Freedom Of The Press

Author's note: Thanks to everyone for being so patient with me. I'm being awfully slow at posting since I have very limited access to the internet these days… what can I say, I'm a penniless backpacker on the streets of Sydney!

And an amendment to the Disclaimer - I still have no rights over "Lois and Clark" and all its supporting characters, but the reporters Samson, Farlecki and Evans are my own creations. Be nice to them!

Reviews are always appreciated!

Part Three - Toxic

Clark's head was banging repeatedly against the side of the van as it bounced and swerved along a dirt track. The instant he woke up he tried to x-ray through the metal and ascertain his location. Nothing. His powers were gone.

"He's awake, sir." A soldier sitting opposite him leaned forward to shout into the cab over the road-noise.

"Put him out then!" came Trask's brusque reply. The soldier raised the butt of his rifle and slammed Clark in the temple causing instant blackout.

Lois felt a wave of dizziness and pressed a hand against the reinforced glass window to steady herself. Perry's hand was on her shoulder in an instant.

"Lois, honey, you need to lie down. I'll let you know when there's any change." His tone was softly insistent, but Lois ignored him and continued to stare at the young man on the other side of the glass, strangled in a mass of wires and tubes.

'Severe injuries' was the only phrase they had gotten out of any doctor regarding Jimmy's condition. They refused to say whether he would live or die.

"He has to be okay…"

The guilt she'd been choking on ever since she woke up in the ER yesterday rose up again. She'd been patched up fairly quickly and dispatched to another ward to recover. She was the luckiest woman alive, they had told her; to have survived a bomb going off in her face and come out with only a concussion and some lacerations from flying debris.

But she wasn't lucky, was she? She was saved. Jimmy had knocked her to the ground, covering her with his body and taking the force of the blast. She hadn't even stopped to consider the danger of opening the van doors, and the young photographer had paid the price for her stupidity.

Bitterly she reminded herself that it was all so futile: her recklessness had hurt one of her closest friends, and she was still no closer to finding out what happened to Clark. To Superman… she wondered again at the strange reality of it. That day had started out with such delicious anticipation, the certainty that she would know her enigmatic hero as no one else in the world did, and that the sharing of his secret would lead to even more wonderful events. Even now she couldn't believe it had gone so wrong, with Trask choosing that day to play out his sick fantasies of alien invasion and make poor Clark the focus of his hate.

Despite the irrelevance of it now, it still grated at her that Clark had not revealed himself to her as he had promised. They'd been together all morning, and he could have taken any opportunity to talk to her alone. Perhaps he had gotten cold feet, decided that she wouldn't be able to remain his partner and be romantically involved too, and taken the coward's choice to stay just friends. Or maybe Superman had decided that he just couldn't trust an ambitious reporter with his secret identity.

For a full day of enforced bed-rest, when she'd had nothing to do but relive the events of the previous day in agonising slow-motion and analyze her feelings, Lois had wondered if she could ever truly be friends with Clark again. There was just too much to be dealt with: Hurt - yes, it did feel like a slap in the face that Clark had been playing her heart like a violin, being two people for whom her feelings were so different. After that came the anger that her best friend had made her feel like a fool, pointed out her own blindness and made her mentally review every conversation she'd ever had with him in either guise and realize what a hypocrite she'd been.

It would be difficult to forgive him for his deceit, and yet only half of her heart wanted to hold him in contempt. The other, more treacherously soft half remembered his tenderness; the way Clark, her brilliant and supportive partner, had quietly worshipped her while Superman saved her life innumerable times, but never treated her like another needy citizen.

And over it all was the heart-crushing knowledge that he was probably suffering as she had seen him suffer in the newsroom, the Kryptonite burning into his flesh as Trask tried to illicit a confession by torture. Tears filled her eyes again - she had cried too much in these last days. Clark, Jimmy… would she see either of them alive again?

Not unless she got out of this damned hospital and back on Trask's trail, she told herself firmly. She wiped her face on the sleeve of her baggy hospital gown and took a firm grip on her drip-stand. She needed to find a white-coat lackey to get this equipment off her so she could get out there and do her job.

Not for the first time, Perry watched the play of emotions on the face of his toughest reporter. Lois had been through as much as anyone could be expected to and keep their head on straight. She was still weak, though she wouldn't be persuaded to rest any longer, and now he saw that fierce determination in the set of her jaw and the way she stood straighter and looked about for someone to bark at. He couldn't help thinking she'd make a great editor some day.

"Lois," he began, and her look was a challenge. "There's fresh clothes in your room. I'll meet you in the foyer."

She thanked him with a grim smile and strode away, but not without a last, anguished look at Jimmy and a silent plea that he would pull through.

The Daily Planet was a circus. With no Perry there to command the newsroom and the eyes of the world on them, the reporters were beginning to crack under the pressure of finding themselves the target of media frenzy. Not a copy-boy arrived at work unaccosted by rival journalists desperate to interview the colleagues of Superman. Trask had been true to his word and sent the video of Clark's unmasking to Channel Nine the following day. It had gone to air at noon. By two there was a crowd of people large enough to stop traffic outside the Planet building, all demanding to speak to Lois Lane, to Perry and anyone else who knew Clark. They wanted to know where the Man of Steel had been taken, and what this Trask person had meant when he mentioned bio-warfare.

Samson, a fairly level-headed reporter who usually covered local government stories, took it upon himself to step into the breach, declaring himself temporary acting-editor of the Daily Planet in an attempt to avoid potential embarrassment for the paper. He issued a general memo that no employee was to make any on-the-record comments to any other media personnel. Whatever position the Planet was taking on this, it was Perry White's call, whenever the Chief chose to turn up again, and in the meantime it was all about damage-control. 'No comment' was the only phrase which wouldn't subject the paper's staff to accusations of withholding information or just plain stupidity.

For himself, Samson had had very little contact with Clark Kent since the green reporter had turned up at the Planet and shot quickly from nobody to headliner. It could be said that Samson was jealous of Kent's whirlwind success, and the sudden revelation of the farm-boy's identity did little to assuage his bitterness. It felt like a stab in the back by a fellow media professional to keep something this newsworthy a secret, and all the while use it to further his own career. So many of Kent's headlines were about Superman, his insider information frequently raising questions about why the elusive hero had singled him out as a confidante. And so much for his talents as an investigative reporter, using his super powers to discover things no other reporter had a chance at. It was cheating, plain and simple.

But none of that mattered now. Clark was gone, Lois Lane was injured and that Olsen kid was fighting for his life at Metro General. Samson was in charge, at least for the time being, and he was the first one to hear the news of the infection.

Superman is poison, the nasty sonofabitch from the government had said. But being sadistic and paranoid didn't necessarily mean he was wrong…

Clark was blind. It was a completely new experience for him, to be trapped in the dark with no recourse to his enhanced eyesight, and it terrified him. He had been beaten unconscious twice more before they stopped the jolting vehicle and manhandled him into this pit of blackness. When they dumped him unceremoniously on the floor, he heard Trask's scathing tone.

"What a pathetic specimen. Ha! To think that your kind could ever be a threat to us! The human race can and will destroy all comers! Now we just have to wait till your backup arrives, and then we'll show you freaks the military might of this backwater planet!"

"You'll be waiting a long time, Trask." Clark replied quietly, and received only a snort of derision from his captor.

He heard a heavy door swing shut with a metallic clang and a lock engaging. It was nothing he couldn't bust out of, just as soon as his powers returned. It was only a matter of time, he told himself.

That was hours ago, perhaps even a day or more in this timeless darkness. He began to question, as he had that first time back in Smallville, whether his abilities were gone for good. What if he was just a normal man now, with no alien army coming to his rescue, just a delusional colonel and a never-ending prison sentence?

He thought of Lois, of what she might be doing right now. He had faith in her tenacity both as a reporter and as someone who cared about him - she'd be calling in every favour, pulling out all the stops to track him, to save him.

She was magnificent. A high-maintenance, supercilious pit-bull of a journalist, and a sensitive, heart-melting goddess of a woman all rolled into one. What he wouldn't give to be back in her apartment right now, picking up where they left off the other night. Now that she knew who he was…

Yes, she knew, but so did the rest of the world, and God only knew what they now thought of their hero. Their pillar of truth and justice was a liar, a coward hiding behind his colours, afraid to compromise his comfortable little life for the sake of honesty. Even if Trask could never have the intergalactic war he desired, he'd already dealt a serious blow to the alien he so hated by undermining the world's trust in him.

A sound in the darkness. A barely perceptible lightening of the space around him. Suddenly Clark could make out the walls of his cell, see the size of the space he was confined in. It was a good thing he wasn't claustrophobic. But a strange nausea accompanied the change in light-level. A roiling, gurgling sickness in the pit of his stomach. What was going on?

He strained to see the source of the light, and realised that what had seemed to him only as an end to pitch blackness was in fact a green emanation from a tiny slit in the wall. Green, sure, but where was the searing pain he'd come to associate with Kryptonite? This greenness floated, drifted, encircled him, touched his flesh.

Gas. Somehow Trask's minions had formulated the deadly substance into a gas! He held his breath, but only for as long as an ordinary man might. A few minutes and he was forced to take a breath of the noxious fumes.

As he breathed, tense, waiting for the effects to hit him, a voice issued from a speaker he couldn't see.

"Our interrogation begins, Superman." It was not Trask. This voice was higher, softer. A woman's voice, accented heavily with Czech, he thought.

"What do you want to know?" Clark retorted as defiantly as he could manage.

"How old are you?"

It was an odd question, and it threw him off his guard a little. He had been expecting accusations of spying, of being part of some grand invasion force…

"I said, 'how old are you?'"

"I'm not sure. I believe I'm twenty-eight." What could that possibly gain them?

"What is your basis for such an assumption?"

"I don't know how long it took for me to reach Earth. I was around one when I arrived."

"The Kents told you this?"

It was like a slap in the face. The mere mention of his parents made his blood run cold. Were they prisoners too? Were they undergoing some tortuous interrogation at the same time?

"Where are they?!" Clark shrieked.

"Not here, Clark." His name sounded like a rebuke in her foreign brogue. "They are hiding, but rest assured we will bring them to you."

At this he clawed himself to his feet, rage flaring up in him, but just as quickly knocked down by a wave of overpowering nausea. He saw a wash basin, barely visible in the gloom, and crawled toward it, gagging.

"The gas is most effective, yes?"

"If you want me d-dead," Clark choked out, "Why all the pointless questions?"

"Oh it is not deadly in these proportions, but will keep you weak enough to be of use to me. Don't worry, Superman. There is a point. We need to know how long you have been on our planet, how long the toxin takes to manifest symptoms."

"What toxin?" Clark thought he'd heard Trask mention poison, but couldn't decide if in his half-faint he had just imagined it. Even then he assumed it was a lie to raise public fear of him, but now they were actually researching it?

"Only a small number of cases, so far," the Czech woman replied, "But we are sure this is because the agent lies dormant for a time. Your alien scientists found a most cunning delivery method - having you infect the very people you save!"

"It's not true!" Clark cried, more to reassure himself than to convince the voice on the other side of the wall. Fear began to gnaw at him; what if they were right? If he was patient zero for a deadly virus, he may have spread it to almost everywhere on the globe! What if he was some kind of Kryptonian living-missile to wipe out the population and prepare the planet for re-colonization? He knew little enough about his origins to make Trask's ludicrous-sounding theory begin to be plausible.

"We shall see, now sleep…" the voice replied coldly, and the amount of sickening green gas in the room increased, hissing through slits in the wall and filling the space.

The elevator wooshed softly as it rose up the floors of the Planet building. Perry steeled himself as the doors to opened onto his newsroom, expecting to have a fight on his hands to get his paper and his disorganised staff back on track.

He stopped short, Lois nearly bumping into the back of him. There was hardly a soul on the floor.

"Where the hell is everybody?!" he barked at a girl changing over the coffee-pot.

"Staff meeting, sir!" she squeaked, pointing at the conference room.

Perry and Lois looked at each other in surprise and went over to let themselves in the back of the packed room.

"Farlecki, where are we on the explosion? You got an owner of that van yet? 'Cause Miss Lane and Olsen are going Page Two whenever we get the SWAT report on that…" Samson was booming at the assembled reporters, his eyes scanning sheet after sheet of agenda notes, "And Evans, what the hell are you doing here? I thought I told you to start on Kent's list of burglary-sites! Who's on the disease statistics? I want graphics--!"

"Chief!" a photographer at the back of the room exclaimed as Perry shoulder-barged his way in.

The reporters parted as best they could to let the editor through. Samson looked suddenly flustered, going quite a bit paler as Perry glared at him.

"Who's on local government while you're up here playing top-dog?" the Chief growled.

"I, err, well there's not much going on there at the mo--" he began haltingly.

"S'alright, son I'm just pokin' fun," Perry punched Samson lightly on the shoulder, relaxing his terrifying scowl into a smirk. "Somebody had to grab the reins in here - good job. Initiative! That's what I like to see! Now, I want to know everything."

He raised his voice to the assembled reporters, "Everyone else, back to whatever Samson put you on! Get!" The people left in a purposeful flurry.

Samson took a calming breath and started to deliver his report.

Lois' gaze swept down the list of names and addresses with incredulity. This was absurd, that she could actually be holding a piece of evidence that Superman was a threat to the people of Earth.

Samson had repeated the phone call he'd received from his personal source inside the Department of Health detailing the outbreak of a brand new disease. So far the symptoms were similar to radiation poisoning, but doctors could not say how the condition would progress, nor find a specific source of infection.

For all that his usual work mostly involved summarising long-winded speeches and putting some punch into dreary local politics, Samson had proved himself a most able investigative reporter over the last two days. The moment he got wind of the problem, he had remembered the words of Colonel Trask as he dragged away the newly unmasked Clark Kent. The idea that Superman's presence may have in some way caused this disease led Samson to cross check the victims against the known activities of the Man of Steel. When that turned up nothing useful, he turned his search parameters to the human face of the hero, with much more solid results: these sick people had all known Kent, his neighbour, his friend, someone he interviewed…

Lois scanned down to the bottom of the list, to her own name. She knew she had had more contact with Superman than almost anyone else in the world, and now found herself wondering if in the next hours or days she too would start to display signs of the sickness. She shook her head firmly - she mustn't start to think this way, mustn't be drawn in by Trask's paranoia.

"Chief!" the yell flowed past Lois as Farlecki jogged through the newsroom, avoiding the sharp corners of desks with practised grace. Lois followed as the lanky New Yorker barged into the editor's office without invitation.

"What in the Sam Hill--"

"The van, sir, that exploded!" Farlecki's exclamation cut off Perry's outburst. "It was leased two weeks ago by an Eastern European pharmaceutical company, 'Chemkya'. There's details of it being licensed to transport laboratory samples and chemicals."

"What do we know about this company?"

"That's the best part, chief," Farlecki's eyes glowed with the discovery, "It's HQ is in Prague, but they have a lab and offices right here in Metropolis."

"LOIS!" Perry bellowed, although he needn't have done because she was standing just outside the door. She stepped in quickly.

"Good work, Farlecki. Keep at it - I want known associates of this company, what projects they're working on, the works. Lois, get down to this lab, and here," Perry opened a small cupboard to one side of his desk, took out a flak-jacket and passed it across to her. "Can't be too careful. They already tried to blow you up."

Lois nodded grimly, but at this point she hardly cared about the danger to herself. This was her first real link to whoever might have Clark. She shrugged on the vest and headed for the elevator.

Josh Evans sat at a red traffic light, his eyes on the seat next to him, where the list of break-ins sat. He'd visited five of the homes now, the first four of which had been empty, but that hadn't really been a problem.

Fairly new to the Daily Planet, Josh knew he'd never make a name for himself by letting these little obstacles stop him from conducting his investigation. He'd picked up a few neat tricks from Jimmy Olsen about breaking and entering. They were the same age and had made friends right away, with Evans often tagging along on Jimmy's photo-gathering missions. Now he had the confidence to get into an apartment with almost no effort, and no trace that he was ever there. He could have become an excellent thief if he weren't so passionate about investigative journalism.

So far the apartments had not turned up much in the way of solid leads, since the owners had obviously cleaned up the mess made during the break-ins, but he'd been able to confirm that they were from all walks of life, all lived in Metropolis for different lengths of time and of varying ages. These people couldn't have less in common, but they had all met Clark Kent, just the one time, according to 'temporary acting-editor' Samson's information. The most frightening fact was that in the last day they had all been admitted to Metropolis General Hospital exhibiting symptoms of what Samson had called 'Super-sickness'. But so far, Josh had been unable to find any direct relation between the violation of these poor people's homes and their subsequent illness. He'd looked for rotting foodstuffs, any conspicuous-looking houseplants, even checked their air-conditioner filters for signs of tampering. Nothing. He needed to talk to one of these victims!

Luckily, the owner of the fifth house had been in. The old man had looked half-dead, white as a sheet and breathless. Josh told the man about the new disease and urged him to get himself to a doctor, but the stubborn old coot swore it was just a bit of bad sushi he ate and said he'd be right as rain in the morning. The trembling pensioner had been able to recognise a photo of Clark Kent, though, quickly launching into the story of a furniture removals accident... It only confirmed two things the young reporter already knew - one, old people were terminally annoying, and two, these burglaries were somehow at the heart of all that had gone on with Clark and his secret.

Evans had been at the front of the crowd right next to Jimmy during the abrupt takeover of the newsroom. Of course he had been winded with shock to find that 'CK' as he'd come to call him, was really Superman. But worse than that was the look he had seen in Clark's eyes as Trask ripped open his white shirt. He looked broken, ready to surrender. Evans had been as awed and enthralled by Superman as the rest of the city, and that expression of hopelessness was such a horrible thing to behold on the face of the greatest hero the world had ever known.

That's why Evans was out here, in the rush-hour traffic, determined to visit every single home on CK's list and find every scrap of information he could. Jimmy had already taken a serious hit for this case, and Josh was going to make sure his friend's deeds weren't for nothing. Something would turn up to tie it all together: Trask, Superman, the burglaries, the disease…

As his mind tried to sort through all the facts, to see the connections, the traffic light turned green. Evans stared at it, knowing he should go, but he was so tired. So very tired, all of a sudden. No, he shook himself, I have to visit every one of them…

But his head drooped to the steering wheel and the angry beeps coming from behind him were joined by a continuous one.

End of Part Three