With the darkness, the city came alive.
As night fell on Manhattan, millions of lights flickered on, bringing artificial day to the otherwise conquering night. From the giant colored lights atop the Empire State Building to the twenty-five watt bulbs hanging in the dingiest apartments, each one did a little bit to push back the blackness until the city seemed to glow all on its own. Clark loved the night here, just as much as he loved the day. Differently, though. The daytime had that all-powerful sun, the golden light which gave Clark the gifts that he'd come to know and love with the years. In the daytime, you knew what was what, and you could be at peace with it. But at night, things were different. It felt like there was electricity in the New York air once the sun went down, like a switch had been thrown. Nighttime was when the more interesting sides of the city started to come out, when people let themselves go a little more than they did during the day. Clark wasn't entirely sure, but he'd always found himself less tired come late night when he came to a big city like New York. Back in Kansas, the day was usually over by ten o'clock; the night when his family was doing anything other than getting ready for bed when the clock hit double digits was the rare one. But here, things never stopped; the city was just as alive at midnight as it was at noon, still noisy and powerful. Clark liked the way it made him feel to be out and about at night in the city. In the darkness, the costume in his closet seemed to nag at the back of his mind a little less; in the darkness, he could feel a bit more free to…express himself without fear of exposure.
But he also enjoyed it on a more human level, too. He liked the feeling of hanging out with other people that came with nighttime, liked going to clubs with friends or just spending hours walking, talking and laughing as they strolled up and down the streets of Manhattan. Sometimes, one of his and Chloe's friends would find out about a party going on at some house out in Brooklyn or Queens, and they would all get together and get psyched up to go, hop on the subway and take it forty minutes out – only to get to the party, and find out it was a bust. Clark loved those sorts of things the best. Adventures, things going other than the way you planned it and you have to roll with the punches and think on your feet. Those were the times he loved the most. Then there were the nights when he and Chloe would just walk through Central Park together, and she'd pull herself close to him and smile up at him, and he could feel the warmth of her body against his invulnerable skin, the gentle pressure of her body touching his, and he found himself wanting to grab her up in his arms and leap into the sky, to make love to her a mile above the city, floating on air. Those nights were the most dangerous, and because of that, the most fun. Despite his feelings of desire, he knew he couldn't give in to them. He couldn't put Chloe through the old song-and-dance routine that he knew she was so sick of; though he'd never heard her say it directly, he knew she'd spent their time apart getting over him, and that now she was ready to move on with her life. He didn't want to drag her back again, not when she'd come so far. So he held his tongue and willed the blood back into his brain on those nighttime strolls, waiting until he returned to the solitude and darkness of his room later that night to find release. But it was getting harder.
Nevertheless, Clark loved the night. Tonight, though, was not one of those nights for adventure; rather, it was a night to hang with his friends. The program of events for that night was simple enough: hang around his friend Mike's (and also his friend Josh's, and Joe's, and Turner's) room and watch some TV, kick back a few, maybe play some cards. It was fun enough – except for the fact that Clark didn't drink. Even though alcohol didn't affect him in any way, and even though he was only eight months from turning twenty-one, he'd long since decided to wait until he reached the age of legality to drink. It was as much a sign of respect to the laws as anything else, a way of showing that the rules of law bound him just as much as anyone else despite his abilities. But that often meant that, as the night went along and his friends become more and more tanked, he found himself losing interest in the evening. Chloe usually didn't get as drunk as the other kids (he still thought of himself and everyone else his own age as a kid), but she didn't hesitate to imbibe, either. She was smart, though; she was one of the few people who knew where to draw the line, and she'd never come close to revealing his secret. Clark trusted Chloe, he really did – he trusted her as much as he trusted any other human being. He just didn't know how far he could trust any human after too many bottles of Bud.
Being careful not to disturb his friends watching the movie, Clark rose to his feet and reached for his boots, putting them on. Chloe, sitting a couple feet away, turned to him. He noticed the extra tenth of a second it took her eyes to dilate to the reduced light when she looked his way, and guessed she was about at her limit for the night. "You heading out?" she asked.
Clark nodded as he laced up his second boot. "I need to take a walk to ease my troubled mind," he said with the slightest of wry smiles. It was their code phrase for "I need to go break the sound barrier," and Chloe nodded her understanding. Quietly, Clark maneuvered around the couch where his other friends sat watching the movie, clicked open the door, and stepped out.
Once in the hall, he forgave the elevator for the stairs, despite his location on the sixteenth floor of the building. He stepped into the stairway, and after closing the door, took a piercing glance up and down the stairwell as he listened for voices in the stairwell. Other than him, it was empty. Clark counted his blessings as he quickly leapt over the railing into the center area of the staircase's shaft – and plummeted straight down between the flights, his favorite way of descending these kinds of stairs. The sixteen stories went by all too quickly, and as he passed the second floor Clark reached out and grabbed the rung of one banister with his hand, swinging himself back into the staircase and landing on the linoleum with ease a couple yards from the first floor exit. He smiled as he stood up and nonchalantly stretched.
Ten seconds later, he was out of the dorm and onto the streets of the city, breathing in the lights and sounds. It was always beautiful, every time he saw it. But he felt like a change of scenery tonight. Clark glanced up at the sky, noting the heavy cloud cover from earlier hadn't dissipated yet, and frowned. He'd been hoping to fly aways and take in the view – it was a three-quarter moon tonight – but with could cover like that, the only way he'd see much down below was through the tint of his X-ray vision.
So it looks like I'm gonna have to do this old school. That's okay. I don't mind stretching my legs.
He glanced up and down the block, waiting for a taxi to turn onto a side street and disappear from his line of sight, before kicking off into a blur of motion, heading uptown along 5th avenue at 450 miles an hour. Within seconds, he'd passed by the Empire State Building and the fancy stores of midtown before detouring into Central Park and following the roadways there northwards. At Harlem, he continued his northward progress, heading up past 125th street and continuing northwards. He leapt the Harlem River in a mighty bound, and headed into the Bronx, picking up speed as he went. As he entered Riverdale and found the traffic light enough to do so, he tore through the sound barrier, rattling windows along the roadside as he went. Once in Westchester, the countryside opened up enough for him to really let loose, and he rocketed up past Mach 5, his usual jogging speed, towards around 5,000 miles an hour – usually about as fast as he liked to run along windy country roads and through the woods. It wasn't until about fifty miles north of the city that he felt comfortable merging onto the highway. Traffic was all but nonexistent at one-thirty in the morning, and Clark let himself indulge in a couple bursts of "real speed" – bursts of velocity that brought him up into the range of speed usually reserved for objects escaping Earth's gravity. But for the most part, he just maintained a reasonable, normal running speed and just let his mind wander. He could do some of his best thinking while running, and it was here that he often deliberated on problems plaguing him, or worked on his latest piece of fiction. Tonight, he was planning out an idea for a movie that he'd been kicking around his head for a few days – a film based upon his own life back in Smallville. A story about an average guy living in a very odd town, filled with people with bizarre powers who he tries to stop from hurting people.
And they all get their powers from the same source, some sort of alien artifact like the caves were…except this one poisons the town, as alien radioactive chemicals get into the water supply. And the hero can will have a love interest for a lot of romantic tension, and in the end of the movie, he can discover that his own life is due to the influence of the caves – that he was born because his parents were selected, or something…naw, that's retarded. But something along those lines. His existence has to be connected to the source of the problem.
For the next fifteen minutes, Clark lost himself in thought as he ran along on autopilot, the countryside rolling past him barely noticeable as it became progressively flatter, and the trees became progressively more bare. Suddenly, Clark found himself coming up on a large body of water; surprised, he slowed to a stop at the water's edge, which he found was frozen. In fact, he realized as he glanced around, he'd been running on ice for as far back as he could see. A chuff rose up to his right, and he turned in surprise, only to watch as a polar bear, aroused from its slumber, shook the snow from its fur and began running off in the opposite direction.
Clark let out a sound that seemed like a huh in his amusement at how far he'd run. Shit. I really gotta watch where I'm going. He turned back the way he'd come, about to start running back to the city – when he noticed the sky was clear. He smiled, and instead flew upwards into the sky. Maybe I should figure out where I am first…
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Indiana Jones."
Stefan Andreski nodded emphatically. "I swear, boss. He looked just like him. He had the hat, the jacket – "
Ivan Zapolev cut off his subordinate with a withering glare from across his giant desk. He wasn't used to not getting what he wanted – certainly not from his most trusted lieutenant – and he certainly didn't want to hear the story again about how a movie action hero smashed into an upper Manhattan whorehouse to ruin a perfectly good plan. Swallowing back his rage, he held up his hand and forced his voice to remain calm. "I'm sure he did. Most likely, a disguise to throw anyone attempting to track him down off the trail." He stroked his chin thoughtfully, as an idea began to form in his head. "Which means he's probably got something to hide. A family, friends, people he doesn't want getting involved. People who might have no idea of what he does."
"Stefan." The mobster's head perked up at the name. "Do you think you could recognize the man? If you saw him again?"
Stefan wasn't entirely sure, but he knew he'd rather lie now and figure out a way around it later than find himself on even shakier ground with his boss. Men had died for doing less to Zapolev than he'd done. "Of course."
"Good. Here's what we're going to do."
"Starting today," Zapolev went on, "we are going to spread word to every single part of this city that we want this man found. He is, most likely, the only person capable of performing these sorts of feats in this city, and if he really does have a Good Samaritan complex, he'll pop up again. Every person who brings us some piece of evidence that helps us determine who he is will be greatly rewarded. Once we figure out who he is…we make him pay for interfering in our affairs."
One of Zapolev's other lieutenants cleared his throat. "Why don't we just stage another kidnapping, force his hand?"
Zapolev waved the idea off like a floating feather. "The kidnapping was a mistake to begin with. We do it again, the police have a far better chance of figuring out who did it. Besides, our resources are spread thin enough as it is – if this fellow is truly capable of what you say he is –" Zapolev gave Stefan an icy glare – "then he could tear down our organization by the seams if he truly wanted to. We must take our time with this one. We have to let him reveal himself all on his own."
Zapolev smiled. "For when he does, it will make his pain all that much more profound in the end."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------It's so beautiful from here, Clark thought. Everything looks so peaceful.
From his vantage point five hundred miles above the Eastern Seaboard, everything certainly seemed that way. In the silence of the vacuum, all Clark could hear was the gentle beating of his own heart. Before him, though, stretched out a vast array of lights, like incandescent spiderwebs across the coast. It seemed far too complex to have been made by man, and yet there was a strange precision, a structure to it, that ruled out any natural origin. It was one of the most beautiful things Clark had ever seen; he loved flying up to see it. Ever since the first time he'd seen it, he'd wished he could somehow take a girl up here to show it to her – but that was impossible, sadly enough.
Unless I meet a girl like me, I guess I'll have to keep this to myself. He thought back for a second. Okay, unless I meet a girl like me who isn't psycho.
As Clark reminisced, his thought drifted back to the time when he'd run off under the influence of red kryptonite, in the summer between his sophomore and junior years in high school. He'd only been snapped from his drugged state when his dad had been given Kryptonian powers by his biological father, allowing Jonathan Kent to…reach his son. Clark had never asked his father about the period during which he had those superhuman powers, despite greatly wanting to. He wanted to know what it was like to go from feeling human all your life to suddenly being able to leap tall buildings. Clark wanted to know what it had felt like to find the powers he'd always known grafted onto your body, into your very cells. But most of all…he'd wanted to know what his dad did while he'd had those powers. Jonathan had gone to see Jor-El at eight-thirty p.m.; he finally intercepted Clark atop LuthorCorp at about twenty to midnight. Clark knew that it couldn't have taken his dad more than thirty minutes to go from Smallville to Metropolis, even being new to the powers. That missing two-and-a-half hours had nagged at the back of Clark's mind ever since he'd found out about the disparity. Did his father use the time to practice, to prepare for a fight he never thought he'd have to fight? Did he just run across the countryside at glorious speed, feeling the wind race over his face as he broke the sound barrier? Did he try and figure out any of Clark's other powers beyond the ones that came naturally, as the strength and speed did? Did he try and use X-ray vision, or heat vision? Did he figure out how to fly?
And if he did, what did he do? Is it possible that he did just what Clark was doing now, flying up above the atmosphere to gaze down on the world below?
Clark wasn't sure. To be honest with myself, I don't think I'll ever find out. If he ever wants to tell me about it, he will. I'm not gonna push the issue.
Clark cast his gaze westward, towards Kansas. From his altitude, he had a clear line of sight directly to Smallville. Zooming in, he could see the abandoned LuthorCorp factory just outside of town; he could see Main Street, even read the GO CROWS! Banners posted above the roadway. He could see Lana Lang's old house, eight hundred yards as the crow flies from his barn. And he could see his own house, dark and peaceful. He shifted his eyes into higher spectra, and gazed through the walls until he could see his parents, fast asleep in their bed. For a moment, Clark just watched them sleep, watching their chests slowly rise and fall as they dreamed on. They looked like they were doing well. They were safe, and they always would be – so long as their son was watching over them.
Twelve hundred miles east and five hundred miles up, Clark Kent smiled gently as he blinked his gaze back to normal. The smile never left his face as he spun around and shot downwards, back into the atmosphere and into his everyday life.