*19*
James is drowning in cold and suffocated by heat. He is adrift, lost in a sea of numbness that bites deep and painful, and he thinks that if he tries to jolt himself awake--or to move at all--he will spiral down beneath the surface into agony deeper than he can endure.
But he doesn’t have a choice. The one point of clear, concrete sensation is the cold, clammy feel of his watch imprinted against the palm of his hand, still clutched tight around it. He can hear nothing over his own ephemeral state of being, but it doesn’t matter.
He knows the watch is screaming.
He cannot hear it. Lois cannot hear it. Trask will not hear it. Only one man in the entire world will hear it, a frequency unique to only him.
“Don’t worry,” Clark had told him dryly, sitting next to him in their first hiding place, a small house in some middle-class city James can’t even remember the name of (they weren’t there long enough for it to matter). “Whatever wave-length it uses, it slices through everything else. I heard it in Smallville even when the Kryptonite was right next to me.”
“Are you sure you want me to have it?” James remembers asking. If he concentrates just a bit, floating on this sea of painful nothingness, he can almost convince himself this moment is real and present. Can all but feel the words forming and leaving his mouth. “Maybe your parents should--”
“No.” Clark had looked him straight in the eye, seeing him. Caring. “Unless you want to leave, Jimmy, you’re family now, always. And if you really intend on working with the Foundation, you’re going to be the one that’s out there the most, maybe sometimes where I won’t be able to find you easily. I’m not saying we can’t eventually get a couple for Mom and Dad, but right now…right now, I want you to have it. It’s yours, and I’m afraid you’re going to need it. Please, Jimmy--it’ll make me feel better if you wear it.”
James had smiled at him (because this worn down stranger he’d found was still CK; because Clark still needed some smiles in his life; because James didn’t think it was possible to spend any amount of time in Clark’s presence without learning how to smile all over again). “All right. But call me James, okay? I’ve been thinking of switching over anyway, and now seems as good a time as any.”
Clark’s never called him Jimmy again (still listening to the young kid tagging along after him; still listening and hearing and acting on what he hears). James is glad. He doesn’t want to be Jimmy again, doesn’t want to be weak and young and naïve and so easily led around that he couldn’t save CK from that story even though he’d known about it beforehand. He wants (needs) to be James, competent and strong and bold enough to stand up for what’s right before it all turns wrong. (Needs to be James because in a world where there is no free CK, there isn’t the luxury of an innocent Jimmy, happy and carefree, either.) And he needs to be James because Jimmy and James are both people Clark listens to, but only one of those two is someone who can make others listen too.
Jimmy would be able to float on this surface detachment and avoid the pain of waking up. James, though, is better than that. He has more depending on him than a tiny, cluttered apartment and a mom out of state. He is strong enough to hear the shrieking of a watch humming beneath his fingers and know that Clark will need him to hold on for just a while more.
Intense, serrated pain knifes through his shoulder when he moves, clear enough to jerk his eyes open to the same dim, depressing setting they’d closed on. Lois is huddled against his side, small and scared, but tight-jawed, narrow-eyed, all grim resolution and indomitable spirit.
He was so disappointed and angry with her that he’d thought he’d hate her forever, but sometimes…sometimes he sees in her what keeps Clark so captivated.
“James?” Lois whispers, as if afraid to look at him and realize he’s not actually awake.
“I-I’m here,” he grits out through wooden lips, rubber tongue, frozen throat. He feels feverish-bright, jangling with the intensity of over-saturation brought on by sickly sensitive nerves, and he knows he will not last for much longer. Trask and his ham-fisted men were not gentle when they held him down and poured alcohol over his shoulder and pushed stitches through his skin; his arm was not ready for the splint to come off and still grumbles discontentedly about the frantic way he’d ripped and torn at it to reach his watch with his sluggish arm; his head still pounds and thrums with the echoes of the blow that sent him spiraling into unconsciousness.
In short, he’s a mess attached to a ticking time-bomb (drawing closer to his final detonation with every drop of blood sliding free of his flesh). All he can control now is letting Lois know about the signal screaming out for Superman.
But how?
He’s no longer naïve enough to believe that Trask isn’t watching them, listening in for any indication that they are calling (or not calling, as that is probably Trask’s greatest fear right now) for Superman. James is calling for him, but he and Clark have used the watch enough by now to have a system worked out.
“Use it, always,” Clark had ordered, the only thing he’s ever demanded of James in return for being included in his life (for not being shut out in that colossal silence that had swallowed everyone else up). He’d been carrying James to one of his doctor friends from his wandering days, and James had been too weary, too scared, to explain why he hadn’t used the watch (to finally tell Clark once and for all how much the older man meant to him and how James could not bear to ever put that in danger). But Clark had known anyway, and so he’d made James promise as they’d flown away from the British man with the smooth, sinister voice and white goatee and calm threats.
“I don’t care if they have Kryptonite or not,” Clark had said, and his voice had shaken, his jaw clenched tight so that the words almost could not emerge. “No matter what, just use the watch. I’ll be careful--I won’t go in without looking first and scouting around. But call me. I’d rather know where you are than be stuck searching endlessly.”
Later, when James was feeling better and all patched up (when the wound was nothing more than another scar to add to his growing collection, badges of honor, marks to show that Clark didn’t have to be the one to take every bullet for their small family), he’d sat Clark and the Kents down and they had developed a few rules and extracted a few promises of their own from Clark.
James only hopes that Clark remembers those promises now, in his growing isolation and his certain panic. He only hopes (as seconds tick away and he feels colder and colder) that Clark doesn’t blame himself too badly for any of what happens here today.
(James only hopes he can forgive himself for dying without fulfilling his promise to bring Clark Kent back to the world; to give the world back to Clark Kent.)
“Lois,” he whispers, trying to push past gauzy shock and shimmering agony, trying to remember how to be clever and sly (how to pass on messages in coded terms).
But his time has run out, in more ways than one.
The door shudders with the force of approaching footsteps (booted and implacable), then shakes as a lock clicks and a bar is removed (even hinges pried off and thrown aside wouldn’t have helped, and James adds another hopes to his growing pile: that Lois realizes this and doesn’t feel too badly anymore for the paltry results of her desperate efforts).
Then it opens.
Trask steps in.
He is arrogant enough to enter alone, smart enough to keep his hand tucked near his sidearm, and insane enough to scare James even past the clogging, cloying apathy seeping through his veins in an effort to replace his life-blood.
“I told you I wouldn’t let you die,” Trask says, and jerks his hand.
More black-uniformed soldiers enter. Lois looks small and thin (as fragile as the strength of an alter ego; as deceptively strong as the power of a name) when they haul her to her feet. He thinks she is going to say something, thinks she will denounce Trask to his face--and maybe she does.
James doesn’t know.
Two soldiers grab his arms and yank him up and the whole world dissolves into sheets of white-hot fire sluicing down his skin, swallowed up by raging, methodical drumbeats pounding him into submission, originating from his right shoulder and his left arm. If he were still thinking coherently, if any kind of cohesion were left to him at all, he would have felt the world disappearing as he blacks out for a second (a moment; an eternity; not nearly long enough).
*
He had found Clark more by sheer dumb luck than anything else, starting in Smallville and moving out in concentric circles, sleeping in ditches and eating at soup kitchens, searching hotel databases for any aliases that strike him as familiar (because Superman might not need to sleep, but his aging parents will surely need a warm place to rest). It was not the alias that seemed familiar, but the initials: CK. Right there, staring back at him, and Jimmy had rushed to knock at the door.
There’d been no answer. Not that it mattered; Jimmy was even better than Lois at picking locks.
When he’d burst into the room, Clark had been standing in front of his parents. He’s Superman--all impossible physique, incredible powers, and innate confidence--but he had looked sick, then, and haunted and so very, very weary. Clark had sagged in relief at the sight of Jimmy, and his parents had reached out to catch him, as if they were afraid he would vanish right in front of them if they did not constantly hold onto him.
“CK!” Jimmy had exclaimed (and to this day, he is incandescent with relief that out of everything he could have chosen to say, that is what burst out first). “I’ve been looking all over for you!”
“Why?” Clark had asked. Later, James will realize that Clark was not as suspicious as he should have been simply because Jimmy had called him CK, not Superman. Later, he will think back and realize that Clark was so tired and so frantic and so devastated that he had not been thinking clearly. But in that moment, he was simply glad to have his friend.
“Because,” Jimmy had said, “I wanted to say I was sorry. For what they did to you. For not warning you. I told them it was wrong, but they wouldn’t listen to me. I…I did try, CK. I’m just…really, really sorry that it wasn’t enough.”
The Kents had smiled at him. Clark hadn’t, not a real smile (he didn’t smile for weeks, for months, until just before Nightfall when he wanted to reassure them that he would be fine and had smiled to mask his own terror, oblivious to the fact that they could see right through him), but the line of his shoulders had eased and he had sagged down into a nearby chair.
“It’s enough for me,” he told Jimmy, and Jimmy had smiled wide enough for the both of them.
They’d had to move the next day (because James isn’t the only one who can recognize a pair of familiar initials). Jimmy had been afraid they would leave him behind until Jonathan pulled him to his feet and Martha said Clark could fly him to the next location after her and before Jonathan. As easily as that, he’d been part of the unit. Part of the team. Part of the family.
“I promise I’ll never let you down again,” he told Clark when they’d arrived at their next hiding place, a bit more long-term, helped along with a few fake IDs Jimmy had hacked into the local DMV to procure for them.
Clark had turned and looked him in the eye (and there are no shadows under Clark’s eyes, because physical weakness doesn’t show up on his strong, smooth, deceptive exterior, but there were enough shadows in his eyes, in the memories dancing there in silver and brown, to make up for it). “Don’t do this because you feel guilty,” he’d said, very seriously. “If you want to help me, do it for a better reason. Do it for my parents--they don’t deserve this. Out of everyone in the world, they don’t deserve this kind of life.”
“All right,” James had agreed (and known that none of the Kents deserved any of this). “I’ll do it for them. I’ll do it for you. I’ll do it because it’s the right thing to do.”
That was the closest Clark had come to a smile, something easing in his expression. Until Jimmy had added, “Besides, I know whose fault this is--Lois’s. She’s the one who wrote the article and convinced the chief to write it.”
Clark had gone cold and still, so remote that, for the first time, he’d seemed alien.
“I can’t believe she did it,” he’d said, and his voice had shaken with repressed emotion. “I just…I don’t understand. How could she do this to me? Or to my parents? I thought…I thought she at least cared for Superman.”
Jimmy had hesitated, but back then, he’d been a boy and hadn’t known when to keep his mouth shut. “Maybe that made it worse,” he’d said, thinking out loud. “Maybe it made her even madder when she discovered the truth.” He’d paused, then asked, “How did she discover the truth?”
“I think Trask must have told her,” Clark had said, looking away. “I think she knew since Smallville. I guess Godzilla wasn’t enough to teach her the lesson I wanted her to learn, Jimmy.”
And Jimmy, who had blamed Lois and resented her but until that moment had still thought there must be some reasonable explanation, had suddenly and with a passion that took him aback absolutely hated Lois Lane.
Because Clark had almost smiled until he remembered Lois, and then he’d been angry and harsh and bitter (and so very, very un-Clark-like when all Jimmy wanted to do was find and protect CK).
Because Clark had been good and decent and friendly, and now, after Lois, he was hurt and haunted and destroyed.
Because Jimmy had liked her, and now he knew firsthand how awful it felt to be betrayed.
(And he was oh so scared, because he was so much more like Lois than he was like Clark, and who was to say he would not turn out the same way? Who was to say that one day it would not be him who made Clark go so remote? Who was to say that Jimmy would not destroy Lois as easily and thoroughly as she had destroyed Clark?)
“Maybe not,” was all he’d said aloud, though, wanting Clark to ease and relax and maybe almost smile again. “But I learned every lesson I needed to, CK, and all of it was thanks to Godzilla.”
*
He only becomes aware again when he feels Lois’s bloody, blessedly cool fingers on his face, supporting his head, and he hears her, as righteously angry, as fiercely defensive (as admirable and beautiful) as she used to be (his champion and hero and idol; his lifeline in a world of competitive business that swept him up in its wake), in a time so removed that sometimes he all but forgets he ever had another life, another name.
“If you want him to live, you need to help him!” she is saying, her voice like a warm blanket placed just over his head and body to shield him from the stinging rain of harsh reality. “Please! He needs medical help, Trask!”
“How convenient,” Trask sneers. “That’s just what I’m going to give him.”
That sounds decidedly sinister enough that James once more rises from the ashes of Jimmy to pry his eyes open. What he sees is not encouraging in the least.
A grungy room, concrete walls and tiny grated window, very similar to the one they’d just left, only this one contains a thin, narrow hospital bed surrounded by curtains and an IV stand and a table full of tools James can’t bring himself to focus on. In short, it looks like a set straight out of those cheesy horror films he used to like to watch and laugh at. (He’s not laughing now.)
This cannot be good. In fact, it can only be bad.
“What is this?” Lois demands. If she is afraid, she hides it well. James hears only imperative curiosity and haughty disdain.
“This,” Trask says with a grand sweep of his arm, “is a message. A message for that alien that Earth is not his playground and that if any more of his kind come, we have ways to keep them…distant.” He squats, bringing himself close, so close that Lois tightens her grip on James to keep him upright when he flinches away from the aura of rampant madness circling Trask. “And you two,” he says, calmly, casually, “are going to send that message for me, just to drive it home.” He stands and moves back, jerking his head toward his men. “Do the kid first.”
Really? James thinks. Kid? Still? Don’t they ever get tired of that? Granted, his suit jacket and tie and even shirt are all long gone by now, but he’s wearing the suit pants and the stupid loafers and he’s had a haircut in the past couple weeks--when are they all going to get the message that he’s not a kid? He’s relatively certain these are his last moments, after all; doesn’t that merit at least a bit of respect?
“James!” Lois calls, but she cannot hold onto him when they are dragging him away.
Pain possesses him inside and out, and even James is not strong enough to keep himself above its rising swell.
*
They had tried to stop Clark from going after Nightfall, but it was impossible, and they had known it even before they began.
“I have to go,” he’d said. “I can’t let that asteroid hit Earth, no matter what it takes.”
“I know,” Martha had finally said, her shoulders rounded in defeat, something dark and twisted and broken in her eyes (and it had scared James, to see that look there when nothing else thus far had managed to bend the Kents). “But don’t do this because you think you have to earn a place here.”
“You’re our son,” Jonathan had added, “and that’s more than enough to cement your place here.”
“Relax,” Clark had said, but how could they when he looked so old and resigned and scared? “I’m not doing this to earn anything. But there are a lot of lives at stake--the whole world. All Clark’s friends. You guys. Besides, it’s not like I have anywhere else to go.”
Later, James will realize he’d meant it as a joke. He’ll realize Clark was trying to lighten the mood. But all it had done then was remind them of just how much they had to lose.
The government knew the world was at stake (it was why they had hunted James down and cornered him and begged him to call Superman for them). The public didn’t even know that much (and if CK had his way, they never would). But James and the Kents were the only ones that knew that Clark’s life was on the line too.
They’d hugged Clark goodbye and pretended they didn’t feel how tightly he clung to them or how slowly he stepped away or how minutely his hands trembled as he accepted their last farewell touches. They’d watched him take off anyway (even though his eyes screamed his reluctance) and dwindle away to nothing (and they had pretended they weren’t watching history repeat itself, only with Superman this time rather than Clark Kent). They’d waited, tense and alert and terrified, for his return. Nothing on the news to help them, no word from the government because Clark hadn’t wanted them to have a way to contact his parents, and no sign of a red cape descending from the skies.
It had been the next night before James had seen the light flick on beneath Clark’s door, had thrown open the door and rushed in--and then stopped dead-still at the sight greeting him.
Clark hadn’t been standing there as he had been the last time James had burst into a room to see him.
He hadn’t been scared and haunted but still upright and protective.
He hadn’t been still strong and Superman.
It had been far, far worse.
Clark had been sprawled on the floor, a jumble of limbs and rags and wounds. His Suit was in tatters, his cape was nothing more than spare threads dangling from his collar, bruises and blood spattered his skin like it was paint on parchment, and his entire frame had been shaking with spasms. James, when he could finally move again, had fallen to his knees at Clark’s side; he’d tried to touch him, but it was impossible. Every time he got close, the tremors emanating from Clark’s body sent reverberations resounding through James’s frame, skipping through every one of his molecules. He’d called for help, screamed for the Kents, and they’d come in a flurry of worry and fear and relief, but it hadn’t mattered. Nothing they’d done had mattered.
Clark Kent was broken.
He’s the strongest man in the world, but still just a man, and Nightfall had been the last straw. The final act that sent him toppling over the brink and spiraling out into a place James couldn’t reach.
They’d been scared. So scared. He’d spent hours talking with the Kents (pretending their own paper-thin façade of calmness and certainty wasn’t completely transparent), trying to figure out what to do, how to help Clark, how to break through the detached aura of desperation clinging to him tighter than the Superman Suit. But there had been no solutions, no plans, no hacking that could help. They couldn’t touch him, couldn’t find the right words to reach him, couldn’t save him no matter how they all tried.
And then Lois’s searches had tripped his alarms, as if on cue.
James had known she’d been searching for him, but he’d had more important things to worry about, had shrugged it aside because there was no way she could track him down and Clark had needed him so much more than Lois Lane ever could.
But Clark had been messed up in some primal, deep way that frightened James (made him wake screaming and sweating from nightmares where Clark was nothing more than a mindless shell, grunting in monotones and blank-eyed and no longer able to listen to James’s words), and they were desperate.
So he’d gone to meet her, and discovered that Lois Lane could be just as broken, just as defective, just as hollow as Clark Kent.
Not that he’d cared at first. She was the enemy. The traitor. The villain of the story. The siren that had tempted Clark to try to find a solution to stay in one place and then had lured him to razor-sharp rocks and left him there to die, plucked apart piece by piece by vultures.
So what if the act had obviously gutted her too? So what if she clearly had her own nightmares and guilty conscience and scars?
They were nothing next to Clark’s.
James should know; he had sat at Clark’s bedside night after night and listened to him mutter about black space and aloof stars and massive asteroids. He’d sat there, night after night, and tried to calm him when he woke with suffocating, straining cries, afraid of being all alone and isolated once again (soothed him with only his voice because even touch was denied Clark, his somber, earnest brother who didn’t deserve this at all).
So he hadn’t felt sorry for Lois. He hadn’t worried about her, or about Perry, or about anything but Clark and the Kents (so tired all the time now, so old and worn and scared).
But there were no better ideas, nothing they could do, and so, eventually, they had told Clark.
“Lois Lane wants to see you,” James had said bluntly one night when Clark came back from his latest foray into the sunlight.
Clark had stilled (his hands trembling as always). His back was to them, his face to the night-dark windows, but James had seen his hands curl into fists.
“She wants closure,” he’d said, and he was pretty sure he was lying for her (or perpetuating her lie; complicit in her crime of deceiving herself), but it was all he could articulate. It had become so hard to find words at all when staring at Clark’s silent, shattered form. “She’s…she regrets how things ended last time, and I think she wants to clear the air.”
“Closure,” Clark had repeated, and it was nearly the first word he’d spoken since waking up in the ruins of his bed after a particularly bad spasm (“What’s wrong with me?” was what he’d asked then, and the memory of that helpless, trapped voice coming from CK is still enough to send chills up and down James’s spine). “She wants to see me?”
James had hesitated, but he was already lying too much (had already dug himself too deep). “Yes.”
“Closure,” Clark had said again, his voice almost wondering. “I…I had thought that chapter of my life was over, but…but maybe it would be good to finally ask…” He’d trailed off.
“Clark,” Martha had said, her own voice tightly controlled (she’d been the one most vehemently set against this, the one siding with James when he’d listed the possible consequences of this decision). “I know you’re angry with her, but--”
“I’m not.” Clark had finally turned to face them, his mouth curved in what James thinks was meant to be a reassuring smile. It looked like an abstract drawing, impossible to interpret, strangely arresting. “I was for a while, yes, but…but I realized that I didn’t want to be angry forever. I didn’t want that moment to define me. Besides, I’m the one who tried to deceive her, even knowing how good she is at her job. And I didn’t exactly ask her whether she wanted to partner with the man hiding the biggest secret in the world. With an alien.”
Martha and Jonathan had both chimed in then, full of denials and reassurances and remonstrances. But James had watched Clark, dazed and clearly not hearing a word, and he’d known (had known from the moment he stepped off a plane onto New Mexico land; the moment he entered a too-hot diner and saw a thin, fragile woman who nonetheless unaccountably dominated the space she occupied) that it was too late.
“Yes,” Clark had said, looking straight at James. “Yes, I’ll see her. Whatever happens, it can’t be worse than things already are, right? So, yes.”
And that had been that. With one meeting, one question, one word, Lois Lane was back in their lives.
And James still can’t decide if it is for the best or not.
*
He’d blacked out again, he realizes, but for not nearly long enough, because they’re slapping his face, jostling him back and forth as they slam him down onto the hospital bed and tie restraints across his torso, his arms, his legs. There’s no way to keep his hand on the watch trigger, no way to keep that signal shrieking out into the night skies as a homing beacon for Clark. No way to keep trying and hoping and planning and pretending to be more than he is for Clark’s sake (for his own sake, too, because it’s nice to feel needed even when he knows he’s really the one who’s needed Clark all along).
A part of James is gibbering in fear, protesting and denying and bargaining and begging, but he locks all that away beneath calm detachment and sarcastic thoughts about the word ‘kid.’ He wants to give into his fear (so strong, so overwhelming, that he nearly doesn’t have a choice in the matter), but things are not so easy anymore. Clark might be here already, might be outside scouting the place, searching for weaknesses, counting the obstacles, looking through walls or listening for other clues if there is (as seems likely) too much lead in the way.
Watching. Listening. Aware of all that’s going on.
Biding his time.
And James will not break, will not cave, will not give into his fear and sob and beg for his life. He will not be the reason Clark’s compassion overwhelms his common sense and makes him barge in unprepared. He will not be the weak link that causes Clark to put himself in danger. (Or, if things go as badly as it seems they will, he will not let Clark’s last memories of him be of terror and pain and hopelessness, goads to drive CK further into Superman, away from Clark Kent.)
And if CK is not here yet at all, well then, James still will not let himself reveal to either Trask or Lois just how weak and helpless he truly is.
So he doesn’t fight (because all his will-power is turned to pretending to a calmness he holds onto only by the skin of his teeth), doesn’t speak (because if he unlocks his jaw, he thinks he might start begging and pleading), doesn’t do anything to stop Trask (because it is so much better that whatever Trask plans to do is done to James, who does not have much time left on his countdown anyway, than to Lois, who is still alive and fighting; who has vowed to do everything in her considerable power to save Clark Kent; who has already done more to bring back Clark’s smile in a few months than James and the Kents have managed in twice that time).
“You do realize Superman is going to find us, don’t you?” Lois asks.
Trask sneers. “Of course. I’m counting on it. I haven’t waited all this time as those dumb sheep out there accept this alien scout in our midst just to falter here at the finish line. Don’t worry, though--we’ll have time to finish up here before he arrives.”
James squeezes his eyes shut to block out the lights swinging back and forth over his head. It works, though it simply makes the whole room swirl about him instead. He’s tempted to just let the world fade away from him altogether in dizzying darkness. That’s the easy option. The harder route (the one Clark would take, and so the one James must choose) is to cling to consciousness and stay attuned to the voices that continue to move, in pointed contrast to the circles the room is taking him through, in linear form.
“You can’t know that,” Lois is saying, defiantly (of course, James thinks, taking comfort in the familiarity of it all).
“There are always people willing to stand up against an enemy so alien to us,” Trask says. Gloats, really, as if he has waited (for decades) to be applauded and vindicated for his ravening paranoia. “A few tracers--operating at a frequency Superman will hear only after an extended amount of exposure to them--attached to those human traitors he calls parents, and I think he’ll be distracted for long enough. He’ll stick around to protect them, never knowing who’s really in danger.”
“What kind of message involves all of that?”
At that expressive but uninformative question, James risks opening his eyes. He wishes he hadn’t. He could very easily have done without the image of a white-coated man (as bulky and muscled and clearly trained as every other soldier in Trask’s little bureau) coming forward to hook a bag full of noxiously green liquid to the IV stand. He closes his eyes again, quickly, but that doesn’t negate the feel of someone clamping at his broken arm to swab at the inside of his elbow. James rides the resulting ripples of bone-deep, knife-sharp agony to a place where he can’t focus on what else (poisonous and deadly and so heavily foreboding) gleams as eerily green as that IV bag.
“There’s one thing that can hurt that wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Trask says from somewhere far away. “What is it you called it, Lane? Kryptonite?”
There is a sharp, punctured silence (punctuated by the sounds of the man hovering over James doing things James refuses to contemplate). Finally, Lois says, in a hollow voice, “You can’t know that. I didn’t write that. I never told anyone about that!”
“I know.” Trask sounds suddenly less pompous and more sinister. “A somewhat glaring omission from an article that was supposedly meant to be the tell-all about the creature known as Superman.”
James is afraid. He is wounded more deeply than he thinks it is possible to recover from. He is nauseous and impatient and desperate. He is hazy and uncertain and fading. But no matter how much the room spins, he cannot keep himself from speaking (cannot help but respond, fiercely, when anyone calls Clark Kent, CK, a creature). “A tell-all,” he forces through lips he clamps tight in an effort to keep from stuttering. “You said it yourself, Trask--everyone knows he’s an alien and can pass as one of us, but they’ve accepted him anyway. Not quite the reaction you expected.”
And for all the complaints James has about the way the world treats Clark, the way they use him, this one thing is true. The world does accept Superman. They do love him (maybe too much, a devouring love that obliterates Clark Kent entirely).
Trask, however, doesn’t feel the same. His brows lower, his eyes black and hard, like chips of hatred frozen in place to pierce the bits of light struggling to survive in the dour surroundings. “Fools,” he spits. “They think that just because he flashes some bright colors and saves a few individuals he’s on our side. He’s a very good PR man, I’ll give him that, but all we need to strip away that illusion of humanity he hides behind is one simple message. No matter what he looks like on the outside, he’s an alien on the inside. He doesn’t belong here. And how better to illustrate that fact than if the two most high-profile people on his side--the human PR he’s recruited for himself--suddenly can’t stand to be near him? If you…simply…make him sick. A bit of proximity and he’ll be powerless. A bit more and he’s hurt. A touch”--Trask hovers close over James, his hand a hair’s breadth from James’s forehead--“and who knows? Maybe death can strike even the most godlike of individuals.”
“Death?” Lois repeats, but James can’t concentrate on anything but the immense shadow silhouetted by the glow of poisoned emerald. The shadow of hatred and bigotry and death so massive, so intrinsic, that it is impossible to fight. The glow of a weapon so poisonous that Clark’s brows tighten whenever it’s brought up.
“Death,” Trask says again, like it’s a whisper of some promised land. “In one stroke, we will both prove to all those gullible fools out there that Superman is anathema to everything we are, and also send an inarguable message that we do not accept his presence here on our world. We will not meekly bow the knee to him, no matter how superior he thinks he is.”
“A god complex?” James gasps. “I don’t think you’re talking about Superman anymore, Jason Trask. It seems to me that that flaw is illustrated a lot closer to home.”
Trask’s lips quirk upward in a facsimile of a smile. “Maybe. But if so, it is only because I am all that stands between this planet and utter destruction.” He looks away from James, as if he suddenly ceases to matter (as if he has suddenly reverted to Jimmy again), and up to the white-coated man. “Do it,” he orders.
James’s heart tries to explode from his chest, his hands start struggling against the restraints tying him down--and Lois steps between him and Trask’s henchman.
“You want someone to give a death’s touch to Superman?” she asks, so calmly it rings preternatural in the darkness. “Then why go for James first? He doesn’t even look like he’s going to make it, but more than that…don’t you think I’d be a better fit?”
“The kid is the one the alien takes with him everywhere,” Trasks points out matter-of-factly.
Lois’s back, all that James can see, is stiff, as rigid as James’s resolve. “Sure, but how close do you think he gets to Superman? You think he can get closer to Superman than I can? I’ve already destroyed the alien once--I can do it again, and much more effectively than James can.”
Trask mulls it over, then shrugs. “Fine. You can go first. It doesn’t really matter--both of you are going to have the procedure done.” He steps closer to Lois (to James), looming over her. “And don’t think I don’t remember the first time I held you captive. You had a last request then, too, and thought you could use it to escape. This time, if I throw you out of a plane, Superman won’t be able to catch you without dropping like a fly himself.”
The restraints are being loosened, someone’s grabbing his arms, lifting him up and away, and Lois is lying down on the cot of her own free will, and James still cannot comprehend what is happening.
“Lois. Lois, what are you doing?” he mutters.
Impossibly, she seems to hear him. Looks over at him. Smiles a small, sad smile. “It’s okay, James,” she says. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
And then she looks down at his wrist. At the watch circling it.
She looks up. Smiles again. And then goes limp, surrendering herself to the white-coated soldier.
“Lois!” James calls. He tries to struggle, but Trask bats him aside. He tries to fight his way up, but the ground is spiraling away. He tries to protest, to make the switch, to save Lois because he’s the one already dying and he’s the one who’s expendable and he’s the one who’s supposed to step between CK and the next bullet…but he cannot move. He cannot speak. He cannot think.
He is, as always, too little and too late.
*
