Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
HerePart 218Part 219Lois climbed up the stairs to her apartment. She had lost count how many staircases she had scaled that evening. Why did she live so high up again?
Right. Safety. Higher floors typically had fewer crimes.
How come when the power went out in Metropolis and she could use a lift, her flying boyfriend…
Lois sighed. Finishing that stupid thought was pointless.
Clark constantly disappeared whenever Metropolis had an emergency. That was what was so terrific about him. Superman was always there for the people of Metropolis, which meant that he couldn’t always be there for Lois. Why shouldn’t messed up traffic signals, the Internet, the phones, and then the power being interrupted be counted as an emergency? It certainly was to Lois’s aching feet.
Why had she thought these new shoes would be a good idea for today?
Molly never showed up at the bar last night. Of course, Lois arguing with the guards at Fort Truman and being threatened with the stockade hadn’t made her the most punctual of people, but Molly was an old friend. She
had to remember that Lois wasn’t always on time, right?
Lois had just sent her ATAS follow-up story to Perry and was talking to Molly on the phone when the lines were cut. Molly had been saying something about needing to meet Lois when the phones died. After Clark pointed out during his all-too-brief visit to the office this afternoon that the terrorist was quoting Molly’s anti-technology book directly, Lois doubted her friend would show.
The empty closets at Molly’s bookstore apartment seemed to corroborate that theory.
Molly had been a good friend back in college. How could she have gone from hard-working computer programmer to terrorist? It just didn’t compute.
Then, again, how many times in college had Lois rallied against the institution of marriage and how impossible it was for any man to commit himself to one woman for his entire life? Men were just predestined, biologically and evolutionarily, to cheat she had used to say, especially after Paul had dumped her for Linda. If Molly knew how implicitly Lois trusted Clark’s loyalty, she would probably be saying that Lois seemed like a completely different person, too.
Lois and Clark weren’t even considering marriage, though. Well, Lois wasn’t. They could have a lifelong relationship without pomp and ceremony, couldn’t they? This was the 1990s after all.
Not for the first time, the idea that Clark had created his abstinence vow in order to pressure Lois into marrying him crossed her mind. She quickly dismissed it. Clark just wasn’t the type of guy to withhold sex to get a lifetime commitment out of her. It was an idiotic plan no man would ever contemplate. It was well known that women had more patience for abstinence than men did. Actually, Lois was using this strategy to lower Clark’s defenses and it had gotten them to second base. She smiled fondly at the memory of last Sunday morning.
Then, again, Clark had mentioned on more than one occasion that planning wasn’t his strong suit.
She shook this thought out of her head.
Clark couldn’t be
that much of a lunkhead.
Finally, Lois reached the top floor of her apartment building. She opened the stairwell door and shone the flashlight up and down the hall. It seemed quiet. She guessed many people had taken this opportunity to go to bed early. She would have to make a note on her calendar to see how many blackout babies were born next August; although, that seemed more the type of fluff piece Clark liked to write. She would put a note on
his calendar.
She doubted she would see Clark before morning. She hoped he wasn’t spreading himself too thin.
Stopping in front of her apartment door, Lois glanced around. It was dark, too dark.
She hoped she would be able to sleep with all this eerie darkness. It almost didn’t feel like Metropolis.
When she finally got her door open, Lois caught sight of something moving inside her apartment. “Who’s there?” she asked, pointing her flashlight ahead of her. All she saw was that one of her windows was wide open and her curtains were blowing in the cool late night breeze like ghosts.
Maybe Clark had come by after all.
She took a step into her apartment.
Where was he?
It wasn’t like Clark to leave her window open, let alone wide open, even if was he rushing out to an emergency. Actually, he had been adamant about her double-checking that her windows were locked whenever she left.
Lois moved the beam of her flashlight around the room as she backed towards the window in order to shut and lock it, but nothing jumped out of the shadows.
Had she forgotten to check the windows this morning?
A noise from behind her caused her to jump, and was her only indication that she wasn’t alone. She swung around to see someone lying passed out on the floor just past her window. As Lois approached the body, her shoe slipped on something slick, twisting her ankle.
Terrific, she thought.
Just what I need.Lois focused her attention back on the body, limping closer in order to examine it.
A hand appeared out of the shadows, knocked the flashlight from her hand, as another pushed her out the window and into the dark night.
***
Lois’s voice screamed in the darkness.
Superman dropped the assailant on the roof of the nearest police precinct and rushed to find her, only Lois had stopped screaming by the time he started his search. Despite this, her voice, her fear and racing heartbeat, still echoed in his ears.
He sped past the Daily Planet, but a quick scan told him that she wasn’t there. The next second, he headed to her apartment. With a sinking feeling, he found her window wide open as well as her front door, but no one was there.
An annoyed groan led him down several stories to the building’s flagpole. Holding on for dear life was Lois. The strap of her briefcase had thankfully caught on the end of the pole and she was currently hugging said pole both with her arms and with her legs.
“Hi,” Superman said, lowering himself down to hover next to her.
“Hi,” Lois replied casually, as if she often hung from flag poles for sport.
He crossed his arms. Was she really so stubborn that she wasn’t going to ask for his assistance? “I know you probably have everything under control…”
“I’m glad you noticed,” she snapped.
Okay, if that was the way she wanted to play it. “Have you eaten dinner?” he asked.
“No,” she replied. “The phones are down and all the restaurants and grocery stores on the way home closed early due to the blackout.”
He nodded in understanding. Of course, Lois wouldn’t have real food at her apartment.
When she didn’t say anymore, he rubbed his chin and asked, “May I ask what you’re doing?”
“Star gazing,” Lois replied wryly. “I can see them much better from here.” She shifted her gaze away from him as if to notice that she really could see the stars above the city now that the lights were out. “I never knew there were so many stars above Metropolis.”
He was tempted to remind Lois that, for the most part, the stars above Metropolis were the same ones they had seen while in Kansas. “Sounds as if we need to go flying more often.”
“I’d like that,” she said. She was quiet for a moment. “Can you do me a favor?”
Superman couldn’t stop the edges of his lips from curving upwards. “Anything.”
“Could you toss these shoes in the next fire you see?”
The smile fell from his face. “Pardon?”
“They are the most uncomfortable shoes ever. Plus, they caused me to twist my ankle.”
Of course, it was the shoes’ fault. “I see,” he replied, looking down at her ankles. One of them was visibly starting to swell. It was the same ankle she twisted while at the Sewage Treatment Plant.
Yet, Lois was determined never to ask him for assistance.
“That must hurt,” he went on.
“It does,” she admitted. “But the cool night air helps.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“What does a woman have to do around here to get your help?” she finally inquired.
“Ask for it,” he replied, still waiting.
“Ha!” she scoffed. “I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction of saying ‘octopus’.”
Grinning, he scooped her into his arms and flew her up to her apartment.
“That doesn’t count!” Lois exclaimed as he set her down inside.
Sure it did. She said it, after all.
Lois didn’t let go of his arms once her feet were on the ground, though. He was okay with that. His heart was only starting to slow down from the adrenaline rush her terrified scream had caused. Personally, he was happy to hold her in his arms for the rest of the night… rescues not included.
“Someone pushed me out the window,” she admitted after another minute.
Without moving, Clark looked around her apartment. “Whoever it was is now long gone.”
Lois stared a spot on her floor next to them. “There was a body there.”
He followed her gaze to her bare carpet. Propping her against her loveseat, he examined the area of the floor more closely. He picked up a rock and a postcard, handing them to Lois.
“This is Molly’s!” Lois exclaimed, handing him back the rock to examine, which he now realized was a pendant. “She was wearing it when we stopped by her store yesterday.”
“Do you think she pushed you out the window to stop you from linking her to the blackout?” he asked.
“No,” she said slowly, shaking her head and holding up the postcard. “This is from her.”
He read the card aloud. “‘You’re right. I should’ve listened to you.’”
Lois gave him a satisfied look. “It’s nice that you finally admit it.”
He pressed his lips together. “I was reading,” he said, nodding down to the postcard. “How does Molly telling someone – not necessarily you – that he or she is right
not link her to the blackout terrorist quoting her book?”
“Obviously, she’s being set up, Clark…”
His eyes widened. They might be in the privacy of Lois’s apartment; however, they both knew that Lois’s apartment was anything but private, especially after someone had just broken in.
“As Clark would say,” Lois corrected after a brief pause to take a deep breath and perhaps roll her eyes. “Framed, just as you were, when people blamed you for the heat wave last November or for jumping the gun on destroying the Nightfall asteroid. If Molly were really the one turning off Metropolis’s technology, she would be smart enough not to quote her own highly unread book. Someone must know that we’ve read Molly’s book and wants us to believe it’s her.” She waved the postcard in his face. “That narrows down that someone to Ryan!”
The leaps of Lois’s logic astounded him sometimes, usually for the canyon length gaps.
“Or maybe your friend Molly is the culprit and she’s trying to up her book sales by pretending she was framed. She could be trying to deflect blame off herself by dropping this card. How do you know it’s from her anyway? It’s not signed. It might not even be
for you.”
Lois hobbled around her loveseat and sat down on it. “If you want me to prove the obvious, Superman, the least you could do is be helpful.” She lifted up her foot and set it on a cushion.
He crossed his arms and waited.
She pursed her lips. “How was your day?”
They stared at each other for a moment before he walked over to her front door and shut it, locking all the locks. “I’m buying you a metal bar to prop up against this door next.”
“Oh, please! Those are so 1970s. Anyway, they came in through the window,” she retorted, flipping her hand back towards the open window. “Didn’t you lock it the last time you left?”
“Didn’t you?” he returned. It was impossible for him to lock it from the outside and she was supposed to check that it was locked before leaving her apartment.
“Fine. Neither of us are the blame,” she said, which was her way of saying that they were both responsible or at least, she refused to take sole possession of it.
“I don’t know why you’re being so snippy with me, Lois. It’s not as if I asked
you to wear a bulletproof vest, though we both know you could use it more than…”
Lois interrupted, “Like that would’ve really helped tonight.”
Okay. She had him there.
“And I would think,” she went on. “That someone who had already been forced once to be Superman full time would want to protect his human side better, so it wouldn’t happen again.”
That was twice.
He couldn’t really afford for her to be right a third time at the moment, so, he held up a finger. “Hold that thought.”
She waved him off. “Go!”
He zipped out the window, shutting it as he went. He flew to brightly lit Gotham City, which was saying a lot about Metropolis’s blackout. When he returned, he came in via her front door as Clark. First, he knocked.
“Whoever it is, I’m not getting up, so unless you have keys, you’re screwed,” Lois called out to him.
Clark chuckled to himself. He had brought his keys. Opening the door, he tossed Lois a bag as he turned to lock up. After securing the locks on her door, he latched the windows for good measure.
“What’s this?” she asked, peering inside the bag. “Ooooh, tacos!”
He brought out two glasses of water from the kitchen. “You really do need to stock up on staples.”
“I have some. They’re in my desk.”
“Food staples,” he mumbled, knowing she was funning with him. He lifted up her foot and sat down under it. He turned her ankle back and forth before lightly caressing it with his fingers. “So, how did this happen?” he asked, blowing an icy breeze onto it.
“I slipped on Molly’s card,” she explained, her mouth full of taco. It came out more like, ‘Ah hipped om Olly’s kar.’
“Explains why it was under your table,” he replied, before pointing to the bag. “The burrito is mine.”
Lois pulled it out and handed it over to him. She continued to stare as he tore off a corner of the packaging and took a bite.
“What?”
“I’ve never seen you eat without washing your hands first,” she said with a shake of her head. “I guess it doesn’t matter.”
He looked down at her foot still lying in his lap. She did know that Earth germs couldn’t hurt him, right? Still… That was three times she had been right in less than half an hour.
“Ooops,” he said instead of saying the statistics aloud. He set the burrito down on her coffee table and heat-visioned off any germs on his hands. “Satisfied?”
She shrugged.
He decided to change the subject back to the matter at hand, as he picked up his dinner again. “So, you think that Ryan has set up Molly to be the fall guy for some elaborate scheme he has going on?”
“Seems plausible to me. I knew he was bad news from the beginning.”
“But why do it in the first place? You said Ryan was a computer engineer, too. Molly didn’t turn off technology until after it apparently killed her boyfriend. What’s his motive?”
“Well, it focuses everyone’s attention onto other things than what we were thinking about yesterday.” She slapped her leg. “The ATAS demonstration! Ryan must want us to forget that we saw him there.”
“This seems like overkill if he only wanted to distract you from the story that he faked his death, don’t you think?” he said slowly, taking another bite.
“The ATAS did almost kill General Marshall,” Lois reminded him.
“It would’ve been easier for Ryan to sneak into the Daily Planet and steal the negatives than rig this whole nightmare. Even that would be near impossible now that the soldiers from Fort Truman are patrolling the streets. Why kill the General anyway?”
She thought in silence while she chewed her next bite. “Maybe as payback for the General almost killing him while he worked on the Hawkeye?” she guessed.
Even for Lois’s brilliant mind that seemed a stretch. His expression told her that. There was only Colonel Fane’s word that Ryan was killed, let alone
almost killed. There wasn't any evidence that General Marshall was even involved.
“Then perhaps the General stood between Ryan and something he wanted badly enough to kill for.”
“The ATAS?” Clark wondered.
“Nah,” Lois discounted that suggestion. “The project is DOA after yesterday’s press demonstration.”
He conceded to this reasoning with a nod. “Perhaps he has a rival warrior robot, like Rourke did to Luthor’s Project Shock Wave.”
She sneered as if that idea literally stunk. “I doubt he could’ve developed one in only a year.”
“The base?”
“You mean, Fort Truman? I can’t picture him being militarily ambitious. Anyway, he’s legally dead. ”
Clark shrugged. “Perhaps it was something on the base. What projects besides the ATAS are they working on at Fort Truman right now that he could get access to with General Marshall on medical leave?”
“Who knows? I don’t work the military beat,” she said, dipping her hand back into the bag to retrieve another taco. “Well, since Colonel Fane worked on the Hawkeye Satellite project with Ryan and he’s General Marshall’s right hand man, and now temporarily running the base, I’m going to list the Hawkeye as asset number one.”
“Hasn’t the Hawkeye satellite already been launched?” Clark asked, taking another bite of his burrito.
“A couple of months ago, but it’s operated from Fort Truman,” Lois replied.
“Why would Ryan want control of a weapons satellite?” he asked.
“Because some guys think it’s cool to blow stuff up from space,” she said wryly. “Ryan was power-hungry back in college. If he faked his death, he’s probably more so by now.”
Clark sighed and tossed his burrito wrapper in the trash. He took a sip of his water before continuing. “If you’re right, any ideas on how we can stop him? It’s not as if we can just waltz onto the base.”
“We can’t, but Superman could,” Lois suggested.
“Superman could probably do a fly over and search for Ryan or Molly, as long as they aren’t located anywhere lead-lined, but Superman can’t enter a military base uninvited,” Clark explained.
“Why not? He’s Superman! He goes where the bad guys are, and if there are bad guys on Fort Truman…”
“Lois,” he gently interrupted, touching her arm. “Superman is all powerful. The military would view a visit from him as a hostile action, especially if he wasn’t invited. I wouldn’t want the regular Army siding with Bureau 39.”
“This will have to be a job for Lane and Kent, then!” Lois said with a decisive nod.
Clark shook his head. “Even if we could somehow sneak into Fort Truman, asking a bunch of questions is just going to end us up in the stockade.”
She patted his hand before setting her feet back on the floor to stand up. “Don’t worry, Chuck. I’ve got a plan!”
“
That’s what worries me,” he murmured.
***
Lois shaded her eyes as she stared at Superman… or that bluish red dot hovering in the early morning light above Fort Truman. She lifted her mobile phone to her ear as soon as it rang. “Anything?”
“It appears as if Molly is tied to a chair in some kind of control room,” Clark’s voice replied from the phone.
“See! I knew she was being scapegoated!” she declared. Her brow furrowed a moment as she pondered the possibility that wasn’t an actual verb. “Do you see Ryan or Fane?”
“Nope. She’s alone.”
“Okay. Well, they have to be around the base somewhere. Get down here; we’ll search for them on foot,” Lois replied.
“Get down,
where?” Clark responded moments before landing next to her. “Lois, I thought we agreed that you would stay at your apartment and rest your ankle.”
“I disagreed with your suggestion.”
He crossed his arms in his disapproving manner, as he looked her up and down. “Lois…”
“Do you remember how fond I was of Officer Elliot?” From the driver’s side of the jeep she borrowed, Lois picked up the uniform she had commandeered for him and pressed it against his chest. “He’s joined the Army.”
“You do know that it’s a Federal offense to impersonate a military officer, right?” he asked.
Lois looked down at her fatigues. “That’s why I’m enlisted.”
Clark groaned and took a step back to spin change when Lois raised her hand.
“Wait!” She reached into the back of the jeep and pulled out a thick black vest. “Don’t forget this.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” He looked at her skeptically.
“No. It would be just as easy for you to be shot by a soldier, more so since they regularly carry guns.” She nodded emphatically.
“Soldiers make it a point not to kill civilians or…” He glanced down at the uniform she had handed him. “— officers.” He held up the vest for her to take it back.
“Even civilians entering a base without permission?” she retorted, pushing the vest back at him.
He threw her an expression that he was doing this under protest before spinning out of his Superman Suit into the green uniform. Once again, he filled out this suit to perfection. Something about Clark in a uniform should be illegal, she decided, for causing distraction in the female population. At least, this one female person.
Lois straitened his tie and pulled him in for a kiss. “I can’t wait to take this off you later, Captain Kent.”
“That makes two of us,” he replied, lifting his hand to the nape of her neck. Then he removed her dangling earrings. He paused, looking sheepish, as he handed them over to her. “I mean…”
She knew what he meant, but that didn’t mean she wanted to hear it spelled out. “Just get in the jeep,” she ordered, slipping the earrings into her pocket.
Less than fifteen minutes later, she drove them up to one of the side gates of Fort Truman. “‘Protecting Our Skies’?” she pondered in a low murmur to Clark after saluting the guard with her correct hand. She didn’t know how exactly she knew it was the correct hand other than the fact that Clark didn’t point out any mistake. “I thought this was an Army base, not Air Force.”
“Perhaps they are referring to the Hawkeye program.”
“Superman protects the skies better than that thing,” she retorted. “Where was the Hawkeye when Nightfall loomed overhead?”
“It hadn’t been launched yet,” he reminded her.
“Exactly!” she said, pulling up the jeep in front of the base commander’s office. “Fane really did empty out the base of all the soldiers, didn’t he?”
Clark didn’t answer as he opened the door. “Strange that he left his office unlocked.”
Lois could hear the hum of electricity as soon as she entered. Never had anything sounded so good.
“They must have a generator on base,” he said as he went into the commander’s office.
Probably more than one, Lois thought. They would need it to be self-sufficient enough to continue to function off the grid during a national emergency.
The fax machine on the counter made a confirming beep and it was all Lois could do not to hug the thing. Instead, she gave it a soft caress. “I’ve missed you,” she murmured. Okay, not as much as her microwave, but she wasn’t going to tell it that. “Hey, I was told you were broken.” She pulled a recent fax out of the bottom of the machine and skimmed it. “Clark, check this out!”
He read aloud over her shoulder. “‘To the Joint Chiefs: Fort Truman has just been destroyed. The Hawkeye Satellite is now under our control. Like my book says, ‘Technology is killing us!’ Literally.’”
“Am I the only one who finds it ironic that someone who is anti-technology sent this message to the Joint Chiefs via fax?” she asked rhetorically. “If this isn’t a clue that Molly isn’t behind this I don’t know what would be.”
“What time is this supposed to be sent?” Clark asked.
“It’s set for nine o’clock. That’s fifteen minutes from now!” She nudged him. “Where did you see that command center?”
“It’s in a bunker. This way!” he said, leading her out of the office and off to the left.
***
“So, apparently,” Lois told Clark as they walked up the stairs to the bullpen in order to type up their story on manual typewriters. He had his arm wrapped around her waist, so that he was mainly carrying her up each step. “Molly
did try to meet me at the bar and
did come over to my apartment last night. After my fainting spell at her shop and my prediction that you were going to be shot…”
“Which hasn’t come true,” Clark reminded her, nudging her with his shoulder.
“Yet,” she corrected. “Anyway, it made her think I’m a bit psychic…”
“You are a bit psychic, Lois,” he said with another nudge.
“
I know that, and
you know that, but nobody else does. At least, not for certain, nor are they…” She stopped and placed her hand on his chest. “Ever!”
Clark smiled. “Our little secret.”
“Good. Molly put one and three together and decided that my intuition on Ryan being a scumbag – all those years ago – must have come from me being psychic; therefore, she should have trusted my judgment all along.” A satisfied grin slipped onto her lips as she turned back up the stairs. “She wanted to meet last night to tell me I was right about Ryan and what he was up to, but he caught up with her at my apartment.”
“She was the body you saw.”
“Uh-huh,” Lois said, unable to keep the smugness from her voice. “And she wrote me that postcard, the one I slipped on, while she was waiting for me.”
“So, what you’re saying is that you
did leave your window unlatched and she and Ryan were able to enter your apartment that way?” he replied.
Clark would draw the wrong conclusion.
“I’m not saying that!”
“Of course not,” he said wryly. “You’re saying that you were right and I was wrong.”
“Exactly! Thank you for admitting it,” she said, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing a kiss to his lips.
He reciprocated. “How about another thank you?” he asked.
She grinned against his lips, whispering, “Later, after we write up our story.”
He chuckled. “Okay, but I was thinking more along the lines for saving your life.”
“You did not!” she adamantly denied.
Though the light in the stairwell was dim due to the blackout, she couldn’t miss his raised eyebrow disbelief.
“Well, I grant that Superman shifting the satellite so it didn’t blow up the base qualifies as saving my life in a roundabout sort of way,” she reluctantly agreed. His lips pressed into a line told her that he had expected her to be more generous than that. She shrugged and kissed Clark’s cheek. “Send him over later, and I’ll give him a proper thank you.” She continued climbing the stairs.
“
Lois!” he groaned.
“Oh, that’s right,” she said, stopping and turning back to face him. “Better make it tomorrow night. I’ve got a date with Captain Elliot tonight I don’t want to miss.” She bounced her eyebrows with not-so-hidden meaning.
“Elliot?” Clark glanced down at his chest. “My name badge says Jones.”
“Pish posh! You know who I mean,” she said, running his tie seductively through her fingers as she had seen Cat do to men over the years.
He cleared his throat, so it meant she was doing it right. “Does being an officer mean that you have to follow my orders?”
“In your dreams, Chuck!” she scoffed before heading up the stairs once more.
“Yep, in my dreams,” he confirmed. “Only in my dreams.”
***End of Part 219*** Part 220 Comments
