The Loyal Opposition, Part 8 of ???
Title: The Loyal Opposition
Author: latetothpartyhp
Rating: PG-13
Genre: drama
Spoilers: through Pandora
Pairings: ETA: I envisioned this as mainly a Chlark confrontation, but what emerged in addition to that were some hints of Chlex friendship, mutual Chless manipulation, and some (mostly) off-screen Clana. There's also a Lexana fight for anyone who's interested. And Cless! We have added Cless!
Warnings: some violence & language - ETA: Character deaths in store.
Summary / Author's Note: Chloe's on a mission for the resistance. Could be a Supernatural crossover if you squint real hard. Also, please check out the amazing banner by go_clo!
Evil LuthorCorp rep came by my workplace today delivering Thin Mints and Tagalongs. Trying to distract myself by writing...
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9 / Part 10 / Part 11 / Part 12 / Part 13 / Part 14 / Part 15 / Part 16
The first few minutes were mildly unpleasant, somewhere between series of bee stings and a curling iron burn, the kind of pain one would slap off and move on, unless one had deliberately chosen to, say, declare themselves permanently Johnny's girl or map out a prison schematic on their body. Or swear fealty to someone from another planet. Chloe grit her teeth and breathed hard through her belly. She reminded herself that she was here for info and now was just as good a time as any to gather it.
"So does everyone on Team Planetary Peace have one of these?" Dammit. That came out a little more flip than she'd meant it to. Well who wouldn't be flip if she had a white-hot needle puncturing her skin every nano-second? She noted too the hovering sense of Other in her skull had completely vanished. Maybe Madelyn wasn't as dumb as she'd thought. She hoped the uppity cow realized there was still work to do.
Rangi laughed. Probably he was used to bitchy subjects. To her surprise, he also answered. "Nah, not like this. Mosta 'em got the shield, but this ink's gotta be rationed. Only the field security team gets this stuff."
The needle passed over her spine and she winced, visions of paralysis dancing in her head.
"Great," she tried to laugh. "So that means I'm not going to be arrested for possession?"
He laughed again, a big laugh from a big man. "Nah. I don't know where they get it all, but they got it. They won't need to rip it off of you. You need to relax. You tense up more, this'll start to hurt."
Start to hurt? Maybe it was like plucking your eyebrows, she thought; after you'd yanked out so many hairs you didn't feel it anymore. Not that she intended to find out. She opened her diaphragm until she was slightly dizzy, then pushed it out slowly until she nearly cramped. She heard Tess get up from the bed and the noise of something large being dragged. Tess pulled it over to the head of the massage table; after some shuffling Chloe felt a finger trace over her hair, tuck it behind her ear. She forced herself to think about what Rangi had just said. They were stock-piling Kryptonite. That much had been guessed, based on the ban the meteor-rock ban, but aside from the importance of keeping it out of rebellious hands, what would they do with it? The Kryptonians couldn't touch the stuff. But it was obvious they did trust some humans to. Why?
"I'm not going to cause any allergic reactions, am I?"
There was a pause, after which Tess answered, her fingers running from crown to neck. "No. As I said, the formula's quite mild. Its only purpose is identification."
"So you save the big stuff for other ... stuff?" Very articulate, Sullivan. Maybe next time try the direct approach: Please give me the precise location of your stores so I can transmit their coordinates via voo-doo radio to my personal medium. She blamed the freaking needle on her back. It was making passes across her spine, back and forth, like an insect performing some kind of pollen-direction dance that involved stinging all the other bees. She gripped the corner of the table and hoped Madelyn was at least maintaining a baby-monitor in her mind. And that her influence didn't have a sell-by date.
"Oh yes, we have all kinds of other 'stuff'' we do with it. Kryptonite has some amazing scientific properties; unfortunately we haven't been able to properly research them until now." Tess uncurled her white-knuckle grip and threaded her fingers through Chloe's. In spite of herself, Chloe gripped the other woman's hand fiercely. Next stop Stockholm, she thought.
"I suppose having scientists with the right knowledge base on hand is helpful." Hopefully she had a few more hours before the grateful-captive train pulled into the station. A few more burning, buzzing, bleeding hours.
"Absolutely. But environmental conditions have been a factor too. We've been able to achieve a number of things that were ... impractical under higher frequency wavelengths. For instance, we can grow a limited supply of most crops, but since the spectrum shift we've been able to use Kryptonite to create seed strains that should multiply yields a thousand-fold from what they were before. You need to relax," she continued. "Rangi's right, the more tense you are the worse the pain." She picked up Chloe's hand and began massaging the back of it where it bent back against her wrist. She pressed hard, hard enough for Chloe to start and gasp and forget the sculpture in progress on her back.
"Watch it," said Rangi sharply.
"Sorry," Chloe replied. She breathed deeply through the scratching on her back, the vise-grip on her hand, the racing of her thoughts. "I haven't seen anything broadcast about growing food again." Were they really doing what she thought they were doing? Tess had to have been privy to those files. She had to know the risks, had to know a super-powered id separated from its ego would be an untameable monster. Kal-El had to know that. "When will the crops be ready to harvest?"
"It's all very top-secret," Tess told her dryly, digging into her bones "Loose lips sink ships. Can you imagine what the reaction would be if we promised manna and it was stolen in the night before it could be gathered?"
And what did she mean by that, Chloe thought. The resistance? Did she think they would take food out of children's mouths? Of course, give people bellies full of something besides algae and they might not care anymore where it had come from.
"That would be a problem," Chloe agreed. The pen neared her sacrum; she could feel it pounding like a lilliputian jack-hammer. Tess hadn't answered her question. It could be tomorrow, it could be two years from now. Her chest tightened with the uncertainty of it. She wished she could sit up and look the other woman in the eye. Whatever Madelyn had discovered to gain this woman's trust it hadn't been enough if she was still able to keep her own counsel. And the damn tattoo wasn't helping her concentration. She let her lungs fill and collapse a few times, then tried a different angle.
"But you said you're growing some food now. How are you doing that?"
"Hydroponics, plant lights, underground climate-controlled facilities - again, very classified." She released Chloe's hand and began stroking the outer edge of her thumb. "The Fortress provides most of the energy, so we don't have to worry about supply interruptions."
Chloe's diaphragm froze for a second. "The Fortress?" she asked. "Jor-El's Fortre -- aiy!" She screamed through her teeth as the pen skidded and ripped into her skin. Tess's hand clamped around hers and for one heavenly moment the stinging stopped.
"Don't let us distract you," Tess said over her head.
"Sorry about that," Rangi answered. "You need a break?"
"She's almost done," Tess answered. The stinging resumed, and Chloe felt tears well. It was worse now that she'd had a breather. She was such a wimp. And Tess was so not granted Adored Captor status. "Yes, Jor-El's Fortress," Tess continued. She massaged the bottom knuckle of Chloe's thumb. "Kal-El tells me you've been there."
"On occasion."
"He told me that day you stopped him from opening the Phantom Zone, you did so by replacing a crystal in the Fortress console."
"Yes?" Tiny alarm bells rang through the pain. Where was this going?
"That's quite remarkable. The Fortress has a limited tolerance for visitors, and no one, human or Kryptonian, other than Kal-El has been able to touch that console since the spectrum shift." She kneaded the pad of flesh between Chloe's thumb and index finger. "Why do you suppose it let you?"
Chloe blinked. She could feel her skin twitching over her spine. Hell if she knew why Jor-El let anyone do anything. Why was Tess was so intent? She could feel it in the woman's fingers, hear it underlie her off-hand tone. She wanted something. Something? The Console. Tess wanted the Console. Her heart pounded to match the pen. She tried to match her interrogator's casual cadence. "The times I have been able to affect the Fortress in any way have been when I convinced it there was a threat to Kal-El."
"Of course. It trusts you will do whatever you can to protect him. That's all I want too," Tess answered.