LAST TIME:
The second locked door was different than the others. It was reinforced steel and the lock was harder to pick than the first one. He opened the door, suddenly fearful about what he might find inside.
“Lois? LOIS!”
She was kneeling beside a bloodied, dark-haired man. She was holding tightly to a strip of cloth around the man’s neck. He wasn’t moving, he wasn’t breathing.
“Dear God, Lois, that isn’t CK?”
Lois looked up at Jimmy, tears running down her face.
______________________________
NOW:
“Jimmy?” she murmured, and as if waking up from a nightmare, she loosened the strip around Clark’s neck, finally tearing it away with a sob. “Breath, please breath,” she said, gently patting his face. After a moment, she bent closer and began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. A minute later, Clark managed a shuddery breath on his own.
“Jimmy, help me get him out of here,” Lois ordered. Jimmy was still standing in the doorway. He hurried over to her.
“Lois, he needs to get to a hospital,” Jimmy protested.
“No hospital,” Clark managed to choke out. The terror was still in his eyes.
“No hospital,” Lois agreed. “Help me get him up.”
Jimmy came around to Clark’s other side and between the two of them, they managed to get Clark to his feet and through the door to the hallway. Clark was shivering from pain, cold, and fever. At the door to the sleep area, Jimmy stopped and pushed open that door.
“Hold on right here,” he instructed. He helped Lois prop Clark against the wall, then went into the sleep area and grabbed a blanket. He wrapped the blanket around Clark’s shoulders. “Lois, he’s burning up.”
“No hospital,” Clark repeated.
“How about some water?” Lois asked. Clark nodded weakly.
“Come on,” Jimmy urged. “There’s a kitchen sort of thing in here.” He led them into the dining area, helping Clark to a chair. Lois grabbed a clean glass, filled it at the sink and brought it to Clark. His hands were shaking uncontrollably. She held the glass for him and more water went down his chin than in his mouth as he tried to gulp it down.
Jimmy refilled the glass for him. “Take it easy, CK,” Jimmy admonished. “Drink it slow, okay? You’re safe now. The police are here, and the FBI’s been looking for you, and some other government people are here to help . . .” He let his voice trail off as Lois dropped the glass, utter terror in her face.
Clark was trying to pull himself into a ball, eyes shut tight, shaking his head in denial. “No, no more, please God, no more,” he moaned softly, voice trembling.
“Jimmy, we have to get him away from here now!” Lois hissed.
“Lois, he needs help. They’re here to help,” Jimmy protested.
“Jimmy, you don’t understand,” Lois spat. “The bastards that did this to him were with the government! The Bureau wasn’t shut down, just relocated. We have to get him out of here before they grab him again!”
“Okay, okay,” Jimmy agreed, helping her get Clark to his feet again. “Where should we go?”
“I don’t know yet,” Lois admitted. “First things first, out of here, then someplace safe.”
0 0 0
Ford was handling communications when word came through that Bureau 39’s hideout had been found in a sub-basement of the building that hadn’t even been on the list SHADO had put together.
“General Straker?” the operative said over the com-unit that had been set up in the Planet conference room. “Detective Reed and S’vram have checked in with a report that they believe they’ve found the Bureau’s hide-out. One casualty. One of the men refused to disarm when ordered and was killed.”
“Any sign of Lane and Kent?” Straker asked.
There was a long pause before Ford responded: “Reed reported they had reason to believe Lane and Kent had been held there, and at least one of them had to have been seriously injured. There was a lot of blood. But they weren’t in the complex when Reed and S’vram got there. Reed also reports that Mister Olsen didn’t stay with them. It appears that he may have taken off on his own.”
“Thank you, Ford,” Straker said before turning to Perry, Freeman, and Foster still waiting with him in the conference room. “Damn. If those bastards have gone to ground taking those kids with them . . . We’ll be lucky to find their bodies.”
0 0 0
Jimmy and Lois managed to get a nearly unconscious Clark out of the underground complex, into a service elevator and onto the main floor of the Wincote Building. Luckily, the service elevator opened into a side hallway, away from the main traffic. Jimmy worriedly looked his companions over. Lois was haggard and disheveled, the surgical style scrub shirt and pants covered in blood. Her feet were bare.
Clark was in far worse shape. He was feverish, sweating, eyes glazed in pain and his skin had a sickly green pallor. His face was bruised and the swelling indicated a possible broken jaw. He was naked to the waist except for the blanket around his shoulders and he was barefoot. His back was raw and still bleeding and his side was badly bruised. In the elevator he’d started coughing up blood.
Jimmy knew better than to suggest a hospital again, even if he didn’t quite understand why Lois and Clark were both so set against it. He looked around the hallway, spotting a door labeled ‘supplies’. He made quick work of the simple lock. “You two wait here for me and stay out of sight. I’ll bring the car around and be right back for you, okay?”
“Jimmy, you don’t own a car,” Lois pointed out quietly.
He held up a familiar set of keys. “But you do. The cops located your car over at Dacy’s and I went and picked it up for you. I’ll be right back.”
He left them alone in the supply room. Lois closed the door, taking care that it didn’t lock on them. Clark was huddled on the floor, knees to his chest, shivering. She went and sat beside him. She wanted to take his hands in hers, but knew she didn’t dare touch his injured hand. She tucked the blanket around him more closely.
“You could have left me,” Clark mumbled through his shivering. “They might have let you go.”
“I wasn’t going to leave my partner,” she told him. “Clark, who did they think you were? Who is this Kal-El?”
Clark shut his eyes and laid his head on his knees.
For a moment she thought he’d lapsed into unconsciousness again. She touched his hair, combing it with her fingers. It was damp and smelled of stale sweat and fear. She suddenly noticed that the ring around his neck had left red marks, almost like burns, where it rested against the base of his neck. “Clark, who is Kal-El?”
“When they grabbed me, they started calling me that name,” His voice was so soft she had to strain to hear it. “I don’t think they even checked my I.D. I think they mistook me for him.”
“Mistook you for whom, Clark?”
“I think Superman managed to escape, maybe.”
“And they mistook you for him? They mistook you for Superman?”
“Trask did,” he reminded her.
“Trask was crazy,” she stated. How could they possibly confuse her mild, dorky partner with the Man of Steel? It didn’t make sense. There was a physical resemblance, yes, but there were lots of guys in Metropolis who resembled Superman. Why pick on her partner?
There was a quiet knock on the door and Lois got to her feet as the door slowly opened.
“Lois? CK?” Jimmy called out softly, peeking around the door. “I’ve got the car right outside the door here.”
She went back to Clark and helped him to his feet. Again, Jimmy came around to his other side to assist. They got Clark out the door and down a short flight of stairs to Lois’s Cherokee. Jimmy helped get Clark into the back seat while Lois grabbed her car keys and climbed into the driver’s seat. Jimmy was opening the front passenger side door to climb in when Lois put out her hand. “No, Jimmy.”
He looked at her in confusion. “Lois, you guys need help here.”
“No. Tell Perry I’ll get in touch with him once I have Clark someplace safe.”
“Lois . . .” Jimmy protested again. She leaned over and grabbed the door from his hand, slamming it shut and locking it. She turned the key over in the ignition and sped off, leaving Jimmy standing in the service alley behind the Wincote building, staring after them.
0 0 0
It was a disgruntled Jimmy Olsen who took a cab back to the Daily Planet, walked into the main lobby and took an elevator to the newsroom floor.
“I had them,” he announced to Perry as he walked into the conference room. “I found Lois and CK in a cell under the Wincote Building and got them out. Then they took off. Lois told me to tell you she’d be in touch once she got CK someplace safe.” He flopped into one of the chairs in the conference room. “Chief, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody as scared as the two of them were.”
“Jimmy, the police report said one or both of them might be hurt,” Perry told him.
Jimmy nodded. “Lois looked okay, aside from being scared out of her wits. But CK’s hurt bad. I tried to get him to a hospital, but he absolutely refused. They’re both terrified that Trask’s people are still out there and’ll grab them again to finish the job.”
“That’s just great,” Straker murmured to himself. He rubbed the bridge of his nose as if getting a headache.
“Mister Olsen, was there any sign that Superman had been there with them?” Foster asked.
“No, but I was a little more worried about getting Lois and CK out of there,” Jimmy told them.
“Mister Olsen,” Freeman began. “You said Kent was hurt. How and how badly?”
Jimmy took a deep breath. “Lot of bruises, his back looked like he’d been flayed. I think he may have a broken arm, and one of his hands was all swollen, like maybe somebody’d done a number on it. There were marks on his chest and neck that kinda’ looked like burns. I couldn’t see what shape his legs were in, but since he could barely walk . . .”
Straker had his elbows on the table, hands clasped in front of his lowered head. “Aside from whatever clothes they gave him, was there anything else on him? Jewelry, bands, anything?”
Jimmy frowned. “Yeah, there was this metal ring around his neck. I looked to see if there was a clasp or anything, but I didn’t see one.”
Straker sighed. “Alec, get onto S’vram, tell him to search that hole with a fine tooth comb. He’s looking for the controller for the prisoner’s toque they put on him. Also have them set the satellite search to detect element 126. I’m betting it’s contaminated with it.”
Freeman keyed the com-unit and spoke instructions into the headset.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Perry said. “What in the name of Sam Hill is a prisoner’s toque, and what’s element 126?”
“A prisoner’s toque is a banned piece of alien technology,” Straker explained. “It was designed to help control unruly prisoners by giving them electric shocks, up to and including killing shocks. It can’t be removed without the controller and any attempt to remove it triggers it. The controller also has a locator function. There’s no safe place on this planet for them if Myerson has the controller.”
“And this element 126?” Perry asked.
“I know that one, Chief,” Jimmy said. “That’s the element number for kryptonite. Myerson must have been planning on using it on Superman.”
Straker nodded “Yeah, that’s about right.”
