USB Drive

Metropolis, hospital.

It was already three in the afternoon. Brilliant golden light streamed through the half-curtained window, spilling over the bed covered in white sheets. Lois Lane lay unconscious on it, hooked up to all kinds of life-support equipment. The line on the electrocardiogram pulsed steadily, signaling that her condition was gradually stabilizing.

Their planned weekend picnic had undoubtedly been interrupted by this sudden accident. Kara now sat beside the bed, keeping vigil over the unconscious Lois, while Jay stayed there with her.

The doctor said Lois had temporarily passed out of immediate danger, but it was hard to say when she might wake up. She might even never wake up at all. Kara seemed deeply upset by this; she and Lois appeared to be quite close.

Jay patted her shoulder reassuringly. "She'll get better. She's Lois Lane, right? She's not the kind of woman who goes down that easily."

"I know." Kara stared blankly at Lois's pale face, unable to keep the sorrow from rising within her.

Jay said softly, "You seem very close to her."

Kara tightly clasped his hand and nodded gently. "We haven't been in touch for a while, but Lois is like family to me. She and Carl took care of me in every way when I first came to Earth. Carl may be my only blood relative on Earth, but Lois showed me what it felt like to have an older sister."

Jay nodded with feeling. "I understand."

"I just hope she gets better." Kara stared at Lois on the hospital bed, then suddenly said, "But why was she there? By that lake outside Metropolis? What was she doing there? And who did this to her?"

"Hey, don't think too much about it yet, okay?" Jay held her hand. "We'll figure it out. I'll figure it out, I promise."

At his words, Kara suddenly remembered something. "Oh, right. When we found her... didn't she give you something?"

Jay nodded and took a USB drive no bigger than his thumb from his pocket. Its delicately crafted silver casing reflected a bright gleam in the sunlight.

"A USB drive?" Kara took it and examined it. "She gave this to you?"

"She gave it to the first person she encountered with the last of her consciousness. That means it was important. Maybe she thought it was more important than herself."

"That sounds just like her." Kara sighed softly. "Always walking beside danger, chasing truths no one else dares touch."

She stared at the little thing in her hand for a moment. "We should see what's on it. Maybe its contents are connected to what happened to her. It could help us find out the truth."

"No. I'll find out the truth." Jay took the USB drive from her hand. "You need some time to rest. And if Lois wakes up, she'll need you here."

Kara opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something, but after looking once more at Lois in her deep coma, she finally nodded in concession.

Jay instinctively felt that he probably should not plug an unknown USB drive into his home computer, so he took it to The Daily Planet.

Since it was the weekend, there were not many people at the newspaper office that day. Even Perry was absent from his office, which made things more convenient for Jay. He sat at the desk Perry had temporarily assigned him and turned on the computer. The aging tower emitted a droning hum like rough breathing. It took more than two full minutes before the monitor reluctantly displayed the desktop background, like someone groggily crawling out of warm winter bedding.

I hope this old thing can at least read a USB drive.

Jay plugged the tiny USB drive into a port on the tower. A small indicator light at its end began blinking faintly red. He stared intently at the screen as the progress bar for the routine scan crawled along at a snail's pace. At last, it finished reading. A folder window popped up on the desktop. On the blank white interface, a single folder sat alone in the upper-left corner.

"S.D.E. Project." That was its name.

The name caught Jay's attention. He could not help thinking of all those mysterious top-secret government projects concealed in science fiction movies. According to movie logic, projects like that always brought a long trail of trouble. He felt as though he had already been cast into such a plot, with an invisible undercurrent quietly closing in on him. He simply did not yet know where it came from.

He moved the cursor over the folder and double-clicked. After the small loading circle spun several times, a long list of file icons appeared. But when he tried to open them, every folder only gave him a discouraging exclamation mark and a dialog box asking for a password.

Jay felt somewhat disappointed, but it was not an entirely unexpected result. If the contents of the USB drive had not been encrypted and had been laid out openly before him, that would have been even less reasonable. He began considering whether to ask Helena for help. Cracking passwords probably would not be difficult for her.

Then his attention was drawn to an attached text file at the very bottom of the list. Its icon was entirely different from everything else in the folder. After a moment's thought, he clicked it open. Following a brief lag, a long list appeared before him.

"S.D.E. Project Chief Director: General Sam Lane," the heading read.

Jay's thoughts stirred. Sam Lane? Wasn't Lane Lois's father? In the original comics, General Sam Lane had been a conservative, stubborn old man and a patriot through and through. Yet he opposed Superman at every turn and represented the military's anti-metahuman faction. That irritating old man had appeared in quite a few major comic events.

Jay continued reading. Below was a long list of people associated with the S.D.E. Project, but nearly every participant's name had the word "Dead" marked after it in small red letters. This included General Lane himself, the project director, who had apparently been confirmed dead. That was not surprising. Countless people had been killed or wounded during the Apocalypse Invasion six years ago, and immeasurable numbers of soldiers had died on the battlefield. These people had clearly not survived.

Except for one person.

At the end of the document, Jay finally found the sole name in an inconspicuous corner that was not marked with a vivid red "Dead"—General Simon Gilson. Behind it, in pale green lettering, was the note: "Retired."

As long as he was alive, things would be easier. All Jay had to do next was find General Gilson's address and pay him a visit.

Just as Jay was thinking that, a buzzing sound that seemed to come from a great distance rode the wind through the open window and into his ears. Amplified by his super-hearing, it sounded like an entire swarm of endlessly buzzing hornets rapidly approaching, faintly resembling a squadron of galloping riders thundering forward.

He narrowed his eyes and instinctively looked out the window, only to freeze instantly.

It was a missile, its long tail flame slicing through the clear sky as it shot straight toward his window at supersonic speed.