In case it hasn't become achingly clear to some: Metropolis's geographic location is not on the east coast where it usually is. Nah, I went north for this. Welcome to Metropolis, Michigan!
Specifically, welcome to Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the Keweenaw Peninsula (and goodbye Houghton we hardly knew ye). I chose a northerly location based mostly on the fact that Siegel and Schuster were living in Toronto when they started work on Superman in 1938. (Gotham is still the armpit of New Jersey tho)
I finished writing that boss battle, so we're marginally in the home stretch for Story 3. There's a good chance I might have it finished by the end of September.
And I went ahead with that deviantart page. Not much new information up yet, but I've clearing out some of the photo backlog on my hard-drive. Come find me at: Shatter-verse
Chapter Twenty-Four: Typhoons in Taiwan
A sudden sense of vertigo and falling caused Lois to jerk reflexively, only to realize that she was lying on a flat surface and not falling to her death from two miles up. The only things over her head were the bright lights and the eggshell white ceiling of a hospital clinic.
"Oh god, I'm alive." she muttered in a flat, deadpan way.
"Well, don't sound so disappointed about it."
One thing was for sure. Perry White didn't have the face of no angel she'd ever seen.
His voice drawled from her left. She looked over to where the editor-in-chief was sitting at her bed-side in a patch of afternoon sunlight, looking up from his tablet. He fixed her with a glare that halfway between angry worry and relief. Perry had been her emergency contact since that first time she had ended up in the hospital getting a bullet taken out of her leg, since she hadn't been in the mind to contact the general and let him insert himself back in her life, as he surely would have.
"What's the verdict? I don't remember hearing it." Lois said, raising her head off the too-soft pillow to look down at herself. She was still in her own clothes, but a nurse had tucked a blanket around her while she'd slept. She was largely unharmed from this angle, though there was a general ache in her torso that no amount of drugs would completely drive away and her left wrist now sported a stiff new cast.
"You crashed when they were taking you down to X-ray, after they gave you the local." Perry started. He was trying to keep up an angry-concerned expression, but it was clearly melting into relief with every passing second. "Total is a fractured wrist, slight hypoxia and dehydration, and something that looks like whiplash. How do you feel?"
Lois thought about that for a moment, narrowing down the causes of the various sensations that hadn't been dulled by the painkillers and obviously could not be pain.
"Starving. I want something with protein and fat and salt." she declared. "Like a cheeseburger. A cheeseburger and fries. Or pizza and breadsticks with cheese sauce." She frowned at the editor. "Don't give me that look, Perry. I honestly haven't eaten since about seven last night."
"The doctor wants you to eat a balanced meal." the editor said. "That means equal portions of proteins, carbohydrates, and green vegetables. That flappy limp slice of green stuff Big Belly Burger laughingly calls lettuce is not going to cut it."
"When did you turn into Mr. Balanced Meal, he who sometimes eats half a bag pizza rolls for lunch?" Lois snarked back.
"I'm just parroting what the doctor wants you to do." Perry said, albeit a tad defensively. He was aware of his eating habits and that they were not the greatest at times. He tried to be good about cutting back on the processed everything -- he was getting on in years, not as young as he used to be, and he'd like to live as long as possible -- but there were days where he gave in.
"You got damn lucky, Ms. Lane." Perry went on in the tone of a very concerned teacher. "I mean, damn lucky that you got out of- whatever happened with just a fractured wrist. When the hospital called me, I thought I'd be contacting your daddy to make funeral arrangements and it's an act of god that I'm not."
For a second, Lois thought he was going to add: 'And what do you have to say for yourself?' The editor-in-chief didn't, but he continued to glare at her exactly the same glare her mother used to give when she caught her trying to sneak cookies after midnight. That 'are you really doing this right now?' kind of disappointed glare.
"Perry, I didn't fall on purpose." Lois told him, trying to wipe out that glare; it was making her feel seven years old again.
"You fell?!" Perry burst out, his face going alternately red and white, his eyes bulging out in horror. "Lois! They're saying that lightning storm thing was two miles above the city! Are you telling me that's where you fell from?!"
The reporter cringed, as it started to occur to her that she was the only person who really knew what had happened. There was, of course, no way the entire city hadn't seen what had happened. It had been big enough, occurring at sunrise, seven-thirty or so on a Tuesday morning. The rush-hour and student crowd would have most certainly stopped to gape.
But she was the only one who had seen it from start to finish.
"...Yes." she admitted. "Don't worry, I have video! I got most of it from the top of some building-- and by 'top', I mean the roof. Where's my phone?" She spotted her coat draped over the chair on the other side and started to roll out of bed so she could get it.
"How did you even get up there?" Perry asked faintly.
"Up where?"
"The lightning storm, Lois. How did you get up there?"
"Uhhh... I actually don't know where to start with that." Lois admitted, digging into her coat pockets until she found the sleek body of the phone.
"I might." Perry flipped the tablet around to show her what he'd been looking at.
On the screen was the Daily Planet's website displaying the Quick 'n' Dirty newsfeed, where they put up the breaking news that had yet to be fully researched and substantiated. Lois ignored the headline that blithered about guardian angels in favor of the full color photograph that occupied most of the page. The scene captured could have come out of a movie -- maybe a movie poster; so theatrical and staged it looked.
The photograph had been snapped by someone who had to have been standing on the roof of a car to get that angle. Her savior - Kal-El, the only name she could assign to him. He was a good ten feet off the ground. with no visible means of support. Lois couldn't see any wires or cranes or lifts. The other people visible in the picture looked shocked, horrified, and completely in awe. You couldn't be surrounded by more than several dozen people without someone spotting wires.
This man was floating under his own power.
There was a man in Metropolis who could fly.
And it was really sinking in now that the adrenaline had worn off and the light-headed-ness was gone.
Lois's breath whooshed out of her.
The man with his thick, strong arm and his solid chest. His bright blue eyes that were piercing even in lower resolution of the photograph. In the center of his chest was a red and gold pentagonal shield featuring a heavily stylized S.
"Hang on, I've got you!"
The baritone voiced echoed through hazy memory, but it made Lois's toes curl, made her shiver. There was a voice that you might feel in your ribs; a rumbling bass that vibrated your chest. Even in the midst of a crazy plunge through the air, it had been absurdly reassuring. Remembering it now -- even when she was standing beside the hospital bed while her phone powered up -- still made her feel safe.
The man in the picture wasn't an angel, not in the most traditional sense of the term. Where there probably should have been a toga or some white robes was a suit of some kind -- a rich royal blue color with highlights of red on his inner thighs and the side of his chest -- that only emphasized just how hugely muscled he was. Corded clenching biceps, thighs as thick as Lois's neck, and pectorals you could grate cheese on. Instead of wings there was the long crimson cape that fluttered around the ankles of his red boots and wrapped around his shoulders to clasp together at the base of his throat. And there was Lois herself, collapsed in a swoon across his broad shoulder.
"What the hell! I look like a fainting damsel in distress!" she raged, turning bright red in humiliation. If it was the middle of the afternoon, then she had been out cold for a few hours now. That meant the picture had gotten just about everywhere in the meantime.
Perry smiled. "Sorry Lois, but apparently that was just a good photo op." he said, not sounding quite that apologetic.
"When was this picture taken?! I don't remember this!" Lois snatched the tablet from the editor-in-chief so she could get a closer look.
"In front of the hospital. Think he decided to save you on the ambulance fee." Perry shrugged.
Lois gritted her teeth. There was no way this picture wasn't everywhere by now. She had been fast asleep for a good seven hours or so; no time anymore for damage control. She couldn't even remember getting down off that building, much less all the way to the hospital. Maybe the flying man had given the staff her name and place of employment-- which would ultimately beg the question of how he had even known both.
"This really isn't a good picture." she commented, scowling at it.
"It's still gone viral." Perry pointed out. "You probably didn't see what happened over on Broadway, but the video's up online. It's everywhere online. Internet's blowing up. People are talking about it. They want to know what's going on." He leaned forward and looked his best reporter square in the eye. "Lois, what everyone saw was something that looked like a lightning storm. Others are saying it was a portal. Everyone here in Metropolis screaming about it being Hell's Gate all over again. But no one knows worth a damn what actually happened up there. No one except you, is the vibe I'm getting."
"Lightning storm and portal. Here." Lois unlocked the phone screen and tossed it down on the bed in front of Perry. "I don't know how good it is, but we can definitely cull a few stills for the front page."
While Perry queued up the video, Lois sat down on the bed to read the Quick 'n' Dirty blog post. She examined the photo again, ignoring her overly-dramatic swoon that belonged on the cover of a pulp sci-fi novel and focused on the flying man. The photo was a touch grainy -- likely taken from someone's potato camera -- but she could still discern the strong lines of his jaw and the very defined musculature and a single spit-curl of hair that fell over his forehead. There was a weird, Good Ol' Boy look about him. Like he was just your friendly neighborhood flying man popping around and performing good deeds.
She watched the video first, wincing every time Kal-El was slammed into the ground while Dr. Essex screamed about plagues and infected children and she especially listened to the part when Dr. Essex told him that the virus was still in their genes. Chances were that it was still deactivated, but a lot of people were going to be talking about it for weeks to come.
She read the article next. It opened with the really corn-tastic line "You might believe a man can fly..." Ugh, who was responsible for that load of cheese? She checked the byline-- Oh, it was Wayne Sparks. Good reporter, but borderline nutball conspiracy theorist. It was short and dissolved quite quickly into hysterical (but correct) speculation about aliens about halfway through and then segued into secret government genetic research conspiracy theories. But it got back on track with the last lines asking: 'Does Metropolis at last have a superhero in its midst? Are we seeing the beginning of a new age of superheroes?'
Good question, Wayne. Maybe your nutball head is good for something. Lois thought, admittedly a touch disparagingly. Wayne wrote for their weekly Weird Science column and dealt more with the theoretical than the practical.
"Take my hand."
That lovely baritone voice sounding off in the room made Lois flinch and look around expectantly until she realized it was coming out of her phone, towards the end of the video. Perry was staring at the screen with a hanging jaw.
"I think I just went a little gay." he commented, not taking his eyes off the action.
"Yeah, I definitely felt my preference for men get affirmed." Lois agreed, grinning.
"That..." Perry fished around for words. "This is good stuff, Lois. Still not a whole lot to see, but it's better than any other footage out there. The Broadway stuff's pretty wobbly and they had a clear shot and everything."
"Yeah, I didn't see what happened over on Broadway and this portal was still a good mile over my head." Lois agreed. She had been quite surprised about how close the zoom feature had gotten. Still too far away to make out any significant details, but... "Now the Daily Planet has the only good footage in town."
"There were two of them up there." Perry said, rewinding the playback and pausing it for a better glimpse. "You're right, that looks like a lightning storm and a portal." he agreed. "Lois, how did you even get yourself into this situation in the first place?"
"Sofia Gigante."
And Perry groaned and rolled his eyes because Lois had been after this woman from the start and nothing good had come of it.
"No, no! I've got her this time, Perry!" Lois insisted, practically leaping across the hospital bed to get in his face. "She's up to something huge! She practically told me herself, straight from the horse's mouth! It looks like I'll be able to nail her ass to the wall! I need to do some more digging, but I just might be able to get an exposé ready in time for next week."
The editor-in-chief crossed his arms, looking quite unimpressed.
"You could have died." he said flatly.
"But I didn't." Lois pointed out brightly. She had every reason to be pleased with outcome. She was alive to sass the chief because- well, mostly sheer dumb luck and some higher deity looking out for her.
And some guy named Kal-El.
"Look, that guy right there, the one not in the cape. The angry one." Lois pointed to the Broadway video. "That's Dr. Norman Essex. He used to be a geneticist at S.T.A.R. Labs when he up and quit two years ago. He started working for Sofia after that. To what end, I don't know, but those human experimentation rumors going on up there were real and he was the one behind it. So I have my guesses as to why he went after mob pay, but guesses aren't going to cut it! I need to find the truth!"
Perry stared at her for a moment in almost baffled amusement, then heaved a sort of laughing sigh.
"I guess there isn't anything that can slow you down forever." he commented fondly. He stood up. "All right, but the first thing I want from you is a write-up about what happened up there. Full article if you feel up to it."
"Not a problem." Lois saluted, then shrugged. "Might have to wait on that until Thursday. I feel like crap. Speaking of that, am I allowed to go home? Am I here to stay? Are they keeping me overnight?"
"No, you haven't been admitted. They just decided to let you sleep. I'm going to lean on our insurance guys to get your bill paid, since I can argue you got injured while pursuing a story."
"Awesome." Lois handed him back the tablet.
"Can I take your phone with me? The internet guys can extract the video and get it posted in just half an hour."
"Sure, I'll swing by on my way home."
"Go home." Perry ordered, because he knew she would hang around her desk if he didn't force the matter. "Go home and rest up. For god's sake, you have a fractured wrist. Don't be afraid to take it easy for at least twenty-four hours."
"That, Mr. White, oh great and mighty editor-in-chief of the morning edition, may he be forever over-strung and critical, is not something I can actually promise." Lois said, putting a hand on her heart.
"You're drugged." Perry observed, as he had never heard the reporter be quite so... 'Complimentary' was not the word, but it was a possible one. "Go home, Miss Lane. One of your friends is here." he added, making for the door.
"I don't have friends!" Lois called after him, scooting back to the edge of the bed and throwing her legs over the side. Her winter boots were down there, so she slid them back on just as someone else came into the room.
Or rather, burst into the room like a stage actor making a dramatic entrance that was either supposed to be funny or slightly terrifying, but at first glance, Lois couldn't tell what effect Colletta had been aiming for.
"What's that about you not having any friends?!" Colletta shouted in deep dramatic tones. "I object to such a despicable statement!"
"Hi, Etta." Lois muttered.
She glanced over the woman. Colletta had fresh bruising on her forehead like she had head-butted someone and a scraped up cheek that was still red around the edges, but that was the extent of her visible injuries. She looked better than Lois too, but Colletta had likely gotten the chance to go home, shower, and take an un-drugged nap while Lois still smelled exactly like she had crawled out of Hob's Bay.
"And looked who survived- whatever happened up there! My girl!" Colletta said proudly, walking over to the bedside to give Lois a one-armed hug that still squeezed her shoulders together. "How's the wrist?"
Lois shrugged. "It doesn't really feel like anything. Like numb, but I can't not feel it. It just feels like a wrist." she admitted. Of course, she was on some pretty efficient painkillers. "How'd you guys get away from Sofia?"
"Dumb luck." Colletta replied, sitting down beside the reporter. "When flying man snatched you up- Wasn't that the Dr. Essex guy I found for you? Anyways, he was a pretty damn good distraction and everyone was staring, so Steve just leaps up and starts shooting up the lobby like holy hell. All the mob guys ducked and we managed to get out of there before any of them got a shot off. I think he might have nicked Gigante on the way out."
"Really? Gold star." Lois drawled, grinning at the thought of the mighty mafia queen picking a bullet out of her arm. Not so tough, then.
"We stole the food delivery truck in the garage. That thing must have been armored because the garage door folded like tinfoil. I don't think those are supposed to do that even though we were only gunning forty on the way out." Colletta said that last bit mostly to herself. "We ditched it a few blocks from a train station and caught the morning commuter back into New Troy."
"Did you head-butt someone?" Lois asked, pointing to her own forehead.
"Yeah, the delivery truck driver." Colletta said, smiling delightedly at the memory. She didn't get to do that very often. It wasn't that the Met P.D. had a rule specifically against head-butting, but they did seem to frown on it more than they oughta.
"So where are our intrepid gentlemen?"
"Steve's been taken into protective custody until this business with Trask and Gigante blows over and it's worth more than my job to tell you where, since he's been classed as a high-profile suspect in what's starting to look like an attempted murder case. And Detective Gordon said something about talking to his commander, but I actually haven't seen him since he left to go home and change.
"But what I want to know, Miss Lois Lane," The police officer poked her in the shoulder meaningfully. "What I want to know about the very, very most... Is that huge-ass super-cell looking thing that popped up over the city for about five minutes and made everyone on the train wonder if the Rapture was coming."
"I don't want to talk about it right now." Lois stated. "Besides, you'll see it better when the video hits the top of the Daily Planet blog in about thirty minutes- Oh my god! Etta!" In a sudden panic, she grabbed her old friend by the shirt collar. "Where's Clark?!"
She felt ashamed, sick to her stomach. Why had it taken her so long to remember that Clark had been on the hit-list too? What if he was already dead and her sarcasm at Sofia and her father had delayed the chance to save him? She still owed him for the first time!
Colletta frowned. "You mean Clark Kent?"
"Yes! Clark fucking Kent! Does anyone know about what happened to my dorky farm boy work-partner from the most pathetic-sounding Kansas town I've never heard of?!" Lois demanded.
"Your dorky farm boy work-partner?"
"Well, he's not anyone else's! But you're not answering my question! Has anyone heard from him?! What about Clark Kent?!"
"What about me?"
His voice was like a random ray of sunshine poking through a cloudy sky and if Lois was going to follow the metaphor through to its logical conclusion, then Clark's face peering tentatively around the frame of the door was the sun itself.
He didn't look like someone had put him through the laundry mangler, but he still looked as thought he'd had something of a rough night. Black hair all astrew, ridiculous glasses sitting slightly crooked on his nose, but not so much as the tiniest of scratches anywhere on him as far as she could see--
"Farm boy!" Lois roared. She seized the pillow from the bed and leapt at him. "Imma kick your flannel-covered ass from here to Canada! Making me worry about you is not cool!"
She swung the pillow at him ferociously and hit him in the shoulder when he turned away to try and protect himself from the onslaught. Not bad for only having one good hand.
"Where the fuck have you been?! Going missing right after an explosion is the worst you could have done! I would have been calling you all night if the mob hadn't been chasing me!"
"Ms. Lane, I'm sorry--!" Clark ducked away from the pillow. "Can I explain?"
He wasn't sure what precisely he was going to be explaining. She hadn't recognized him on the roof top, but now that all the adrenaline was passed and she had the space to think about what had happened, it was possible that Lois had retrospectively recognized him and just didn't want to say that out loud in front of Colletta.
"I'll let you know when I'm ready to hear it!" Lois swung the pillow again, this time at his head, hoping to knock his glasses off. But either her aim was skewed because of the painkillers or Clark was just better at dodging her inebriated swings rather than her sober ones, but either way, she missed him.
Instead of winding back for another try, she let the pillow fly out of her hand and threw herself at him. It just wasn't any kind of attack that happened, because the fight had burned out of her as quickly as it had come and it was damn good to see the farm boy idiot in one piece.
So instead, she did something that she hadn't done to anyone (except Lucy) in several years.
She hugged Clark.
Colletta uttered a low, impressed whistle.
It did feel a lot more like Lois was trying to get a grip on him so she could throw him to the floor or something, but since she was really just standing there and leaning on him, Clark figured it was supposed to be a hug.
Oh... Do I-- hug back? He wondered. Normally when she goes for the physical contact, she uses fists, not-- this.
I think I should hug back.
"Wow, she is seriously drugged." Colletta commented, raising an eyebrow at the out-of-the-blue display of affection. "The last time I saw her hug someone was the last time she got smash drunk and that someone was me."
"I can hear you." Lois mumbled, muffled into Clark's chest.
"Well!" The police officer got off the bed to stand beside the reporters. "I'm Colletta. Lois and I used to date in college."
"Ah... That-- must have been interesting." Clark said, actually not completely surprised that Lois had been around that particular block. Wasn't college really the time when people started -- ahem, exploring?
He stuck out a hand politely. "Clark Kent."
"I figured as much. She doesn't talk about you." Colletta reciprocated the handshake. "I found about you from Detective Turpin."
"She barely talks about herself. She did mention you once in passing."
"Oh really? One for the record books, that."
"I can still hear you." Lois grumbled.
"We should totally swap numbers and meet up for coffee or sandwiches some time and gossip about Lois and her short-comings." Colletta suggested brightly, still addressing Clark and acting like she hadn't heard the other reporter.
"I'd like that." Clark said. He wasn't talking about gossiping over Lois's short-comings. No, he was responding to the other offer, the one that said 'I like you, let's be friends'.
"Ugh, this is why I tell people I don't have friends." Lois groaned, shaking her head against Clark's chest.
"I always knew you were a liar!" Colletta said cheerfully, squeezing past the two of them to leave since they were standing in the doorway. "Steal my number from Lois in the near future, Clark, and I'll see you at the SCU the next time!"
"Bye."
Lois just went 'ugh' again.
"She seems nice." Clark commented.
"She's a minion of hell in the guise of a kickboxing cheerleader." the other reporter grouched, finally pulling away from Clark's (broad, strong, muscle-bound) chest. She looked at him with a slightly unfocused expression and said: "Now seriously, what the hell happened to you? Where have you been?"
"A hospital, for part of the night. I had a concussion." Clark lied, one that Lois had no choice but to accept (because she had been looking for burn victims, not concussions, and she hadn't contacted all the hospitals in the city).
"And you didn't call me because?" she prompted.
"Well, I tried, but you weren't answering your phone." Clark replied. Again, plausible, as Lois mostly tuned out the world when she was researching. She wouldn't have necessarily noticed her phone ringing. "I did get the voice-mail you left me, so I wasn't sure if going home would be safe. Since I had a concussion, the doctor didn't want me spending the night alone. So I called Dr. Sullivan and asked him to come get me."
"Of fucking course you did!" Lois punched his arm a little harder than normal. "Good on you, practicing basic safety with half a mob coming after you!" She grinned, partially in relief. "Finally, a partner with some actual common sense!"
"Um... Thanks." Clark said slowly, frowning. "What's this about half a mob coming after you?"
"It's a story. I'll tell you all about it over lunch." Lois said, flapping a hand dismissively. "Right now, I want something to eat. Doctor's orders are to get a balanced meal and probably take a nap later, so we're getting lunch, you and me. Right now. I'll tell you all about what happened. Did you see the lightning storm?"
"Hard to miss it." Clark nodded. Especially when he'd been twenty feet away from it. "How's your wrist?"
He must have heard the snap of bone from two miles off and that, combined with Lois's snarking remarks, had told him what Nam-Ek had done. He was glad it wasn't more than a fracture that would heal up fine in a matter of weeks, rather than a crushed joint that she would never be able to use again. Part of him was insanely proud that Lois had stood up to Nam-Ek, but at the same time, Clark wanted to scold her for running her mouth when she definitely could have died.
Not that scolding her would have worked. If there was one thing that he had learned in the weeks he had worked alongside Lois Lane, it was that no one and nothing ever stopped her.
"Eh, it just feels like a dead weight." Lois commented, pulling the limb to her chest. "These are some solid painkillers, Smallville, let me tell you. Nothing beats hospital-grade."
Clark smiled. "I'm glad you're all right, Ms. Lane." he said sincerely. "Why don't you get your boots on and we'll get out of here." he suggested, gesturing to her boots. "I'll be the gentleman and pay for lunch."
Commander Friedland had been with the Metropolis police department long enough to turn old and gray with less than seven years to go before retirement and only a limp to tell of the reason why he had gotten put behind a desk in the first place. In a career that did have a significant mortality rate, that was an achievement to be celebrated.
So he was the very sort of cop who had seen it all and then some.
But even then...
"You want to transfer, Detective Gordon?"
"Yessir." Jim nodded.
"To the Special Crimes Unit?"
"Yessir, with your approval."
Commander Friedland laid down the transfer request form and fixed his best detective with a stern, questioning stare. "Detective, Lieutenant Sawyer has been trying for the past year to fish you out of the MCU." he said. "I don't blame her; you're damn good at the job. I've had every department in this building come knocking around asking if you were done with Homicide. But what I don't understand is why you're filing this form."
"With all due respect, Commander, I thought it would have been obvious in the wake of this morning's events." Jim said.
"I'm afraid it's really not." Commander Friedland admitted. The events of this morning fell squarely into the lap of the SCU; it was their job to handle the fucking weird Code Veitch stuff that came down the pipe. That did not mean, however, they needed his best Homicide detective to help them. "Major Crimes needs you more than Special Crimes."
"Sir, it's clear to me that I need Special Crimes more than Major Crimes." Jim corrected. "I've been on the trail of Sofia Gigante for nearly two years and I've gotten nowhere. But not even eight hours in cooperation with the SCU put me right inside Gigante's primary base of operations. I've never gotten anywhere near that close. I believe the MCU is no longer capable of providing me the latitude I need in order to properly pin a solid on Gigante."
Commander Friedland pinched the bridge of his nose. "Of course you got so close. No one has a leash on the SCU." he muttered into his hand. It would have been Captain Jase if the turd-ball hadn't been so upright with his morals.
"Sorry sir, what was that?" Jim frowned. He hadn't quite heard the muttered statement, but it hadn't sounded complimentary.
"Lieutenant Sawyer is a good woman and a good cop." Commander Friedland said, effectively doubling back over his statement. "She's done the best she can with what she was given, but Detective... The SCU?"
The Special Crimes Unit did have its good points. They did have an acceptable success rate and a record low incidence of disciplinary referrals which, in the eyes of the higher ups, made them the most well-behaved department in the force. The latter was due in large part to the fact that there was only eleven people in the department. With such a small number, it was easier to watch them for rowdiness and it was harder to hide a misdeed without a crowd of anonymity.
On the same token, however, it made them largely ineffective and uncoordinated on the account of just not having the numbers to properly enforce their portion of the law. It made them slipshod, shoddy, cutting corners every which way in order to simply get the job done. They were far from the efficient machine they were expected to be.
"Detective Gordon, the SCU is something of a joke. And you've done so much good here." Commander Friedland said entreatingly.
"So I've been told, and thank you for the opportunity." Jim said sincerely. "But what I'm being presented with is the chance to rid this city once and for all of any considerable mob influence. If the SCU has a habit of doing this sort of thing, I could have Sofia Gigante in jail on an indisputable charge in a matter of six months. I can't pass it up, not when it will do Metropolis so much good."
Commander Friedland hadn't made it all the way up to his position by not reading the signs. There was no arguing with James Gordon once he set him mind to something. The son of a Chicago beat cop and a Chicago City Attorney. The very idea of law-keeping and law enforcing was written into his bones. He was a bit wild for a cop, but a good one all the same.
And a better head of the SCU than Sawyer the dyke and Toadie Turpin, I won't argue that. The commander added silently.
"Well," he said out loud. "I'm sorry to see you go, Detective, but the SCU could certainly use a man of your skills to bring them up to code."
He picked up a pen and made a show out of scrawling his signature across the bottom of the form.
"Just come back and visit your old pals here in the MCU once in a while."
"Thank you, Commander Friedland."
The elevator seemed to take forever to climb up the forty floors to the pent-house level, but General Lane didn't allow so much as a hint of impatience to peek through his stern professional expression. He stood in the center of the elevator car at parade rest, the tablet tucked under his arms.
Operating under the assumption that her primary base was now compromised, Sofia Gigante had retreated to a safe-house in Midtown Metropolis. One of her comfortable bolt-holes that was technically owned by her father and used by him when he came a-visiting. Mrs. Gigante's legitimately registered residence in a file somewhere and if the police had the gall to come looking for her, they would start there.
If it occurred to any of them to look for places under Carmine Falcone's name, then they would have to be the stupidest goddamn cops in the country. For the reach of the Roman Empire extended beyond the limits of Gotham and its county in small but exacting ways. To infringe upon even its edges would mean retribution. And retribution would be swift and fierce.
The elevator dinged to a halt and opened its doors, releasing General Lane into the clutches of an opulent, over-stuffed pent-house suite with glass walls and peaked ceilings and every bit of luxury he couldn't stand the idea of owning. Standing at a window that looked down to the street a dizzying six hundred feet below was Mrs. Gigante herself. She cut a harsh figure in the late evening light spreading orange-gold across the city-scape.
But that wasn't exactly what stopped General Lane on the elevator landing.
On a regular basis, Sofia always wore a long, bulky trench coat. It was heavy and canvas-like and it was known to have a pair of weights in the bottom corners to prevent it from blowing around. In addition, there were no less than six knives and two handguns on the underside at any given time, within easy reach. Underneath that coat, she dressed in a sort of business casual with several layers to further hide the shape of her physique. Slacks cut for a man and steel-toed workman's boots lent her the image of being powerful without actually spoiling anything.
When the coat and all those layers came off, however, it was very easy to see that she was indeed built like a brick shit-house.
Despite his complete self-assured confidence that he was in the mafia queen's good graces, General Lane still a fleeting thought that he was going to get his neck wrung under those steroidal forearms.
"Say what you have come to say, General Lane." Sofia ordered.
"Alcohol and painkillers?" he inquired.
"I doubt you came to say that." Sofia commented, turning enough that he could see the bandage applied to her right arm. She had indeed gotten hit by one of the bullets that Trevor had sprayed around with impunity. She waggled the glass tumbler. "Brandy is my painkiller." she added with a smirk.
"I'm here about what happened early this morning." the general said without further ado. He stepped off the landing and started towards her, swiping a finger across the tablet screen. "It hasn't reached clusterfuck levels yet, but I need to know what you're going to do in the way of damage control. It appears that we have lost Dr. Essex. He was an irreplaceable asset."
"Indeed." Sofia hefted her glass in a silent toast.
General Lane already had the video queued up. It was considered to have come from an anonymous source, but he had already read the reports from this morning, when Nam-Ek had gone a little crazy and made off with the general's own daughter like a madman.
The obsessed and paranoid communities on the internet had been all over the footage since the Daily Planet had posted it and had dissected it to tiny bits. The lightning storm was better confirmed. The portal had been confirmed. Images of the man in the red cape had been passed around so much in the last few hours that he would probably hit some kind of meme status within the next forty-eight.
"See here. This man, the one in the cape, appears to be Trask's Prometheus. He fits the profile. Here, he's throwing or kicking Dr. Essex into the portal. And I don't think he's coming back out." General Lane said. "Mrs. Gigante, I've been running the numbers, as it were. It's my conclusion that we need to postpone phase three. If we go ahead with it now, we'd only be shooting ourselves in the foot. Without Dr. Essex, the most vital component of the plan is notes on paper."
"Indeed." Sofia said again. "Is that all you have come to say, General?"
"Yes." General Lane nodded. He felt strangely pre-empted, as though he had expected more of a discussion.
"Your concerns are noted. Please show yourself out." Sofia said, looking out the window again.
The general left without an argument. The topic had barely been open to begin with and he wouldn't push the matter further. Their partnership was tentative as it was.
As soon as the elevator was on its way down, Sofia spun away from the window, her face a mask of irritation.
"Idiot, I haven't spent ten years digging myself into this city for you to stop me now." she grumbled. "Not for you to stop the expansion of the Roman Empire. My father has plans. I have plans."
She went over to the dining table where she had deposited her phone. She sat down and pulled a number out of her contacts list. It was probably the most important one in there, at least for the time being.
"Mannheim, it's me."
"Sofia! My darling! So lovely to hear from you!" declared the oozing, oily voice that made her feel like she needed to take showers after every call. "What brings your sonorous voice back to my ear?"
"The general has tapped out. He thinks it's too risky to move forward at this juncture, given the events of this morning." Sofia explained.
"Yes, the good doctor Essex. I don't think we'll be seeing him again, all things considered."
"I'm going ahead with the next stage. It can be carried out; there will merely be more fatalities than originally estimated. That does mean I will need to call in my favor sooner than planned."
"Of course, of course. I would expect nothing less from a woman of your calibre!" Mannheim replied knowingly. "If you could just give me a few days to rally the pieces, that would be wonderful. If I could ask, what do you plan to do?"
"I'm going to give someone a reputation they don't want. To ensure that they won't interfere at the wrong time." Sofia was hesitant to explain further, as the plan was only just starting to come together. "I'll need your strongman before the Friday after next. Can you make that happen?"
"Friday after next... Why isn't that-"
"Yes. Black Friday. Can you make it happen?"
"Yes, I can. But Sofia--"
"This line isn't necessarily secure on my end, Mannheim." Sofia interrupted. The dithering idiot did use a voice disguiser, at least.
"Yes, of course, sorry. My strongman is valuable; he's the only one I've got. I was just hoping you'd tell me what you were going to use him for."
"Don't worry. He'll find it to his liking. As will you." the mafia queen assured her contact.
And she hung up.
There was work to be done.
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