Lois could count on one hand the reasons a reporter would bin a Pulitzer-size story. Twenty minutes into the biggest scoop of her life, she realised there was a new reason to add to the list. Time travel. It sucked.
At first, she had no idea she had gone so far off the map. When she had opened her eyes she had only been able to roll onto her side and disgorge herself of the little she'd eaten that day. Moving even those few centimetres had created a rumble of pain to roll down from her skull so she sucked in a deep breath. Tess Mercer had clocked her harder than she'd been hit in a long time, she thought. Jimmy would be able to take some incriminating snaps and then she'd hit the bitch with an assault charge. Assuming Tess didn't sack her first. Discovering evidence of your boss murdering someone was a sure-fire way to find yourself out of work.
Musing on the rather dramatic end to a chequered employer-employee relationship, Lois raised her eyes from the floor below her. Instead of being confronted with the crowded bullpen, she saw she was in the centre of a large circular dias. Beyond its edge was a row of three white consoles. Behind one was a man wearing a dark green mask. Looking to her left and right, she saw she was encircled by an array of men and women wearing loud costumes.
She hadn't suspected this move, but it made some sense. Tess had clearly had her committed to silence her. Though she didn't think the patients were usually allowed to express their fantasies so creatively outside of sessions by wearing spandex.
"You are not quite who we were expecting," the man with the green mask said.
"Don't you recognise her?!" Lois gingerly made it to a kneeling position and tried to identify who had spoken. A young red-haired man was looking at her with an ecstatic expression on his face. His enthusiasm was making her a little nervous but she was still struggling to summon the energy to string a whole sentence together.
"Garth…" A blonde woman beside him said uneasily.
"Imra, It's Lois Lane herself! Drop the field," And he darted towards her suddenly. Lois got to her feet quickly and raised her hands in an attempt to maintain some distance. "This is amazing! You are a legend Lois!"
"Whoa…I don't…I don't know who you are. But I am not supposed to be here."
"That is certainly true," a third man with dark hair said as he walked onto the dias, a little behind the red-haired man. He put a hand on Garth's arm and shook his head at him before looking at Lois. "Are you Lois Lane?"
"Who wants to know?" Lois said weakly, despairing at herself for uttering something so transparent. She'd have to be a little sharper than that if she wanted to extricate herself from this mess.
"We are the Legion. I am afraid you are very far from home but we are not a threat to you." Lois nodded slowly, not entirely convinced but knowing she should probably agree. "You are Lois Lane, aren't you?" Then Garth burst out again with a jumble of words. Lois recognised the words but she was having trouble understanding them, though there was a name mentioned that she recognised. Why couldn't she grasp the sense in it? The blonde woman, Imra, joined the other two on the dias and rubbed the side of her head as if the puppy-like boy was giving her a migraine.
"Garth, you are being unforgivably reckless." Garth dropped his eyes, embarrassed at the rebuke and Lois would have felt bad for the kid if he wasn't coming across a little stalker. "Rokk, I suggest we both speak to Lois in another room. Clearly things have not happened as we expected. But Lois is understandably alarmed by this situation." Rokk nodded and held out a hand to Lois, his brown eyes capturing hers and said softly,
"Ms Lane, we must talk. Would you like to sit down and perhaps have a drink? You must be feeling unwell after your journey." Everyone was talking to her and looking at her as if she was the crazy one. But these people dressed and spoke like no one she had ever laid eyes on. How had she ended up here? How was she going to get back? Jimmy had been closing in on Chloe's location, what if she missed his call? She suddenly realised that not only did she not know where she was, she didn't know when it was.
"What time is it? It's just, I was expecting this really important call and…" she tailed off as she registered the strange expressions on the faces of the people in front of her. Pity?
"Come with us, and we will discuss this further," Rokk repeated. She wavered for a moment but then relented. She didn't have enough information to know how to respond yet so for the time being she would play along. Taking Rokk's hand, she felt a little spark of static sting her skin before her hand settled neatly in his. She glanced up, evaluating his face quickly. For some reason, he reminded her of Clark who would also sometimes look at her with the same grave sincerity.
Supporting her then under the elbow, Rokk lead her off the dias, with the woman following behind. Lois looked quickly round at the rest of the large room and saw its walls were unmarked but the domed ceiling was decorated with a strange three dimensional light sculpture that kept fluctuating into new glittering ribbons. A dark red beam of light was winding its way through the centre as she glanced down again, a trickle of blood amongst the dazzling petroleum colours. It disconcerted her more than anything else she'd seen so far.
They continued past the other dozen or so loudly attired people who watched her departure silently, and approached a large set of doors which opened automatically before them. The corridor beyond was also white and the light seemed to seep out from the walls in a way that started to concern her. She had seen her share of fancy buildings but she had never seen materials like these used in construction. The floor looked like marble but when her foot came down on it, it seemed to give ever so slightly, as if cushioning her every step. Her alarm was starting to accelerate again until the woman approached her elbow and said with a gentle smile,
"I know this all seems very strange Lois but this building uses cutting edge technology you may not have come across before. The designers behind the institute had a very unique vision."
"Institute? What Institute?" Lois said.
"It may be wise to…" Imra began but Lois cut her off sharply.
"Tell. Me. Or I stop being so co-operative and start screaming this place down." Lois knew she wasn't strong enough yet to tussle with two strangers but she could still raise hell if she needed to. Her two companions looked at each other for several long moments before the blonde woman nodded.
"This will be difficult to accept but you are in the Institute of Time."
"The Institute of what?"
"Time. You are in the 31st Century Lois."
Lois stared at the apparently earnest young woman in disbelief. Then she burst out laughing.
"For a second…whoa, you guys are something else! I'm sorry to burst your bubble but I've consigned my tabloid days to the past. Whatever complicated…" She waved her hand at their surroundings, "…scam you have set up, it's not going to wash. Rule of reporting number four, if it's too weird to be true, it probably is. Honestly, did you really think this was going to…" But she realised that the two strangers were only looking at each other with resigned expressions.
"Whatever his reason for sending her here, I hope it was a good one," the man sighed.
"Wait. Who's he?"
"A question that will be of significant interest to you but that we cannot answer. Lois, you must understand, any knowledge you acquire here threatens to do further damage to this timeline. Our ally…"
"…is already known to you Lois. He is in your thoughts. You spoke to him only a few hours ago. From your perspective at least."
"Oh crap. The red-blue blur?" They frowned at that name but then the woman nodded.
"That is what you know him as. We know him by his real name."
"Then that means…"
"Yes."
"Oh crap. You're for real." Her alarm was suddenly swept to one side as she realised she was in the middle of the biggest story she'd come across her entire career. The red-blue blur was in contact with people from the future. She was in the future. A thousand years in the future!
It was going to be a difficult sell, but if she could just persuade the editor she wasn't completely out of her tree, she would have the hottest story in Metropolis. It might even buy her some time before Tess made a move against her. Then she recognised that the Rokk guy had said something worrying. "Wait, damage the timeline? What are you saying? Further damage?"
"Ms Lane, you cannot ever repeat anything you learn here. The consequences could be grave indeed." There was the worrying face and the strange words again, and she had a feeling this was going to be the bad news part of the talk.
"The individual you know as the red-blue blur has a significant role to play in the eventual creation of this reality Lois. And you…" The woman looked at her companion uneasily before looking once again at Lois. "You have a significant role to play in his future. Through your role as a reporter," she added. Lois felt a little disappointed there that Imra hadn't been about to say as something other than a journalist. But the idea that the blur had an important destiny and she would be connected to that made her heart feel light in her chest. And it felt right. She knew he was something special and she knew she could help him. How she could be so certain about a man she had never actually met confused her but her certainty about this man was too big for her to ignore. "It is essential that others do not learn these things before they should. He is not invulnerable." Lois felt her stomach shrink unpleasantly, he had admitted as much to her only a few hours ago, or a few hundred years ago, whichever. Then there was the ugly red thread of light she had seen in the ceiling of the room behind them.
"Is he in trouble?" She said, her voice emerging only as a whisper.
"We are all in trouble without him," Rokk said, his voice betraying fear for the first time. "He did not die as we predicted but instead something we had not foreseen is beginning to impact on this timeline." He shook his head. "Even now, the mechanics of time are a mystery to all but the most elevated minds Lois, so most of your questions about this we are not able to answer. We can tell you that whilst reality will bend to small alterations and absorb them without the future being radically affected, allowing for time travel to exist at all, some changes de-stabilise things too severely. Your arrival has begun to escalate an already perilous situation."
"How perilous are we talking?"
"The death of billions."
And that was when she had officially nixed the story. Time travel. It sucked.