Twins: 11/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
"I know. I just ... I was afraid for you, Clark. I don't want to lose you. I've ..." She hesitated and added, "I've kind of gotten used to having you around."
"You're not going to lose me. In fact ..." He bit off what he was going to say. Jumping ahead too fast would be guaranteed to scare her off.
She didn't seem to notice. "If we can connect this to him it will be useful, but I also want to try to ... I don't know ... try to help the other Superman, somehow. We can't let Lex turn him into some kind of super weapon. Superman would be the only thing we had to defend us against him, and both of them could get hurt or killed. I don't want that to happen, either."
He nodded. It figured, he thought. Once Lois got involved in something, she went at it with everything she had. He just hoped that she hadn't bitten off more than both of them could chew this time.
The elevator doors opened and they stepped out into the Daily Planet's newsroom.
**********
And now, Part 11:
"That was a great guess," Jimmy said. "Look at this. Over the last six months, there have been six monthly million-dollar donations to Fabian Leek's genetic research project. And look where it came from."
"The Luthor Foundation for the Advancement of Human Science," Lois read aloud. "That's it. There's our connection."
"Only now we have to prove it," Clark said. "Nobody's going to believe it without solid evidence. This part could get kind of sticky."
"Prove what?" Perry's voice asked. Clark turned to find their editor standing behind them.
"Something pretty wild," Lois said. "I don't want to talk about it in public. Can we get back to you on it?"
"In my office," Perry said. "If you're going to do something dangerous, I'd at least like to know why."
Lois and Clark looked at each other, then Lois turned to Jimmy. "Keep looking for that other stuff. If Leek did what we think he did, they had to have had some genetic material to start with. Come on, Clark."
When the office door had closed behind them, Perry he gestured to seats. "Sit. I want to know what all this intensive research is about. And don't forget that warning last month from the guys upstairs, Lois."
"Chief, have I ever steered you wrong?" she demanded. "Yes, sometimes it looked like it," she added hastily, "but it always worked out in the end, didn't it?"
He raised an eyebrow. "I'm goin' prematurely grey just worryin' about you getting' yourself killed one of these days, honey," he said. "I'll back you up; you know that, but I'd like to know what I'm backin' you up *about*. Tell me it's not gonna get us into another lawsuit ... or get one of my star reporters killed or somethin'."
Clark winced. When Perry's Southern accent became this pronounced it meant that he was genuinely worried. He'd known his boss had been dealing with a number of problems with the paper recently, ranging from advertisers bailing on him to one of the Planet's reporters winding up in the hospital two weeks before because of a gang beating down at the docks. Somehow, the Armani suit and the hairpiece weren't so funny this morning. "I think we'd better tell him, Lois," he said.
She shrugged. "Okay. Just remember what our source said."
"Source?" Perry asked.
"Superman," Clark said. "I don't think he'll mind, Lois. Chief, Superman came to Lois a couple of days ago and asked us to help him. We can't tell you everything he said because some of it was in confidence, but he said we could print anything we like if we left out that part."
Lois nodded. "Remember that plane rescue the other day?"
"Yeah. What about it? Was there some sort of sabotage to the plane or something?"
"Not that I know of," Lois said, "but the problem was that Superman *didn't* rescue the plane. Somebody else did. There's a Superman imposter out there, and Superman needs to find out who he is and what he's up to."
"An imposter?" Perry's eyes widened. "How can that be? He flew!"
"I know. He has Superman's powers, and even looks like him, but he isn't him, if you get my drift."
"You got any proof?"
"Not solid proof yet," Clark said. "Superman met him, and so did we, last night. He's definitely not Superman, even if he looks like him, but we don't have any evidence in hand. We have a working theory, but we'd rather not talk about it yet, if you don't mind."
Perry regarded them without expression for the good part of a minute. "Okay," he said at last. "Go to it, then. Maybe the story will help boost circulation. Just do me one favor."
"Sure," Lois said.
"Try not to get yourselves killed, and try not to get us sued. The Planet can't afford either one."
"We'll do our best," Clark said. He hesitated. "Chief, is everything all right? I know the paper is having problems. Is there anything we can do to help?"
"Not unless you can figure out why so many of our advertisers are dropping us," Perry said, heavily. "It started about two months ago and seems to be gettin' worse. The suits upstairs are breathin' down my neck over it."
"Oh," Lois said. She looked at Clark. "I didn't realize it was that bad."
"Well, now you know. Go ahead, kids. Help Superman, but bring me back a good story too."
"We'll do our best," Clark said.
**********
Jimmy was waiting for them with barely suppressed excitement when they exited the Editor's office. "I found it!" he announced, waving a sheet of printer paper at them. "Take a look!"
Lois snatched it from his fingers. "'Superman donates a lock of hair for Charity Auction ...' But hair isn't living."
"Look farther down. Superman individually pulled about thirty strands of hair because his hair won't cut," Jimmy said. "It had the roots attached."
"We've got it," Clark said. "Does it say who bought it?"
"A Mrs. Doyle Alexander," Jimmy said. "I already called her. She said there was a break-in at her house the day after the auction. The lock of hair was stolen. They never found out who took it and never got it back."
"Bingo," Lois said. "It all fits. It's even consistent. Good work, Jimmy."
"I guess you have an idea who took it," Jimmy said.
"Let's say we have our suspicions," Clark said. He hesitated. "Jim, I wonder if you could do me another favor."
"Sure, CK. What is it?"
"I'd like you to check into the advertisers who have dropped the Planet in the last two or three months and see where they went after they left us."
"Sure. Any particular reason?"
"Just sort of a feeling. Maybe it isn't anything. Could you do that for me?"
Jimmy nodded. "Sure. No problem."
"Thanks," Clark said. "I appreciate it."
As they headed for their desks, Lois glanced back at Jimmy, who had just seated himself in front of his computer. "Got a hunch, partner?"
"Sort of."
"Care to share?"
He shrugged. "It just strikes me as funny that all of a sudden a bunch of advertisers decided to drop the Planet. We're the biggest newspaper in the city and one of the most respected in the world. Why go to something less prestigious when you can have the best? It's not as if the rates are unreasonable."
"Sometimes the suits make a business decision."
"One or two, maybe, but not a whole bunch like that, unless there's something going on. I'd like to see what it is."
"You wouldn't be thinking corporate takeover, would you?"
"Actually, yes. It's been done before."
"Yeah, it has." She looked worried. "The last thing we need is something like that."
"Definitely. Anyhow, I'd like to have some sort of heads-up if it's in the works. Now, until Jimmy comes back with the information, we need to decide what to do next."
"We're going to visit Dr. Leek."
"I thought you said you didn't want to alert him that --"
"I didn't say we were going to interview him. How good are you at impersonating a sanitation engineer?"
"A janitor? I can handle a mop with the best of them."
They grinned at each other momentarily.
"Good," Lois said. "I just happen to know where we can borrow some coveralls ..."
**********
Fabian Leek was probably in his forties, a man of medium height with thinning, blond hair, and probably carrying around at least fifty pounds that he didn't need, Lois thought. The scientist was leafing through a sheaf of papers when she and Clark trundled their cart with the pails of soapy water and mops into the corridor outside his office.
They began their task, industriously setting up warning cones about the hallway to allow passersby to proceed past their spot of endeavors, and began to mop while Lois scanned the area, taking in the layout. She glanced at Clark and hid a smile. He had applied the same ratty beard and mustache that he had used the first night she had gone to spy on Toni Taylor, and looked tired and bored, a man doing a dull, uninteresting job, but she saw him glance toward Fabian Leek's office and lower his glasses.
She had seen him do that hundreds of times in the past months, but now the gesture had more significance. Superman was checking out the lay of the land, peeking over Dr. Leek's shoulder, as it were, to see what he was doing. Even if she didn't let him know that she knew, having Superman as a partner was going to have significant advantages, she thought. Never again would she inadvertently sabotage him when he was sneaking a look at something of interest.
Instead, she concentrated on other points of interest. While she worked, she popped a chunk of chewing gum into her mouth, then a second and a third. This was one of her preferred methods for preparing the way for a return visit later tonight. The heavy door to the lab and the small side door that gave access to the building were almost certainly rigged to alarms, but if she could prevent the locks from engaging in the first place, she would have one less difficulty to deal with later. It was too bad that she couldn't just ask Clark to zap the alarms, as, she suspected, he had probably done on other black bag jobs of theirs, but she intended to remain in official ignorance of that aspect of her partner for some time to come.
She'd made the decision to let him know about her "Luthor file" after several hours of dithering the night before. She hadn't told him about it in the beginning because she had known that he would worry about her, but she had begun it shortly after the pheromone incident. It had been something she felt that she had to do for her own personal satisfaction and, to be honest, peace-of-mind. Lex Luthor had tried to kill Clark and, somewhere under the surface that had left her both shaken and angry. Lex was going to pay, not only for the fact that he was a scum-sucking criminal but for the fact that he had tried to harm her best friend. Her personal crusade wasn't something that she had been prepared to admit to Clark at first, although recently she had been contemplating letting him in on the deal, but that had certainly been the main driving force behind the project in the first place.
Now she knew that Lex couldn't hurt Clark, but the fact didn't make a significant difference. The intent had been there, and that was all that mattered. Nobody tried to hurt her friends with impunity. Lex Luthor was going down sooner or later, and she was going to be the one who brought him there.
But now it had seemed like a good idea to let him know what she was up to. With Superman's resources behind her, it seemed likely that they would make faster progress. Like now. For instance, unless that file cabinet in the back of his office was lead-lined, Clark would know whether there was anything in it worth bothering with. And if it was, then he would know that there was a good chance that Leek had something in there that he didn't want Superman to find out about by accident.
Clark pushed his glasses up his nose and applied himself to his task. Lois scrubbed vigorously at the floor of a hall alcove, keeping her face down as footsteps sounded in the adjoining hallway.
The footsteps rounded the corner. She glanced sideways at the expensive shoes and the slacks of the expensive understated suit and lowered her face again, turning her back to the visitor, all her nerve-ends tingling.
Lex. Lex Luthor had come to see Fabian Leek. If that wasn't suspicious, she didn't know what was.
**********
Clark heard the approaching footsteps. There was something extremely familiar about the way the man -- he could tell it was a man -- walked. Then he caught the whiff of cigar smoke and recognized it as the expensive Cuban cigars that Lex Luthor smoked. They were, of course, illegally imported for the crime lord's pleasure, but he was quite certain that even if proof could be found, that such a case would never make it through the maze of attorneys and legal wrangles that Luthor could bring to bear. And even if, by some miracle, it did, at worst the result would be a fine. No, when he and Lois nailed Luthor, he wanted it to be for something significant.
Luthor rounded the corner with a confident stride as Clark made himself inconspicuous at his job of mopping the floor. Luthor wasn't actually smoking a cigar, of course, but the odor clung to his clothing. The scent of tobacco wouldn't be detectable by an ordinary human nose, but he could smell it clearly.
The billionaire strode past, never glancing at either of them. A quick glance at Lois showed that she had her back turned as she applied herself industriously to her supposed job.
Luthor strode into Leek's office and shut the door behind him. Clark winced. How was he going to overhear what they said? Lois was bound to come up with some kind of wild scheme to try to ...
"Clark!" Lois whispered.
"Huh?" Here it came.
"Your hearing is better than mine, farmboy! Get over by the door and listen! I'll block off the hallway and give you cover!" He saw her moving as she spoke, collecting the orange warning cones. She hurried to place a line of the cones at the corner and immediately rushed to do the same at some distance in the opposite direction. Then, with a move calculated make his hair stand on end, she calmly picked up her bucket of water and sloshed it across the linoleum by the cones, flooding the area. "Move, Kent!" she commanded, still in a whisper. "I want to know what they say."
Boy, Lois was really hyper today, he thought. Or else she smelled a hot story in the offing and was willing to pull out all the stops for it.
Cautiously, he moved closer to the door, mopping industriously at the edge of the spreading puddle. Lois moved to his bucket and calmly treated the other end of the hall to the same measures, then methodically started to mop at the mess she had made.
"I need you to come by the penthouse this evening." That was Luthor's voice. "I want you to examine the specimen. He's exhibiting certain symptoms that disturb me."
"Remember, sir, I warned you that there could be difficulties." The oily voice somehow matched his impression of Fabian Leek, even though he didn't know why. "He's the prototype. We really need to study the process longer to determine exactly why the frogs died."
"That's what I pay you for," Luthor said, disdainfully. "In any case, that isn't the problem. You assured me that an alien would have no interest in human females. That the chemical sexual cues, whatever they are, would preclude any interest in mating with humans. The specimen is showing an interest in a human woman."
"That's impossible," Leek said. "He's not human." He paused for a long moment. "Of course, I haven't actually studied Kryptonian DNA in depth. On the surface it looks quite similar to human DNA, but then so does a chimpanzee's. I'll have to do that, but the analysis is long and difficult. The actual cloning process is much simpler -- simply place the nucleus of the cell in the envelope of a human ovum -- well, you don't want a blow by blow account. If you like, I can do an actual DNA analysis, but it will take some time."
"I don't care what you have to do," Luthor ground out. "I want his interest in the woman in question stopped now! When you come by, you can also give me a status report on his health. I'm nearing my goal, and need to know exactly how much time we have left before he goes the way of the frogs. Be there at ten."
"Of course," Leek murmured. "I'm not sure what I can do if he does indeed have an interest in human women, though. The urge to mate is instinctive."
"Then find a way to short-circuit it," Luthor snapped.
"I'll do my best," the scientist's voice said.
"Do that."
It seemed that Luthor was on the verge of leaving. Clark moved away from the door. "Lois!"
"What?"
"He's coming out. Step into the restroom there. He's bound to notice you with all this water all over the place!"
"What about *you*?"
"I'll hide. Go!"
Surprisingly, she didn't argue further. As she disappeared through the door of the restroom, Clark lowered his glasses and trained his heat vision on the section of floor in a direct path toward the exit.
There was a savage hiss and the corridor filled with water vapor as the liquid burst instantly into steam. Clark cleared the air with a quick blast of breath and with a burst of speed rearranged the cones to give Luthor a clear path toward the exit. That done, he busied himself with slowly moving the mop back and forth, soaking up the puddles in the still-wet sections. Behind him the door opened and he heard Luthor's footsteps diminishing as he made his way down the hall the way he had come.
**********
tbc
