Jude leaned against the doorframe and rubbed his eyes.
"I welcome visitors," he said. "Generally speaking. Though I am currently reconsidering the guest list for at least three people." He stepped back, gesturing for Clark to enter. "Three in the morning is pushing it, Clark. We met this afternoon. You are making yourself very much at home."
"I know, I know." Clark ducked inside. His shoulders hitched up, his gaze dropping briefly to the floor. "I am sorry. It is late, and we just met, and normally I would never do this. But I think you are someone I can trust, and I need to ask for help."
You have known me for a long time, Jude thought. That is what you said. Which means—
"Before I left this afternoon," Clark said, raising a hand to stall the incoming question, "your conversation with Bruce was not very different from two people speaking directly into my ears. My hearing is not something I have complete control over at the moment."
Jude stared at him. "So you already knew."
"I am sorry." Clark let out a short, scratchy laugh. "I was not trying to eavesdrop. After the body-swap incident, spending time in that scientist's body, even briefly, there were aftereffects. I have been adjusting back to my own physiology for the past month or two. The gross motor control is fine. The fine sensory calibration is still catching up. My brain has not fully relearned which inputs to filter out."
Jude processed this. "So you are confirming you are Superman."
"You and Bruce had already concluded that, had you not?"
"More or less."
Clark's shoulders relaxed, his breathing steady. "Honestly, I am glad. You are both good people."
"I would hedge on 'good,'" Jude said. "Bruce's methods are—"
"Considerably more creative than most people's."
The voice came from the corner of the room.
Jude picked up the nearest cushion from the bed and threw it into the dark without looking. A large, black-gloved hand emerged from the shadow and caught it cleanly.
"I did not open the window tonight," Jude said. "So where, specifically, did you come in?"
"Through the door," Batman said. "This time."
"'This time' implies there have been other times."
"Let us move on."
Jude pointed at him. Then at Clark. Then back at Batman. Failing to formulate a productive follow-up, he sat down on the edge of the mattress.
Clark looked between them, a faint smile touching the corners of his mouth. "You know, this is a bit like one of those secret organizations from the comics. A small group that knows each other's identities."
Batman said nothing.
"Bruce," Clark added, tilting his head slightly. "You do know I can see through things."
A pause.
"Can you see through everything?" Batman asked.
"Lead, no. X-ray vision does not penetrate lead." Clark did not hesitate, his voice entirely level. "But you do not have to worry. I do not go looking for things that are not my business, and what I do happen to see, I keep to myself."
Batman remained silent.
The Batcave is getting a lead renovation, Jude thought. Probably by the end of the week.
"This is one of the stranger friendships I have ever witnessed," Jude said. "One person volunteers his own weakness without being asked. The other one absolutely intends to use that weakness as the basis for countermeasures, yet finds the volunteering of it somehow touching. I do not know what to call that."
"Making contingency plans has nothing to do with trust," Batman said. "From a personal standpoint, I am grateful for the honesty."
"Do not tell him that," Jude said. "He will take it as encouragement." He looked at Clark. "He is like this about everything. It is structural. You cannot change it. You should not try. Just accept it as a fixed feature of the landscape and move forward."
Clark pressed his lips together, his chest rising with a suppressed huff of amusement.
"Right." Jude clapped his hands. "You said at the door you needed help. What is the actual problem?"
"Right. So." Clark straightened, his brief amusement fading. "When we met this afternoon, I could hear something faint coming from you. A strange sound. Barely there, gone almost immediately. I could not get enough of it to identify it. It has been bothering me since I left."
Jude thought about it. He ran a mental check of his inventory, active effects, and anything system-related that might generate an audio signal. Nothing obvious surfaced.
"And tonight?" Jude asked.
"Tonight I dealt with Titano in Metropolis."
"The chimpanzee," Jude confirmed. "We watched part of it."
"I know," Batman said from the shadows. "Fifteen minutes. Green-eye radiation consistent with kryptonite exposure. Lois Lane convinced it to put on specially-made sunglasses. You then redirected it through a time portal into the Jurassic period."
Jude and Clark both turned to stare at the corner.
"The Jurassic period," Jude repeated flatly.
"There was a time machine," Clark said, slowing his words slightly as if hearing how absurd they sounded. "It had been attempting to function for three years without success. Tonight, it happened to work. I opened a portal and sent Titano through." He paused. "The Jurassic period seemed like a reasonable destination. Less collateral damage than anywhere populated."
"Barry is going to be so upset when he hears that a time machine casually worked in Metropolis," Jude muttered. "The Flash's whole thing, reduced to infrastructure." He looked back at Clark. "And the machine?"
"Destroyed. The scientists confirmed it was a one-time fluke. The machine had not successfully activated once in three years before tonight. I was not leaving it intact regardless."
"And the body-swap machine from before?"
"Also destroyed." Clark's tone dropped, hardening into something final. "I burned the blueprints, the data, and the hard drives. I used X-ray vision, so I know nothing was missed." He hesitated for a fraction of a second. "The scientist was executed."
"Executed," Jude repeated.
"After he was returned to his own body, he became irrational. He kept insisting he was still Superman. He would not respond to anything else." Clark stared blankly ahead, his jaw tight. "A woman named Amanda Waller tried to negotiate with him. It did not go anywhere."
"And then the pressure from Metropolis made the outcome inevitable," Batman said. "The military's position was that the execution was the last usable value he had. A public statement."
Jude sat with that for a long moment.
"Right," he said. "So the machine is gone, the scientist is gone, and whatever Waller wanted from that conversation, she did not get it." He looked at Clark. "Which means someone with resources and an interest in metahuman-level capabilities just walked away from a failed negotiation with nothing."
File that under things that do not end here, Jude thought.
"Anyway." He rubbed the back of his neck. "You heard the sound from me this afternoon. You still do not know what it was?"
"Not yet. That is why I am here."