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CHAPTER 6

Of all the places and of all those who were in know, it seemed none held answers for Lois. So, after days of useless searching and a hopeless lack of answers, Lois decided there was only one thing to do. Return to the source of it all. Return to the beginning of it all.

The ice fortress.

Armed with the journal, Chloe's words and Martha's instructions, she made her way to the Kawatche caves, dust rising on the horizon as her jeep drove through. Her mind was focused on her destination, but it could not escape the echo of the General's words and his admonishes at her recklessness.

Reckless soldiers die in battle, Lois!

A good soldier knows when to retreat.

No more of this nonsense!

She grimaced still at the tone of his voice and his orders to cease and desist. And he didn't know the half of what she truly was doing.

Breathing in deeply, she made a sharp turn and sighted the cave's' opening up ahead. This was the first time she had disobeyed a direct order to the General's face, doing an about face and leaving the farmhouse and her irate father behind. Part of her felt terrible about that. The rest of her felt a sense of freedom that was both new and scary.

She hoped this was not biting more than she could chew.

"Jor-El, Jor-El… I hope you are better at this parenting thing than the General."

She pulled to a stop and abandoned her car without a second glance.

The caves were large and held several chambers. The atmosphere was damp and gloomy. Only the etchings on the walls pointed to this being anything special from the thousands of other caves in the world. Lois had been here before, but had never given it much thought. Now, though, each drawing was a word and each wall a hidden message.

Absentmindedly, she leafed the journal and glanced at the painted, uneven walls, generally differing stories of a hero, his darker self and his lighter self. She saw how the words could have generally meant Clark, but found them too generic to be certain. Surely, if a civilization had the power and means to travel so far and wide, Clark wouldn't have been the first to have made it to Earth.

When she finally came across the wall with carved depression Chloe had talked about, Lois paused. Was she ready for this? Would this even help her quest, she wondered.

The octagonal key Chloe had reluctantly provided fit in the slot without problem and Lois soon found herself engulfed in light. A chamber revealed itself, hidden as it had been from sight before, and beckoned her without words.

Was it her wishful thinking or was this feeling real?

She felt a pull and an almost urgency to cross onto the chamber, a wordless voice beckoning in almost impatiently. The solid rock moved, proving it to be not solid at all, and Lois found herself cocooned in a closed off chamber.

"Come, Lois Lane, there is no time to waste."

"Who ar-", her words were caught in silence and it was so loud, it almost felt like no sound at all, vacuum all around her.

She supposed there was pain, though she didn't exactly feel it. She thinks there was a weightless feeling, though her feet never left solid ground. In the blink of an eye, what was brown and black and hard grew white and bright and soft. She was standing on snowy floors.

"Jor-El?"

The voice of before was no more, yet Lois felt it, a presence lingering in the air, eyes watching her move. Her eyes glanced this way and that way, seeking for signs of life. The console Martha had mentioned and she had remembered seeing before glowed with a gentle blue light.

There was no hesitation in her steps.

Knowing there would be no words, her mind remained sharp, eyes glue to everything around her. The console was filled with countless slots and long pronged crystals. They all glowed uniformly.

"I seek Kal-El. How do I find him? How do I bring him back here?"

The crystals lost their steady glow and began to blink, creating a light show that would have been mesmerizing to anyone who was not half as focused as Lois on her task. After several moments, the lights died down and two empty slots glowed, while one crystal grew darker, almost black.

She reached for it.

"This better not be sending me to some panther infested jungle", she mumbled, hand closing around the crystal.

Which slot to choose?

Lois was almost placing the crystal into a random slot when she paused. It couldn't be this easy. The kandorians had needed the Book of Rao to cross. Clark used a specific crystal to open the Phantom Zone. It might all seem random and uniform to her layman's eyes, but Lois knew it wasn't.

Stepping back, she studied the darkened crystal in her grasp. It had some etchings on one side and different etchings on its opposite face. Lois dropped her bag to the floor and allowed her frame to fold into a seated position. She had all the tools, right? Wasn't that the point of sending her back to Metropolis and Smallville?

If it was all as simple as changing a crystal from one slot to the next, she could have simply done it on her last trip to the arctic.

It all had to mean something.

She cracked the journal open and started searching for the symbols on the crystal. It was a laborious task, made it all the more difficult by symbols that were similar but not the same and by notes that offered uncertain translations and double meanings. Lois lost track of time, feeling neither hungry nor cold as she worked.

In the end, she had two rough sentences:

The path is the connection.

The return is two.

Ruffing, she rolled her eyes and dropped both the crystal and the journal onto the snow. Figures it would all end up being some cryptic message. She had heard stories from Marth and Chloe about messages that were misunderstood and ominous commands that meant completely different things than they had feared.

She bet it was all lost in translation.

Working out a kink on her neck, Lois' eyes again roamed the place. It was quite beautiful, wasn't it, the long columns and the wide space. It felt otherworldly and foreign. She tilted her head sideways and frowned, mind furiously working.

It was all about the translation, wasn't it?

Lois had been born in Germany, albeit in an American Military base, and she had been exposed to the language from an early age. Not much survived after years of disuse, but she could still generally understand it.

German was not at all like English.

She bet all the maple donuts in the eastern seaboard that Kryptonian was not at all like English, either.

.

.

.

Chloe fingered the markings on the dark crystal and contemplated this new, previously unknown piece of information. She didn't know kryptonian, save for one or another symbol, and her mind wasn't inclined to focus on the translation. Her gaze was elsewhere, focused on her cousin and the the table spread full of papers, Virgil Swan's diary, a laptop, the key to the caves and the Book of Rao.

It was strange to think that Lois was newly arrived to this world of aliens and secrets and the unexplained. From knowing about the Blur, to being abducted by Zod, disappearing for months and finally appointing herself Clark's savior, Lois hardily seemed to have missed a beat.

She was sure she hadn't handled it so well when she had found out. Lana definitely took a turn for the worst after learning about Clark.

Not Lois, though.

Her cousin ran her hands through her messy hair and forced her eyes open, all her attention on Mrs. Kent, whose grim face looked out of the laptop screen at them.

"So, not 'path'. It's probably 'portal' or something like that." Lois had scribbles upon scribbles taking up space in her notes and she kept crossing them out for new information every few minutes.

"I believe so. Though the word has an origin prior to technology in Krypton, it came to roughly mean portals, later on."

Chloe herself had only recently found out that Martha had been Lionel's successor, inheriting the kryptonian library and was, therefore, all things knowledgeable about Krypton, aliens and whatnot. This information had certainly seemed useless before Lois had come along and even Martha Kent was unable to simply translate the crystal. Words, as Lois had pointed out, were tricky.

Hadn't they all spent years afraid of Clark's destiny and him "ruling" the world, when in fact that hadn't been Jor-El's message at all?

"So, we have opening the portal on one side?" Chloe finally joined in, placing the crystal on the work table, which was by far the most messy corner of the apartment. Her cousin nodded, biting her lower lip and picking up the discarded object.

"Probably. But we should check it makes sense after we pin down the other side."

"Lois," Martha leaned forward on the screen, eyes briefly glancing at the wrist watch she wore. "Could the other side mean two may return, instead of the return is the second?"

Chloe braced her arms on the next nexto to Lois and cocked her head to the side, gaze locked on the scribbled Lois had compiled.

The return is two.

The return is the second.

The return is second.

Two is the return.

Two return.

Second return.

Talk about many interpretations to the same text. Kryptonian had such a different structure to English that one symbol could mean different things depending on its position and what else was written. Without a real kryptonian - Clark or even someone else - they might as well be working in the dark. It was all basically guess work.

"It's possible, Mrs. K." Lois finally agreed, turning to face Chloe when the short blonde woman sighed loudly.

"It makes sense, I guess. But in the end, we'll have to admit it's all a guess. This crystal might be dangerous, might bring Clark back or it might do something completely different. It's not like Jor-El is ever forthcoming." She sighed again, her venting finding reflection in Lois' own thoughts and worries.

"I know, Chloe." She got up, embracing her cousin. "I'm frustrated too, and you've been at this longer than I have."

They stepped back, though arms remained loosely around the other. "We can do this, can't we?"

"You betcha!" Lois grinned.

"Girls, I have to go. I'll call back later to see how things are going. Please, be careful." And with those parting words, the screen went black.

Lois pulled the laptop screen closed and grabbed the crystal.

"So, I think I have an idea." Chloe nodded for her to continue. "If Jor-El had this crystal all along, why would they kryptonians need the Book of Rao so badly? Hopping to another dimension would be have been as easy as placing this thing in the right slot thingy back at the ice palace."

"Fortress", Chlor automatically corrected, though her mind and her gaze was solely on the coveted Book of Rao, resting innocently on the messy desk.

"Whatever", Lois rolled her eyes. "It doesn't make sense for this to be the ticket there. So…"

Chloe was already nodding, understanding Lois' line of thought. "Portal opens and two can return. This is the return trip."

"Exactly. To get there, we already have the Book of Rao. We just have to figure out how to get one of us pulled in without relocating the entire human race to some other dimension. Once there, this baby here can bring Clark and us back."

"One goes, two come back." Chloe nodded again. "I think this might just be it." She took quick strides to the desk and retrieved the Book of Rao. "So, how do we reprogram this thing?"

Lois deflated a little. "No idea."

"This is good, Lois. This is more progress than we've gotten in months." Lois' smile was dim. It seemed to be no progress at all when Clark was still out there and they couldn't get to him.

What was the point of a return trip, if you couldn't even figure out a way to get there in the first place?