Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
HereWhere we left off in Part 114 …“I better call Cat and see if she’s okay,” Clark said, tapping the newspaper that Jimmy had left.
“But I thought we could take this video to Eugene and see if he recognized the man,” Lois said.
“That seems excessively cruel.”
“Any crueler than sitting on death row for a murder he didn’t commit?” she asked.
“You’re right. Okay, you do that. I’m going to send the elevator cable to S.T.A.R. Labs, and then check on Cat. I’ll catch up,” he said. “How did you know that they’re cousins?”
Lois stared at him blankly. “I don’t know. I just did. Didn’t we talk recently about the probability of two people having lived in Metropolis for at least three generations being related?”
Clark shook his head, not recalling any such conversation.
“Oh, well. It’s probably for the best anyway. Do you really think Cat was emotionally involved with Chow?” Lois asked skeptically, resting her hand on Clark’s shoulder.
Clark shrugged. He doubted it, but he knew Cat must be hurting not to show up at work. “Rejection is still rejection, whether you’re emotionally involved or not.”
She nodded and patted his shoulder, ending with a small squeeze, before heading for the door. “Maybe after I talk to Eugene, we can meet up with Superman and finally get that interview.”
“We?” he asked, gazing up at her. “I thought it was
private.”
“Not from you,” Lois said, and then pointed at him. “Hey, you know I don’t think we’ve ever done a joint interview with Superman before. Huh? I wonder why that is?”
She continued to look at him, and he realized it wasn’t a rhetorical question. “I don’t know. Ex…” He coughed. “And current…”
“Oh, right,” she scoffed. “And you wanted us all to have dinner together. Ha! I knew that was a bad idea.”
After her acceptance of Luthor’s watch, Clark didn’t know if they were still more than partners anymore. He should just come out and ask her, but not here. That night, back at her apartment, he decided. Smiling weakly, he waved as she left.
***
Part 115“Clark, you didn’t have to come over,” Cat said, backing up and letting him inside her apartment. “I told you over the phone, I heard about Arthur, and I’m fine with it.”
“Are you?” Clark asked, shutting the door behind him.
“Yes!” she said a tad forcefully. “If you had asked Perry, you would’ve known that I had sent in my story about Arthur’s marriage last night. Arthur called me before boarding his jet for Vegas, because he wanted
me to break the story in the Daily Planet. We’re
friends, Clark.” She threw a hand up in the air. “I was the decoy girlfriend for his mother, because he could never be interested in somebody ‘as starchly conservative as me and his mother’.” She laughed with a shake of her head. “I guess I wasn’t the only one hiding their true personality.”
Clark enfolded her into his arms. “I’m sorry, Cat.”
“Are you?” she scoffed into his shoulder. “I thought you hated him.”
“No, I didn’t know him. However, I’m sorry you were hurt,” he said, letting go and sitting down on her sofa.
“I’m
fine! I wasn’t in love with him,” she reminded him.
“I know. I was just worried when nobody had seen you in the office this morning,” he said.
Cat harrumphed onto the sofa next to him. “Clark, I was out half the night on an investigation. I had only just woken up when you called,” she said, holding out her arms to show him, once again, her robe. She patted his cheek. “You’re a dear to worry though. Thank you.”
Clark glanced down at a moment in chagrin. “I’m sorry, Cat, but with this happening so soon after Phil…”
“I’m over him too, Clark.
Please, I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not, Cat,” he said, taking hold of one of her hands and giving it a squeeze. “I’ve never seen you so broken up over a man as you were with Phil.”
“Water under the bridge,” she replied, only weaker.
“You sobbed for over ten minutes.”
Cat shrugged and started to pick at the belt of her robe.
“Then you jumped off my patio with no thought to your own safety.”
“I knew you would save me,” she said softly.
“You said that your life had no value, and that no one would miss you,” he reminded her.
“I was upset because you had lost your memories. It was as if I had lost one chance at love, my best friend, and my world all at once.” She continued to pick at her robe. “I felt like I had nowhere to turn and that I was all alone.”
“I know,” he said, running his thumb down her cheek. “Then, suddenly, you decided that you didn’t like the old you and wanted to be someone else, someone you thought a person could love. You didn’t feel like someone could love you for you, but only your body. So, since it was
your body you felt you might as well offer it to the highest bidder.”
“Arthur is the
second richest person in the world, Clark,” she countered.
“The first is a woman, a
married woman,” Clark reminded her with a sharp look. “But I knew you were in serious trouble, in the deepest darkest pit of despair, when you impersonated Lois.”
Her gaze jumped to his in surprise.
“I’ve never heard a call for help any louder, Cat,” he said, and then he leaned forward conspiratorially. “And I’m Superman.”
Cat chortled and slugged him in the arm. “Yeah, that was a real low point.”
“Hey!” He held up his hands in surrender. “She isn’t all that bad.
I love her.”
“And you think there’s something wrong with
me?” she said, looking him square in the eye. “There’s something seriously off with my world, when Lois attracts a man like you, and I get rejected by three men in a row.”
“Three?”
“You were number two,” Cat grumbled, holding up two fingers. “Does Kryptonite make you blind too? No memories, and you
still prefer Mad Dog Lane.”
Clark smiled sheepishly, and mumbled, “No accounting for taste.”
“You can say that again,” she said with a bitter laugh.
“Cat, you’re intelligent, sweet, thoughtful, kind, and, as Jimmy said earlier, ‘smoking hot’.”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me,” she said, looking to the ceiling. “I’d feel like I would be robbing the cradle with that puppy.”
“Don’t worry. Lois told him that you were cousins, and that put the whole ick factor into the possibility… well, for the rest of us,” he said.
Cat stared at him in shocked disbelief. “Lois said that? Really?
Lois? Hmmm. Interesting development. I wouldn’t have expected that from her.” Then she grimaced. “Oh, I don’t know. Is being related to Jimmy any better?”
Clark pressed his lips together. They were getting off topic. “Cat, I wish you could see that any man would be lucky to earn your affection.”
“Maybe I should give up on men altogether,” she said, nibbling on her bottom lip in contemplation.
He ran a hand through his hair. Oh, God, what had he done? The men of Metropolis would surely send a lynch mob after him.
“You don’t happen to have a brother, do you?” she asked innocently.
Oh, an alien joke. Phew. “Last son from a dead planet, so I’m guessing ‘no’,” he replied.
“A shame.” She shrugged. “It was worth the shot.”
Clark let their conversation drop into a lull as he built up the courage to tell her what he had thought earlier. “When I didn’t see you at the office today, and then heard about Chow, I...” he said, his voice hoarse. “I asked Perry if he had heard from you, and he said that you asked for a ‘personal’ day. My worry became panic, which is why I came over, Cat. I was afraid that I was about to lose my best friend.”
Cat wrapped her arms around him. “I’m not going anywhere, honey buns,” she said, sniffling. “With someone like you looking out for me, this world must not be so bad.”
“I would’ve missed you,” he murmured.
“Thanks, hero,” she whispered. “It’s always good to know that I’m wanted.” She cleared her throat and ran her hands down his back. “You sure you wouldn’t want to give me another shot? I’m available again!”
“Cat,” he scolded, and then chuckled because he knew she was teasing.
“Darn,” she said, slightly pouting. “Sooooooo, are you sure you’re the last son of Krypton? Are you sure no other studs made it out?”
Clark shook his head. “That’s the rumor.”
“Pity. It must be horrible being so alone,” she said.
He smiled. “I have you and Lois, Perry, Jimmy, and the Kents. I’m less alone now than I’ve been in years.” He patted her arms and stood up. “Speaking of which, I’m supposed to meet Lois at her…” He paused as he heard the sounds of multiple sirens blaring, and he sighed. “Well, I guess, I’ll catch up with her later.”
“Sucks to be you,” Cat said. “No time for secret nookie from Lois between emergencies, huh?”
“Nookie?” he asked, before spinning into his uniform.
“Oh, darling, you really must learn to do that slower,” Cat complained. She shook her head and straightened out her crossed eyes. “Nookie, sex, the horizontal limbo, the midnight swing, the morning mambo, the camel with two humps… or is it the whale with two backs?...
and why I’ll always be glad to be alive.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Cat,” he said, heading for her window.
She grabbed his arm and swung him around. “Better use the door,” she said. “I have a few peeping Toms. I’d hate to give Superman… well… actually… it could improve
my batting average lately.”
“Goodbye, Miss Grant.”
“
Au revoir, lover boy,” she said with a wave of her fingers as he scanned her hall for occupants. “Hey!” she called out as he went to open the door.
Clark took one last second to glance back at her.
“Thanks for putting ‘intelligent’ first,” Cat said with a wink.
***
Lois shifted the box of pizza to her other hand and opened up her apartment door to find Eugene sitting at her computer.
“Thank God, you’re back. You told me not to use the phone or go out, so I had no way of contacting you,” Eugene said, standing up from in front of Lois’s computer and crossing over to her at the door.
“What are you doing?” Lois gasped, pointing at her computer screen.
“I’ve straightened out your files and gave you a simpler directory,” he said, removing his glasses.
“You… those… those are
personal files!” she exclaimed. “I have a password.”
He looked at her with grinning skepticism. “I know. Superman? It wasn’t too tough to figure out,” Eugene said, sitting back down at her computer.
Lois pressed her lips together in annoyance. She was glad at least that Clark hadn’t been there to hear that. She had set that password months ago, to hide her novel from her sister. Was Eugene right? Was it too obvious? If that were true, she should change the one at work as well. Maybe she could make it the date she figured out Clark was Superman: 02281994. “Okay, fine. What happened?” she asked.
“Nothing. It’s what’s going to happen… I think,” he said, typing away on her keyboard. “All the programs on your system were sluggish today, so I plugged into the Daily Planet Bank. Their systems have slowed down too.”
“Eugene, there are more important things going on than a temporary computer slow-down,” Lois reminded him, patting his shoulder. She sat down on her sofa and dropped the pizza box on the coffee table, popping open the lid and removing a slice. “Let’s go over what happened the day of Harrison’s death.”
He rubbed his forehead. “Yes, well, okay, right. It’ll make more sense this way,” he said, and moved to the sofa opposite hers. “Well, it’s like I told you and Clark yesterday. I had found this new program he was working on. Henry had asked how much of the program I’d seen. Suddenly, he was screaming at me, saying I’d stolen his wife, and now the Ides of Metropolis. And I started yelling back at him. I said I’d
kill him, if…” He paused, and she could see the realization on his face how damning this testimony would have been during trial. “If… if he hurt Lena again.”
“I can see why you didn’t take the stand in your own defense,” Lois said, taking another bite of her pizza.
“That so-called program file that Henry was working on, it wasn’t a program. It was a virus. A virus programmed to destroy all other software programs, a poly-morphic, encrypted virus,” Eugene said.
Jimbo had said that Eugene was a genius when it came to computer viruses, so apparently he would know.
“That makes sense. The man was about to lose everything. Why not take everyone’s system down with him?” She took another bite of pizza, wondering where her partner was. Though she’d deny it if anyone ever claimed it to be true, Clark was much more computer savvy than she was and would know what kind of questions to ask. “Can a virus just ‘start up’ without the programmer there to initiate it?”
“Maybe. If it has some kind of ‘doomsday code’ on it,” Eugene said, turning to face her again.
“How bad can this virus make things?”
“In a nation completely dependent on computers? It could mean disaster,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Lois asked; she was thankful Clark wasn’t here to see her computer ignorance first hand.
“Banks, the stock exchange, air traffic control, even our nuclear missiles, they are all run by computers,” Eugene explained.
Okay, now she wished Clark were here again. “Is there any way to stop it? What can we do?”
“You need to break me into M.U.T.,” he said. “I need a powerful central computer system to work off of.”
Was he serious? “You’re a fugitive,” Lois reminded him. “I could be arrested just for ‘harboring’ you in my apartment, and you want me to break you into Met. U.’s computer lab?”
“I have to find the antidote. Jimmy and my other students can help me,” he suggested, and sat back down at Lois’s computer.
Being in jail must have messed with Eugene’s sense of priorities. The world wouldn’t come to the end because of a few computer slowdowns. America had run just fine without computers for several hundred years; surely, it wouldn’t crash and burn before they could clear Eugene of murdering his boss.
The phone rang, and with a shake of her head, Lois picked it up. “Hello?”
“Hi, Lo,” Cat’s voice sang into her ear.
“Don’t call me that,” Lois grumbled, and then remembered what Clark said earlier. “I’m sorry to hear about Chow.”
“Eh… He wasn’t really my type,” Cat replied. “What’s the point of having that kind of money, if you don’t want to have fun with it? Anyway, thank you for telling Jimmy that we’re cousins, even though we aren’t. One less puppy nipping at my heels at work will make the newsroom all the more pleasant.”
“Tell me about it. Now, if they’d only send Ralph out to be fixed,” Lois replied. A smile came to her lips as she imagined the jerk with a plastic cone around his neck. “Wait. You’re not Jimmy’s cousin?” She could have sworn that she had heard that they were, somewhere recently. She shook her head. “Oh, well. Win some, lose some.”
Cat chuckled. “Oh, and Clark’s going to be late.”
“Late?”
“Yeah, you know him. He hears sirens and takes off running. Kind of like you, only without the doggy drool. On the plus side, we’ll probably have a bright and shiny Superman story for our front page tomorrow,” Cat said. “Tootles. I’m off to meet Simon down at the docks. Don’t tell Clark, or he’ll worry his pretty little head about me.”
“I wouldn’t think of it,” Lois replied.
“Don’t forget that you owe me,” Cat said. “I plan to recoup and soon.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
“We’ll discuss the details later. Tallyho!”
“I’m not the ‘ho’ in this…” Lois started but Cat had already hung up. Darn. Lois always liked to get the last insult into their conversations. She hung up the phone, turned back to Eugene, and saw he was holding up a familiar diskette.
“I found this in with your computer stuff. May I ask where you got it?” he asked.
“It’s part of an on-going investigation,” Lois said, reminding herself that she needed to talk to Superman about Daitch and soon.
“Is this what I think it is?” Eugene asked.
“No comment,” she answered.
“Lois,
this is a computer virus, a very specific computer virus. You’re lucky that you didn’t download it to your computer,” he said.
Lois crossed over to him at the computer. “Jimbo didn’t say anything about a virus.”
“Jimbo?”
“I had Jimmy Olsen take a look at it for me over his Spring Break,” she explained.
Eugene nodded. “He probably didn’t think to look at the software code, but only at the file attached. The virus has been weaved into the software. It looks like a regular spreadsheet program, but once you download the file onto your computer, if you input a certain set of data…” He gave her a look, also not wanting to mention aloud which data it would be. “It would change your file, and any other file with corresponding data, to match the result it wanted.”
“So, what you’re saying is when this file was downloaded onto EPRAD’s computers it corrupted all the files with similar data on it?” she asked. “So, if someone forwarded it to a colleague via e-mail…”
“That colleague’s computer would also be infected,” Eugene finished. “Actually, it’s such an invasive virus,
any attachments sent from the computer the person originally downloaded the virus onto, would weave itself into any outgoing attachments, even if said attachment had nothing to do with the data in question.”
“Do you recognize anything about the virus that will help us pinpoint who wrote it?” Lois asked. “Does it have a signature that you’re familiar with?”
“It’s not a bomb, Lois,” he said, shaking his head. “Not all viruses have signatures that can be matched a certain programmer or hacker.”
“It might as well have been a bomb,” she corrected. “For all the damage it could have caused.” For all the damage it
did cause, Lois added silently.
Eugene nodded in agreement and dropped the diskette back into her desk drawer.
Lois bent down and pulled the videotape Jimmy had made from her briefcase. “I want to show you something. It won’t be easy to watch, but maybe you’ll recognize… someone,” she suggested, moving over to her infrequently used television in the corner next to her desk and slipped the tape into the VCR.
“Nice legs,” Eugene said after a minute of watching Lena walk through the lobby of the Lexor.
“Ji… my researcher got distracted,” she clarified.
“Lena!” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet and pointing to the television. A moment later, he dropped back down into his chair. “No. No, this can’t be.”
“What can’t be?” Lois asked.
“That’s Harrison!” Eugene gasped, grabbing the remote from Lois, rewinding the tape a few frames, and pausing it on the man in Lena’s embrace. “How? I don’t understand.”
“
Henry Harrison? As in the man you’ve been convicted of killing…
that Harrison?” Lois said, literally sitting on the edge of her seat.
He nodded.
“This is terrific!
This is proof that you’re innocent, Eugene,” she yelped with excitement. She had just known he was innocent.
“I can’t believe Lena went back to him,” he said softly, staring at the television and the paused picture. “He used to beat her.”
“This also proves Lena is Harrison’s accomplice in framing you for… for…”
Whose dead body was it, then? Lois wondered. “For the murder.”
Knock. Pause. Knockity knock knock.
“It’s probably just Clark, but you better go hide the bedroom, just in case,” she warned Eugene.
He nodded and dashed down the hall.
“Oh… um…” She found his suit jacket next to the sofa and stuffed it inside one of her side tables. She took a deep breath and straightened her suit, before opening the door. “I didn’t…”
Only it wasn’t Clark on the other side of the door, it was Detective Reed and two of her men. “I have a warrant to search these premises,” Reed announced, holding up the paperwork as she walked inside.
“What? My apartment? Are you crazy?” Lois said, opening up the document and finding Reed hadn’t been lying.
“I don’t think so,” Reed said, looking around. “Call me ‘wild’, call me ‘crazy’, but I have a hunch that you’re hiding something or someone.” She waved for her men to start their search. “Why don’t you have a seat right here on this couch, Ms. Lane? This won’t hurt much and it’ll be over real soon.”
Lois had an annual checkup once where the doctor had issued the same warning. The man was now in jail for inappropriate touching of his patients, and since then Lois only saw female doctors. Nevertheless, she sat down on her sofa and nervously folded the warrant into smaller and smaller squares.
Reed’s men had disappeared down the hall to look in the bedrooms, but the detective kindly kept Lois's company as she looked around the living room. Reed stopped and tapped her long, beautiful fingernails on the wood of the sofa opposite Lois. It sounded like claws down a chalkboard.
Lois knew something wasn’t right. Clark should have been here. Why wasn’t he here? Then, on the other hand, what could he really do without revealing his secret and getting Superman in very hot water if he were here? Why did Reed have to pick this moment to show up here? Lois hoped Clark scanned the building as he arrived, and kept himself out of it, until after the police left.
Reed came over and sat down next to Lois on the sofa. “That’s a nice watch,” she said, glancing at the LoLex watch Lex had given her.
Lois tugged down the sleeve of her jacket. “A gift from a friend,” she muttered, wondering what the men were doing and finding in her bedroom.
Reed’s men returned, one shaking his head. “No sign of him, Detective Reed, ma’am.”
Lois crossed her arms and shot the detective an ‘I told you so’ expression.
“I apologize, Ms. Lane. It appears as if my tipster was mistaken, for the time being,” Reed said, standing up and heading for the door.
“Tipster? You mean someone
told you that Eugene was here?” Lois sputtered, and Clark was conveniently late. She hated to blame him, but he was the only other person who knew that Eugene was here. “Who?”
“Now, now, Ms. Lane. You don’t reveal your sources,” Reed said, leaning closer. “Neither do I.”
A crash and thud sounded from the other half of her apartment.
“Cat,” Lois said weakly, knowing they wouldn’t believe her.
Reed’s men disappeared quickly towards the bedrooms.
Lois stood up and watched down the hall, biting her bottom lip in anticipation. She knew it was mere matter of moments.
“We’ve got him!” they called, and Lois winced.
Detective Reed took hold of Lois’s elbow. “What’s that?” she yelled back at them.
The two men returned, each holding onto one of Eugene’s elbows, and Detective Reed’s long nails bit into Lois’s arm. Eugene’s face was red on one side as if he had belly flopped out of the bathtub and landed face-first on the floor.
“I wish I could say ‘good job’, boys, but you missed him on your first walk-through. Cuff him and get him in the squad car,” Reed ordered. “Why, now, lookie there, Ms. Lane. It looks like you’ve been a very naughty girl, harboring a fugitive and all.” She pulled out her handcuffs.
“Eugene is innocent!” Lois insisted, pointing at the television where Jimmy’s videotape was still freeze-framed on Lena and her mystery man. “He’s been framed.”
Reed took another glance at the television. “Interesting theory, Ms. Lane, but it isn’t against the law for a widow to find a new romance, now is it?”
“It is if the ‘new romance’ is her dead husband,” Lois retorted. “Eugene has been telling me that Harrison has unleashed a terrible computer virus to wipe out the country’s software. Eugene is the only one who can stop it and find an antidote. He can’t do that from behind bars.”
Reed took a brief glance at the couple on the screen. “Uh-huh. Convenient. Who’s to say that Mr. Laderman didn’t release the virus since his escape and is only using Harrison being dead as a scapegoat? Who better to create such a virus than an expert on computer viruses?” Reed asked, snapping the handcuffs on Lois’s wrists. “You have the right to remain silent; although, knowing you, I doubt it will be possible…”
***End of Part 115*** Part 116 Please, don't blame Cat. It's not her fault. I promise.
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