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Act Four: It's the End of the Tunnel on a Broken Track… It's the Ticker on the Bomb that You Can't Turn Back…
Friday, 4:42 p.m.
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On an upper level floor of an office building still under construction, Lois darted across the obstacle course of construction equipment to return to Clark's aid. "Oliver and Chloe are on their way to disable the device," Lois reported, "and we've got less than fifteen minutes to get out of here before the walls come tumbling down." She knelt down on the ground beside Clark, who was writhing in anguish from the Kryptonite bullet that was buried in his shoulder.
Clark groaned in violent agony. "Can't," he grunted. "I won't make it." The words barely made out even as a choked whisper.
Lois started pulling him up off the floor by his good arm. "Come on, tough guy. It's just a shoulder wound. You're not even bleeding that much."
Clark howled in pain before the bullet-ridden shoulder even left the ground. Lois gently lowered him back down immediately. "If you don't get that bullet out of me right now," Clark growled, "it will kill me."
Lois blinked a few times as she sucked in a lungful of air. "Okay. Right. Remove bullet. I can do that." She turned and lunged away from Clark to grab a conveniently located knapsack she'd dropped earlier. After a moment of digging through the contents within its black hole, she extracted a pair of tweezers. "Thank god for social grooming," she muttered sardonically.
She turned back to Clark and began unbuttoning his shit, but he grabbed it with his good hand and tore it open, sending the buttons flying across the room. He still wore the tattered remains of the black t-shirt beneath, but there wasn't much fabric left for her to pull away to expose his wound. Clark continued moaning in agony. "I'm sorry, Clark. This gonna hurt… a lot."
"Just do it," he ground out through clenched teeth.
Lois nodded as she drew in a steadying breath. She began slowly probing the wound with the tweezers; Clark's agonized groans grew louder as she pushed the tweezers in deeper, and when they finally made contact with the deeply buried bullet, he screamed in agony.
"I'm so sorry, Clark." Her eyes were nearly as anguished as his for causing him further pain. His cries of agony continued as she worked the tweezers around the bullet until she felt them get a good grip. She began slowly pulling it out, endlessly repeating her apologies.
Just before the bullet broke through to the surface, a strange fluorescent green glow began to radiate from the wound. "What the…?" Her eyes grew wide as saucers when she finally extracted the glowing bullet. "A meteor rock bullet?"
Clark's pain-filled moans quieted the moment the bullet left his body, but he was obviously still in a great deal of pain. "Get rid of it," he groaned. "Get that thing away from me. Please."
Lois turned and threw the small projectile as hard as she could. It soared across the room and bounced off a far wall. When she turned back to Clark, she gasped in shock as she watched the wound completely heal itself right before her very eyes. "How the hell did you do that?"
"It's a long story," Clark answered as he levered himself into a sitting position.
Her eyes narrowed at Clark's evasive answer. "Why would they shoot you with a bullet made of meteor rock?"
"Because they know that meteor rocks are deadly to me," Clark answered.
Her eyes filled with equal parts confusion and uncertainty. "I've dealt with my share of meteor rock freaks, you know. They may have developed strange super-powers, but I've never seen any of them react like that." She paused to stare at Clark with a critical eye. "So what is it that makes you so different?"
"Like I said, it's a long story." Lois's face contorted in indignation. "I'll tell you everything later, I promise. But right now, we've got to get out of here before this place blows up."
The two stood and made for the exit. "Were you infected by the meteor rocks?" Lois asked as they reached the door.
"No," Clark answered as he opened the door. They began running down the stairwell at break-neck speed. "I wasn't infected with meteor rocks, Lois," Clark told her as they sped down the stairs. "The meteor rocks came from the same place I did. A planet called Krypton. I was sent to Earth just before the planet was destroyed, and a lot of the debris ended up here as well. The powers I have, they come from the radiation of the sun here—the yellow sun. Krypton had a red sun; if I'd lived there, I wouldn't have had any of these powers."
"Wait a minute, Smallville." Lois stopped dead in her tracks. "You're telling me you're from… another planet?"
Clark gave her a small smile, slightly humble, but also a bit teasing. "Yes," he answered simply.
Lois regarded him for a quiet moment. "You're an alien." There was no disbelief in her tone, and not much surprise, either. Only acceptance.
"I prefer interstellar traveler, but… yeah." He slipped one arm behind her and placed his hand at the small of her back, gently urging her to resume their escape. But just before she moved turned away, Clark pulled her up close against his body. "I just hope you can find a way to… how did you put it? 'Dismiss it as an endearing personality quirk.'"
The words sounded familiar, but it took Lois a moment to recall where they were from. When it finally dawned on her, she closed her eyes and let out a somewhat self-deprecating chuckle. "You know, I hate it when you use my own words against me," she told him as she raised her lids. She stretched up and pressed a quick kiss to his lips before extracting herself from his embrace to run down the stairs.
They were only halfway down to the ground floor when they heard a door crash open below them, and an instant later, a hailstorm of gunfire rang out, reverberating through the vertical corridor as bullets whizzed towards them, missing their heads by scant millimeters.
"You have got to be kidding me!" Lois exclaimed as Clark shielded her with his own body. "Don't those morons know their own bomb is about to go off in, like, two minutes?"
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{Cut to Super-Irritating commercial break}
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