Superman faded from her sight. The mechanical voice appeared again. "Once more, Lois. What story are you working on right now?"
She groaned and spluttered a bitter laugh. "My obituary!"
To her surprise, the pain didn't increase. "Are you certain of that, Lois?"
"Yes! Yaaggghh! Yes, I'm sure! You - you won't let me out of here! You can't let me live! Aaaggghhh! Just let me die! Yaaahhh! Kill me! Please! Just k-kill me!"
The pain jumped another level and she screamed again.
"Are you ready to answer - what's that - look out!"
Lois didn't respond. She wept tears of bitter inevitability and waited for the final fade to black.
- Begin Part Eight -
Carmen slowly pulled open the basement door and invalidated the soundproofing. Clark heard Lois's scream and he tried to jump past Carmen, but she barred his way and leaped down the steps three at a time.
Clark was right behind her as she kicked in the plywood door in front of them. He saw two men standing beside a console. The one in front of the microphone shouted "Look out!" The other man spun away from his dials and displays and wrestled a pistol from under his jacket.
Clark hesitated. Should he use his heat vision to make the weapon too hot to hold? Or should he try to talk them into surrendering? Or should he abandon his secret identity for Lois's sake? Before he could decide, Carmen shoved him to one side and opened fire.
The AK-47 was set to full automatic and she emptied the magazine. Both men died in a spray of blood and steel-jacketed bullets. The plastic console behind them shook with the impact of the rounds that missed the men. It caught fire and began melting.
Clark was momentarily stunned, then horrified. Two men had just been killed before his eyes, and he'd been too indecisive to help them. He could have resisted Carmen's shove and acted, but he hadn't. He'd let Clark Kent stand between Superman and the prevention of two deaths.
He looked at the pistol in his hands, then dropped it on the floor. He looked at his other hand and was surprised to find the pistol belt still wadded up in it. He opened his fingers and watched the belt fall. He wished he could drop his guilt as well. Like Scarlett O'Hara, he'd think about it later.
He heard Carmen replace the magazine in the rifle. Clark finally roused himself and scrambled to his feet, then smashed through the opaque plastic covering the wooden framework on the other side of the console. While Carmen checked the two men and made sure no one else was lurking around, Clark tore down the rest of the plastic sheeting and stared in horror at the woman on the gurney.
Lois was wearing a short-sleeved orange jumpsuit with no shoes or socks, and she was bleeding slowly from several scrapes on her wrists and ankles. Her eyes were crushed shut and her face was tear-stained. She was writhing and groaning in pain, muttering 'no, no, no' between gasps. Clark tore the restraints from her body and closed the IV in her left elbow, then disconnected it from the tubes trailing from the low ceiling. Then he peeled the wires from her head and body.
He lifted her head gently and spoke urgently. "Lois! Lois, can you hear me? Lois!"
She slowly opened her eyes but didn't seem to recognize him. "No! I won't tell! You'll have to kill me! I won't tell!"
"Lois, it's me, Clark! I'm here to help you!"
She coughed and tried to push him away. "No! You won't help! Go away!"
Carmen leaned into the ruined enclosure. "Clark, you must bring her. We must leave now."
"But she's hurt! She's been drugged somehow!"
"All the more reason to leave! We must gain medical assistance for her!" Clark hesitated and Carmen grabbed his arm. "If we are discovered here our mission will have been in vain! We will all die, including your Lois!"
That got his attention. He lifted the still groaning and writhing woman off the gurney and carried her up the steps. Carmen led them, her rifle ready to fire at a moment's notice.
As they exited the house, Clark saw that the guard was gone. "Hurry!" Carmen whispered urgently. "We do not know where they are or how many they are. We must become borne in the air very quickly!"
Clark nodded and began following her. He bit his lip at the delay. Even though Carmen was sprinting and leaping through the woods at nearly her top speed, it galled him to move so slowly to a helicopter that would also move slowly, at least compared to Superman's average rate of travel. He kept up with Carmen and did his best to smooth out Lois's journey. Lois still seemed to be in extreme pain, but other than the abrasions on her wrists and ankles he couldn't find any obvious injuries.
As they topped the last rise, Carmen called out, "Take her into the back seat with you! Strap in yourself and make certain she does not fall!" Carmen threw the AK-47 to the ground and grabbed a headset as she leaped into the pilot's seat. Clark heard her mutter in Spanish, "This takeoff will not be by the book!"
Clark gently carried Lois with him to the back seat of the copter. As he sat down, Lois opened her eyes. She lifted one hand and pushed on his chest and murmured, "No, no, no." Then she made eye contact with him. She reached up and touched his face, then looked at her hand.
"Clark? Is it - are you really - am I dead?"
He smiled slightly. "No, Lois, it's me. You're alive, you're free. We're taking you to the hospital so they can help you. Are you hurt?"
She suddenly jerked in his arms as if she'd been electrocuted. "Aaahhh! It hurts! It hurts! Make it stop! Yaaagghh! Please!"
He held her tightly as Carmen revved up the rotor. She leaned over the seat and shouted, "Put on your headset! Hold tightly to your Lois! We are flying out from here most quickly!"
He slipped on the headset one-handed and braced himself. The copter leaped off the ground, leaned forward, and scudded across the treetops. Clark could hear Carmen on the radio, calling the hospital first with news that she was bringing in a patient, then the police to report the location of the farmhouse and its contents.
"Clark? We will arrive at the hospital in perhaps twenty minutes. Is your Lois still alive?"
"Yes!" he shouted. "Don't slow down!"
"I do not intend to do so. Remain holding her."
He held Lois as she writhed aimlessly in his arms. He kept telling her he was there and wouldn't let anyone hurt her. After several minutes, she opened her eyes again and froze in amazement when she saw him.
"Clark?" She slowly lifted her hand again and touched his face. "Clark? Are you here? Are you really here?"
He drew her closer but held her easily. "Yes, I'm here, Lois. I won't let anything or anyone else hurt you."
She looked around and finally seemed to realize she wasn't where she had been. "What happened? How did you find me?"
"I'll tell you everything later, I promise. We're almost to the hospital now. The doctors will make sure you're okay."
Pain still glimmered in her eyes, but it was fading, to be replaced by wondrous joy. "You - you came for me. No one else would help me - but you came for me." She squeezed her eyes shut and leaned against him, then wrapped her arms around his chest and tried to crush him. "Perry wouldn't help. Lucy wouldn't help. Even Superman wouldn't - " Her body vibrated against his as she sobbed out her relief. "But - you came for me." She spoke so softly, a normal human wouldn't have heard. "Oh, Clark. Thank you. Thank you for my life."
He held her and stroked her hair, unable to speak.
Carmen broke into his reverie. "Clark, we are ready to descend. There is an ambulance beside the landing pad. There are many policemen there also. You will tell them, I hope, that I shot those men in self-defense during the noble rescue of your missing Lois?"
He nodded, then realized she couldn't see him over her shoulder. "I'll tell them. I wish you hadn't shot those guys, but I'm not sure you had much choice. At least one of them already had a gun out. And I'll try to convince the FAA not to do anything more than frown at you for violating Federal flight regulations."
She smiled. "Thank you. We are landing now, so please do not distract me with shouts or screams. I have not done this before."
"What, set down beside a hospital?"
"No. Land willingly beside many so police officers. I hope they listen very attentively to you. I still wish to become a citizen of this country."
Clark smiled. "Oh, yeah, I'd forgotten. I'll do my very best to keep you in the clear, Carmen, but I'll have to tell them the whole truth."
She nodded. "I feared you would be like that."
"Like what?"
"Noble to the point of foolishness. Ah, we have now touched down. Please take your Lois to the ambulance while I attempt to convince these men with the serious faces that I am truly a good girl."
*****
Perry found Clark in Lois's hospital room, sitting beside her bed and holding her hand. "Hi, Clark. Is she asleep?"
"Yes, finally. She keeps moving around like she's still hurting a little, but at least she's resting now."
"What's the prognosis?"
"They say she'll make a full physical recovery. They don't think there'll be any scarring on her wrists or ankles from the restraints."
"That's good to hear. What did those thugs do to her?"
"They pumped a psychotropic drug cocktail combined with some kind of pain stimulant into her bloodstream and augmented it with electrical stimulation. The doctors said she was subjected to the most intense pain a human being can experience. She's fortunate to be alive. She - " His voice tightened and he hesitated, then continued, "Her body will be fine, but her mental recovery may take a while."
Perry nodded. "Has Dr. Friskin been here?"
"Yes. All they did was talk a little and agree to talk again tomorrow. I haven't been able to leave her side since we got here."
"Oh? Why is that?"
Clark smiled and pointed to his other hand, captured firmly in Lois's grasp. "She won't let me go. She's asleep and still won't let me go." He hesitated, then continued. "Those guys had 3-D projection units on the outside of that enclosure she was in. They were showing her people she knew who refused to help her. They were trying to break her resistance, to force her to cooperate with them." He sighed. "They didn't show her my image. She said she hung on by focusing on me." He lifted their joined hands an inch, then lowered them back to the bed. "I think she's still hanging onto me."
Perry quietly pulled up a chair and patted Clark on the shoulder. "Tell me exactly what happened, starting with you leaving the Planet to check out her Jeep."
Perry leaned in and listened as Clark outlined the whole adventure as far as he knew it. "Good work, Clark. Really good work. I just want to know how you found the helicopter so quickly."
He ducked his head and smiled crookedly. "Dumb luck, Chief, just plain old dumb luck. Once I found out what kind of chopper it probably was, I figured it had to be a private craft, and I hoped they weren't pilots themselves, and do you know how many private, business, and personal use helicopters of that type there are in Metropolis? Bunches of them, let me tell you. If I'd shown up five minutes later, Carmen would've been gone and I would have missed her." He shuddered. "I knew Lois was in some danger, but I never imagined how much. It scares me to think how close a call this was." He hesitated. "Perry, I was almost - I was almost too late to help her." He squeezed his eyes shut. "I don't think I could have survived losing her."
"Reminds me of what she said about you not long ago when we thought those cloned gangsters had killed you. You and she should compare those notes soon." Perry squeezed his shoulder. "You stay with her as long as you need to. I'll write this one up and put your byline on it. You earned it."
"Thanks. What about Lois getting a byline too?"
Perry shook his head. "No. She is the story this time. She can do a first-person account when she feels up to it, but you get the banner by yourself this time, son." He stood up and frowned at Clark. "And I don't want to see you in the newsroom until Lois is better. I don't care how long it takes, understand?"
Clark looked at his boss and his friend, and he understood how badly shaken Perry also was. Clark realized again that Perry - in his gruff, fatherly way - loved Lois as much as he did. "Got it. I'll check in with you as soon as I have some news."
"Good. Say, that Carmen is a real pistol! She makes for great copy all by herself."
Clark smiled. "Make sure you mention her prominently in the story, Chief. I might not have found Lois at all without her help."
"Huh! She earned her fee, that's for sure. I've already approved the expenditure for the helicopter trip, along with a big thank-you bonus. And the police commissioner is planning to yell at her for tackling such a dangerous job without contacting the authorities, then call a press conference and give her a citizen's commendation for bravery."
"Good. Hey, wait a minute! Carmen's not a citizen yet, Perry."
Perry smiled. "We've arranged for her to take her test. When she takes the oath of citizenship, I want both you and Lois there, assuming Lois feels up to it. It'll be great for the paper, and great for Carmen too."
Clark nodded. "Have you talked to Bill Henderson yet? Do they know who those guys were or why they were doing this?"
"Part of it. One of them was an out-of-work actor named Kevin MacGillis. He was a specialist in vocal impersonations. You could give him a tape of almost anyone, man or woman, and he'd nail the voice by the next day. He'd been out of work for a couple of years because of his violent temper. He was on some daytime drama when he beat up a makeup intern for no apparent reason. He went to jail for assault and battery, and even with his incredible talent no one would hire him after he got out."
"He must have been the one who pulled the gun when Carmen and I opened the door."
"No, that was Doctor Montgomery Proctor, formerly a practicing experimental psychologist. He went to prison for murder about three years ago, sentenced to death for killing a policewoman during a traffic stop. Claimed she'd deliberately been rude to him."
"Huh. Sounds like a real nice fella."
"Oh, yeah, he was a real pussycat. Before his trial, he was on the CIA's payroll doing only they know what. The rumor is that he was an interrogation specialist who killed some people he was supposed to be questioning, so they dropped him like a live grenade. Somebody broke him out of Death Row a couple of weeks ago, presumably for this little assignment."
"What did they get from the computers in the farmhouse?"
Perry snorted. "Not much. When Carmen sprayed the room and killed MacGillis and Proctor, she shot up the computers pretty badly, too. Star Labs is trying to retrieve whatever data they can from the hard drives, but Jimmy got a look at them and he says they probably won't have much luck. The fire in the console melted most of the hardware that wasn't shot to pieces."
"But why Lois? Why torture Lois like this?"
Perry shrugged. "No one knows for certain. The best guess is that they wanted specific information from her."
"You think they got it?"
"If they had, all you would have found at the house was Lois's body. Whatever they wanted, they either didn't get it or weren't able to pass it along."
Clark nodded. "Who were they working for?"
Perry hesitated. "We don't know for sure."
"Is it related to something Lois was working on?"
Perry hesitated again. "Maybe." He exhaled deeply. "Probably."
Clark gently caressed Lois's hand. Her sleeping face, still tense with fear, relaxed noticeably. "What's Lois working on, Perry?"
"Besides the water department kickbacks?"
"I doubt the city manager would go this far."
"Yeah, me too." Perry sighed. "There's rumors about a new criminal organization moving into Metropolis and taking over where Luthor left off. The name we keep hearing is Intergang."
Clark frowned hard. "Why am I just now hearing about it?"
"Because we don't have any real proof. Lois was collecting rumor and innuendo to see if it all fit together. I told her not to share this story with anyone, you included, in case she found more facts to support the rumors. I didn't want anyone to be in danger." He rubbed his hands over his face. "Not one of my smartest decisions."
Clark thought of the dead men in the basement of the farmhouse. "Nobody makes the right decision every time, Perry, not even Superman." He hesitated. "Do those rumors and innuendoes fit together?"
Perry sighed again. "Two days ago, I would have said 'no,' but now I'm not so sure. It's not proof, but I can't think of any other person or group who'd have both the resources and the motive to do something like this. Lois must have asked the wrong person the wrong question, and someone got scared she knew something important or dangerous. Maybe when she feels better she'll have some ideas as to who that someone might have been."
Clark shook his head. "I hope you're wrong about this new group, Chief."
"Why's that?"
He looked into Perry's eyes. "Lex Luthor was a dangerous criminal, but he thought of himself as either a surgeon or an artist, and he tried to run his illegal activities in the same way. Minimum effort for maximum gain. If this is an example of the way Intergang works, they're more like an berserk rogue elephant, willing to trample anyone who gets in their way."
"I sure hope that doesn't come to pass, Clark. No one would be safe then, not reporters or police officers or even people in the District Attorney's office." He stood ramrod straight. "I've got to get back to the office. Call me as soon as she wakes up. I'll come over and fuss at her for getting into trouble. Again!" He patted Clark on the shoulder. "Good thing you kept at it, Clark. Even Superman would've had a hard time finding her under these circumstances. You did a fabulous job."
"Thanks, Chief."
"And get some rest yourself, okay? Even if you were Superman, you'd still need to sleep occasionally."
*****
She picked up her office phone before the second ring finished. "Right Now Deliveries, Carmen Avanzano speaking. We deliver anything to any place at a reasonable cost, and we deliver it right now. How may I help you today?"
"You may accept my congratulations, Ms. Avanzano. That was excellent work. You have reaffirmed my faith in you as one of my very best cleaners."
"I must apologize for allowing the guard to escape, sir. I could not clean him without harming Mr. Kent also. I will locate the man and terminate him if you wish it."
"No need. He knows nothing except that he was supposed to guard the house. He's not a loose end, and we can use him again on something else. Besides, this way Kent still thinks you're his angel. Your task is complete. And I admire the way you hustled Kent out of the farmhouse too quickly for him to ask any embarrassing questions."
"Thank you, Mr. Church. It is my pleasure to serve. I hope the project produced some positive results."
He exhaled deeply and the smile left his voice. "It did not. We got absolutely nothing from it except a risk of exposure. They didn't learn a thing about how much Lane and the Daily Planet know about our organization. And that's the last time I break a death row inmate out of prison, especially for a cockamamie project like this. It's way too expensive." She could hear him shifting in his chair. She never would have let any of her equipment squeak so loudly. "I didn't like this experiment to start with - it's not our preferred method of operation - but Proctor's attorney talked me into it. She's a greedy little wench. Which reminds me, have you found her yet?"
"I have, sir. She is vacationing in Aruba, despite the tragic news that she has lost a very valuable client. Sadly, she will suffer a scuba diving accident the day after tomorrow and drown."
"I appreciate your efficiency, Ms. Avanzano. I hope you found your remuneration sufficient."
"No, sir, but I believe the amount of money you placed in my Cayman Islands account was more than generous."
"Ha-ha-ha! You're as witty as ever. I always enjoy speaking with you, Carmen."
"There is one more thing, sir, if you please."
"Go ahead."
Carmen frowned to herself. "The original plan, as you know, sir, was for me to bring Mr. Kent to the empty farmhouse after several days and discover poor Ms. Lane's dead body, but he located me far more quickly than I had anticipated he would. He might not appear to be a threat, but I think he is one who must be watched. He might prove dangerous to the entire enterprise."
"Hmm. I see what you mean. That's a very logical analysis. I'll take it under advisement. And thank you for the excellent thought, Carmen. Good-bye."
"Have a nice day, Mr. Church."
Carmen hung up and grinned to herself. Too bad Kent was already spoken for. He might have provided her some good sport. They would have been good together.
For a little while, at least.
The End (?)
Author's notes: Thanks to my terrific Beta readers, Ray and Wanda, for their insightful perseverance and always helpful suggestions. The title of this piece was inspired by a sequence in a Babylon 5 episode (season 1 episode #5 'Parliament of Dreams') where the Narn ambassador is threatened by an assassin who taunts him repeatedly with the almost-haiku "You will know fear, you will know pain, and then you will die." As always, I gleefully invite your feedback. Let me know what you thought of it! And thanks for making it to the end!
