Clark dialed Perry's office number again, letting it ring through to voicemail before ending the call and dialing Lois's cell phone. No answer. He called Jimmy's desk phone.

"CK?!" Jimmy's voice answered, sounding a little more than panicked.

"Jimmy! Jimmy, what's going on? Is everybody okay?" Clark asked, jamming his finger into the button for the bullpen again, wishing the elevator would go faster. It was past eight at night, he'd been out of contact with everybody for hours upon hours. It had taken next to eternity to extricate himself from Jim Harris' ambulance between the EMT's insistence that he stay and get his breathing back to normal, and the press outside. He'd made it to his apartment just in time to crash onto his couch and hope he didn't stop breathing while he slept. He'd woken, dressed in the first clothes to come to hand, and gotten a cab, dialing Lois, Jimmy, Perry, and the Troupes' home phone alternatively, worry growing with each unanswered call.

None of his powers had returned yet. None of them. Whoever had planted the kryptonite had known what they were doing.

"I don't know! Where are you? I thought you'd been taken, too."

"Taken?"

"Yeah; that's what it looks like happened. Everybody who was in to cover the Superman story is missing."

"Have you called the police?"

"No, I just got here. I hadn't quite gotten past the sight of it yet."

"Call the police. I'll be up in a minute."

- - -

Lois was beside herself. She hurt all over from blows delivered in the struggle, and there was a sharp pain inside at the loss of her son. She'd broken half of her fingernails trying to get the door open by prying at it around the edges with her hands—even with her family's help she'd had no luck. The four of them were still waiting for answers but Lois couldn't bring herself to explain it to them, her mind too consumed by her worry.

Without prelude, the door swung open, knocking Ron to one side from where he'd been pacing in front of it. Lois and the General leapt at the man dressed in black entering, but he raised a gun and they both froze. Two more men with guns entered behind, one pointing his weapon at Lois's forehead and keeping her sitting against the wall, the other two covering the rest of those in the break room.

"Tut tut," the Boss said, smiling his charming smile. Lois wanted to tear into his perfectly smooth skin to shreds with her cracked fingernails and she was sure her gaze made that clear; the Boss only continued to smile. "I would've expected more courtesy. I come to bring you a bit of entertainment and you make to attack me," his eyes softened and he shook his head, looking deeply hurt.

Lois locked her jaw, knowing that anything that made it out of her mouth at that point would earn her a bullet in the brain faster than Superman could blink. The Boss' hurt look turned into his evil smirk when he saw it.

"I think you will enjoy the program already in progress on 102.8," the Boss said flippantly before striding back out of the room, pausing only in the doorway to look down at Lois. "And I do thank you for bringing your son all this way, Miss Lane. He is a most fascinating subject. And it was so kind of your sister to provide two extra control subjects, and with the similar DNA on the maternal side," his too-white teeth gleamed. "So kind."

He was gone a moment later, the henchmen backing out of the room one at a time, keeping their weapons trained on those to be locked in the room. Lois's 'guard' was the last out, his comrade pulling the door closed with a bang.

It occurred to Lois that the Boss hadn't even so much as looked at the others in the room, despite having passed very near the General to place the battery-powered radio that looked as though it might've come straight out of the '80s next to the microwave.

"What was that station he said?" Lois asked, voice shaking more than she would've liked.

"102.8," Ron said. He had Lucy in his arms, trying to settle her shaking. Lois tuned the radio without looking at them, hating that it was her fault they'd been dragged into this.

My poor, perfect sister, she thought, twisting the dial into position. You had an unblemished suburban life before I dragged you into this. Not even Ron had ever had a gun pointed at him. Neither had Momma. This is all my fault!

102.8 was playing a commercial for a furniture chain when they tuned it, but it cut off halfway through to introduce a breaking news bulletin: "Moments ago, police swarmed the Daily Planet building in central Metropolis when an employee called in to report that the bullpen-level of the building had been ransacked. Sources tell that not only was the bullpen, an entire floor of the landmark building, completely trashed, but all but a handful of the holiday staffers have gone missing.

"We don't need to mention that this is only the latest in a growing number of alarming circumstances that began with the apartment fire early this afternoon that incapacitated Superman. We have yet to receive any news on the Man of Steel's medical condition; witnesses report he was taken away in a Met. General ambulance, but he was not seen at that same hospital that treated him just over a year ago after the New Krypton incident."

Lois sank to the floor again, now leaning against the cabinets. The anchor for the FM station sounded as though he were forming a bullet-point list into full sentences to deliver on-air, as though he really was giving a 'just in' report. The man sounded truly frightened, which didn't help Lois at all, either.

"We have been made aware that the editor-in-chief of the Daily Planet and most of the regular staff is missing, including Lois Lane, Superman's press contact. Her writing partner, Clark Kent, was one of the journalists in the bullpen when police arrived on the scene."

Clark's okay! the back of Lois's mind screamed for joy, but she couldn't bring herself to move. She listened to the rest of the announcement in a daze, wanting to hit something, wanting to know what was going on.

Clark and Jimmy were alright, she learned. Jimmy had been the one to call the police. The bullpen was a disaster, fifteen journalists, photographers and editors missing all-told. The bullpen was a wreck and the police were still combing over it for any sort of clues. The radio didn't tell of what sort of investigation Clark had mounted, but Lois hadn't really expected it to. Knowing Clark, though, he would be sitting at his desk shooing Henderson and his men away, calling in favors. Lois wondered off-hand if he would involve Batman.


A/N: Soon enough? *lol*

The next update won't be quite so soon, however. I'm officially done with my Tuesday/Thursday morning summer internship, so there's no guarantee I will be awake and headed over to the library reliably. Good news is, the rest of the story is more-or-less completely written, so updates should be about as regularly as I can get to the library (and it's summer, and I read in the summer, so it should be fairly regular). So- next update sometime at the end of the week, Thursday-Saturday-ish. Bad news is, school starts up again in two weeks and I'll have, y'know, homework to interfere with things.

- mak:)