Thank you to everyone who read, reviewed, favorite'd and followed. I'm giving Nanowrimo a shot this year so I might not be very chatty.
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Chapter Four: The Damning Evidence
By the time they made it back around the block to the front entrance of the apartment building, the only thing they could be sure of was that Mr. Colon had made it down the stairs. They were lurking now on the second-floor landing, which just overlooked the foyer, high enough out of sight that they didn't have to worry about being spotted. From here, they could watch Mr. Colon leave.
"Ms. Lane, when you said 'illegal', what exactly were you proposing?" Clark wondered in a low voice.
Lois turned her head slightly so she didn't have to look at him from the corner of her eye. "I told you. Something that might get the cops called on us if we're spotted."
"That actually covers a very broad range of activities." Clark pointed out. Especially if you looked at everything through the pessimist goggles and assumed the worst about the most innocent things.
"Don't get your crisp white undies in a knot, Smallville. It's not like we're doing something that's more illegal than whatever Mr. Colon's doing." Lois said, rolling her eyes.
"I'm sure breaking and entering is up there on the list." Clark said softly. Since they were waiting for the landlord to waddle out, he could only assume that they would be going through his apartment. "Besides, if Mr. Colon is involved in something very illegal, shouldn't we at least tell the police?"
Lois snorted. "Before I get the story? Are you kidding? No matter what happens, I want enough dirt to pot a tree before I turn it over to the police." she said. "How much info do you think the police will dish out once they get their paws on it?"
Clark hesitated over that. The police could be stingy with the details that got released to the public. Things they thought were too gruesome didn't make it to the news desks and some of the tamer details were just with-held on general principles. He could see where Lois was coming from.
"All right, but don't you think it would be a good idea to have an officer with us?" he questioned. He would feel a little better about having one, not just for Lois's sake, but so he wouldn't have to answer the possible question of: 'why did that bullet bounce off your chest?'
"I've never gotten the police involved first and I'm not about to start." Lois declared.
"That seems a little dangerous."
"What can I say? I live life on the edge."
Clark frowned at the back of her head. Perry had told him that Lois could be difficult to work with and he would completely understand if he wanted to shadow a different reporter. She lost partners because they said she was too reckless, too impulsive, taking stupid risks in the name of getting the story, and pissing off all the wrong people in the process. Her approach had been too aggressive for the Metro Eagle and she had scared the Daily News. People couldn't ignore the negatives long enough to see that she was a fantastic reporter. Perry felt that she needed someone level-headed to try and bring her back down to earth. He didn't anticipate meeting anyone like that in this lifetime, but he would feel a lot better about Lois's excursions if she had someone trustworthy watching her back.
It took guts and balls of brass to get the stories that Lois Lane got. No question about it.
"Oh, hurry up, fatty. My feet are falling asleep." Lois groaned softly. She shifted on her feet, trying to relieve some of the pressure her crouched position was putting on them.
"He can only move so fast, Ms. Lane." Clark reminded her gently.
"That's his own damn fault, you know." Lois growled. "You don't get that fat by moderating your intake and being active in general. It takes a lot of work to become a planet. I mean, the funds alone to support the over-eating... He must be this close to being house-bound." She held up two fingers just millimeters apart to demonstrate how close"And the smell... What are the odds he can't even fit in the shower anymore?"
"Ms. Lane, I don't like talking about people behind their backs." Clark said, feeling a tad uncomfortable. It was a staple of human conversation to gossip, but Clark had seen how vicious the rumor mill could get. He had been the victim of a vicious rumor mill. He didn't like gossiping about people any more than he liked being gossiped about.
Lois shrugged. "Suit yourself."
There came the sound of a door squeaking open, followed by ponderous footsteps. Lois flattened herself to the floor of the landing and Clark shifted back out of sight until he couldn't see the foyer below. He glanced down at Lois; her attention was riveted, her eyes forward. Clark tipped his glasses down and peered through the wall.
There was just enough lead in the lenses of his fake glasses to stop his x-ray vision and it took the edge off his heat vision too. The lead plating also had the side-effect of muting his memorably bright blue eyes to a dull navy. His trip across the Eurasian continent had showed him that people tended to remember his eyes before they remembered his face.
He wasn't too good at using his x-ray vision yet. The image would drift in and out of "focus", or he would see too far and too much. He suspected it was because of how little he had actually used his x-ray since it had first developed. It was like the rest of his powers, the flight and the strength and such. For both, he'd had to work on the control of it, practice with it. He'd have to do the same for his x-ray vision.
It held pretty steady this time, though he was concentrating magnificently on peering through the wall. The image wasn't as clear as he liked, but he could still see Mr. Colon wrapped in a coat that was too small for his ample frame, huffing and waddling laboriously towards the door. It seemed to take an age before he shuffled up to the door and let himself out in a gust of cold air.
Clark blinked and pushed his glasses back up his nose, cutting out his x-ray vision. Lois waited another ten seconds to see if the slumlord might come back. When it was apparent that he wasn't in the middle of turning around, Lois hopped to her feet and headed down the stairs.
"Ms. Lane!" Clark hissed, making a useless gesture that would have been him grabbing a shoulder or an arm if she had been standing closer.
"Either stay there and keep watch or come on and make yourself useful. One or the other." Lois instructed impatiently.
Clark didn't think there was a way he could talk her out of it. The fiery reporter wasn't one of those people who easily listened to reason. Perry seemed to think a college-level thesis outlining your reasons for why Thing A was a stupid idea was the only thing that could remotely sway Lois, but even then your chances weren't great.
Lois moved out of sight, away from the stairs and to the slumlord's apartment door.
Ugh... Clark thought, rubbing a hand up his forehead and under the brim of his hat. I was going to try and keep her out of trouble. I know it's half the reason Perry assigned me with her...
Because Lois Lane walked up to danger and laughed at it.
He quickly followed. If his feet didn't quite touch the stairs on the way down, if his shoes didn't quite make a sound on the concrete floor, then no one was around to notice. Lois hadn't gotten far in the meantime. She was crouched beside the slumlord's door with her ear pressed to the cheap plywood and fiddling with the lock, trying to spring it open with a hair-pin.
"Do you expect to find anything in there, Ms. Lane?" Clark wondered.
"Won't know until I look." Lois replied, scowling in frustration as the hair-pin refused to work its usual magic. "I don't suppose you know anything about jimmying open locks?"
"Can't say that I do." Clark tapped the door. "But it is plywood. You could probably just put your foot through it."
"Nope, not leaving that much evidence behind me. Bad idea." Lois told him. "You sure you can't pick a lock?"
"To be honest, I've never tried."
He could melt the lock. He could force the door open just by knocking on it. He could even break it off its hinges. But Clark Kent wasn't supposed to be able to do anything like that, so he had to stand there and keep watch while Lois made increasingly frustrated expressions before the lock finally gave up the battle with a sullen *click*.
"Kiss my ass." she told it triumphantly.
She pushed open the door and felt immediately for the light switch. The hall light came on, illuminating a scene of utter horror that Clark was sure belonged in a scary movie.
Logically, he knew that the obese and otherwise mobility-challenged had a tendency to be more slovenly, if only because they weren't as able-bodied when it came to just getting around the house to clean up. It wasn't that they were particularly messy. It was more that things tended to build up a little at a time and they couldn't keep up.
And then there were those who simply couldn't be arsed.
Homer Colon was the latter.
This was not a man who was motivated to clean up after himself. His apartment, what they could see of it from the doorway, was awash in pizza boxes, burger wrappers, take-out boxes from across the city, drink cups, and his own unwashed laundry. There was piles and piles of just-- crap that ranged from trash to desiccated roach corpses to rotting food and more things than Clark could scarcely imagine. Even from the doorway, he could smell the powerful stench of human waste and quite a bit of it seemed to originate from a lumpy thing that must have been couch. It was in front of the television, so it couldn't have been anything else.
He hadn't even entered and his eyes were already starting to water.
A live roach skittered across the stained floor. It was as long as Clark's little finger, antennae wavering in the air currents as it embarked on a search for food.
Lois made a sound that might have been a scream, if it had just been a little louder and less squeaky.
"Are you going to be okay?" Clark asked, because this was the second time she had reacted like this. Her posture was tense again, her expression suggesting she was either going to scream properly or hurl up her breakfast, but either action would end with her running.
"I-- I--" Lois twitched, her voice breaking before she found it again. "I'm a military brat, Smallville. I could bounce a quarter off my bedsheets; they were always tighter than a drum. I had to mop my bedroom floor once a week and help with the dusting. Mom kept the dining table so clean you could actually perform surgery on it. We put bleach in the toilet every evening! We lived in base housing; everything was expected to be neat and tidy! I have high standards for cleanliness! And physical fitness! This is a nightmare!"
Clark smiled sympathetically. "I'm sorry."
If she was a military brat, that explained her reactions. The military held its members to a standard, expounding self-discipline in all realm of things, from house-keeping to physical fitness. If Lois had grown up on-base, then she had likely been raised in a somewhat strict environment where even the little things were enforced.
No doubt, Mr. Colon's apartment and the man himself were like nightmares for her.
"But it's not gonna stop me." Lois coached herself, wiping the revolted expression off her face and replacing it with a determined one. "I'm not going to let a pigsty stop me from getting the story!"
Clark peered into the gloomy depths of the apartment. "Calling it a pigsty is an insult to pigsties, Ms. Lane. They're much cleaner than this." he said.
Lois scowled. "Do you mind? I'm trying to psyche myself up for something unpleasant. Quit trying to discourage me." she snapped.
Clark smiled apologetically and made an 'after-you' gesture, inviting his temporary partner to venture in first. Lois squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, then stepped tentatively into the apartment. She took light, tiny steps, like she was afraid of disturbing the atmosphere too much. He couldn't blame her. He wasn't sure what color the hall rug had been initially, but surely it hadn't started off as at that odd shade of yellow-green.
"Oh my god, it stinks in here." Lois complained, covering her nose against smells that men were not meant to live with, but did anyways. She looked back at Clark, who was following her in. "How are you not smelling that?"
"I grew up on a farm. I'm pretty used to strong smells." Clark replied. He was smelling it, but he had also learned how to ignore stronger smells. He didn't have much of a choice.
Lois shot him a glare that was more envious than anything.
"But that doesn't mean my eyes aren't watering." he added, because they were.
"We're standing in the belly of the beast." Lois said, slightly dramatically as she gazed around the hazardous excuse for a living area. Even the quality of light was terrible. "I'm going to need to bathe in bleach tonight."
Clark shrugged up a little and tried not to let any of the piles touch him. "What are we looking for?"
"I don't know if I even want to look for it." Lois admitted, shivering. "I would have brought a pair of gloves and a face-mask, if I'd known it was going to be this bad. Oh god, I feel like I'm going to develop a respiratory problem."
Mr. Colon's apartment was sort of like the home of a hoarder; there was just so much crap laying about in moldering piles. But hoarders had a mental issue that just wouldn't allow them to let anything go and for some, a part of them fully understood that there was a problem. Mr. Colon was just too lazy to do anything about the piles. He was wallowing in his own filth. Even a hoarder could still work the toilet.
With a sideways glance at Lois, Clark nudged his glasses down and tried not to x-ray the piles too deeply or stare for too long. Nonetheless, he still regretted everything he saw, even if he did find the outline of a filing cabinet.
"Ms. Lane, there's a filing cabinet." he told her, making his way over to it.
"Oh, good eyes, Smallville!" Lois praised, gingerly making her way over to join him.
The filing cabinet was half-hidden under a pile of-- Well, he wasn't sure what. It appeared to be a pile of towels so dirty and unwashed that they had crusted to the side of cabinet and fused with particles of food the size of Clark's fist. Lois eyed the whole thing askance.
"Is it going to eat us?" she wondered.
"I don't think so." Clark said, but at the same time, he nudged what was very clearly a plant pot at the base of the pile.
"I hope that's dead." Lois said. "I don't want to invoke the wrath of Audrey II."
"Don't worry, I'm indestructible." Clark told her, reaching for the top drawer.
"You'd better be."
Here's hoping I am. Clark thought, because he didn't know if he actually was. He had survived a lot of things that would kill a normal human, but there must have been a limit. Who knew? Maybe getting bitten by a semi-sentient plant mutated in the apartment of a morbidly obese man was the thing that did him in.
But the strange pile of maybe-even-God-didn't-know what didn't shift or otherwise show any indication that it was alive in any manner. Clark slid open the top drawer without any trouble. The inside of the drawer looked like it was a sterile zone in comparison to the apartment, with just a bit of dust. There had been a haphazard attempt at organization with file folders, but for the most part, the papers were just laying around. Lois dug her hands into the stack and peeled off a bundle of paper, skimming through it quickly.
"Property deeds." she reported. She peered at the next few pages down. "And tenant information."
Clark extracted a folded and battered sheet from the side of the drawer. He smoothed it out.
"And a map of New Troy?" He blinked, not sure what to make of it. It looked like a public transportation map, but he wasn't sure.
Lois leaned over his arm. "The Metro map for New Troy." she confirmed. "From ten years ago. That section doesn't exist anymore." she added, pointing to a line of rail that skimmed the curved northern edge of Midtown down to the Suicide Slums.
"Is this odd?" Clark wondered, noticing her thoughtful frown.
"A little." Lois nodded. "No way the planet owns a car, so I bet public transportation is what he uses to get around. He'd want an updated map of the Metro system. So yeah, it's a little odd. Look at the way it's marked too."
Clark did, but he had lived in Metropolis for approximately one week now and that wasn't long enough to know what Lois was getting at. He said as much.
"Your small town origins work against you, Smallville." Lois said. "Following the bouncing finger." she instructed, and began to point at each marked location. "Planet Square. Atlas Plaza. Glenmorgan Square. Market Street. Metropolis Mall. All high-volume pedestrian areas. Lots of tourists. If you were doing something illegal that involved meeting with shady people, these are the perfect places. There's just too many people there most days; the police can't keep track of everyone."
"Unless he marked these places when he first moved to the city?" Clark suggested.
Lois shook her head. "No way, this map dates to 1996, at the latest. I did my research. Mr. Colon's been a life-time resident of the city." she explained. "That's why it's weird. Hold on, I saw his mail."
She hopped gingerly back across the living area to what Clark supposed was the coffee table. As carefully as she could without touching anything else, Lois scooped the pile of mail up off the pizza box that was currently serving as the only available flat surface.
"Junk, junk, credit card, bill, junk-- Oh, this one's from the city." She pocketed that one.
"Ms. Lane! You can't just take other people's mail! That's illegal!" Clark complained.
"We're already breaking and entering. What's one more offense?" the dark-haired reporter shrugged. "Hey, this one has no return address. I bet it's important."
She pocketed that envelope too.
"Ms. Lane!"
"Relax, Smallville. It's for the greater good." she said. "Besides, I'd have to open it anyways, so I might as well just take the incriminating evidence while I'm at it." She dropped the rest of the mail back onto the pizza box. "We've got enough to go on. Now let's get out of here before either of us develop staph infections."
On the way out, they startled one of the tenants just outside the door. A young man in his late twenties, blonde hair and androgynous features, his hand raised to knock. He scurried back when the door opened to reveal Lois and Clark instead of his bulbous landlord.
"Who are you?!" he yelped, drawing back defensively.
"Reporters. Lois Lane, Daily Planet. I won't tell if you don't." she reeled off snappily and flashed her press badge. Clark felt his pockets for his own before he remembered that he didn't have one yet. Lois inclined her head towards him. "He's new." she added for the benefit of the tenant.
"Are you-- Are you covering a story?" the young man asked, looking about half-convinced. "Are you covering a story on Mr. Colon? Is it about the meth?"
Lois perked. "Is it? Do go on." she invited, a predatory expression on her face. There were drugs involved- oh this was perfect! Metropolis didn't like drug trade any more than other cities and it would be a feather in her cap if she exposed a drug network, so it was win-win all around! Perfect!
The young man inhaled like he was about to talk, but then looked shyly around the foyer, his eyes flitting over the corners. The homeless bum had abandoned his corner some time ago, but the young man seemed rather leery of the shadows. He shook his head.
"I don't know..." he said quietly, staring at the tips of his battered sneakers.
"If you've got information, share it. We'll quote you as an anonymous tip. I don't even expect to know your real name." Lois assured him, waving a hand.
"Maybe we could talk in your apartment?" Clark suggested, as gently as he could. The tenant wasn't showing many visible signs of distress, but Clark had heard the man's heart-rate jump with anxiety.
The tenant ("Call me Dave", he requested; it wasn't his real name; not with the way he had hesitated) nodded and led the reporters up to his apartment on the second floor. He only spoke once to them on the way up, to ask where Mr. Colon had gone.
From the state of his apartment, it was immediately obvious that Dave did not live alone. While it was slightly less run-down than the ones Mr. Colon had shown Lois and Clark, it wasn't in the cleanest state because it seemed Dave lived with a small child. There was a booster seat at the dining table (currently littered with what Clark recognized as bill payments), children's books scattered across the carpeted area in font of the couch, and a bucket of Legos littering the coffee table. The apartment was small, making the slight disorder and clutter seem magnified.
"I'm sorry about the mess. I wasn't expecting visitors." Dave said, grabbing the piles of clean laundry off the couch cushions to clear a space for them.
"We just saw way worse. This is nothing." Lois said, shuddering. The memory of that biohazard apartment wasn't going to go away any time in the near future. "Do you happen to have any hand sanitizer?"
"Oh, in the kitchen." Dave made gestures to the kitchenette. "Would you like anything to drink, while I'm over there?"
"Just water, please." Clark said.
Lois shrugged. "Sounds good."
Dave apparently wasn't used to having visitors either, judging from the way he bustled away awkwardly into the kitchen and made an awful lot of noise getting out the glasses from the cupboard. The two reporters sat down gingerly on the couch, sitting on the edge the way people did in a stranger's house. Lois nudged her temporary partner in the side and gave him a significant, raised-eyebrow look that Clark failed to grasp the meaning of. Lois didn't take his confusion for an answer and simply widened her eyes and tilted her head in the direction of their host.
Lois, I've known you for-- three hours? How am I supposed to know what you're trying to tell me? Clark wondered, trying to convey all that with his increasingly confused look.
The dark-haired woman gave him a half-annoyed, half-frustrated look and shook her head.
"We have to work on our nonverbal communication." she whispered, leaning in to make sure her voice wouldn't carry. "Since we're stuck together this week. We should just make sure we can communicate nonverbally. Just in case we have to work together again in the future."
Dave bustled back with two glasses of water and the squeeze tube of hand sanitizer. Lois immediately squished out a glob of the stuff and began smearing it all over her hands and up her arms.
"So, meth." she began rather conversationally. "What does the Planet Colon have to do with meth?"
"He's-- getting paid to hide it, I think. Or he might be a supplier." Dave replied, seating himself on the coffee table. He shook his head. "I don't know exactly. But he's getting money under the table and meth is involved."
"How do you know?" Clark asked.
Dave shivered. "'Cause he's blackmailing me to be one of his drug mules."
Lois blinked. "One? How many of you are there?" she asked.
"Most of us who live here." Dave answered, lacing his fingers together. "At least, I think. I never bothered to ask. I just try and keep my nose out of it. I figure the less I know, the better. I'm getting paid to do it. It's not a lot, but I can send my daughter to a better school across the river and it pays for my hormone therapy..."
For a second, he reddened in the face, then rubbed his cheeks.
Lois nodded. "Okay, it sounds like it this to me: Mr. Colon is being given meth to spread through the city. You guys are his mules because he's got the dirt on you. You're being paid less than you deserve, but enough to keep you crawling back." she summarized. "That sounds like the job I had in high school."
"How does the transport work?" Clark asked. "I'm sure transporting methamphetamine around the city would get noticed sooner or later."
"Not in small amounts." Lois pointed out.
Dave nodded. "Mr. Colon leaves a package outside our doors. It's maybe the size of a checkbook." he explained. "We take it to a pre-arranged place downtown. A plaza, a train station, the train itself... Centennial Park a lot. I've mostly just had to leave it on a bench and walk away."
Lois made a thoughtful face. "Is he basically using public transport to get the drugs around?"
The young man nodded.
"Oh! Suck it!" Lois crowed, throwing her fist in the air triumphantly, her whole face lighting up with glee. "Suck it you, bitch! I was right!"
"Right about what?" Clark wondered.
"About the Metropolis Metro being used for drug trafficking." Lois replied. "About six months ago, I wrote an article on inner-city smugglers using the light rail to transport their cargo around unseen, passing it from dealer to dealer. It was theoretical, based on a lot of evidence but no hard facts. And the Warfield-wench printed up a counter article that basically said I was crazy and unpatriotic. A lot of people didn't believe me. They said it was impossible to move drugs around on the light rail because someone would notice. Apparently, people are under the impression that drug smugglers stand out in a crowd because they're evil and shady. That's completely stupid. The smart ones know how to disguise themselves. There was a heroin smuggler out of San Diego that ran a legit courier business for years! Right under everyone's noses! No one knew until she turned herself in!"
She thrust her fists into the air again. "But I was right! I am the champion! Take that, you bitch!"
Clark turned to Dave. "I think we have everything we need to know, thank you." he said.
"Yes, thank you." Lois agreed, briskly shaking the young man's hand and leaving behind a business card. "If there anything else you need to tell us, we're at the Daily Planet. Don't worry, it's all anonymous."
"So I won't get in trouble for... this?" Dave asked tremulously.
Lois shook her head. "Not unless you do it yourself." she said. "And since you were coerced, the police probably won't look twice at you-- Well, you might get fined, you'll definitely get questioned... But I don't think you'll spend any time in jail." She patted his shoulder. "Just take it easy, Dave."
Dave still looked troubled and unsure when the two reporters departed. Clark didn't hear the man's apartment door close until they were on the stairs. He wondered what had caused the uncertainty and chalked it up to feelings of general nervousness. Some people tried to go their entire lives keeping their heads down and staying out of everything and Dave had already told them that there was a lot he was keeping his head down for. People like him went very far not to be considered a rabble-rouser, even if it meant turning a blind eye to something that was blatantly illegal, especially when it meant losing one's livelihood. And possibly, Dave stood to lose custody of his daughter as well.
"Mr. Colon doesn't seem to be the man with the plan." Clark commented, on their way down the snow-covered front walk. Mr. Colon's waddling steps had carved a path.
"Hmm, the plan being meth? What gives you that idea?" Lois wondered. She was eyeing the letter from the city, clearly contemplating whether to open it right there, or not.
"He doesn't seem smart enough to do it all on his own." Clark admitted. He had met a lot of very intelligent people and Mr. Colon just didn't seem to operating at the levels needed for what he was doing
"Yeah, it's called 'fat brain syndrome'. The fat basically chokes out everything." Lois told him, tearing open the envelope. "Someone's probably telling him what to do. All he really needs to do on his own is enforce the rules. He's probably good at that. He smells like a bully."
She unfolded the letter and Clark couldn't help but lean over her shoulder to read it.
"What's it say?" he asked.
"They're suing him for the property deeds." Lois summarized. "The mayor's office is suing Mr. Colon for obstructing the urban renewal and... It looks like they have the supreme court of Michigan behind them."
"Oh, that would take months just to get to the court date and not just because you stole the letter." Clark shook his head. "The court battles could take years to settle."
"Yeah, they would never be able to stick to their schedule. They want to start bulldozing next April." Lois agreed, folding the letter up. "But if he's not selling, I don't know what else they could do. Short of me uncovering something really big that gets his ass in jail. The police would seize his property and search it, then it wouldn't be hard for the city to acquire it."
Clark nodded. A few of his neighbors had gotten into a court battle. Mr. Abraham had sued Mr. Willingham over the latter's dog squeezing under the fence and hassling his sheep to the point that several had bolted and two had been killed. It had taken the better part of a year to reach settlement because Mr. Abraham just wouldn't buy it that the dog had been indoors at the time. Whether or not Mr. Colon was acting alone didn't matter. He would drag out the proceedings as far as he could to wrangle out as much money as he could from the operation.
And then probably do a runner for a tropic coastline that didn't have an extradition treaty with the United States.
Then Clark heard it-- No, it wasn't right to say that he heard it, but his intuition sort of pinged. He wasn't sure if it was part of his alien biology or just a result of having to be cautious, but he had an uncanny knack for cluing in to danger. Sort of like his own spidey-sense, and when he cast his senses around, he heard the footsteps about fifteen feet behind them and the smell of cordite from a recently fired gun.
"Ms. Lane, I don't want to alarm you, but I think we're being followed." Clark alerted her. "I just have a feeling."
Lois raised her head and to her credit, she didn't start looking over her shoulder. Her expression didn't show any fear, but the same sort of determination she had shown before entering Mr. Colon's nasty apartment, tempered by a great deal of self-confidence.
"How many?" she asked.
"Maybe one?" Clark shrugged. Definitely one pair of footsteps, for now.
"Alright, keep acting natural. If they catch us, they should know I don't carry more than fifteen dollars in cash on me and I'm prepared to put my heel through my phone. It's under warranty; I can get it replaced." Lois said. She glanced down at his shoes. "Like I asked, can you run in those?"
"It shouldn't be a problem." Clark replied. "And I'm fast. I was on the football team. The coach would make us train with the cross-country team sometimes."
"Good. As soon as we're around that corner, we run like goddamn bastards." Lois instructed, making a small gesture to the end of the block.
Just as soon as she said it, like she was tempting fate, a black teen came around the corner, wrapped in a hoodie and raising a gun. He smiled at them, showing vaguely discolored teeth. Lois had to stop short and stutter-stepped back, right into Clark's chest (it wasn't the time to notice, but his chest felt like a solid wall against her shoulders). The one following behind them, a white teen in a similar hoodie, came rushing up and Clark heard the click-click of the safety being turned off. The white teen came around into their line of sight, holding his gun at waist-level. Both teens must have been no more than eighteen or so, featuring just a little scruff of beard on their chins.
"Hands up. No funny business." the black teen ordered, jerking the gun to accentuate his point.
"Hold on, you don't want to do this." Clark said, trying to be reasonable.
"Shut up and raise your hands, Kent." Lois said, whacking him in the chest as she raised her hands. "They've got guns. You don't argue with the guys holding the guns! Just do what they say!"
The black teen chuckled. "That's right, listen to the little fawkes, redneck." he said, obviously catching Clark's distinct drawl; it stood out like a flare in this neck of the woods. He watched in amusement while Clark put his hands up as ordered. "Yeah, this the big city, country mouse. You gonna get squashed worse than a bug. You stepped into the wrong 'hood."
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