history, and the huge majority chose science. All Els had been scientists for as long as the family could remember, but when Kal had announced his intent to follow their footsteps, Jor-El had taken him aside and forbidden him to do so. As far as Kal-El could recall, it was the only time his father had displayed a spark of the temper and passion Kal had supposedly inherited from him. Otherwise, Jor-El was a quiet and reclusive man who hardly ever spoke a word beyond the barest necessities, drifting through life like a ghost.
So Kal answered, truthfully but slightly reluctant, "No, history."
"Excellent," Lex replied. "You will explain that as a student of history you're there to interview one of the most notorious terrorists of the last decade for research purposes. Add a generous bribe, and they won't ask any further questions."
"One of the most notorious terrorists?" Kal-El echoed faintly. He had only delved very superficially into Earth's recent history, but from his younger years, he remembered vividly the horrors some of these terrorists were capable of, massacres like the Belle Reve suicide bombing and the assassination of the governor of Indo-Russia. He had never been able to think of the terrorists as human; no human could be so vicious and terrifying. Most humans he knew hardly dared to raise their eyes or voices in the presence of Kryptonians and they were simple and gentle people, such as the Kents.
But the piercing grey stare Lex gave him was anything but meek. He seemed to dare Kal to show fear.
"We're going to talk to the Batman."
TBC
ladydey gave me:I know that someone already asked for Star Wars Clex, but I'm thinking: Clark as an Interstellar Bounty Hunter/Retrieval Expert hired by Lionel to rescue/find his wayward son Lex in various space ports.
Other than that, it is strongly inspired by the Man of Steel Annual #3, an Elseworlds Superman story called "Unforgiven", of which I posted scans here.
Title: The Light and the Silence (1/?)
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Clex, but there are other pairings, slash, het and...um... other.
Fandom: Smallville, a couple of DC characters
Genre: AU, science-fiction, action/adventure
Warnings: some violence
Summary:
One
The dim light and warm, stale air gave the impression of being in the burrow of some small animal, safe and cramped while predators roamed above ground. Immediately upon entering, Kal-El had been welcomed and led back to the part of the counter that could be curtained off from the rest of the room to provide a separate drinking booth for Kryptonians. He was the only non-human guest, and judging from the surprise on the barkeeper's face, the first in a long time. Nursing a bottle of sterile water, Kal-El waited for his heart-beat and breathing to settle down.
Should he take the mission? The pay was certainly good, and Kal-El needed the money. But everything in him rebelled at the notion of working for a human and this man in particular. His father would be furious if he knew, since the house of El, poor as it was, still was a proud house. Do never forget the past, my son, for we have a long and noble history. How many times had Lara said these words? And Jor-El himself, although he never spoke a word to Kal about money or status, had once or twice even taken the time to come down from his laboratory and chide Kal as a boy when he had come home whining about the insults and jeers of his classmates in preparatory school.
You are a Kryptonian, Kal-El. One day you too will know what that means, Jor-El had said to him. Kal was no longer a boy now, but twenty-one Terran years old and a student in the Archives, and he knew well what it meant to be a Kryptonian. Even as beggars, they were still be lords on Earth, masters even of the richest of humans. Working for the servants of Krypton – what more demeaning task could there be?
Quite apart from the fact that Lionel Luthor was human, he was also a very suspect individual. Nanny Kent and her husband, Jor-El's driver Jonathan, the human couple who had fulfilled a parental role all through Kal-El's childhood, would have frowned on him. Lionel Luthor was corrupt in every way Kal could imagine. The thirty minutes he'd spent in the man's house made his skin crawl and itch for a thorough sterilization procedure. He'd have to burn this body suit once he could afford a new one and a private darkroom where it was proper and safe to undress. He could go home, of course, but the suit was new and Lara would question him where he had been and what he had done.
He had seen the man touch his secretary, bare human skin on skin, his fingers lingering on her hand as she passed him a data pad. Kal-El's body tingled with nausea and he bent lower over his drink, but his thoughts and memories jumped faster than he could reign them in. The Kents would never have dared to behave so primitively in front of their masters, not after that one time Lara had nearly fainted after seeing Martha Kent wipe Kal-El's cheek. The offence to Lara's sensitive nature had been double: Kal-El had been crying, openly showing bodily fluids, and Martha had touched them without covering her hands with sterile gloves.
Kal-El remembered, like a lasting brand, the warm, calloused feel of her fingertips on his wet cheek. Sometimes, in the dark, he trailed his own fingers, shamefully free of their black gloves, over his face, searching for an echo of that haunting touch. The morning after he always performed the rites of Rao with special fervor.
And the way Luthor had talked to him, his drawl crawling into Kal's ears, so raw and wantonly physical, perverting the noble Kryptonian language that was meant to be smooth and cool like a piece of polished steel. Kal-El shook himself, trying to dispel the memory. He had fled from Luthor's villa in the first district, near the Science Palace, to this tiny bar in the seventh district, eager to put as much distance between him and his potential employer as possible. The seventh was inhabited mostly by free humans, and while many of the tall houses were old, they were clean and well-kept and the streets were narrow, offering a constant comfortable twilight. Kal felt safer here than in the first district with its immaculate white houses and broad, empty streets and the high spire of the Science Palace looming over it all like a spear raised in warning. Kal himself had grown up in the third district, a mixed neighborhood in the outskirts of Metropolis with small one or two-storied houses, most of them built by humans before the liberation and outfitted with Kryptonian comforts on the inside.
He had fled to the little bar to forget rather than to think and for a while the soft din of human voices and the dark curtains that separated his booth from them had been comforting. But he needed the money. The false prediction of Krypton's demise had destroyed Jor-El professionally. His father was sinking lower and lower in the ranks of the Science Council, and his meager income could no longer sustain the El household. He stayed in his laboratory most of the time, and when he walked through their house, wordless and grim, a dark shadow seemed to hang over him. The position in the Archives that Kal's studies would eventually lead to wouldn't bring in much money either. He needed to work on the side, and if he finished this one job to Luthor's satisfaction, he wouldn't have to worry about money for a long time.
There were all kinds of horrible rumors about Luthor. He wouldn't have been tolerated in Metropolis, the finest city of the Terran colony, the seat of the Council of Science and the Council of Law and the Archives of the Kryptonian People, if he had not married a Kryptonian wife of old nobility: the widowed Lady Jan. Having married a human, she was as infamous as her husband, but she was of oldest nobility, and her father a most respected and powerful man within the Science Council.
Kal would take the job Luthor offered. There was no other way. But he would have to keep it a secret. He could never tell the Kents or his father where he had gotten it from –
A rustle disturbed Kal's line of thought. The dark silver curtain separating his drinking booth from the rest of the bar was lifted and someone bowed inside. Kal jumped to his feet, incensed and embarrassed to be disturbed while he drank and ate, but relaxed when he realized that of course the intruder was human. While it would have been a grave insult to eat or drink in front of a fellow Kryptonian like an unrestrained animal, it was not improper to let the natives see your bodily functions. Before the liberation, humans had been barely civilized. They had lived in a world of constant violence and pollution, indulging in every imaginable form of sexuality, flaunting bare skin whenever the weather permitted it, living without direction or order, brutal and savage.
The stranger was unmistakably human and in him, the contrast between culture and nature was jarring. No cowl covered his head, even his pale neck was bare, the impression of nakedness enhanced by the fact that he was entirely bald. But still there was something graceful about him, an economy of motion and a proud restraint that would have befitted any Kryptonian. His clothes were a mix of both cultures as well: he wore the black jacket of a member of the city guard, the only humans allowed to carry weapons, but all the insignia had been removed or covered with patches, probably to avoid conflict with the human law-enforcers, who did not like the increasingly popular practice of ordinary citizens appropriating their status symbols. The jacket was unzipped, revealing a faded grey bodysuit that some Kryptonian must have discarded a long time ago when it ceased to offer full protection, and a heavy utility belt worn low on his hips. Fingerless gloves and calf-high boots completed the picture.
The human moved smoothly and silent, but when his eyes fell on Kal, he froze and his lips moved in a silent curse. There was a tiny scar on his upper lip, a minor flaw that nonetheless caught Kal's attention.
Then the human's face went blank except for his eyes, which flashed with sharp surprise and calculation. They were a nearly grey blue. Kryptonians and humans were very similar in their range of skin and hair color, but almost all adult Kryptonians, except for a few families with Daxamite blood, had bright green eyes.
"A frill-head," the man said, somewhere between a mutter and a sigh.
"Huh?" Kal-El involuntarily reached up to touch his cowl and feel his frills; often Mrs Kent or Lara had chided him for looking so ruffled all the time.
For a second the bald man looked apprehensive, then disbelieving and finally his expression melted into a smirk. His lashes dipped low and he inclined his head as if to hide the amused smile lighting up his face. "An affectionate title for our beloved overlords, Sir. Nothing more. You're 'Clark Kent', then?"
Kal nodded before he remembered that his alias wasn't supposed to be connected to a Kryptonian. He'd done a few runs under the human name of Clark Kent, borrowed from Nanny Kent and her maiden name. Apart from Lionel Luthor, none of his employers had realized that a Kryptonian was working for them, since all his transactions with them had been done via the Wired. Now he was busted.
The smirk brightened a notch. "You're new in the business."
The tone of that voice was as uncomfortably intimate and soft as Luthor's had been, only instead of making Kal's skin crawl, it made him want to hear more. He felt himself flush with embarrassment.
"Yes," he said, trying not to show how nervous he was. He was new in the business, but he was a Kryptonian. There weren't many in this line of business and none that would admit to it, but naturally they were the best. At least Kal-El assumed they were: he hadn't actually met any of the Kryptonians who worked as bounty hunters.
"How many?"
"I – what?" Kal fumbled with his bottle, nearly spilling the water.
The question was repeated patiently, as if he had just hatched from his birthing matrix, but apart from Lionel Luthor, Kal had never heard a human sound more commanding when speaking to a Kryptonian. "How many have you brought in?"
Oh. He meant how many bounties Kal had collected. "I. This. Is my first time hunting. I've done other things before."
Rao, what was up with him today? He couldn't form a proper sentence. We must always be dignified, Jor-El's voice in his head nagged, for we must set an example to those we rule.
The human slunk closer and pulled up a chair to sit at the high narrow counter where Kal was having his drink. There wasn't much space in the curtained-off drinking booth, but there really was no reason to sit quite this close. The proximity was overwhelming. Kal felt his whole body go into overdrive, his nostrils widening, his heart hammering in his chest, the blood rushing in his veins and heating his cheeks – then Kal yelped and scrambled backwards, nearly tipping over his chair. Their knees had touched! As if nothing had happened, the bald man leaned even closer. His eyes seemed to pull Kal apart, layer by layer like an onion, until his very core was uncovered.
"I can see why Mr Luthor thought you'd need a partner to find his son."
"Partner? Luthor didn't say anything about – "
"Of course not. We do not talk about these things in the business," the answer came slickly smooth as oil as his new partner reached for the bottle, picked up the straw with two fingers and discarded it, and lifted the bottle to drink, all the while holding Kal's gaze, daring him to object. The mere idea of their spittle possibly mixing should have made Kal sick, but in truth his mind had stopped dead somewhere at the sight of those scarred lips stretched around the mouth of the bottle and then the flicker of a tongue over the little scar as he set the bottle down. He couldn't even have said what was so obscene about it, only that it happened, right there in front of him.
"Well, Clark – "
"Kal-El," Kal corrected quickly, because dishonesty made his skin crawl worse than Lionel Luthor's voice. He hated nothing more than lying, and the few times he had had to, he had been abysmal at it.
The human stilled, and for a second, his eyes narrowed in suspicion, then he regained his smooth calmness and leaned back to speak, his voice sweet as honey on the blade of a dagger. "We don't go by our names in the business, Kal-El."
"We don't?" So far, Kal hadn't been aware that there were rules. It was a human line of work, and humans tended to be chaotic and undisciplined and all those things Jor-El often complained when it came to Kal's work ethic. But if there were rules, he guessed, it probably was a good thing that Luthor had sent him this man. It was no shame to be tutored by a human, after all it had been Nanny Kent who had taught him to read and write English, the primary language of Earth. Jor-El had encouraged it, saying that knowledge could never do harm and since writing was not translated by universal translators, it was a useful skill to have.
"Sorry," Kal said lamely. The damage was done, of course, he couldn't take his name back now that he had divulged it.
The sharp smile softened somewhat, becoming less predatory. "You were on the right track calling yourself 'Clark Kent'. I go by Lex." Mischief gleamed in his eyes. "It means 'law' in one of our ancient languages."
Kal blinked. Human humor often eluded him, although there were a few times Jonathan Kent had made him laugh as a young boy, to Lara's great consternation. He was positive that this was some kind of joke, though, and then he got it.
"We're not working for the law, so this is ironic," Kal said with a nod to show he had understood. He even smiled, proud of himself for having figured it out.
Something entered Lex's smirk then that did not fit, something that was harsher and clearer, a hard twist to his humor.
"No. We work for justice."
Confused, Kal lowered his eyes and they fell on the data pad that lay in front of him on the table, the holographic screen still showing the single image of his quarry that Lionel Luthor had supplied him with. A photograph of his son: a soft and fragile looking little boy with a sullen frown and a shock of fiery red hair, almost the same shade as Nanny Kent's. Kal had always wondered what her hair felt like if you touched it without gloves. Justice. Yes, he supposed it was just to bring back a kidnapped child. The boy could not help that his father was such a vile man, after all.
Lex took the data pad from him without asking for permission, just as he had done with the bottle, and studied it for a moment before tossing it down onto the table again. His smirk became a more serious and professional expression. "Whether it were criminals or rebels who took him, he's not on Earth anymore."
Kal didn't follow that logic. Luthor had told him that Alexander had been kidnapped, most likely to extort a ransom, and he wished to deal with the matter on his own, without involving official law-enforcement. "How can you be so sure he's off-planet?"
There weren't a lot of places to go within the closer vicinity of Earth. There were penal colonies on the Moon, and a couple of space stations and shipyards in orbit around Earth, and a few mining sites and laboratories on the various moons and asteroids of the solar system. Interstellar travel from Sol to other stars was prohibited because of the quarantine.
Lex raised his brows. "Thanks to our beloved overlords, Earth is safe and free of crime, Kal-El. Don't your people learn that in school?"
*
Kal-El would not have been able to afford even a hoverbike, and normally he walked where he needed to go in Metropolis or used the public transport system. At twenty-one, he had only left the protectorate Metropolis twice – on educational school trips to the farming belt, where only human workers, robots and a few free human overseers lived, and to the Quebec Reservation, where a small community of humans was allowed to live in their natural state for the education of future generations.
They had flown in huge airships then, and Kal had always envied the families that owned their own hoverjets and bikes. But Lex procured money from somewhere – according to him, Luthor paid for all their expenses – and suddenly, with Kal's Kryptonian license that permitted them to buy a craft capable of interplanetary travel, they could afford a small space glider. Kal eyed the shipyard and the seller suspiciously, for they gave the vague impression of not operating entirely within the law, but Lex dealt so smoothly and efficiently with everything that Kal barely noticed the exchange of money.
There was a moment of perfect companionship, boundaries of species and culture transcended, as they stood side by side and touched the gleaming golden hull of their new acquisition. It was shaped like a swallow; a repainted fighter hailing back from the Kandorian war, with a cockpit just big enough for two and thin, sickle-shaped wings. Its belly had once held massive quantum warheads, but had been redesigned as a cargo bay and bunk space just big enough for one person to lie down and have a nap on long flights. On small distances it was capable of faster-than-light travel, but it would barely carry them out of the Oort cloud of comets that surrounded the solar system before its engines would need to be recharged.
Lex walked around it, examining the polished flank, and found the Kryptonian inscription on the left wing.
"Sunrider," Kal-El translated helpfully, since a human would be illiterate in Kryptonian, wondering at the fact that a military vessel had a name at all, and such a fanciful one at that. Today, Kryptonian military put function over form.
The spell of understanding between them broke just like that. Lex cast him an unreadable glance before wordlessly heading for the cockpit. Kal didn't understand what could have set off the sudden change in mood, but he followed Lex's example and folded himself into the luxurious co-driver's seat. It embraced him almost like a second body suit, and Kal felt doubly safe, right until Lex powered up the engines and, without warning, accelerated and shot out of the hangar like a speeding bullet. Kal's breath hitched, but he had to admit that while Lex flew like a maniac, his take-off maneuver was far more graceful than Kal could have managed: a perfect half of a parabola, slow start and then sudden steep ascent into the sky, racing deeper and deeper into the blue.
*
"First we must go to Arkham," Lex decided once they floated in orbit, darkness and stars enfolding them while Earth shone fat and round beneath them.
"Arkham?" Kal gasped.
Arkham had started out as a small military facility during the early stages of the liberation, but now in the golden times of peace, it had become a penal colony. Most offenders against the law were merely sent to a short stay in Belle Reve, where all aberrations of behavior were gently corrected, but human repeat offenders and those deemed dangerous to society would be shipped-off to the lunar prison colony Arkham. All sentences were for life, and the prison's staff was almost entirely human to ensure fair treatment. But still an aura of dark mystery surrounded the prison, its location on the edge between near and far side of the moon and its hellish appearance thanks to the fact that it got its energy from Apokoliptian fire-pits.
Kryptonian troops had defended Earth from Darkseid's Apokoliptian troops fifteen years ago, only two years after colonizing Earth and without aid from Krypton. Even so they had sent the invading army back to Apokolips in shameful defeat, while their technology had remained behind, and all over the solar system and the greater Kryptonian realm, firepits and boom tubes were now in use. Kal had seen the message from Kandor praising the valor of the Terran colony many times – it was televised every year on the anniversary of the victory. It was also the most obvious proof of how beneficial the presence of Kryptonians was to humanity: without them, Earth would not have survived.
It had to be clearly written on his face how much Kal dreaded going to Arkham, because Lex smirked, "You're not terribly adventurous for a bounty hunter, are you?"
"I'm doing it for the money," Kal stated stiffly, unwilling to let the man think he did this for fun.
"Your family doesn't support you?"
"They would if they could," he sighed. "But my father earns just barely enough to live on and I think he's going to sell one of our two servants to the farming belt. They're husband and wife, and I think it'd kill them to be separated… I can't just sit by and watch!" He fell silent when he realized that his voice had risen embarrassingly. Kal's teachers had often reproached him for being too passionate in his arguments and not maintaining the composure and distance to the subject matter suited for a Kryptonian.
Lex of course was human and had no such concerns. It was hard to tell what he thought of Kal's reasons for needing money or whether he cared at all. However, the mocking tone was gone from his voice when he explained, "There are people we have to talk to, if we want to find the boy."
"In Arkham? How are we even supposed to get in there?"
Lex looked up from the flight controls to give Kal a considering once-over. "What's your profession?"
"I'm a bounty hunter!"
"Your official profession."
"I'm a student," Kal admitted.
"Science?" Lex asked. There were only to choices for Kryptonian students: science and history, and the huge majority chose science. All Els had been scientists for as long as the family could remember, but when Kal had announced his intent to follow their footsteps, Jor-El had taken him aside and forbidden him to do so. As far as Kal-El could recall, it was the only time his father had displayed a spark of the temper and passion Kal had supposedly inherited from him. Otherwise, Jor-El was a quiet and reclusive man who hardly ever spoke a word beyond the barest necessities, drifting through life like a ghost.
So Kal answered, truthfully but slightly reluctant, "No, history."
"Excellent," Lex replied. "You will explain that as a student of history you're there to interview one of the most notorious terrorists of the last decade for research purposes. Add a generous bribe, and they won't ask any further questions."
"One of the most notorious terrorists?" Kal-El echoed faintly. He had only delved very superficially into Earth's recent history, but from his younger years, he remembered vividly the horrors some of these terrorists were capable of, massacres like the Belle Reve suicide bombing and the assassination of the governor of Indo-Russia. He had never been able to think of the terrorists as human; no human could be so vicious and terrifying. Most humans he knew hardly dared to raise their eyes or voices in the presence of Kryptonians and they were simple and gentle people, such as the Kents.
But the piercing grey stare Lex gave him was anything but meek. He seemed to dare Kal to show fear.
"We're going to talk to the Batman."
TBC