This was a fun chapter to write. Endgame sort of begins here cuz this is when it starts to unravel then pull back together. The pedal is on its way to the floor, folks.
I've also been sucked deeper into the realm of Harry Potter (let's face it, you never actually leave Potter totally behind) and fanfiction has commenced. The ideas have been there for a while. Don't worry, it won't affect updates here because Crucible's already complete. I'm justing putting out a heads up. There might be some Potter-related content by the end of the year, if that's also your jam.
Not just a one-trick pony!
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Metropolis's Guardian
By the following Tuesday, it was apparent that this week was going to follow the pattern of looking absurdly nice outside by being sunny and bright with clear blue skies, only for the unsuspecting to find out that it was still fucking freezing and the snow wasn't going anywhere for a while yet. A chill arctic breeze swept off the Canadian plains and powered across Lake Superior to slam into Metropolis like the fart of a vengeful god.
Winter had come to the city in full.
Lois wore sunglasses and khaki slacks to work.
It had been an obnoxiously long weekend and she had spent too much of it flat on her face after she had decided that no, it wasn't a good idea to substitute generic aspirin for Percocet when two bones in her wrist were fractured. The hospital had sent her another prescription on Monday that did the same pain-blocking job, but left her clear-headed and conscious so she could get back to work on Tuesday. The trek from home to work was not particularly enjoyable since the trains did a marvelous job of rattling her wrist, but at least the cars didn't get stuck on the rails like they sometimes did when eight inches of snow hit the ground overnight.
Stepping out of the elevator on the fifty-seventh floor, Lois yawned a jaw-cracking yawn into her elbow, shaking her head a little in an attempt to dislodge from of the fuzziness from it. Even though the new stuff didn't knock her out, it still left her feeling a little muzzy around the edges.
Nothing some more coffee wouldn't alleviate.
She had barely set foot in the newsroom when Lombarde swooped up beside her in a wash of too much cologne and a faintly lavender colored Henley that he must have thought was blue. Besides that, he also wore a broad, smug grin on his face, like he knew something Lois didn't and was eager to rub her nose in it.
"Morning, Lois!" he said jauntily. "How are you feeling?"
"Lombarde, the first thing I never want to see this close is your face." Lois grumbled, sipping her coffee. "To answer your question, the morning was going all right until you had the gall to show up."
"Aw Lois, how could you resist a good look at my mug? No one has a cleft chin like Lombarde!" the sports columnist said, stroking said chin. He was quite proud of how solid and manly it was.
"And you take cheap shots like Gaston." Lois snarked back. "Now I've had just enough coffee to be patient, but that could wear off any second. What is forcing me to endure your cologne at half past eight in the morning?"
"Did you read the news?" Lombarde asked, his smug grin increasing ten-fold.
"Of course I read the news. Who do you think you're talking to, Joyce?" The reporter gave him a look like 'bitch, please'. "I report the news, Lombarde. If I didn't stay on top of the weird crap happening in the city, I'd be a pretty poor reporter."
"But do you know what happened?"
"Sure. Gang wars blowing up all across the Slums and fucking Guardian just popped out of the woodwork to hand some ass to people. Look me in the eye and tell me who didn't hear about that."
As if the appearance of the Superman (Kal-El was the other name Lois knew him by, but 'Superman' was a better public fit) hadn't been enough for the world, the old hero Guardian (or someone dressed just like him) had been out and about all weekend cracking the heads of gang-bangers in the Suicide Slums. Guardian had been well known in his days on the lower peninsula, working mostly around the Detroit area. But the fact that he had been seen and reliably identified here in Metropolis was enough to make the city's head spin.
Lois grinned while Lombarde's smug expression slipped off his face, replaced by something that looked a bit like disappointment. He must have been looking forward to finally knowing something she didn't. But that was the thing. Lois knew everything.
"Sorry tough guy, but you're gonna have to get up earlier than that if you expect to get one past me." she said, patting his cheek a bit condescendingly. "But your enthusiasm's commendable."
She left Lombarde standing near the entry looking a bit dejected and walked across the newsroom to her desk. Her desk which was no longer surrounded by the same grouping of people as it had been last Monday.
It didn't surprise her terribly. Every couple of months, Perry gave them the chance to swap desks around, change up the view. Cathy the crime beat reporter was still there on the other side of the cubicle wall, forever lurking behind the two ferns she had put up to block Lois's view. The guy in front of Lois was still there, the view of his butt-crack still blocked by the cubicle wall in front of her desk, and joy of joys, Osborne had moved across the room! His desk was empty for the moment -- maybe they were getting a new guy?
It was the person who had moved in behind her that intrigued her the most.
"Mornin' Smallville!" Lois said, perhaps a bit loudly.
"Good morning, Ms. Lane." Clark said, glancing up briefly from Tuesday edition of the paper. He was still on the front page, the bold banner headline reading HEROES RETURNING?
"This partner thing we have going becoming a long-term arrangement?" Lois asked, setting her things down. She tilted the top of the page down so she could see the name in the byline.
Clark nodded. "Perry said something about wanting to see it last at least six months. He thought one of us should move desks and since you weren't here Monday..." He trailed off with a shrug.
"Six months sounds doable." Lois agreed, shucking off her coat. She could probably do a year, but there was still some feeling out to do about the good Mr. Kent before she could agree to a full year. "All caught up on the news?"
"Who isn't?" Clark said rhetorically, giving something of a sheepish smile.
For how much everything had been plastered all over the news sites, it was hard not to be caught up. He'd made quite a splash, after all. Guardian's first appearance in two decades hadn't overshadowed the likes of the Superman. More like people were regarding it as the next step in a sequence of events.
"What do you think about it?" Lois asked, flicking the headline with her finger as she sat down.
Clark went "Hmm..." thoughtfully and hesitated over an answer. What was he supposed to say? What would a normal person say about everything that had happened this past week?
The internet chatter had been excitable, and the excitement had been palpable. If the Superman's presence could inspire a comparatively minor hero like Guardian to reappear, then what were the odds he could bring back out someone a little more big leagues?
The Central-Keystone area was predictably and loudly speculating over a possible re-emergence of the Flash, Jay Garrick. More to the point, they were gauging the odds of who would win in a fight, the Flash or Zoom. Said odds were heavily tipped in the Flash's favor, as he had fifty years worth of experience behind him dealing with ninnies like Zoom. What few supporters the yellow-clad speedster still had left mostly framed their arguments around Garrick's age, saying that his eighty-eight years couldn't possibly be a match for Zoom's more robust late-twenties, early-thirties.
It was really the only argument they had.
And it wasn't a very good one.
The fear, however, was just was as palpable. In the mid-eighties, there had been something called the Scare. Some people called it the White Scare, referring to the white flag of the movement. Even today, information on the event was scarce and hard to find, but what everyone knew was that the population of metahumans around the nation had attempted to rise up in revolution and forcibly take what they had deemed theirs. Unrest had turned into rioting had turned into fighting up and down both coasts and into the mountains. The final death tolls had made those four years some of the bloodiest on record.
The government had crushed the would-be revolutionaries by 1987 and had crushed them hard. In the three years following, they had spoken out harshly against meta-powers, calling the Scare an act of domestic terrorism and its participants were subsequently branded as terrorists. The ongoing treatise about the evils of metahumans had culminated in the Gem City Riots over the summer of '89 and the passing of Order 0088, which had dismantled and disbanded all metahuman and superhero support agencies. Metahumans had sunk to a depth of obscurity that they had never reached before. They hid their powers in fear that their neighbors and even their own family members would recoil in disgust and horror; that they would be turned out onto the streets or turned over to Homeland Security where they would never see the light of day again.
To be something more than a plain vanilla mortal meant being feared and hated.
When the Flash had retired the very next year, there had stopped being such a thing as superheroes.
Those people who feared the chain reaction that Superman might start, however unintentionally, were justified in being afraid. If Superman could inspire the old heroes to come out of retirement, then he was just as capable of bringing the old villains out of retirement as well.
Or his presence would create brand-new ones who wanted to test themselves against a man who seemed very hard to beat. To test themselves against someone everyone was calling 'Superman'.
So Clark couldn't blame those nay-sayers for even one second.
"I don't what to think." he admitted honestly, to Lois. "On one hand, it's a little exciting. I mean, this all fell down when I was five and it looked like it was going to stay that way, so seeing it get back up again isn't something I imagined would happen in my life-time. On the other hand, this also isn't new territory. New superheroes usually means new bad guys."
He didn't want to be responsible for bringing calamity upon Metropolis, or the rest of the world for that matter.
"Yeah..." Lois nodded in agreement, biting her lip briefly. "I've been up and down the forums all weekend. You're right, it's not new territory, but it's unprecedented. We've never had a situation of superheroes dropping off the map and then reappearing like this. There's going to be panic. Ten bucks on rioting."
"Ms. Lane..."
"Twenty and a bag of that expensive coffee you like. Final offer."
"Ms. Lane, this is not something we should bet on."
"I know. That's why we should." Lois said insistently. "When shit like this gets thrown at the fan, you need to have some fun with it, Smallville. Yeesh, live a little."
"I'm not capitalizing on people's panic." Clark said, crossing his arms. He shrugged. "Anyways, you'd probably win."
He could admit that much. The gangs were firing up across the city and the police were coiled tight with tension, waiting for the worst. Unless something else happened to divert their attention, it probably wouldn't be much longer before the regular city folk got in on the brick-throwing too.
Lois nodded in agreement. "Such wisdom you have, Smallville." she commented. "I started a file for him."
"A file for who?" Clark asked, not sure where he should follow that non-sequiter.
"For the Superman, Kal-El, whatever he's going to call himself." Lois leaned down to grab her bag and out of it she extracted a battered, heavily taped together, and absolutely stuffed D-ring binder. "Behold! My retroactively researched database on all things weird, strange, and super-heroic in the last sixteen and a half years."
It landed on Clark's desk with a thud solid enough to kill a fish.
On the cover of the binder were some faded old stickers, mostly of the smiley face variety. If he tilted his head a little, the lights caught the outline of a word that appeared to read 'studies' with '-alism' slightly superimposed over it. It appeared that the binder had served Lois faithfully through some of high school and most of college before she had repurposed it.
He wasn't going to ask why she hadn't thrown it out.
"I started this three years ago, after the Saffron Streak Zoom showed up." Lois said, flipping the cover open for him. "All the superheroes might have gone into retirement sixteen years ago, but they sure as hell didn't keep their noses out of things."
The first thing on top was a table of contents. Typed out, it was easily among the most recent additions to the binder. There were the superhero teams - the Justice Society, the All-Star Squadron, Infinity Inc., the Seven Soldiers of Victory, the Freedom Fighters, and more than Clark had been aware of. The teams were subdivided into the individual members. The next major item were the solo heroes, like the three successive Starmen and the Congorilla and even Zoom was in there at the bottom - Lois had meticulously alphabetized everything.
And right at the bottom of the S's, there he was: Superman (Kal-El).
Then the enemies... Oh dear lord, she had researched all of the significant enemies of each group and each hero and Look at that, I didn't know there were five different versions of Dr. Maniac. Clark thought.
The final major divider was miscellaneous metahumans who were categorized as neither hero nor villain, organized by date and location as far back as 1981 and as far abroad as the Middle East.
"This is only three years of work?" Clark asked with a sense of awe, flicking through the first few pages covering the Justice Society. Specifically, Jay Garrick of the Justice Society who had never bothered to wear a mask and had had a habit of signing his real name for autographs. A thorough, detailed timeline of the hero's history had been spread across several pages.
"Okay, I started collecting the information when I was nineteen -- it was for a term project in college -- but it didn't mutate into this until three years ago." Lois admitted. "There was a thing. These Rube Goldberg style murders. Probably meta-human involvement, but I never got an answer on that."
"I haven't heard of even half this stuff." Clark commented, skimming through the Flash's timeline with an increasing sense of holy shit this is amazeballs where did she find the time to put this together?...
Lois grinned. "I've been acting like a reporter longer than I've actually been employed as one, Smallville." she said smugly.
She reached over and flipped the entire mass of paperwork back into the solo heroes category, then turned pages until she had arrived at the back half of the S's and Clark found a picture of his own face, sans glasses, wearing the armor the A.I.s had built for him with the coat-of-arms across his chest. Going by the projector tucked under his arm, he knew it was a video still from the footage Lois had recorded. There was a file folder right behind it.
"I spent Monday making calls to all my contacts. I've got one on each continent. Hoping to have one in every geographic region." she went on, as Clark started to investigate the contents. "As near as I can tell, this is every possible sighting of the Superman in the last eight years."
There had to be at least fifty articles crammed into the pockets and Clark skimmed through the headlines quickly. They were from everywhere, all over the world. He knew immediately to strike out the ones from Australia and Africa; he hadn't ventured into Africa and since his flight ability hadn't matured until this past year, there was no way he had made it all the way down to Australia. All of the printed articles were marked with sticky tabs.
"The red tabs mean I'm absolutely certain that Superman was involved." Lois explained, proud of her system. "The yellow tabs are more of a 'maybe'. Definitely something super-human, but not quite Superman. And the blue tabs need more research before we can upgrade the color or strike them out."
"What about the purple tabs up here?" Clark asked.
"Confirmed sightings of the remaining Justice Society. Apparently, Alan Scott the Green Lantern is showing up in New York City again. Nothing overt, but it's hard to miss green hard-light constructs doing things like pulling idiot pedestrians out of the way or preventing subway accidents." Lois said. She shook her head. "I swear that Lantern guy must be in his late eighties by now, but he doesn't look a day over thirty. What do you think his secret is?"
"Clean living." Clark commented.
"Or it's the god-knows-where his powers come from." Lois grumbled. She was going to age gracefully, if her genetics had any say in the matter, but even she wasn't going to look middle-aged when she was in her eighties. "I had to mark a few coming out of Central. They definitely had to be Jay Garrick because they precede the first appearance of Zoom by at least two years. Y'know, at least he shows his age. Sort of. He looks like he's in his late forties."
"He was still fairly spry by the time he retired." Clark said, which only seemed to make the dark-haired woman grumble some more.
For his age and as much as he had gone through since World War II, the one thing that had surprised Clark the most was just how energetic and spritely Jay Garrick had been in that final interview before his retirement. He had taken more battering than a team of football players and the only complaint he had uttered was how his shoulders twinged sometimes in damp weather.
Lois shrugged. "Whatever. Anyways..." She tugged out the red-tabbed articles from the brand-new Superman file. "Here, these are interesting."
Of the eight articles that were tabbed red, only two of them were legit and they were as old as 2003. During the last leg of his globe-trotting venture, Clark had wound up on the Mediterrannean island of Corto Maltese just as a group of revolutionaries had decided to start something. The article, haltingly translated from Italian, reported a man performing nearly impossible feats, mainly regarding super-strength and flight.
No wonder it had caught Lois's attention.
"I was there in Corto Maltese when this revolutionary fracas went down. Dad tried to do family-bonding. Believe me, it was a miserable failure." Lois said, tapping the article gleefully. "I swear I might have seen him, even. Guess what some eyewitnesses saw. They described a man practically flying them to safety." She grinned, dark eyes glittering. "Sound a little familiar, Smallville?"
Clark adjusted his classes. "A little." he said. Really, no wonder it had caught her attention. She had been there. He hadn't been flying (long, controlled leaps, really), but she had been there. She could have seen him. "What about this horrid shade of puke-green?" he asked, poking the tab that was at the end of the solo heroes category.
"I didn't have piss yellow." Lois replied. "It's for Central City's most hated resident speedster. He's been getting around a bit lately. Spotted in Seattle back on October twenty-fifth. The sixth, the same day Superman first appeared, enjoying five cheese-steak sandwiches with onions in Philly. Yesterday, nine car pile-up on the Eisner Bridge in Central with three more going over the side and he's nowhere in sight."
"I didn't hear about that. Was everyone alright?" Clark asked. He hadn't thought to get back out there since last week. Especially not with Trask still prowling, his movements unknown.
And even though it was his job to keep up with the news, he couldn't say that he had been paying much attention to what was going on outside of Metropolis.
He should probably make it a habit of reading the national news.
It kicked him now, the twinge of guilt. There was probably something he could have done.
"No casualties. It was on a stretch of the Eisner Bridge goes over the canal. Six feet deep, tops. The average person can stand up in that." Lois assured him. "But it's not helping Zoom's reputation turn any less black."
"I can't blame him for leaving the city from time to time. Have you read any of the news coming of Central about him?" Clark asked. He had never read more vitriolic articles in his life.
The dark-haired woman laughed, a note of scorn in her tone. "Yeah, there is some beautifully-crafted sarcasm coming out of that city." she said, nodding with approval. "I might be changing my mind about Kansas."
"How so?"
"Well, it might have something there after all."
She flashed a playful grin that suggested she was not really reconsidering her stance about Kansas or she was actually talking about him. Then she went on to explain the other six red-tabbed articles.
They were bogus, however, putting him in places like New Guinea and Singapore and India. All dated up to five years ago, before he had actually developed full flight capabilities. He had only skirted the northern border of India on his way across the continent, so Singapore and New Guinea had been too far off to consider making the trip. Clark recalled that he had turned further inland towards more desert-like climes.
The articles were most likely the result of someone trying to cash in on the stir his presence had caused (no, he hadn't stayed out of trouble). One of those remaining six claimed that he (or someone like him) was in talks with the Chinese government. Knowing exactly where he hadn't been, Clark could see how transparent that one was. That one was heavy on the propaganda and sparse on actual details. Trace it back to its source and you would probably find that an office aide for a politician's assistant had been tasked to write it.
Tabbed with yellow was an article from the Edge City Daily Globe, about a woman who had almost been run over by a speeding semi-truck. Her heel had caught in a manhole cover in the middle of a crosswalk and there had been an impatient semi-truck barreling down the road well above the speed limit with no regard for human life. One second she had been facing certain death and the next, she was in the grass on the other side of the road, missing one shoe, a little dazed and windblown, and no one had been certain how she'd gotten there.
That one was legit too.
It had occurred literally last year, near the Edge City community college that Clark had attended. There had been no time to move like a normal human. Clark wouldn't have been able to pull that woman out of the way in time otherwise. So he had decided to move faster than the human eye could process.
There were three others that were legit, but they were tabbed in blue. Awkwardly translated from Russian and around five years old, they related an event such as a man lifting a car up with one hand, walking away from a thirty-foot drop, or punching through a wall. Feats of endurance and strength that weren't entirely outside the realm of human possibility and thus not something you would immediately label 'super-human'. But Lois was right that he hadn't exactly stayed out of trouble while in Russia. And Clark remembered very well where he'd been when he had lifted that car and jumped thirty feet and punched through a concrete wall.
It was just fortunate that Lois wasn't connecting the dots.
Not yet, at least.
"So, what do you think?" Lois asked, when she had finished her explanation. Admittedly, it was a very well put together explanation and if Clark hadn't been on the inside of this thing, he might have believed every word. He was okay with letting Lois think she had the whole thing pegged, but at the same time, he wanted to set the record straight.
"I don't know about the Chinese one." Clark said, morphing his face into a mask of confusion. "It doesn't make sense. The time-frame, I mean. It's too close together."
"What?" Lois slid in a little closer.
"Well, he was spotted over Singapore at the same time he was supposedly talking to the Chinese government." Clark pointed to the time-stamps in the accompanying photos. The Singapore photo showed what was either a bird or plane or perhaps a cloud while the Chinese photo had a generic shot of some government buildings. "The uh, 'Superman'... He was either in one place or the other or neither at all, but I don't think he could have been in both at once."
"Hmm..." Lois pursed her lips. "So one was lying and if I know anything about the Chinese government, it's probably them. It wouldn't be the first time they've made stuff up to make themselves look better." She tapped the Singapore article. "These guys managed to get a picture. The quality's crap, but it's more than the other guys got."
Clark made a show of peering at the photo.
"I think that might really be a cloud."
Lois frowned. "You wear Hubble lenses so I don't trust your eyesight's accuracy, Smallville." she said, gesturing to the thick black frames. She bent over the photo, so close that Clark didn't even have to try when it came to smelling her body-wash. "Besides, you can clearly see the cape here."
"Ms. Lane, I honestly think it's a cloud."
Lois frowned at him like he was throwing off the rest of her rehearsed explanation, peering at him like he was an especially recalcitrant brick wall. She really looked like she wanted to argue with him, but couldn't seem to find the words.
Odd for her that she couldn't put up a satisfactory argument. Clark chalked that one up to the painkillers.
"Ugh, forget it." she groaned, flipping her hands up briefly before she heaved herself out of the chair. "I'm gonna head downstairs and get some coffee. I'm practically falling asleep here. I hate not being able to think straight."
"I thought you were on new painkillers." Clark was pretty sure that a lot of painkillers weren't supposed to be mixed with caffeine, so he hoped she was on a new prescription.
"Yeah, but they're still harshing my buzz. Turns out I don't sleep well with plaster on my arm." she said. "Text me if Perry shows up before I get back."
She grabbed a five out of her wallet and stuffed it into her slacks' pocket, then fished her phone out of the front compartment. She unlocked the screen and got onto her Chirp feed to see if there was any new buzz about gangs and old superheroes cracking heads. There was nothing new and Lois couldn't tell if that was good or bad overall. Word of Guardian doing just that had gotten around to the rest Metropolis's gangs over the course of the weekend. By Sunday, most the gangs had stopped trying to thrash each other so they wouldn't bring the armored hero down on top of them.
But if the gangs had quieted down and Guardian had returned to relative anonymity (for the moment), then something else was bound to take their place in the news. Something bigger and bolder and more panic-inducing than before.
Such was the nature of weird shit.
Lois turned the corner out of the newsroom and into the elevator lobby. There were big windows to the left that let in the winter sunshine, casting a glare across the polished floor. It was normally crowded any other time of the day; lunch time was the worst. So that was why "Don't scream." surprised just as much as the gun barrel that pressed into the small of her back.
She felt the cold weight of fear drop over her and she went very still. She could all but smell the looming presence of danger over her shoulder. It was heavy and thick like a stinky quilt. Through the fabric of her blazer, the gun barrel was somewhat chill. A shiver went up her spine. She had very good idea of what the bullet would do to her back at the non-existent range.
"I didn't want to do this, Miss Lane, but you're not leaving me with any choice." Trask's distinct voice rumbled in her ear. His breath wafted past her nose, smelling strongly of garlic.
"What, shoot a nine millimeter through my spine at point-blank just outside a newsroom that tried to string you up once before?" Lois quipped, digging up a measure of shaky courage. "Or choke me with your garlic breath?"
"I'm a government agent, Miss Lane. I know how to be discreet." Trask said.
"Yeah, tell that Andrea Saunders, Jeannie Henderson, and Jackie Adams when you stormed into their homes and shot them in full view of their neighbors." Lois snapped. "Or to Tina Abbott and Marlene Long. How about Norma Marsh? Were you discreet when you had them beaten and arrested in the middle of the street?" She grinned nastily. "Oh, I know about all of that. It's all going into my article. The Florida Keys incident alone ended with at least-- how many, four dozen people in the hospital because of you? You're a sick man, Trask. I just want everyone to know that."
Trask pushed forward with the gun barrel and snatched the phone from her hand. He tossed it aside where it hit the floor with a clatter that Lois hoped was loud enough to heard by someone. He put his hand on her shoulder.
"Let's take a walk this way." he said.
"Whatever you want." Lois agreed.
Trask propelled her back out of the elevator lobby and down the hall past the restrooms. Beyond that was the swinging doors leading to the janitorial and service corridors. This time of day, there would be no one back there. They could get down the service elevator sight unseen. There was probably another swim in the lake waiting for her.
The obliviousness of the human race was one of the ways that Lois earned her bread and butter. She saw things that other people just plain missed and called attention to it. But never before had she actually cursed that human trait. Her co-workers were so self-absorbed in their computers and their work that they didn't notice the (admittedly discreetly dressed) government agent who'd come screaming into the newsroom last week, currently packing heat and all it was aimed into Lois's back, walking past the entry. It wasn't catching their eye, so it wasn't important. Trask didn't want to attract unwanted attention. It was probably the only reason Lois didn't have a bullet in her just yet.
I'm boned. I am so boned. She thought despairingly as the agent directed her through those doors. She forced herself to inhale slowly and calmly, to keep her wits about her. Okay, play it cool, Lane. You'll find a way out of this. You're good at that. Just play it cool for now.
Unbeknownst to them, Clark rushed into the lobby just seconds after they had disappeared through the swinging doors, having heard Trask's voice and the sound of Lois's phone hitting the floor. Three seconds too late to notice them and looking the wrong way.
He tugged off his glasses and looked up and down the elevator shaft. No one was coming, both cars were still resting at the bottom of their shafts twenty floors down. He looked down through the floor (something he really tried not to do because wow that was unnerving), but to his frustration, there were limits to how far his x-ray vision could go.
Clark pushed his glasses back up his nose and gave the lobby another restless look before he went into the adjacent hallway instead and into the men's room. It was empty, so his closed his eyes and listened instead.
If his eyes couldn't find them, maybe his ears could.
Both Trask and Lois sounded very distinctive. Trask had grown up in a southern state, giving him a drawl that wasn't as pronounced as Perry's, but it still made him stand out. Lois had the clipped Metropolis accent that was made for fast tongues and faster lips, and the occasional tendency to fault back on German pronunciations.
While Clark exercised his super-hearing and did his best impression of a radar, Lois was guided through the dim service corridors with the gun in her back. Trask wasn't chatty. He kept up a silent, looming presence, a large square hand resting on the younger woman's shoulder. It was only resting. Lois was sure that if Trask had started to squeeze, he would have easily fractured the bones.
"Still going to shoot me back there?" she asked.
"Shut up, you little bitch." Trask growled, rolling his eyes. "As much as I want to right now, I don't want to make a mess that the police are going to trace back to me. But don't think that I won't."
"So you're a more sophisticated, civilized government agent for not leaving messes for other people to clean up, but you still wanted to shoot my coworker because you think he's an alien. I guess we also won't talk about your prostitute soliciting and your rape charges or that jail time you did for sexually harassing your neighbor's eight year old daughter." Lois snarked, rolling her eyes.
Now the hand did squeeze over her shoulder and the gun barrel dug into her spine despite her vain efforts to get away from him. Her skin tingled and a fluttery feeling blossomed in her gut at the thought of the bullet passing through her insides.
"Just because I won't shoot you right now doesn't mean I'm not tempted." Trask said, threateningly. "Like I said, it would make a mess that you wouldn't have the decency to clean up."
"Sorry, no such thing as a self-cleaning corpse. So if you're not going to shoot me, then what are you going to do with me?" she asked. She hated herself for being curious about how she was going to die. But wasn't that something that crossed everyone's mind once in a while?
"Do you always ask questions when you're about to die?" Trask wondered.
"I'm an investigative reporter to my last breath." Lois shrugged. She couldn't help it. It was like a biological imperative. She had to ask questions.
"Don't be impatient, Miss Lane."
They reached the end of the corridor, where there was a locked door. Trask simply reached out and with no visible effort, he jerked the door open. The lock didn't stand a chance. Lois had sudden horrible visions of the agent snapping her neck like a dry twig.
Then they stepped out onto the roof.
Fifty-seven floors up, the wind roared, icy and bitter.
"I'm not shoot you, Miss Lane! You're going to jump!" Trask ordered, raising his voice in order to be heard.
Lois stared in horror at what was in front of her. There wasn't anything in front of her. That was the problem.
The section of roof wasn't big, four feet maybe. There was a ladder mounted on the wall leading up to the Planet's rotating sphere. Except for a ledge several inches in height, there wasn't anything that would better prevent a person from taking a leap.
Lois felt it again, l'appel du vide, the strange urge to jump, and reeled back before she could give in, momentarily forgetting that there was a madman with a gun standing behind her. The man gave her small shove that almost knocked her off her feet. Her heels scraped the concrete and she came perilously close to the edge before she regained her balance, but the wind tugged strongly on her clothes. She shivered reflexively when the bitterness cut right through the fabric and seeped down into her toes.
"No one will think you were forced! It's the perfect cover for your murder! Rarely do the suicidal give warning that they're about to leave this world behind!" Trask said, holding the gun out to prevent her from trying to reach safer ground.
"Do you honestly think that anyone will believe it? People know me better!" Lois pointed out, glaring.
"A Pulitzer winner who struggled after receiving the award! A woman so dedicated to her craft that losing it drove her to despair!" The government agent wore a thoughtful look for a second. "Yeah, I think people will believe it! They don't know you as well as you want to believe, Miss Lane! Once the facts are laid out, they'll take anything at face value!"
"You must have no faith in humanity!" Lois grumbled, curling her fingers into fists. The tips were starting to feel uncomfortably numb. She wasn't dressed for the outdoors, having not intended to leave the building.
"That's because they're all stupid, mindless insects!" Trask shouted. He had the gun level with the younger woman's eyes. "I can live with that! The problem is people like you! The ones who see way more than they should be allowed! You should have stayed away from my business! I know about your article, Miss Lane! This is how far I'm willing to go to prevent you from publishing it!"
"Nah, I'm still going through with it!" Lois decided, regardless of where she was standing. Perhaps Clark would publish it for her. "I'm going to bury you if it's the last thing I do!"
"Not since I'm getting to you first!" Trask retorted. "I didn't spend seven years of my life looking for Prometheus- to kill him before he kills us!- just to have some nosy little girl like you destroy everything because you think you can work for a newspaper! You are going to jump! That's not a suggestion!"
"Come here and make me! C'mon! I'm a foot from the edge!" Lois challenged, making 'c'mon' motions.
Trask frowned and the gun in his hand faltered just half an inch to the side. Lois saw the opening and took full advantage of it. The barrel was half an inch to the side and that was enough. She lunged with her hands ready, her left striking out towards Trask's wrist and her right angling for the man's jaw.
Trask jerked his gun-hand out of the way, but his head wasn't so quickly moved and the reporter's knuckles struck with exacting precision. It was hard to say who had been more hurt by the blow. The agent didn't quite reel away from it, but his head turned hard to side. Lois's fist started to throb from the impact and she briefly wondered if she had punched the wall instead.
She whirled around instantly, shoving her shoulders up into the agent's chest and grabbed the still outstretched gun arm, intending to flip the larger man over her shoulders. Trask didn't give her that chance. He lurched forward powerfully. There wasn't much roof between them and the edge. The next thing Lois knew, there was no solid surface underneath her and they were both plummeting over the side of the ledge and down the building, gravity ripping at them.
"You crazy bastard! You crazy bastard, you just killed us both!" Lois screamed. The words were torn from her mouth. She wasn't even sure Trask could hear her. She could barely hear herself.
Inexplicably, a ham-like fist bashed across her face so hard the first thing she tasted was blood and turned her plummet into a tailspin. After a dizzying second in which the ground got horrifically closer with no explanation, Lois realized that the government agent had punched her. She could taste blood on her tongue-- had she bitten her cheek?-- and her head was spinning. She wasn't sure if that had anything do to with a concussion or just the fact she was spinning like a motor blade. Imagine if she vomited before hitting the ground, she felt so sick to her stomach-- Trask was bellowing something at her and pointing the gun- He was still going to shoot Lois even though they were about to become street-pizza!--
"Don't worry, I've got you!" called out a man's voice.
*BANG!*BANG!*
The first gunshot deafened her in one ear and the second might have hit her; Lois wasn't sure. All she knew was that her deathly plunge had come to a jerking halt and that she couldn't separate the dizziness and pain her head from anywhere else.
There was a strong arm looped around her waist. A reassuringly strong arm covered in royal blue and cradling her against a broad chest like she was a kitten. And the ground was still at least thirty feet away, though she could see the horrified and awed faces of the pedestrians below, hands outstretched and fingers pointing and she thought she heard cheering. Her face was throbbing, her stomach wanted to heave, her eyes felt like they were crossing, and her head just might fall off, but she managed to look up and focus on the handsome face of the man who had plucked her out of mid-air for a second time in a week, with the square jaw and such bright blue eyes, and wondered if maybe he really was here to be someone's hero.
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