Curate, connect, and discover
When Lex took Clark's DNA to make a clone, none of his scientists could make it work.
Failure after failure after failure, until finally one of them went to an old lab they used to work at. It had been falling into ruin, mostly empty due to layoffs. The government agency that had been in charge of it had been long disbanded w/ the meta protections that had been signed into law.
So it was rather easy to get in; no one had bothered to cancel this scientists credentials.
There was a specimen, permanently asleep thanks to layers upon layers of security; the first metahumans ever recorded.
Phantom, Plasmius, and Phantasm.
They took Phantom's DNA, as he looked most like Superman, and snuck it back to Lex's labs, and it worked perfectly.
And thus, Conner was born/made.
Everyone used the altered report that the group of scientists made to say he was Superman's clone.
Until, after the dust has settled and Conner died and came back, he has another DNA test run.
His other donor is not Superman at all.
His other donor's information was under layer upon layer of high tech security, and breaking through them resulted in the American Government making baseless threats against the Justice League.
But with Oracle, Cyborg, and Red Robin's help, he found out who it was.
His real donor/father was deep underground, trapped in a lab, and unable to escape.
He leaks the information to the press, and suddenly everyone knows about the first metahumans and what happened to them. What was still happening to them. How most of the worlds insane advances in technology and medicine was due to human experimentation on them.
Now the American Government is trying to calm down the public, and claiming they had no idea what was going on.
Danny wakes up, disoriented, slumped in the arms of an extremely worried teenager that keeps calling him "dad".
His response, while waking up and confused?
"Alright, don't mind kids anyways. Ellie'll be thrilled."
He really does not expect the teen to burst into tears.
For the purpose of the AU, I was imagining Danny as in his mid thirties before he was tricked by the GIW and trapped.