Chapter1
Checkmate

"Are you scared?" Kara's wide blue eyes darted from the brochure in her hands to her sister and back again.

"Pfft, of course not." Alex tossed her long red hair over her shoulder defiantly, but a slight twitch pulled at the corner of her mouth betraying her wavering confidence. Kara watched as her sister pulled at her jean skirt and then ran nervous fingers along the hem of her Black Watch plaid button-down. Picking her way across the clean, crowded showroom, the younger blonde slipped her hand into her sister's and Alex squeezed it, grateful for the distraction.

Their grasp of sisterhood was still tenuous, a fragile bond that had grown in halting fits and starts, but in this moment, the redhead seemed happy to have a hand to hold. Kara knew that she sometimes said the wrong thing, asked the wrong questions, forgot the English word for everyday objects, but in this moment, she wasn't some alien girl sharing Alex's room, she was family, providing comfort on one of the biggest days of her sister's life.

Today, Alex was officially sixteen years old. Earlier that morning, they were woken with fanfare; there were presents waiting at the breakfast table, and Eliza grew only slightly misty, wishing their father could be there to celebrate with them. And while Kara was still uncertain when it came to most Earth customs, she knew what turning sixteen meant to Alex – to everyone on the planet, it seemed.

Today was the day Alex could get her Timer.

Kara didn't quite understand the Timer or its popularity, as they had never had any technology on Krypton for determining pair bonding, and it seemed one of the more alien concepts to her. To think that one could, upon their sixteenth birthday, have a small strip installed on their forearm that would then alert them when they came in contact with her pre-destined mate. Even with all the advanced research in the fields of science and technology on her home planet, Kara found the concept perplexing, that a machine could understand the vast complexities of human behavior – of fate, of future, of the heart and the head – and accurately predict the ideal mate. And yet, everyone around them seemed to trust in its infallibility. The papers – both local and national – were full-to-bursting with success story after success story, of people finding their soulmates, thanks to a little strip of metal and plastic.

Eliza had explained that the tech inside the Timer was, at least partly, alien; it was able to quantify and build algorithms that accounted for the ineffable – all those things which couldn't be explained – to find the perfect match for each person on earth. Apparently, fate and future could be converted into a mathematical equation, personality and preference were all just data points, it made Kara's head hurt just to think about it, so she preferred not to.

True, there were people who chose to do things the old fashioned way; those backward few who rebelled against the idea of circuits reading their stars, divining their future, and determining matters of the heart. They believed in organic love, either matched before the device's invention, or simply rejecting the concept as a whole.

Alex was not one of them, she couldn't wait.

"I hope it's Darek from poetry class." She had said in the car on their way to the installation center, "He just got his Timer last week and it's totally dashed."

Dashed, as Alex explained, was what happened when whomever you were destined to be with hadn't gotten their Timer yet. After a Timer was installed, Kara was told, one of two things would happen, "One: it immediately starts counting down, having calculated the exact moment you're going to meet your soulmate, then it'll beep when the moment happens," Alex was gesticulating excitedly, obviously eager about her impending installation. "Two: it just shows a series of dashed lines, meaning that your soulmate hasn't gotten their Timer installed, or they've had it removed." Alex added, with some disbelief, "as if I would ever think of removing my Timer."

Eliza, having found her husband before the days of digital pre-destination, had to ask Alex to settle down several times on their way to the center, "Remember sweetie, whatever happens, and no matter what you decide, you still have so much love in your life. Just because you're old enough for a Timer doesn't mean that you're obligated to get one. You always have a choice, Alex."

At this Alex had groaned audibly, throwing her head back and letting out a protracted whiney, "Moooooom," while her younger sister, trailing her in age by a mere year and a half, shifted uncomfortably in the car.

Kara had been here on Earth for just under two years and had already heard so many stories about Timers, both good and bad, that she was simultaneously intrigued and terrified by them.

One girl in Alex's class had gotten hers installed a few months ago only to have its readout start counting down to a date over forty years in the future. The girl had essentially collapsed at the shock and, after a week or so, adopted an aggressively apathetic attitude toward the whole thing. Two weeks after that, she had her Timer removed.

A man in North Dakota had become so obsessed with the countdown on his Timer that it actually drove him to the point of psychological breakdown. When the moment finally came, his soulmate ended up being the psychiatrist performing his intake evaluation; it was not a great first impression, to say the least.

After hearing stories of failed Timer pairings – and there were a handful of others, tucked among the millions of success stories – Kara didn't know if she ever wanted one.

Not that she had the luxury of choice; it was here she and Alex diverged. At present, there was no way to install a Timer on a girl with bulletproof skin and, somewhere in the back of her mind, Kara was grateful for the obligatory opt-out. She'd never have to worry about the potential fixation on a singular point in time, never had to be beholden to another person. Besides, she wasn't even from this planet, who knew if the Timer could even pair-bond a Kryptonian.

A woman in a bright red, collarless pique shirt was talking to Eliza now, going over some legal paperwork, and Alex's hand was growing hot in Kara's own.

"Are you sure you want to do this, Alex?" the blonde girl looked over at her sister with uncertain blue eyes. "Like, super sure?"

"I'm sure," Alex nodded and squeezed her hand once more, "you don't have to be so upset Kara, it'll only hurt for a second."

Kara steeled herself, determined to be stalwart and supportive, "Who says I'm upset?"

Her sister turned and poked at the spot just between Kara's knit eyebrows, "Crinkle!" and both girls erupted into giggles as the installation technician came over to begin the procedure.

The process ended up being far faster than Kara thought it should be for something with so much significance and, before they knew it, they were all back in the car on their way home.

"Twenty seven seems so far away, I could be an entirely different person by then," Alex murmured rubbing a thumb over the smooth display screen on her right wrist. "I wonder who he'll be."

Kara looked from her sister's wrist to her wistful face, then turned blue eyes to the landscape speeding by and let escape a small sigh.

Lena Luthor rubbed her left wrist without thinking and received a quick swat on the back of her hand.

"Leave it alone, Lee. You know what Lillian will say if she catches you fussing with it. You're lucky she let you get it at all." Her brother's teasing grin shone, white and gleaming as he reached over to capture her rook with his bishop. "Check."

"Why wouldn't she? Our company helped develop the tech in the first place." Lena slid her queen between her king and Lex's bishop. "Besides, it's not like it matters, it's dashed anyway."

Lena glanced down at the strip of metal and plastic on her wrist, blank, save for a series of short black strokes across the display. She couldn't decide whether she was pleased at its silent refusal to fulfill its digital obligation, or frustrated at the denial of yet another traditional teen experience.

"You know how she feels about them. Besides, It's dashed now," Lex countered as he jumped his knight over one of Lena's pawns. "It won't be forever. Then Lionel and Lillian can stress over you for a change." He swept her knight from the board. "Check.

Lena sighed, considering her next move. She doubted that even if her Timer had started to countdown upon its installation, Lionel and Lillian would treat her with the same stoic distance they did now. As for their hesitance toward Timers in general, Lex knew better than anyone that while the Luthor's had, in fact, helped to fund and develop the technology behind the devices, their personal history with them was less than stellar.

Lex's Timer had been installed when he was nineteen and, as it flashed to life, the face read an appalling low number – he was mere weeks away from his soulmate encounter. He had reacted with poise and grace as Lillian clapped her hands in delight, talking animatedly about wedding planning and the future of the Luthor legacy. Four years had passed since his installation date and save for regular visits for family dinners, Lex remained as solitary as an oyster, the only evidence of his Timer the two dime-sized scars on the inside of his wrist, long since healed after its removal. He had ripped it out within days of its implantation, and refused to pay it any heed. On the date he was to meet his soulmate, he barricaded himself in his study till the day had passed completely, shouting that he alone was master of his fate.

Lena still had nightmares about the day she climbed the stairs to find Lex clinging to consciousness on the top landing, lying prostate in a pool of his own blood as it streamed in macabre rivulets from the two puncture points on his forearm. There had been a faint brown ring on the rug for months afterward, outlining the perimeter of her brother's blood loss. Strangely enough, it did not deter her from wanting a Timer of her own. Lex had made his choice and Lena was destined to make hers, even if it caused her path to diverge from her brother's.

"What if it never starts counting?" the dark-haired girl captured her brother's rook and settled back into her seat. She drew a long strand of hair over her shoulder and began winding it through her fingers.

"I'm really not the right person to ask, Lee." Lex crossed his arms as his mouth puckered and pulled to one side.

"No, I mean, if the TimerTech is so advanced that it can determine who I'm going to end up with, does it also know for certain that my match will even get a Timer? What if they never do, and I'm just stuck waiting?"

She watched as Lex leaned forward and swept his knight in a decisive curve around her own.

"First of all, I don't know how smart it all actually is. You're starting to get into the realm of 'fate' and 'prediction' and when you mix questions of destiny with science, the results are always messy. Check."

"But isn't that the point? That the tech is supposed to be all-knowing? Like, somewhere there's an omniscient super-computer sitting at that center of a warehouse that knows the whole of human existence." Lena knit her eyebrows, and blew out the exasperated breath she had been holding.

"Lee, even if we did have some fancy Zoltar machine tucked away on a black site, don't you think we would have it doing more important things than finding you a boyfriend?"

Lena glared at him, and, glancing at the board for a brief moment, shuffled her queen over three squares. "Who says I want a boyfriend?" she asked then, sporting a condescending smirk, knocked Lex's king over with a decidedly childish flick.

"Checkmate."