FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
Part Five - Something In The Air
Lois sat at her desk, staring at the pages of notes arrayed all around her, but not really seeing them. Her mind was too absorbed in a mixture of impotent rage and anxiety to concentrate on the task at hand.
Snap out of it, Lois! She reprimanded herself sternly. She had to focus, to find the connections, to get to the bottom of the case instead of worrying about Clark and formulating half-baked rescue attempts in her mind. She was almost certain he was imprisoned somewhere within the Chemkya facility, but the security was tight and that infuriating scientist was not going to let her in a second time.
Belatedly she wished she had somehow distracted Dr. Slomowitz enough to steal some of her papers: maybe would have enough evidence to call in some police support…
Her mind was wandering to the 'should-haves' and the 'what-ifs' again, and she rose angrily to pace the bit of newsroom she called her own, forcing herself to take calming breaths, to clear her mind.
She was about ready to return to her papers when a polite cough startled her, and she looked up in to the face of Dr. Slomowitz!
"What are you doing here?" she blurted, before regaining her composure.
"Miss Lane, I came to enquire after your health." Katia began formally, but then lowered her voice, "Is there somewhere we can talk?"
Lois knew immediately that the woman was jittery, anxious about coming forward with information - she'd seen it a hundred times. Some sources needed to be coddled, made to feel safe…
Lois led the doctor into the conference room, and closed the blinds.
"You got something for me?" Lois prompted.
"That depends on what you can give me. I want to find the cause of this sickness--"
"Ah! I knew you were researching that!" Lois exclaimed.
"Correct, Miss Lane, but now I find you can be of help to me. You do not appear to be suffering from this condition, despite your intimacy with Superman."
It was Lois' turn to blush. How did the scientist know about that? Katia went on.
"And this leads me to believe that your colleague Mr. Evans was exposed not through contact with Mr. Kent, but by visiting the homes of the victims. You still have the list that you were working on a few days ago? Take me to these sites."
She tapped a small hard case she was carrying and Lois guessed that it was some kind of equipment for analysis.
Lois looked sternly at the scientist. She knew the woman was not telling her everything, that she was probably in league with Bureau 39 and there was absolutely no cause to trust her. But right now she was the best possible lead in finding Clark.
"I'll get my coat."
"Why won't you people just leave me alone?" the old man's voice was low and croaky, his lined face only half-visible as he peered over the door-chain at Lois.
"I've been harassed enough! I'm 82 years old you know!"
"I know that Mr. Mestre, but if we could just come in for a few minutes, please! It's very important - we're checking for gas leaks."
The elderly man huffed his annoyance, shut the door and opened it fully, allowing Lois and Katia to step inside with a scowl. Both looked ridiculous in their oversized haz-mat suits which the doctor had brought along with her.
"I told the police, I told that reporter kid yesterday and I'll tell you now: I don't want to be bothered any more. I'm not sick, I just ate some bad sushi! I feel fine now!"
Katia began walking around, holding a Geiger-counter out before her and scrutinising the readouts, while Lois held the man's attention.
"We're sorry for the inconvenience, but really this is very important. You see the whole neighbourhood has to be checked after problem with the supply line. You should definitely make an appointment with your doctor too."
"I was at the hospital yesterday and they told me I was perfectly alright!"
"You went to the hospital?"
"I go three times a week, for dialysis."
Katia appeared from around the corner and hurried up to them.
"All finished, sir. We will leave you alone now, but we are arranging an air-filtration unit for all the houses in this block. This should prevent any future problems. Thank you for your time." Katia ushered Lois out the door.
"So what d'you find?" Lois asked eagerly, as soon as they were out in the hallway.
"There is radiation in there, quite dangerous."
"We should get him out of there!"
"As I said, I will arrange for a clean-up, but he will be alright. He is not sick like the others because of his dialysis. I believe all the addresses that were broken into have been irradiated."
"But my apartment was broken into too. How come I'm okay?"
Fifteen minutes later the yellow-clad pair entered Lois' apartment, and Katia began scanning again. Lois wandered into the bedroom, her mind instantly flying back to that night - before all hell broke loose, when there was only the passion and the thrill of being held by Superman…
"This is strange," Katia mumbled, cutting into Lois' sweet thoughts. "The radiation is present here, but at a much reduced level, almost as though it's been absorbed by something. It's the kind of technology I could bring in, but--"
"Superman!" Lois exclaimed, suddenly understanding. "He came to visit right after I was burgled. He cleaned up my place."
"And he must have drawn the radiation into himself in the same way he draws his power from the sun."
Lois was about to ask how Katia knew that about him, but there was a knock at the door. She opened her door to a microphone and a news camera, with two or three more reporters crowding in behind with their dictaphones held aloft.
"Miss Lane, are you sick yet? You're on the list, Miss Lane, and you're closer to Superman than anyone! Aren't you going to go to the hospital?"
As the questions came thick and fast, Katia came up behind Lois, de-suited and carrying her sample case.
"I'm going back to my lab to run some tests on this gas." The scientist began to push through the reporters and out.
"Wait! Katia, where is he?! I know you've got him!" Lois tried to catch Katia, but her voice was drowned out by the questions and the doctor hurried away, with her head down. Lois cursed as she was left to fend off the eager journalists.
Katia stared at the screen before her; an array of numbers and spikes on a graph. The sample of atmospheric gas which she had taken at Mr. Mestre's apartment was reading as a mixture of radon and some other element which could not be identified, and she'd run the test six times now.
Where have I seen these readouts before? She rolled her chair over to a tall filing cabinet at the other side of the room and rooted in the top drawer. Pulling out a sheaf of papers and printouts, she leafed through until she found her R&D notes on the green gas which was currently keeping Superman in his weakened state.
The radon was mixed with Kryptonite! Of course! Colonel Trask was a cunning man indeed - any scientist handed this data would have no trouble surmising that the dangerous unknown element was of alien origin, and that it must be a natural emanation from the only known alien on the planet! These readouts were a smoking gun, and Superman would be named as the poison that had affected all those people.
There was one thing Trask may not have counted on, though. Katia had a new theory. She quickly put on protective clothing and went to a safe, drawing out a substance she wouldn't like the government to know she had…
Lois twisted and gasped in the hospital bed. Sweat poured down her face, across the weeping sores and decaying flesh.
Clark stood beside her, holding her hand as the tender skin was dying.
"I'm sorry! I didn't know! Lois, NO!"
And all around him, beds were filled with people in agony, being slowly cooked at the cellular level by his alien radiation…
"Clark?" Katia put out her gloved hand to shake him gently, and when he didn't respond, she grabbed his shoulder, wrenching him hard. "HEY!"
"Wha-?!" Clark jerked awake in the midst of another anguished apology.
"You were dreaming! I can guess what about, but she is alright, I promise you."
Clark, his thoughts still jumbled by the nightmare looked from the scientist in her yellow suit to the instrument in her hand. "What's going on?"
"Just a theory…" she placed her precious supply of uranium on the floor right next to Clark. The Geiger-counter, which had been reading somewhere in the 'extreme danger' levels of radiation, suddenly dropped.
"I knew it! You certainly are not the source of the radiation, Superman, in fact--"
"Well, that's good to know, Doctor." Trask's sudden interruption made Katia's jump and she whirled round to face the pistol he had levelled at her. "Unfortunately that's not the official story, so you'll need to make a few alterations to your press statement. Upstairs, now."
Katia was still protesting violently in both English and Czech as she was prodded into her lab, Trask's gun at her back.
"That's enough, Doctor!" The Colonel boomed, shoving her roughly into a chair. "You know, you scientists think you're so damned smart, always looking down your noses at the military, but really your just as dumb as all the other shmucks out there, too blind to see the threat in front of your face, and certainly too stupid to see the opportunity I've handed to you here!"
"The opportunity to blame an innocent man for a poison you've been spreading?" Katia bit back.
"He is NOT A MAN!!" Trask yelled, the fanaticism dragging his voice into a higher register, "He came to Earth without invitation and set himself up as some kind of god! Well it's time people saw that a god can fall! And his demise will make me a bigger hero than he ever was!"
Trask took a calming breath, aware he was losing his cool. He stepped closer to the doctor, deliberately waving his gun before her eyes.
"Now, you are going to go out and tell the nice people from the media that Superman is toxic to the people of Earth, and that he is scheduled for execution in 24 hours."
Katia folded her arms. "I will not."
"In that case, you will be the cause of a lot more suffering. How much radiation do you think a human can stand? Twenty of my K-radon emitters have been concealed in Metropolis General Hospital, and I will trigger them unless you do as you're told! You can't win doctor… everyone in that ER is waiting there because they have had contact with the alien. If you refuse to co-operate, they will all die, confirming the theory that Superman is the cause!"
Katia's determined expression fell. What could she do? She could be responsible for Superman's death, or the deaths of all the people at the hospital!
"What'll it be, Doctor…?" Trask began, but was cut off by a sharp blow to the back of the head.
Trask grunted and stumbled forwards, Katia leaping out of her chair as he fell at her feet.
Lois put down the microscope she was holding, breathing heavily.
"Where's Clark?!" she demanded.
Katia didn't reply but quickly dashed to a console on the wall, sliding a switch which halted the steady flow of Kryptonite gas into Superman's cell.
Seconds later her ankle was gripped and tugged. She fell into Trask's grasping hands, struggling and squirming.
Lois snatched up the microscope again and held it before her as Trask got to his feet, holding Katia in a vice-like grip.
"Nice surprise attack, Miss Lane," Trask's voice was oozed malice, "But you should always make sure your enemy stays down." He brought his pistol level. "Allow me to demonstrate--"
Three levels down, the sound of the gunshot rung in Clark's ears and instantly he knew he had his super-hearing back.
He leaped to his feet and ran to the door, shoulder-barging it open. It took more effort that it should have, Clark noticed, and he wondered how long it would be before he was completely back to his normal - super - self.
He arrived in the lab and took stock of the situation in a millisecond: Katia was screaming, tears of shock streaking down her face as she looked at the body in the corner… Lois.
Trask's face held a gloating expression over Katia's shoulder as he gripped his hostage tight, the gun now pressed against her neck.
Clark's heart skipped a beat as he saw Lois lying there, and a rage he shouldn't have felt as a good and true hero of the people welled up in him.
"Well my alien friend, looks like you cause no end of suffering from the people you claim to love, huh?" Trask gloated. "I see my plans will have to be accelerated - I may not get to execute you in front of the cameras, but as least I can still kill you!" He shoved Katia roughly away from him and aimed his pistol at the alien.
As the gun went off, Clark felt an instant's fear that he might still be vulnerable to the shot, and as the bullet hit home, for a split second the expression of malignant joy remained on Trask's face.
The bullet ricocheted straight back into the Colonel's upper chest. A look of utter confusion came over his face then, as he fell back into Katia's chair.
Clark rubbed his chest, which stung a little from the bullet's impact, but his aura of invulnerability seemed intact. Beneath his stained and creased office shirt, his bright 'S' symbol was not even marred. He rushed to Lois' side, his x-ray vision sweeping down her body, but his superior sight couldn't penetrate beyond the large metal plate over her chest and torso. He smiled in relief - he had always known Lois to be the kind of woman who took extraordinary risks and usually endangered her own life on the job, but maybe at last one of his long lectures to her about caution had paid off.
As he opened her coat and started to undo the vest, complete with a bullet lodged right in the heart area, she came to and smiled up at him weakly.
"Are you alright?" she croaked.
"Look who's asking." Clark replied as he helped her sit up. "Good thinking with this," he tapped the flak-jacket.
"Well, I've always wanted to be bulletproof." She smiled, and Clark leaned in to capture her chin in his hands. Lois looked from the intense relief in his eyes to his chest, where his grubby shirt hung open to reveal the uniform beneath. She put both arms round his neck and held him for the first time as the real Clark, the real Superman, both together. Clark brought his lips to her forehead in a gentle kiss, his eyes closed in silent gratitude for her safety.
"Err, Superman, we have a problem!" Katia's voice broke into the tender reunion. Clark looked over to see her kneeling over Trask's body. The Colonel's hand held a small device with a red LED blinking on the top.
"He must have triggered his emitters before he died!"
Clark had no idea what she was talking about, but it didn't sound good. He rushed over, seized the device and crushed it in his palm.
"That won't do any good. Trask set twenty of his devices to release the same radioactive substance that poisoned all those people! They're all over Metropolis General!"
Katia had barely finished the sentence when Clark raced to the window and leaped out, not even stopping to discard his work clothes, nor even to wonder if he had regained the ability to fly! Thankfully he did not fall, and sped away over the city. If Trask had triggered his devices of death as he fell, then the lethal radiation would already have been pumping out for a few minutes. It would be a race against time to locate and destroy every emitter, but Clark had one fact to rely on: Katia's little uranium test in his cell earlier had made him realise that his dense molecular structure could attract and absorb the harmful rays. So intent was he on his mission that he didn't hear Katia's shout of warning from the lab.
"Wait, it's too dangerous!!" She yelled out of the window, but he was gone in a dark blur. The doctor whirled around. "We have to get there, fast!" Katia practically shrieked at Lois.
Lois got up painfully, rubbing her bruised chest. "What's wrong?"
"Superman doesn't know about the substance! It's mixed with Kryptonite! The radiation will affect him just like any other human being, except that he'll be drawing it ALL into himself! If that doesn't kill him, the Kryptonite certainly will!"
The reporters at Metro General had settled into a state of simmering agitation. They were still eagerly awaiting any further developments in the cases of 'Super-Sickness' that had already been diagnosed, and in the meantime were talking to the concerned citizens who had flooded in for reassurance when the story broke.
Samson was at the hospital too, trying to assuage the guilt of sending Evans round all the burglary sites… he wasn't sure how, but he was sure the young reporter's critical condition was in some way his fault. Local government could wait - today he was a front line investigator awaiting the next development in this alarming case.
He had spent the last several hours getting the stories of those around him and was now seated next to a middle-aged man with a boy of around twelve on his knee who had just got through telling him a harrowing tale of a car crash which Superman averted a few months ago, saving the man and his son from going over the edge of a cliff. Instead of being grateful to the hero, the man now seemed to take it as a curse that he and his boy had encountered the alien, and now would most likely die from the new disease.
A pair of men in white-coats stood a little way down the corridor, heads close together, talking animatedly over a clipboard. One held a device that looked not unlike one of those 'scanners' from Star Trek. Samson was just getting up to approach them, his notebook and interview-tone at the ready, when the device suddenly emitted a high-pitched whine. The two men looked at it, apparently in shock.
"Err, ladies and gentlemen!" The taller one of the two piped up, coming closer to the crowd and addressing the whole room while the other tried to shush him. Samson, now closer than anyone else to the men, could hear the shorter, stockier one telling his friend not to cause a panic, but his warning was ignored.
"If I could have your attention for a moment," he didn't need to ask - all heads we turned in his direction, listening intently, "I would like for you all to begin vacating this area, and if you could please make your way out of the hospital into the car park--"
"We're not leaving till we get some answers!" A young woman in the third row of seating yelled out. There were cries of assent from all over the crowded waiting area.
"Well, you see there's a problem with, err, the air conditioning system and there may be some harmful gasses coming out so if you could please--"
Again the scientist didn't get to finish, because a crotchety old lady began to fire questions at the scientists, asking what was taking so long and why they hadn't had any updates on the 'super-sickeness' for hours...
And into the midst of this strode a man in a crumpled, grubby suit and glasses.
"Clark?!" Samson exclaimed as soon as he saw him, and hurried over. As amazed as he was to see his colleague, it still didn't register instantly that Superman had just walked into the ER. All he thought was that Kent looked quite pale, like he was sick himself.
Another of the waiting people made the connection first.
"HEY!" He yelled out, jumping to his feet and pointing, "That's Clark Kent! It's Superman!"
Panic broke out. Everyone was on their feet in a heartbeat, trying to put distance between themselves and Clark. Cries of, "He's here to kill us!" rose from some people, whilst others started throwing things to get him to stay away. The many other media professionals in the room backed away too, but kept all their cameras focused on Clark, and yelled fiercely pointed questions in his direction: "What are you doing here? Is the Invasion about to begin? Where have you been all this time? Is there an antidote to your poison?"
And all the while the alien kept walking calmly through the crowd, ignoring the objects that bounced off him and the shrieks of accusation aimed at him. His arms were held out from his sides as though he were trailing his hands in water. He seemed to have set his jaw and tensed himself, and those who cared to look closely might have seen his hands shake a little, might have seen him start to breathe heavily and squeeze his eyes shut for a few moments…
Samson was no more aware of the true nature of the sickness than anyone else, but he personally believed that Clark was not the source of it all. He himself was not sick, nor were Lois Lane, the Chief or any of the other newsroom staff, with the exception of poor Evans, who had been in close quarters to the newly revealed Superman in the last year or so. It just didn't add up. As everyone else backed away in fear and anger, Samson approached Clark.
"Kent? You okay? You look terrible, kinda like…" suddenly Samson remembered the only other time he'd ever seen Clark looking this pale and trembling: the moments after that nutcase from Bureau 39 had gleefully held aloft the glowing green rock, taunting the alien hiding in plain sight among them.
"Shit, man, it's that rock! Where is it? You gotta get away from it!" Samson gripped Clark's shoulder just as his strength gave way and he toppled to the floor, groaning softly. Samson ignored the shouts of warning from the crowd and knelt over Clark, doing anything he could think of to help: removing the tie, opening his shirt further, fanning him with a clipboard.
"What's wrong with him?" Ventured the man Samson had been sitting next to earlier, taking a caution step towards them. Apparently a few other people felt curiosity overcome their paranoia for a moment and edged closer too. Brian Denver from Channel Nine News actually came right up to shove his microphone in Samson's face.
"What's wrong with him? He can't be sick from his own poison can he?"
"Get lost!" Samson retorted angrily, "Or I'll make you eat your mike! He needs space!"
The crowd formed a circle at a wary distance and continued to mutter and speculate as Clark began to twitch and gasp. For a moment the people seemed to forget that they hated the alien for spreading poison and become concerned for the one they knew as Superman, their hero.
"EXCUSE ME! Move aside please!" A woman's voice, shrill and accented, cut through the people.
Katia, still in her white lab-coat, strode quickly into the middle of the circle and knelt next to the suffering Superman. Close behind her came Lois Lane, whose face went pale with shock at the sight of Clark twisting in pain on the floor. Three other doctors followed the two women, and Samson recognised them as the ones treating Evans and the others. They yelled at the crowd to clear a path for the gurney.
Katia checked Clark's pulse and breathing, felt his forehead and looked at the palms of his hands. Samson had not noticed before, but Clark's palms bore many horrid-looking lesions.
"Clark, can you hear me?" Katia asked, leaning close to his face. Clark opened his eyes briefly and nodded. "Did you locate the emitters?" Another nod was all Clark could manage. Katia turned to Lois.
"I thought so when I saw his hands. The Kryptonite burned his flesh quite badly. We'll have to assume that he has disabled all the emitters, but they were active for a while before he arrived, and we have no way of knowing how much radiation they released."
"Someone tell us what the hell is going on here!" A reporter nearest the front cried in exasperation.
Katia shot the man a withering look which made him gulp and fall quiet instantly. She nodded at the doctors who lowered the gurney and began to manhandle Clark onto it.
Katia drew herself up to address the crowd.
"I am only going to say this once, so be silent!" She began, and Samson was amazed at the sudden obedience of the crowd: even all the reporters ceased their questions.
Clark opened his eyes a little as he felt the trolley he was on begin to move. Blurrily he saw Lois standing over him, her eyes glistening. Her hand was gripping his tightly, though he could no longer feel it.
As the doctors began to wheel him away through the crowd, he was dimly aware of the many eyes focused on him, and heard Katia's stern, foreign voice begin to explain to the people about Trask and the radiation.
He missed the bulk of it, but he was certain he heard her mention Kryptonite, which made sense to him. He had not been expecting the sudden rush of pain when he encountered the first of Trask's emitters, nor the burning sensation throughout his whole body which increased every moment he spent in the hospital. He knew it was the radiation, coursing through him, agitating his cells, disrupting his nervous system, and still he had walked though the corridors letting his body take in every deadly particle…
As his consciousness slipped away, the last thing he heard was Katia's voice. The last line of her statement she spoke passionately, and there was a catch of emotion in her voice.
"Superman has saved you all again, but it might cost him his life."
End of Part Five