Back To Krypton

Chapter 37

Kara's teeth chatter as she passes through the ceiling. She's getting closer to the lab but didn't think ahead enough to consider that she has to pass by a lot of the machinery that powers the lab's equipment. After being on Earth for so long, she had almost forgotten the way Kryptonian generators don't overheat but quite the opposite, a stark contradiction to the technology on Earth.

Between crawling under massive pipes and tiptoeing around wires, she rubs her hands up and down her arms to generate a little bit of heat. If she gets too cold then she's going to stiffen up and not be at her best for whatever is to come and she has to be able to move quickly.

If she doesn't move quickly enough then her body heat will affect the overall temperature up here and since a lot of these generators are powering some very important pieces of equipment, they will be monitored closely and she could accidentally set off alarms and have people figuring out where she is.

She tucks the jacket sleeves over her fingers and keeps moving. All she knows is that the lab is on the far side of the building so her best bet is to just keep going until she reaches a dead end and then she can figure out her exact location from there, trying to sneak a peek down into the rooms below now could blow her cover before she's even halfway there.

She makes progress slowly but surely, the temperature fluctuating all the while as she passes the odd generator. She figures out that there is a generator above each room that has a great need for power, so that's mostly labs and surveillance rooms that track satellites and Krypton's deteriorating atmosphere.

From what she can remember, her father's lab is right on the far side of the building and the furthest on the right so if she finds the generator that corresponds with that, she'll be right on the money.

The climb is more tiring than Kara imagined it would be and her pace is nowhere near what it was when she first climbed up here but she's still going and she hasn't got much further to go. She can see her checkpoint just up ahead and it gives her a little more motivation to move faster to get there.

Since she's going to be right beside a generator, she can't stay there for long because of the temperature issue so she's got to check that she's in the right place, make a quick assessment of the situation and then retreat away from the generator to a safe distance to come up with a plan of action.

There's a hatch a couple of metres to the side of the generator and Kara carefully lifts it after taking a deep breath to steady herself. Her fingertips curl around the edge and she only just cracks it open so she can peer down into the room below.

It's bright down there. That's her first assessment. It's bright and it takes a second for her eyes to adjust because it's pretty damn dark up in the ceiling and she had gotten used to it.

Squinting against the light, it doesn't take long for Kara to recognise the familiar space although she has never seen it from this angle before. Her father's desk looks exactly how she remembers it; it's covered in piles of documents, information crystals and a hologram crystal displaying the image of Kara and her parents, all looking positively joyful.

Her gaze fixes on that hologram crystal for a dangerous moment and almost misses the shadows dancing across the wall from her pacing parents, deep in conversation and thankfully not paying attention to the ceiling. That's probably because people don't often spend time looking at a ceiling when their prepubescent teenager's future self shows up to throw a spanner in the works of all of their plans.

Kara only keeps the tile cracked a little and presses her ear down into the slit to try and make sense of what they are saying. It's a struggle to hear but she makes out a few words here and there. She's grateful they are speaking Kryptonese because even after all these years, she still finds it much easier to understand what people are saying in her mother tongue rather than English.