A/N: This was supposed to be the concluding chapter, but Clark had other ideas. So did a certain surprise villain. :)
Chapter Ten
Clark's pace was just slow enough to pass for normal as he rushed through the swinging doors into the Planet's basement offices, less than an hour after Chloe's unexpected phone call from Lex. A worried frown creased his forehead at the sight of her unoccupied desk.
His eyes swept the room, quickly passing over two or three busy staffers, until they reached a far corner, where a scrawny figure in jeans and a sweater poked around in a nearby supply cabinet. For a second, Clark stood motionless, watching the young intern neatly—and, apparently, uselessly—straighten and rearrange stacks of notepads and mailing labels. He nodded, as if what he saw satisfied him in some way. Then, with a curiously tight smile, he crossed the office.
"Hey." The freckled boy pulled his head out from a shelf filled with boxes of pens and paper clips. "Have you seen Ms. Lane?"
He was answered by a shrug. The intern grabbed an armful of file folders and headed for the adjoining morgue, balancing the folders against his chest.
A solid wall of plaid stood in his way. "I'll ask again," Clark said softly. "Where is Lois Lane?"
The boy's eyes traveled up Clark's sheer six-foot-plus frame in wide-eyed surprise. "Oh, sorry. You're her boyfriend, right?" He sniffed the air. "Do you work in a barn or something? You smell like hay."
One look at Clark's face, which had darkened into a thundercloud, stopped his grin before it began. "Um—Isn't she upstairs with Ms. Kahn?"
Quickly, as if anxious to escape, he swerved around Clark and carried the folders into the dark file room.
Clark followed close behind. "No, I've already checked. She never showed up there."
The kid shrugged again and turned his back on Clark to pull out a file drawer. "Well, that's funny."
"Yeah it is." Clark's voice had grown dangerously quiet. "And you know what's even funnier?"
His arm shot out. Moving faster than a striking snake, Clark yanked the intern up by his shirt and pinned him to the wall of the file room. "Ms. Kahn told me she never asked to see Lois in the first place," he whispered through clenched teeth.
"Hey!" the kid yelped, squirming in Clark's iron grip. "Let me go! What's wrong with you?"
"I've had a bad feeling all morning because something about last night, about Lana, didn't add up. And then I heard your voice on the phone today, and it finally came to me what it was."
The room's silence was punctuated by the boy's shallow, gasping breaths. "Who's 'Lana'? What are you talking about?" he whined. "Please put me down. You're hurting me."
"Oh? Then why aren't you calling for help?" The intern stared at him with wide, pale eyes, and said nothing.
Clark returned the gaze coldly. "How did Lana know the two of us were in Smallville? How did Lex know? He'd just seen us that morning, here in the city, and there's no way he could have guessed we'd be leaving for my farm." His grip on the boy's shirt tightened. "Someone had to have told them."
The intern's squirming hadn't stopped, but his young face was suddenly watchful.
Clark's voice lowered into a growl. "You told them."
"You're crazy," the intern muttered quietly.
"I don't think so," Clark replied. "I figured it out after hearing your voice on the phone today. It reminded me of something." He scanned the boy's motionless features with cold green fury. "You were the only one here in the newsroom yesterday when we talked about going to Smallville. No one else could have overheard our plans."
"So I decided to check out your so-called 'message' from Kahn. And guess what? It was a lie."
For a moment, the room was absolutely silent. All traces of fear had drained from the intern's face, leaving it completely blank.
"You're part of the ship, part of whatever Milton Fine really is," Clark declared grimly. "You've been spying on us." The intern didn't answer, but his lips began to curl slowly upwards.
Clark grit his teeth and, with one hand, slammed the smirking figure against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. The boy—or whatever he was—didn't even flinch at the impact. "I'll ask you one more time: Where is Lois Lane? And what do you want from her?"
For a moment, the intern just smiled down at his captor. Then he opened his mouth, and a grotesque, impossibly deep chuckle echoed across the room. Clark, stone-faced, continued to hold him against the wall, the knuckles in his fist almost white.
When the boy answered, it was in Fine's clipped tones. "Congratulations, Kal-El. Very logical. You would make a good ally for the General, if you could ever outgrow your foolish affection for this planet's primitive species."
"Where IS she?" Clark roared.
The alien construct, pushed deep into the cracked wall, seemed unimpressed. "Please. This display of emotion is not only shameful, but unconvincing," it remarked. "Why not admit the human girl is no more than a useful tool? Annoyingly useful, in fact. Without her, Jor-El would never have been able to activate the Element, and free you."
The smile on the "intern" no longer resembled anything human. "You see, you and the General are not that different. Don't pretend otherwise."
Clark's eyes narrowed into fiery slits. The construct's own eyes dropped, and its distorted, self-satisfied grin quavered and disappeared. "If you really believe that," Clark said slowly, "then you know as little about me as you do about humans."
Still avoiding his gaze, the robot raised his shoulders in a dismissive shrug. "If you count primitives as friends, then you bring shame to the House of El."
Clark lowered Fine's avatar to the ground, but kept him pressed firmly against the wall. "I'm beginning to understand why Krypton fell to Zod," he remarked grimly. "It doesn't sound like a place I'd want to grow up in."
The thin material of the construct's shirt began to rip as Clark's fingers tightened around it. "And you still haven't told me where Lois is," he added, menacingly. "I'm guessing you used that phony "meeting" with Kahn to get her out of the office somehow."
The construct stared at him wordlessly, pale eyes gleaming.
He glared back in sudden realization. "Of course. You knew how badly she needed a story to show Kahn. So you cooked up that fake meeting to motivate her to go out and find one."
"Then you dangled your carrot. What was it, Fine? It would take something pretty big to get her to run out like that."
"Humans are slaves to their emotions. She was pathetically easy to convince," the construct murmured contemptuously.
Clark shook his head. "You don't know when to stop, do you? I'm no expert on Krypton, but I'm betting that Kryptonians weren't all that different from people on Earth. Zod sure isn't."
The construct's mouth twisted. "Liar," it snarled.
"And don't underestimate Lois." His green eyes caught and held the robot's pale gaze. "She's stronger than you can imagine."
Still pinned against the wall, it smirked again. "Kal-El, your faith in humans is touching, but useless. The girl in question is my prisoner. The only way to free her is to cooperate with me."
Clark, however, was no longer paying attention. He turned his face away and tilted his head, as if listening.
"I can hear her."
The construct's freckled face frowned. "So quickly? That's not possible."
"I can hear her heartbeat. She's alive."
Fine's avatar went very still. "You're linked to her. You've willingly bonded yourself….to a human," it whispered in a shocked tone.
Without another word, Clark spun around and disappeared, leaving the young-looking figure slumped against the wall. The construct's eyes sparkled with malice in the dimly lit room.
"He's coming. For his life-mate," it spat out into the gloom. "Be prepared." With that, the flesh-and-blood disguise melted into a liquid silver puddle that streamed across the floor and quickly slithered through the crack in the wall.
TBC...
