Chapter Text
“No, no,” Dr. Hamilton flustered, messing with the camera settings again. “We didn’t get it that time.” He glared at the device, then at the tech shifting awkwardly nearby. “What’s the lowest shutter speed and exposure level this thing can do?”
Noon, standing in front of the lens with a freshly made white candle in hand, tilted her head curiously. “I can make another more slowly if you want?”
Hamilton paused, considered it, then nodded. “Actually, that might work.” He glanced around at the myriad of recording devices, sensors, and the lab techs operating them. “Reset, people. We’re trying this again.”
A muttered chorus of groans and hasty instructions filled the testing area. Clark, off to one side, gave Noon a thumbs up and a smile.
“You’re doing great!” he called, “Just do the same thing you did last time!”
She huffed, fluffing her curls and dissolving the candle back into a stream of light. “Why does Dr. Hamilton want to watch us make candles anyway?”
Before Clark could reply, Hamilton finished puttering around and situated himself so she was directly in front of him again. “Because,” he replied with a wide grin, “There’s still so much we don’t understand about how you kids work. These candles you make don’t behave at all like ours. I’m not even sure they can be considered solid objects.”
Sky nodded from his perch atop a shelf, idly swinging his feet. “Human candles are weird. They can’t be collected at all.”
Hamilton pointed at him. “Exactly! We have no idea how you’re making them, or what they’re made of!”
“Light, if I had to guess,” Clark muttered.
Hamilton crossed his arms. “Even if that’s the case, light doesn’t just condense, not unless you subject it to a very specific set of conditions, none of which we can observe happening here. And it certainly doesn’t condense into objects like candles.”
In contradiction to his point, Noon lifted the hem of her dress, sunny yellow and gauzy today, giving what Clark could guess was a cheeky grin. Hamilton uttered a tired groan.
“Of course,” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes behind his glasses.
Clark stifled a laugh while Noon carefully rearranged the pleats of her dress.
Ever since the kids had established a routine of coming and going from the portal, Dr. Hamilton hammered Clark with requests to bring any back to the main campus of STAR for further analysis and testing. Of course, with the kids’ expressed consent. With the remains of the artificially mutated krill being heavily studied, even more knowledge about the sky children and their environment was required to make any sense of what they were seeing. While Hamilton’s early findings based on Sky were helpful, it was rudimentary at best.
Meaning that when Clark finally got Noon and Sky to agree to volunteer, unlike when Sky first came, they were met with a swarm of other scientists, far more monitoring tools, and a lot more interest.
Hamilton shook his head, huffing a breath and marching back toward the monitoring equipment. “Right, from the top. Can you do that again for me, Noon?”
She shifted awkwardly, shoulders curling inward. “Actually…”
He glanced up. “What is it?”
“I’m kind of out of extra light. I can’t forge any more candles now.”
The various techs around the lab collectively groaned, one throwing up her hands and heading out to the break room. Noon kept bowing at the head in apology.
“Well, can’t you just find more?” Hamilton asked, eyes still hopeful.
Noon winced. “It takes a little while.”
“I’m afraid she’s right,” Clark added, “I never see any kid make more than a couple per day. They have limited reserves.”
Hamilton snapped his laptop shut, dragging a hand through his graying hair. “Well, we’ll just pick this up tomorrow I guess.”
Sky hopped off his shelf and raised his arm while standing on his toes.
“I can do it!”
Hamilton looked like he was going to cry. “Yes!” He waved hastily toward where Noon was standing. “Yes, perfect! Okay, you two switch out.”
Sky strutted onto the little piece of blue tape one of the lab techs stuck onto the floor while Noon excused herself to peer into the vending machine of snacks in the hallway. Sky, vibrating with excitement, squared his small shoulders and placed his hands hovering over the molten gold aperture in his chest.
“We recording?” Hamilton said breathlessly, “And make sure your exposure is set low enough this time!”
“We’re good, Doc,” one of the techs announced.
“Alright, Sky.” Hamilton beamed. “Show us!”
In a single, graceful motion, Sky reached toward his chest and pulled. Golden light flared all around the room as white-hot particulates of sunshine poured out of Sky’s body. He cupped his hands and lifted them, the kernels of light drawing up into his palms and beginning to coalesce and coagulate into an incandescent shape. Within seconds, the candle’s cylindrical shape began to grow upward from his hands, as though a gold-forged plant were sprouting from his waxy skin.
As quickly as the entire process began, it ended. The brightness faded to more tolerable levels, leaving behind a pristine, ivory candle cradled in Sky’s palms, wick alight with a gently fluttering flame. If Clark focused, he could hear its resonance just within his range of hearing, audible just under the ambient noise of a room full of people breathing and their hearts pumping in elation.
“Please, someone tell me we got all that,” a tech spoke up, breaking the awed silence they all had fallen into.
“From twelve angles and at least five monitoring systems,” another called back.
The room burst into applause. Sky beeped with pride, raising the candle above his head again.
Hamilton waved for silence and focus. “We’re not completely done yet, people. Sky, put it on there, please.”
He gestured towards a small case just nearby with all sorts of monitoring equipment and sensors crammed into the small space. Sky dutifully marched his creation over and set it down.
“What are you gonna do with it?” he asked, tilting his head curiously.
“Oh my god…” the tech monitoring the case whispered, “Come look at this.”
Hamilton scrambled over, nearly tripping on a cable and staring at the output screen in disbelief.
Clark frowned, stepping closer. “What’s going on?”
“My theory,” Hamilton replied with a huge grin, “Was completely wrong!”
Clark stared as the other man let out a hearty laugh. “Uh…and you’re happy about that?”
“I thought it was all to do with illusion and the brain!” Hamilton continued. “These kids just play with light like it’s clay! And you know what the best part is?” He pointed at the candle, then back at Clark. “Remember how you told me they have a sound?”
“Kind of,” Clark corrected, waving a hand. “I mean, it’s more like a subtle vibration.”
“Right. It’s how they can talk to us.”
Clark blinked. “What? What do you mean?”
“Yeah,” Sky piped up, eying his precious candle carefully. “I didn’t think it would work on big people.”
Hamilton took a steadying breath, straightening his glasses. “Well, put simply, it’s entanglement.”
An amazed laugh huffed out of him. “And here I thought it was some kind of magic.”
“It explains the way the kids treat candle gifting,” Hamilton said, grinning down at Sky. “They’re giving actual pieces of themselves, tuning us in to their frequency. It’s not currency, it’s…energy exchange.”
“Ooh!” Sky raised his hand again. “They don’t just let us talk! I can see you better if I’ve already given you one! Even if I’m far away! And friends are always able to recharge better when holding hands.”
“Rain,” Clark murmured. It had been nagging him for a while, how Sky could detect his friend from so far away, or how Rain even knew to come here.
“Man,” Hamilton breathed, rubbing his face. “Entanglement via exchange of cohered light energy. This is going to make a hell of a paper–“
A muffled thud echoed from the opposite end of the room. Clark’s gaze snapped up to find Noon fallen over onto her face, a little open bag of chocolate clutched in one hand and currently spilling brightly colored candy onto the tile. Several techs gasped in surprise.
“Ow,” she grumbled, picking up her head and glaring at the door just a few feet to her left. “Who locked the door? I had to go through the wall!”
Hamilton, jaw hanging open, stepped forward. “Wait, what do you mean you went through the wall?”
She scooped up her runaway snack, then got to her feet and glared at the bare, solid wall behind her. “A shortcut,” she replied curtly.
“Ohhh.” A tech tested the door, opening it easily. “We never gave them visitor passes, did we? Of course she got locked out.”
“Sorry, Noon,” another laughed.
“Hold on!” Hamilton interjected, eyes so wide they were circular. “What do you mean you went through the wall?”
Noon popped some chocolate into where her mouth would be, the neon blue morsel disappearing. “I fell through. On purpose. So I could get back inside.”
“Wait a minute,” Clark shook his head, “You guys can just…phase through things?”
Sky made a noise of denial. “Nah, not everyone. Only if you practice a ton like Noon. I can’t do it.”
“It’s, well,” Noon mumbled. “It’s hard to explain. I’m not really walking through the wall. It’s more like I’m just kind of, if I concentrate hard enough, ignoring it?”
Hamilton stared at her for a long moment, eyes wide and mouth spreading into a grin.
“Would you…” he hedged, crouching a bit to her level and staring up at her like she was the world’s greatest treasure, “Please demonstrate for us?”
Noon popped another chocolate into her “mouth”, setting down the bag, then stretched her arms above her head with a quiet squeak.
“Fine,” she sighed, “But only if you put something there for me to land on.”
By the time they’d all left the main STAR campus, the sun was low on the horizon and the evening rush hour was at its peak. The sky was awash in orange and gold, fading slowly into indigo. From atop their perch on the skyscraper, Clark drank in the cool air and basked in the decaying solar rays. His skin buzzed pleasantly; there was supposed to be a geomagnetic storm rolling in during the coming days. He’d need to be more alert.
Noon kicked her feet happily as she finished off the last of her cookie, brushing crumbs off her dress. “Are all science humans like Dr. Hamilton?” she asked, “He’s…uh…”
“Intense?” Clark chuckled. “Maybe not all like him, but everyone is excited to get a chance to meet you guys.”
Sky hugged his cape around himself in the breezy air. “I still don’t get all that stuff he said.”
Clark winced. “Yeah, it was a bit hard to follow.”
He’d tried, but he just could not wrap his head around the official explanation Hamilton had enthusiastically rolled out. Too many highbrow terms like “phase alignment” and “atomic repellence.” He’d probably read a better phrased explanation once the whitepaper was written sometime within the next couple weeks.
Noon glanced over at him with a solemn look. “You know that he was asking for the impossible before we left, right?”
Clark sighed through his nose. Just as they’d finished up, Hamilton had approached them with a very particular request.
He wanted to meet the eldest among the sky children. Luce.
“It’s just, a lot of the rules we made for the portal were made by her,” Noon went on, “No wandering alone, no humans coming through without one of us pulling them through, time limits on groups that come through.” She shook her head. “She was really mad about what happened to that moth. Still is.”
Sky nodded. “She doesn’t want to come here.”
“I can’t exactly blame her,” Clark murmured, scooting a bit further back on the ledge. “I wish I did get to meet her, though. When Lois and I came through.”
“You wouldn’t have, you went to Prairie,” Noon explained. “Luce doesn’t wander much anymore. She stays in the archives of the Vault, and any message that does come from her usually comes from Dawn. Neither of us have ever seen her.”
“Rain told me he’s met her!” Sky interjected, “More than one time.”
Clark smiled. “Well, they had only each other in the beginning, right? Makes sense that he did.”
He glanced back out towards the skyline, watching a pair of sky kids holding hands midair gliding along the wind tunnel between buildings.
“I’d still like to meet her sometime,” he said softly.
Noon stood, her curls catching in the wind. “Maybe.”
In one motion, she snapped her arms and wings out and leaped from the ledge. The current caught her as easily as a kite, filling her white and gold manta cape.
“Race you to Clark’s nest!” she called over her shoulder, shooting off toward the horizon.
Sky jumped to his feet, fists balled. “No fair! I don’t have as many wings as you!”
He flapped frantically after her as she laughed. Clark gave a soft chuckle, standing and watching them chase each other across the skyline.