Lois gave him a wide-eyed look before ducking around the edge of the wall, leaving him no answer, and no choice but to follow. As they snuck past a closed door, Clark read the handwritten placard that was affixed to the wall beside the door that declared it to be 'Room #5'. Confused and curious, he slid aside the covering on the window slot and peeked inside. Immediately, he wished he hadn't. To his shock and embarrassment, the two people he'd spied on inside Room #5 were channeling Tarzan and Jane… sans loincloth.
And now:
"Apparently, there are people out there who are willing to part with a great deal of money to make a few… fantasies come true," Lois voiced in a low tone.
When she realized that Clark was still standing immobile next to the door and looking at her in speechless shock, she shook her head and tugged on his arm. She pulled him past a few more closed doors and noticed with mild amusement that he was having no trouble avoiding the little glass peep holes.
He cleared his throat. "So, this is…"
Lois glanced up at him through the corner of her eye. "…An underground sex hostel," she finished for him.
Clark's eyes seemed to grow larger. "What are you doing at a place like this?" he demanded in a whisper.
She stopped walking and turned to face him; her hands bracketing her hips indignantly. Her purpose here should have been obvious. "What do you think I'm doing here?"
Belatedly, she realized that her full length leather outfit didn't really support her annoyance. She crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her chin defiantly. "Exposing it, of course."
Clark's jaw muscles jumped as he bit out, "Alone? You could have gotten yourself killed!"
"Correction – alone, I was doing fine. You almost got me killed."
Suddenly, the first passageway that they had entered through became illuminated. With a series of dull clanks, more lights came on as banks of fluorescent bulbs came alive behind them. It was almost as if the lights were living things – living things that were chasing them.
"Crap! Come on," Lois exclaimed, grabbing his arm and pulling him along the corridor again. She slid to a stop when they reached an open door. "They'll be looking for someone in the halls," she explained in a panicked tone, dragging him inside the room and shouldering the door closed.
Once inside, her eyes flicked about the small space they were in. She caught sight of the form of a tall man in the shadows on the far side of the room and jumped in alarm, backing roughly into Clark's chest with a grunt. "Oof."
Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she saw that it wasn't a man at all but statue. "What the hell?"
It seemed that the room they had stumbled into was an ode to the days of Camelot – or rather, the nights of Camelot, considering the activities that were no doubt supposed to take place there. The statue was a full length coat of arms, standing guard next to a wooden post that went from the ceiling to the floor. Lois gulped when she realized that the post was not load-bearing, and the leather straps wrapped around it weren't for decoration.
"Uh, Lois…"
Abruptly, she stepped forward and away from Clark, suddenly aware that their situation hadn't gotten any safer. Turning her attention away from the -shudder- strapping post, Lois saw a drawbridge plank on the right side of the room, suspended from the wall by large chains. The wall behind it was decorated with a painted image of a castle. The wooden plank was obviously the designer's idea of a bed.
Across from the bed, a three dimensional tree extended from the wall, its branches attaching to the ceiling toward the center of the room. She decided to ignore the handcuffs hanging from the middle branch. The only illumination in the room came from a dim red light over the door and from the light from the hall shining trough the door's window slot. Suddenly the room brightened as the hallway lights outside in the door came on.
Lois spun to meet Clark's eyes. Heated voices were making their way down the halls where the lights had previously chased them.
"Company's coming," he said.
"At least with our boy being unconscious, they don't know who they are looking for," she replied, eyeing the door again.
Swallowing, she tried to think of what to do next. The baddies might not know who they were looking for, but standing out like a sore thumb would be a sure way to give them a clue. She pulled Clark over to the drawbridge bed and pushed him down onto it. She looked at him apologetically and turned to quickly scan the room again. "We need a cover."
--
Clark sucked in a breath and pulled Lois down next to him. Rolling her underneath him, he stifled her surprised yelp when he placed his mouth over hers. Her eyes went wide and he silently urged her to play along. His hearing had informed him that their pursuers were going from room to room and that they were seconds away from the one he and Lois were in. His attention to the hallway faltered as Lois relaxed beneath him and gave in to the performance.
At the door, the slot slid open and he fought the urge to turn around and look. Tarzan and Jane had been too preoccupied with their actions to notice his earlier interference – their indifference was probably the example to follow. Mercifully, the slot slid shut after half a minute.
Clark pushed himself upright. Lois was giving him a strange, calculating look. For a moment, a flash of fear skirted down his spine. She had looked at him like that once before since the time he had disguised himself as the Green Arrow… but she didn't remember it.
"When I said that we needed a cover, I was thinking more along the lines of a blanket…" she said with narrowed eyes. She stood up and continued to stare at him oddly. "That way, we could have just made noises and not actually…" She finished her statement by making circular motions with her hands.
Clark was at a loss for a reply. He swallowed and straightened his jacket. "Oh."
Clearing his throat, he glanced back up at her. "Your neck looks good… better, I mean. It's not bleeding anymore."
Lois's brow cinched for a moment before her expression cleared. "I told you it was just a scratch."
She stood and walked across the room to the tree and began to feel curiously around its trunk. He noticed the hidden cabinet door at the same time she did. Lois opened it, searching for anything useful, and he saw her grimace as she pulled out something silk held between the fingertips of her thumb and forefinger.
"Um… ew," she commented, dropping it to the floor and wiping her hand on her pants.
Turning back to the cabinet, Lois pulled a flashlight out and flicked it on. Satisfied with the battery power, she turned it back off and crossed to the door. When she put her ear to the door, Clark guessed that she was trying to gage where their pursuers had gone.
Clark narrowed his eyes and tuned his vision so he could look through the wall. Engaging it, he could see that men with large guns were moving deeper into the mine.
"Okay, facts," he heard Lois announce. "Unconscious guard outside who failed to respond to a call from Command Central… Evidence of a struggle…" She paused in thought. "…And an empty gas canister with a knife stuck in the side of it. They don't know who, how many, or where we are, or even if we are inside," she listed, ticking each point off with a finger. "Which means we can walk out of here like everyone else who's here for the…" She waved a hand in the air. "… You know."
Clark was relieved that she didn't want to add detail the 'you know' anymore that he did. Her points were valid except for the additional fact that the door 'Mickey' was supposed to be guarding now sported a busted lock. With that knowledge, 'the powers that be' in this situation would now know that the 'intruder' – or intruders, actually – was definitely inside. Most likely, the guards would carefully inspect anyone attempting to leave, making sure that their business here was, in fact, the… 'you know'.
Of course, Clark couldn't really share this reasoning with Lois. "I don't know. What if there is some kind of secret handshake the guests have to use to get out or something? We wouldn't know it."
Even in the dim light of the room, he could make out the arch of Lois's right eyebrow. "A secret handshake?"
Clark shrugged. "That, or Mickey could wake up at any moment and ID us. I think we should try to find another way out of here."
--
Lois gnawed on her lower lip in thought. His point threatened to counter all of hers. "Okay."
She leaned and put her ear back to the door. She really hadn't been fond of the idea of remaining in the room and waiting like sitting ducks anyway.
The hallway outside of the door seemed to be unoccupied for the moment. She didn't have too much hope that it would stay that way for much longer. "Ready?"
She waited long enough for Clark to rise from the bed and move behind her before pulling the door open. Together, they stepped into the hall, simultaneously checking opposite ends of the corridor for guards or guests alike. Lois was about to suggest going back down the hall in the direction they had come from when Clark stepped around her and pulled her the other way.
Confused, she glanced over her shoulder to see what they were running from, but there was nothing there. She shot Clark a glance out of the corner of her eye as she allowed herself to be dragged along.
Suddenly, he stopped and kneeled. "In here."
Lois's eyes bulged at what he was referring to as 'here'.
He had stopped and opened what appeared to be a slotted circular slab of concrete in the floor. How he had noticed it in the darkness was beyond her. She crouched next to him to get a better look at the suggested hiding place. He slid his finger through a metal hook in the middle of the slab and pulled it out – apparently she had been wrong in assuming it was concrete. There was no way he could have pulled it out that easily otherwise.
The removal of the slab uncovered a pit of pitch black. "Seriously?"
"Seriously," Clark responded gravely. He took a brief moment to gaze at the emptiness behind them before pulling the flashlight from her grasp. Sliding the switch to its 'on' position, he dropped it into the hole so it could illuminate the dirt floor below. In the next second, Lois found herself being unceremoniously lowered into the darkness.
Before she could protest being manhandled, Clark had released her hands. She dropped a few feet to the floor and rolled to the side as Clark followed seconds later. Lois gazed up at the ceiling while he brushed dirt from his pants. The hole was still open. Leaving it that way would be like placing a glowing arrow pointing out the direction the 'bad guys' should follow.
"Give me a lift, would you?"
--
Clark moved behind her and lifted her to his shoulder. From that height, she was able to reach through the hole and slide the heavy slab cover back into place.
Dropping back to the ground, Lois picked up the flashlight. Spearing Clark with the light, she sighed. "Now, what?"
Clark glanced up and scratched the back of his neck. He had gotten them this far, but he was clueless on how to proceed from there. By some twist of luck, the walls of the shaft they were currently in were lined with lead. His ability to cheat the maze had been rendered useless.
"Um…" he started; his head swiveling as he considered their surroundings. The shaft seemed to mirror the level above without the rooms jutting off of the main hall. "Maybe if we follow this back toward the main door Mickey was guarding, it will lead to an exit."
--
Lois nodded and headed in the suggested direction. Her thoughts were all over the place, and the process of putting one foot in front of the other was a welcome distraction. The muscles in her arms were sore from sliding that cover back into place. It had been heavier than she'd anticipated after seeing Clark move it, and that in itself was another confusing thought to add the melee. Nothing was as it seemed… especially not her current emotions.
When the beam of the flashlight showed that the path was ending, she stopped. After walking in the intended direction for a little over twenty feet, they had come to a dead end. The shaft they were in was capped off with what appeared to be a steel door.
"I don't like it." Instead of a knob or a simple door handle, the door sported a round turnstile handle like the kind seen on underground water pipes.
Lois put her hand up when Clark started to walk past her to inspect it. "I don't like it," she repeated, turning to face him and pointing the light to his face.
Clark blinked at the light and reached out to move her hand so his eyes were no longer being accosted. "What's not to like?" he asked. "It's a door that's right under the main entrance. It could be a way out."
"Key word in that statement being could." Lois frowned and shined the light on the handle again. "It's called resistance, Smallville. You don't have to do everything that pops into your head, you know."
"Wait, who are you again?" Clark asked, flashing her a disconcerting grin – disconcerting because of the odd chill that went up her back when he did it. "The Lois Lane that I know never checks the water level before jumping in."
Lois flinched at his statement but didn't respond to his goading. "All I'm saying is that just because there is a door there, it doesn't mean that you have to open it." She gestured to the knob. "And just because there is a handle there, it doesn't mean you have to turn it."
Clark gave her an odd look. Lois knew that there was a slight chance that she was overreacting, but she couldn't ignore the feeling in her gut – nor explain it.
"What is it?"
The concern in Clark's voice snapped her to attention. She was definitely overreacting if Clark Kent was picking up on her discomfort. He wasn't really the most astute person when it came to her moods and his odd moments of empathy on her part tended to unnerve her.
She flipped her hair over her shoulders and blew out a breath. "That knob thingie reminds me of the doors in a submarine. A knob like that usually means that water is nearby and I have a thing with water, okay? You happy?"
"You have a thing with water?" Clark asked. "Since when?"
"Since always," she replied in a huff, spinning around to face him. If they went back to the manhole cover thingie, they could just wait it out. After the people upstairs realized that there weren't any unidentified people in the building, they would have to assume that the intruders had gotten away… Right?
"But you take showers," Clark commented, obviously not giving up on the water issue. "And you swim."
Lois sighed. "It takes me a moment to convince myself to do it, but yes… I swim." She glared at him. "Why is this such a big deal?"
--
Clark's brow furrowed for a second as he thought about her question. Honestly, he wasn't sure why it was such a big deal. He figured that part of the reason was because it was obviously a big deal to Lois. For some reason, he couldn't shake the need to get to the bottom of it.
And then, suddenly it hit him. During his recruiting trip to Met U, back when he had still dreamed of accepting a football scholarship, Lois had been paralyzed and left in a pool of rising water. Then, last summer, she had hit her head on the side of the diving dock at Crater Lake and almost drowned while unconscious... And if that wasn't enough, he had learned from Oliver that she had been tortured by thugs who had held her head under water while trying to get her to confess the true identity of the Green Arrow.
Given the circumstances, anyone in Lois's shoes would have a 'thing' with water. Mollified, he nodded and walked over to the knob. "Look, this is not attached to any pipes," he announced rubbing his hand over the surface of the wall behind the handle. It was too bad he couldn't see what was on the other side, but going through it seemed to be a far safer bet than staying put.
"Maybe this was once a reservoir for the mine but it hasn't been used in years. It's dry now but the path could lead to a way out. The water had to go somewhere…" he reasoned.
He offered Lois a sheepish grin and reached for the handle just as she reluctantly moved to stand beside him. She still didn't look convinced. In fact, she seemed to grow pale as he added force to his actions.
"Wait! Don't op…" but the rest of her words were lost as the floor opened up beneath them.
...
TBC