Perry stood in the kitchen of an average-seeming apartment, hands restrained behind his back with little plastic ties that cut into his wrists something awful. Most of his staff was restrained similarly and attached to a partner, all of them packed like sardines in the bedroom of the apartment.
The knife block was sitting on the counter next to the stove, mocking him in its emptiness. Their captors had cleaned the place out; there wasn't even any furniture left in any of the rooms the editor had seen, nothing but a few scattered remains of a life that had been lived in the tiny apartment.
Perry wondered off-hand whether the owner of the apartment had cleared out on his/her own or if the men who had captured him had killed the apartment owner of lessee and then cleared it to their own purpose.
"Mr. White," a hauntingly familiar voice said from the entryway, making Perry's head snap up and his musing cut off abruptly. Lex Luthor smirked, giving most of his attention to a pair of black leather gloves he was tugging onto his hands. "So good to see you again; it's been too long."
"Lex Luthor," Perry said in as close to a drawl as he could manage. The tall bald man was wearing all black, like the men with guns scattered around the apartment keeping the Daily Planet staff from rising up. His dome of a head shone in the fluorescent light of the kitchen. "Can't say I'm glad to see you again."
Luthor merely smirked crookedly, turning his attention to the doorway to the side through which lay the living room and it's tightly packed occupants. The smirk deepened slightly and his eyes gleamed.
"That doesn't matter very much, Mr. White," Luthor said, returning his attention to the editor. The dark eyes held a menace Perry wasn't sure he would've been comfortable with even in his prime, when he'd been chasing down his own bad guys—he certainly didn't feel prepared to deal with Superman's nemesis after so many years off the beat. "It's time for us to go."
"Go?" Perry asked dumbly.
"Yes; go," Luthor mocked, smirk disappearing entirely.
A henchman gripped Perry's elbow behind his back roughly and began guiding him out after Luthor. Perry dug his heels in as they passed the doorway to the living room, seeing his panicked staff standing there, packed together. Thugs were packing them closer together, forcing them to stay close by way of more plastic ties between them.
"Move," the thug at his elbow growled, but Perry stayed put, eyes fixed on the shortest of the thugs. The man wasn't particularly muscular, nothing to suggest he was hired for the same reasons the other men were probably hired—but Perry had noticed the thick square the man was holding, the one labeled C4.
"Move along, Mr. White," Luthor said from the hall, smirking again. "We have a bit of leverage here, you know."
- - -
Clark paced the Daily Planet roof, wishing he had any one of his abilities back. As it was, it was a struggle to even breathe properly. Anything more than a short puff of breath led to a burning sensation in the pits of his lungs in addition to the constant ache that they had become after he'd inhaled the kryptonite-laden smoke from the fire.
He glared at his collection of cell phones, waiting for one of them to ring; he had no other moves available until one of them rang and somebody reported back to him.
He'd called his Metropolis contacts first, pulling out a fresh map of Metropolis and spreading it across his trashed desk—whoever had ransacked the bullpen had done a very thorough job, spilling everything from every desk onto the floor and leaving nothing unbroken except for the copy machine. Clark had had to chuckle at that—the machine never did what it was supposed to be doing.
He'd called his grid of useful people in all levels of existence in Metropolis as he had when Lois had been stolen from her parents' house and stashed in the bunker beneath the warehouse by the harbor. It took less than half the time it had before to establish that the Planet's staff wasn't anywhere that anybody knew about.
After considering the amount of time the criminals responsible had had to move and hide the staff, Clark had called Bruce—Gotham was the next logical place to look.
A few calls to Lois' cell phone had drawn him out of the bullpen to the Troupe residence, finding the front door wide open and the house completely empty. He'd called Henderson and another investigation had been piled on top of the first, though the fact that Lois Lane had been abducted with her family and not from the bullpen with the rest of the Planet staff had been withheld from the media.
There was a frustrating lack of evidence, which Clark quickly decided was the most infuriating part about being without his abilities for the time being—he usually could have flown overhead and peered into every nook and cranny of the city when the leads dried up; now he couldn't even do that.
He leapt when his cell phone vibrated, skittering across the box he'd set it down on.
"Find anything?" he asked, not bothering with the pleasantries—the caller ID had read Batman (the cell phone that had rung was the one he used as Superman when it was necessary) and neither of them needed pleasantries in the current situation.
"Not what you had me looking for, but I did find something," Bruce said in his grainy Batman voice, no more than a whisper—not that Clark's voice was any better, at the moment.
"What is it?"
"I went to those tunnels I'd seen Bill around before—they were locked down as ever, but I noticed something I hadn't before," Clark waited with baited breath, wishing his friend would get on with it. Bruce seemed to be processing what he was saying as he said it, though; as though he were still in shock at what he had stumbled upon. "I was about to leave when a few guys came out and held the doors open for four U-Hauls to drive out. Mid-sized, the type somebody moving from a small apartment to another small apartment would rent. The tunnel closed up again afterward and I followed the U-Hauls—they went straight to a warehouse, drove inside."
"And?" Clark prompted urgently.
"They all came out again in a hurry almost half an hour later. I stopped two of them, but another two kept going. I got a tracker on one of them, it's headed straight to Metropolis. It'll be there in about two hours if it keeps on track and doesn't run into any traffic."
"What did you find in the two you stopped?" Clark asked, not bothering to ask how a single man dressed as a bat had stopped two U-Hauls more than likely carting illegal goods or kidnapped people and driven by criminals. It was just what Batman did. And he did have a rather snazzy car.
"One had medical equipment in it, samples. I'm fairly certain I found the organs those bodies that washed up in your harbor were missing and then some… I brought them back to the Cave, I'm looking over it all now," something in his voice told Clark that the samples were exactly what he thought they were, what he'd been afraid they would be the moment he found that Lois and Jason had gone missing. "The second one had three hostages and a few more racks of testing equipment."
"Who were the hostages?"
"They say they're Lois's family. General Sam Lane, Ella Lane, Ron Troupe."
"What about Lucy? Lois's sister, Ron's wife?"
"Not in the second U-Haul," Bruce said. Clark wondered where he was, where Lois's family had gotten to.
"Well?"
"I brought them back to the Cave and called Gordon, he'll be here any minute. I want to get this stuff to Metropolis, there were a few off-duty cops driving the first U-Haul. God, I thought I'd flushed things out better than this," the tension in Bruce's voice was enough to make Clark pause a moment before pressing for more answers.
"Anything else? Who were the cops working for? Did the Lanes say anything?"
"The Boss, Clark," Bruce said through gritted teeth. "Troupe said it was the Boss that was holding them."
"Lex Luthor?"
"No, it wasn't him."
"What?" Clark began pacing again, all the plans and thoughts that had formed in his mind were based off of Luthor as the Boss. A new villain threw a rather large wrench in his thought processes.
"Yeah. I don't even know if Luthor is a part of this. The Boss was the one the cops were working for; there was no mention of Luthor. The Lane sisters were separated from the rest of the group after a bit of an issue with the kids, apparently."
"What did they do to the kids?"
"I don't know—they don't know. From what I've discovered looking at this stuff, it's not good. My bet is that they took the mothers to either placate the kids or use them as hostages."
"Oh, God."
"I'm fairly certain they were in the other U-Hauls. They left the warehouse in flames, I looked around a bit before the fire got too bad—there was a lab, but it was cleared out."
"They set it on fire?"
"They knew I was tailing them."
"Great."
"You're welcome."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know—look, I've got to go. Gordon just pulled up."
"In the Cave?"
"No, I'm meeting him at a more anonymous location."
"Right."
"I'll call when I have more information."
"I'll put MPD in contact with Gordon."
Clark closed his phone and shoved it deep in his pocket, picking up his second cell phone, the one he used as Clark Kent for everyday and business things, and walking back across the roof for the door and the stairs back to the bullpen.
A/N: Next update will be... Monday? Hopefully Monday.
