PART SEVEN
Club 37 wasn’t the smooth, sophisticated wine bar Lois had pictured when she’d read Dr Klein’s note at lunchtime. In fact, as she approached in the jeep, the other Clark by her side, she wished she’d dressed more casually than the good jeans and smart sweater she was wearing. The parking lot in front of the club was swarming with motorbikes and bikers, some of them spilling out onto the street and others spreading sideways into the neighbouring parking lots. The noise from revving engines, thumping music, and loud, enthusiastic bikers, was enough to make her teeth rattle.
Erring on the side of caution, she decided to park the jeep on the opposite side of the road, some distance away from the melee of bikes and bikers.
“You sure this is the right place?” asked Clark.
She pointed at the bright pink neon sign above the building. “What do you think?”
“Well, yes, but look at it!” he exclaimed. “That lot would eat Dr Klein for breakfast, lab coat included.”
She shrugged. “Nah, they’re harmless. Look at them – half of them are probably over 50.”
He peered through the jeep window. “Okay, but they seem like a very...fit...over-50s crowd. Just look at all that leather. And metal.”
“Yeah, well Jimmy wears leather and drives a bike, but you’re not going to tell me you’re afraid of him?” she drawled. “Anyway, never mind that – can you see Dr Klein?”
“No.”
“Me either.” She opened her door and stepped out. “You coming?” she asked, when he didn’t budge from his seat.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we just stayed here until he arrives?” he said. “I mean, we’re not exactly going to blend in over there.”
He had a point. In her jeans and sweater, she’d look out of place amongst the leather-clad crowd across the road. Clark wasn’t even wearing jeans, but had chosen chinos and a button-down black shirt from her husband’s wardrobe.
Reluctantly, she slid back behind the wheel and closed the door. “Okay, since it’s not eight o’clock yet, we’ll stay here.”
“Fine.”
Why on earth was he so uneasy in the face of a few aging-hippy bikers? Okay, so one or two of them looked like they might be capable of more than just an assault on good taste, but still... “You do know you’re invulnerable, don’t you?”
He glanced sideways at her. “Yes, but you’re not.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s very sweet of you, but I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, actually.”
He winced. “That sounds like something my Lois would say.”
“Well, you should listen to her. Just because we wear skirts occasionally doesn’t mean we can’t defend ourselves.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I’d be just as concerned if you were a man, you know.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yes.”
She crossed her arms. “I don’t believe you.”
His mouth twisted. “Fine by me.” He turned away to gaze out the window. “I’ve been thinking about what you said this morning. About leaving Lana.”
“Oh?”
“Much as it pains me to say it, I think you’re right,” he said. “I have to stay with her until I can get to the bottom of this thing.”
At last he was seeing sense! “It’s the best way to find out how much she’s involved,” she agreed.
“I mean, how much worse can it be than it is now?” he muttered. “I already know she thinks of me as a thing. Who cares if she shares those views with Skywatch?”
He sounded so depressed when he talked about Lana. So much so, in fact, that she found herself actually glad that he had Lois to confide in. “Just...take care, okay?” she said, remembering Clark’s concerns last night. “She could be more dangerous than you think.”
He snorted. “You mean she can hurt me more than she already has? I doubt it.”
She did a quick scan of the milling bikers for Dr Klein, but he was nowhere to be seen. Well, they were still early. “Clark thinks she may be using something called kryptonite against you,” she said. “Do you know what that is?”
“No.” He turned to look at her. “Sounds like it comes from Krypton, though.”
She nodded. “It’s a meteorite from your home planet. It glows a sickly green, which is unpleasant enough, but more importantly, it can kill you.”
His eyes went wide. “Kill me? How?”
“It emits some sort of radiation that’s lethal to Kryptonians,” she explained. “First it causes extreme pain and nausea, quickly followed by a high fever. If you can get away from it soon enough, the worst you’ll suffer is a loss of your powers for a while. But otherwise...” She shrugged. “Anyway, Clark’s had a few near-misses, so he recognises the symptoms pretty quickly. When he woke up in your place yesterday morning, he thought he’d been exposed to kryptonite.”
“You’re...you’re kidding me,” he breathed.
She shook her head. “I’d trust Clark one hundred per cent on this one.” As the blood drained from his face and he turned a sickly white, she put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re okay, aren’t you? You’re not going to be sick again?”
“No,” he muttered. “It’s just...those symptoms you described...” Suddenly, there was a strange crunching sound from his side of the jeep. Following his downward gaze, she saw that his right hand now held the mangled remains of her door handle. “Hell,” he muttered, shoving the door open and striding several paces along the sidewalk.
She glanced quickly at her watch to check the time – ten to eight – and pushed her door open to follow him. He was standing facing a shop front, his hands clenched tightly at his sides, and looking dangerously as if he were moments away from punching a hole in the glass. She went to stand beside him. “You recognise the symptoms?”
“Yes.”
She put a hand on his arm to pull him around to face her, but encountered rock-hard muscle - impossible to budge even a millimetre. “Tell me.”
“I’d never been ill before,” he began in a cold, hard voice. “That’s why I remember it so clearly. There’d been a really bad storm, and several trees were down. Lana insisted we go play near the bottom end of Shuster’s Field where the biggest trees had fallen, even though we’d been told to stay away until the area had been made safe. It wasn’t like her to disobey her parents, but I couldn’t talk her out of it. So I went with her to make sure she was okay.”
He brought his arms up to hug himself, his shoulders hunching as he continued. “We found a really big hole where one of the trees had been uprooted, and that’s when I got sick. Really sick. The pain was so bad I could hardly move, but instead of fetching help like I asked her to, Lana somehow managed to drag me back to her house.” He paused, his chest heaving with suppressed anger. “She said she didn’t want the grown-ups to know where we’d been,” he spat. “Like that was more important than my health.”
“Anyway,” he continued, “by the time we got there, I was shivering so bad her Mom put me straight to bed, took my temperature and diagnosed the flu – there was a lot of it about at the time. Neither of us mentioned the crippling pain I’d experienced because we were scared that would show up my differences.”
Lois nodded. “Sounds like kryptonite. But maybe Lana didn’t know it was there.”
“Maybe not. But two days later...My God, just two days later...I got sick again. We were eating lunch at school – just her and me at a table. Again, there was the crippling pain followed by violent shivering – a high fever.” He shrugged. “The school nurse sent me home saying I’d obviously come back to school too soon after the last bout of flu, but I knew it wasn’t the flu. I didn’t have any of the other symptoms for flu.”
“Kryptonite again,” agreed Lois. “So you think Lana deliberately exposed you to it that second time?”
“Well, get this – she was showing me her collection of rocks and pebbles at the time.” He snorted. “I didn’t even know she was interested in stuff like that up until then. Now I know why.”
“Oh, Clark!” she exclaimed softly, rubbing her hand up and down his sleeve. “I’m so sorry.”
“I was so grateful I had someone to confide in,” he muttered. “She reassured me and made me feel like it wasn’t such a big deal – even though I could tell she was just as worried as me. Or at least, I thought she was worried.”
She felt his muscles tense again. “Come back to the car,” she suggested quickly. “If you like, you can stay there while I meet Dr Klein.” Glancing at her watch again, she saw that it really was time to get over to the club.
“No, I’ll come with you,” he said, turning away from the shop window at last. “I need something to take my mind off all this.”
And so did she! It now looked as if her husband might be sharing a house with a potential killer! Not that he couldn’t take care of himself, but if Lana had kryptonite...
Lois swallowed hard, gave herself a mental shakedown, and walked purposefully back to the jeep beside Clark. No sense in worrying about something she couldn’t do anything about. The best thing she could do for Clark right now was to meet Dr Klein and find out how to get him away from that woman as quickly as she could.
But as they reached the jeep, Clark faltered and placed a hand on the jeep’s roof to steady himself.
“Clark?” she queried. “Are you feeling sick again?”
He shook his head. “Dizzy. I think...” He began to sink forwards.
Quickly, she grabbed him around the waist. “Sit,” she commanded, pulling the jeep door open with one hand and then bundling him inside. “Put your head between your legs.” She pressed him forwards with a hand on his back while praying that he wasn’t about to throw up all over her jeep. Bad enough that he’d broken her door handle.
“No, I think...happening again...”
“What’s happening again?” She shook him gently when he didn’t answer. “Clark?”
************
“...over to Dan Wilson at Metropolis Airport. Dan, what can you tell us about this so-called miracle?”
Huh? Where had Lois gone? And why had she put the radio on in the jeep?
He raised his head, which seemed to have gained about a hundred pounds, and blinked to clear his vision.
Not a radio. A TV. His TV – the one Lana didn’t like because it was the wrong colour. Cold despair settled upon him like a heavy shroud: he was home.
He glanced around the room quickly, but he appeared to be alone. Was Lana out, or merely in another part of the house?
“...and experts are saying that there’s no way the plane should have been able to land safely on its own.”
Frowning, he looked back at the TV, which was displaying a close-up of what appeared to be part of the undercarriage of an airplane. In the centre of the screen, a bubbly, jagged solder line ran across the metal.
“Gary, we could be looking at a real, genuine miracle here,” the voiceover was saying. “Already, some religious groups have arrived to pay homage.”
The picture changed to a scene on the runway, where a man in a long, flowing white robe was kneeling down and apparently kissing the tarmac.
What the heck was going on? No-one had been making a fuss like this over in the other universe!
He heard the front door slam, and then seconds later, Lana swept into the room, still in her buttoned up raincoat. Pausing to look at the TV for a few moments, she crossed to his side and bent down to give him a quick peck on the cheek. Her lips were cold on the warm skin of his face. “Good day at work?”
“Okay,” he replied. “You?”
“So-so,” she said, looking at the TV again. Her lips pursed as she unbuttoned her coat and threw it over a chair. “You eaten yet?”
“Yeah. You?”
“I had something at lunchtime.” She sat neatly and primly on the other sofa and looked at the TV again. The reporter at the airport was interviewing one of the passengers, who was excitedly relating how the plane had seemed to glide effortlessly down to the runway, despite the pilot’s dire announcements just seconds earlier of the impossible situation they’d been facing.
Glide effortlessly.
An image of the other Lois swam before him, explaining with a swooping motion of her hands just how easy it was to fly an airplane down to safety. “All you have to do is get underneath it and take the weight on your back.”
He hadn’t, had he? The other Clark?
A mechanic was being interviewed now, inter-cut with pictures of what were presumably ordinary solder jobs on pieces of metal. Then the airplane’s undercarriage was shown again with its bubbly, jagged repair – clearly done in haste and not very expertly.
He had. The other Clark had flown this plane down to safety.
Clark glanced over at Lana, who was watching the TV intently. Did she suspect anything? She wasn’t usually this interested in the news.
The item finished and the program moved on to foreign news. Lana grabbed the remote and muted the sound. Then sat fiddling with the device while gazing at the silent images on the screen. Should he say anything? Pre-empt any suspicions she might be harbouring? The atmosphere in the room was becoming so thick you could cut it with a knife. Maybe he could-
“Why, Clark?” Her gaze had dropped to the remote control in her hands, her voice low and quiet.
“I’m sorry?”
“I mean, I can understand why you’d want to rescue all those poor people, but after everything we’ve achieved - everything we’ve sacrificed...” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and placed the remote carefully on the sofa beside her. “I just don’t understand why you’d want to throw all that away.”
“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about-“
“Yes, you do,” she murmured, meeting his gaze at last. “Please don’t pretend you don’t. We’re better than that, aren’t we? More...mature.”
She sounded so reasonable. A little hurt, perhaps, but she had every right to be, didn’t she? He’d let her down.
At least, that was what he was supposed to think, wasn’t it? “Actually, Lana, I didn’t-“
“I think what hurts most is that you didn’t tell me,” she continued quietly, as if she hadn’t heard his interjection. “You’ve always confided in me before. I could have helped you if I’d known.”
“Known what?”
She looked down at her hands. “I guess flying could be quite exciting,” she mused. “Is that what it is, Clark? It excites you?”
He shrugged. “I really wouldn’t know.”
“Or is it a feeling of power? Knowing you can do something that no-one else can?” She nodded. “That would make sense. But whatever it is, we can find another way...another outlet for you.”
At that, he wasn’t able to stop his expression from twisting into a grimace. “Something more normal, you mean?”
“Yes,” she replied, smiling at him like he was a dull child who’d for once given the correct answer. “That’s right - something to take its place. And...and you could do charity work if you want to help people. Daddy knows several charities in Metropolis who need volunteers on a regular basis. He could recommend you to a few of them. How about that?”
“It sounds just great, Lana,” he said tonelessly. “You know how much I want to be invisible.”
“Good.” She got up and came to sit beside him, snuggling up close and putting her arm around his shoulders. “So you’ll promise? No more flying?”
Cringing inside and fighting the urge to remove himself from her grasp, he replied, “Whatever you say, Lana.”
“And you’ll tell me if you get any more urges like today’s?” She kissed his cheek. “You shouldn’t struggle alone, honey. I’m here for you - you know that.”
Suddenly, his patience gave way. “Aren’t you even just a little relieved that all those people’s lives were saved?” he snapped.
She pulled away from him, sliding her arm from his shoulders like a snake might withdraw from its prey. “Of course I am,” she replied. “It’s really wonderful that you rescued them.”
He snorted at her insincerity. “How about you try that again and this time sound like you actually mean it?”
She flinched. “That’s a horrible thing to say. Of course I mean it.”
“Then why aren’t you thrilled by what I was able to do? Why aren’t you encouraging me to try again instead of telling me off?” He stood up. “I’m going to bed.”
“Clark, don’t be like that,” she pouted. “You know I’m only trying to protect you.”
“But at what cost?” he retorted, staring down at her. There she sat, so pretty and neat, not a hair out of place nor a fold of her skirt misplaced, her make-up as perfect as a fashion magazine – and not an ounce of real compassion in her soul. Oh, how he yearned for just five minutes of Lois’s messy, whirlwind personality. “Goodnight, Lana.”
“But it’s still early,” she protested.
“I’m tired,” he muttered and strode from the room.
Walking upstairs, he forced himself to unclench his hands and pull in deep, slow breaths through his nose. He’d needed all of his willpower not to start an argument with her. He’d wanted to yell at her – tell her how callous and selfish she was to believe that keeping his secret was more important than saving lives. Tell her he was going to fly whenever and wherever he pleased, and there was nothing she or her friends at Skywatch could do about it. Tell her to stop controlling him.
But he didn’t trust himself. In the heat of an argument, with emotions running high, he’d never be able to hold back telling her just how he felt about her notebooks and her ‘it’ and her cold-hearted manipulations - or about her probable involvement with Skywatch. He’d have let her have the full force of his fury with all guns blazing.
And gone would be any chance to find out just exactly what had been happening behind his back for all these years. If there was even the slightest chance that she was working for Skywatch, he couldn’t risk her or them knowing more than he did. Knowledge was power, and he intended to amass just as much of it as he possibly could before he made a single move. He was going to spy on Lana, just as she had spied on him.
************
Lois had been in clubs with loud music, but she’d never experienced anything quite like this before. Her chest felt like someone was thumping it in time to the music with a huge padded mallet. Not only that, but the pounding was reverberating straight through her entire body and she was beginning to wonder whether it possible to die from too much noise.
She, Clark and Dr Klein were sitting around a tiny circular table in the centre of the bikers’ bar. All around them were leather-clad bodies, drinking and laughing, and the air was blue with smoke. The floor felt sticky underfoot and her chair rocked on unevenly balanced legs. So far, she’d managed to avoid touching the table, but she suspected she’d find puddles of warm beer if she did.
She could understand why Dr Klein had picked this place – no-one was ever going to overhear anything he told them – but couldn’t he have chosen a nice quiet deserted warehouse somewhere instead?
Dr Klein was leaning close to Clark and saying something.
“What?” she yelled at Clark. “What did he say?”
Clark’s lips moved.
“What? I can’t hear you!”
He leant towards her and shouted in her ear. “I’ll tell you later!”
Frustrated that she was being excluded from the conversation, she put her mouth close to his ear and yelled, “Don’t forget to ask him about the alternative dimension theory!”
Clark rolled his eyes and pointed at her drink. His lips moved again and he mimed a sore throat.
She felt tempted to pick up her drink and splash it over him just for being so annoyingly good at hearing people in noisy places. Super-hearing was all very well, but it wasn’t fair that she couldn’t join in the interviewing of Dr Klein.
But all she could do was sit and sip her drink while Clark engaged in an apparently fascinating conversation. Would anyone hear her if she screamed, she wondered.
Twenty minutes later, she and Clark were sitting in the jeep and Lois was trying to adjust to the seemingly deafening silence all around her. It was exactly as if someone had pulled the plug on sound. There was just none of it to be heard. She was in a negative sound space.
“Well?” she croaked in a voice that seemed to echo tinnily around her head. “What did he say?”
“Well, after I got him to speak English and not scientific mumbo-jumbo,” Clark replied with a rueful grin, “what he basically said is that Dr Schulz doesn’t fully understand the forces he’s working with. According to Dr Klein, he’s ignoring too many unexplained anomalies in his experiments and his equations don’t add up.”
“I knew it!” she exclaimed, and immediately regretted her outburst. “Ow,” she muttered, placing her hands over her sensitive ears.
“Awww,” murmured Clark. “Your poor ears. Look, how about I drive us home while you lie back and relax? I’ll tell you everything he said after we get home.”
“No, I want to know now. What if you get switched again?”
“Okay, then how about I drive and talk while you listen and relax?” He rubbed his hand soothingly over her thigh. “You look tired, sweetheart.”
Yeah, but not for much longer if he kept doing that with his hand, her libido sighed dreamily. Would it ever wear off, this tingling, electrical sensation wherever he touched her? Did old married couples of seventy-something still feel like this?
She placed her hand over his. More electricity. “All ri-“ She stopped and cleared her voice, hoping to bring it up a couple of octaves from sultry and sexy. “Okay,” she said. “But watch my bodywork.”
He grinned. “I’m happy to watch that any time.”
She swiped at his arm. “Just get over here and drive, silly.”
***************
Clark lay on his back in bed, his eyes closed but still very much awake. The faint sounds of a TV chat show drifted up from downstairs, a muted background chatter that was strangely soothing – a comforting reminder of the world outside this bleak and loveless house, he supposed.
As was often his habit these days, he’d managed to blank out Lana, her duplicity and pretty much everything else to do with his marriage, and was thinking beyond his present stifled existence.
What would it feel like to have rescued a plane-load of people?
He’d never before imagined that these strange abilities of his could actually be put to any use, let alone be used to save lives. His eye rays were just about good enough for heating up a cup of coffee, but it was usually touch and go as to whether he’d turn the cup into a pile of blackened cinders. He’d learned how to confine his strength to human levels, but he knew only too well that if he ever switched into full freak mode, he’d crush anything he grasped to dust. As for flying – well, he’d tried, hadn’t he? What a joke that had turned out to be, straining upwards with his chin while his feet had remained firmly planted on the ground. He must have looked like some kind of a head case.
Yet Lois had told him that it was possible. A man just like him was routinely flying to people’s rescue, using every one of his freaky abilities to help them. He wore a costume and called himself Superman - and nobody laughed. Nobody even suspected it was plain old Clark Kent under the disguise.
What incredible freedom he must feel. To be exactly the person he wanted to be, to refine all these weird abilities and turn them into something useful – to even make them into a force for good. It seemed almost inconceivable. And yet...
Imagine lying in this bed knowing that families had remained untouched by tragedy, that disasters had been avoided, that people’s livelihoods had remained intact, all because of something he’d done. How would that feel?
Incredible, he decided.
But how had the other Clark done it? How had he managed to tame these clumsy-
Pain suddenly lanced through his body, punching his breath from his lungs.
What the...?
He gasped as the agony gripped and knifed through every part of him. It bit so deeply and so powerfully that within seconds he was feeling sick and dizzy. Rolling onto his side made no difference, curling up and clenching every muscle only made it worse, and when he rolled over onto his back again, the sour taste of bile burned the back of his throat and fresh pain slashed through his head.
“Clark? Oh, my God, Clark!”
Lana. Her hand landed lightly on his chest - just as he had to turn his head to one side and hack painfully to clear his throat. Dimly, he felt her press a paper hankie to his mouth and thought for a moment that she was trying to stifle him. In fact, all she did was provide something for him to cough into, and then when he was done, dabbed efficiently at his lips. Perhaps she was worried he’d mess up the nice clean bed linen.
He rolled his head around on the pillow and looked up at her.
“What...what are you doing to me?” he gasped.
Because he’d identified the pain. The familiar, paralysing agony of kryptonite.
Her oh-so-anxious face acquired a frown. “What do you mean? I came up to bed to find you like this.” She reached out and pushed his hair back from his forehead. “It’s just like before, isn’t it? Poor sweetheart. I thought you’d got over this, whatever it is.”
“You...you know what it is,” he said. He tried to get some purchase on the bed with his elbows so that he could inch away from her, but his limbs didn’t seem able to respond correctly under the relentless onslaught of pain. He groaned in frustration and fell back onto the bed.
“Try to relax,” she soothed. “You know it only gets worse if you try to fight it. Take some deep breaths. Come on - with me, Clark. Nice, deep breaths...“
She began pantomiming the in and out of slow breathing while giving him encouraging looks. Not so long ago he would have been taken in by her consummate performance as the concerned wife helping her sick husband, but not now. Oh, no, not now...
“I know about kryptonite,” he blurted.
She interrupted her pantomime to frown down at him. “Kryptonite? What’s that?”
“A green rock than can kill me,” he gasped. “You’ve...you’ve planted it somewhere in this room.”
She stilled. Even in his pain-filled haze, he could tell that she was rattled. God, what had he done? He’d blown the entire mess of lies and deceit right out of the water with one single, idiotic blurt. What would she do? Kill him while she had the chance?
She was moving again. He flinched as her hand landed on his forehead and she bent low over him. Now what? He waited tensely for her next move. Perhaps if he lay quiet for a couple of minutes, he could gather enough strength to make a break for it...
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she murmured, stroking his hair. “But it’s for your own good.”
My God, she was actually admitting it? He was about to respond to that when fresh pain lanced through him, forcing a moan to bubble its way out of his mouth.
“My poor darling,” she whispered, kissing the side of his face. “I’m sorry it has to be this way.”
He turned his head away from her. “I...I don’t understand.”
“If I don’t keep you under control, they’ll take you away from me,” she explained kindly. “They’ll hurt you.”
“You’re...hurting me.”
“Shhh...” she hushed. “Just a few more minutes.”
Was this how it ended? Murdered in his bed by the woman he’d once loved? A fitting end, perhaps, for a blind fool who’d been so stupid as to place his trust in a woman without once questioning her motives.
But he wasn’t ready to die yet. Lois was out there, waiting for him, offering him a chance for a real future. He’d return the love and support she’d given him over the past few months, and he wanted to give the Superman thing a try. There was hope ahead, if only he could avoid dying in the next few minutes.
He began to struggle, to attempt to roll onto his side so that he could sit up and then scramble off the bed. Weakness crippled him, though – already he was much weaker than when the pain had first struck – and Lana was easily able to press him back down. He fought against her, but even in extremis, his natural instinct to avoid striking a woman prevented him from fighting as hard as he might against a man.
How ironic, he thought hysterically. Killed by his own moral standards.
And then, abruptly, the pain disappeared, leaving him dazed and light-headed. “There,” she said. “Now you won’t be tempted to do something silly like that aeroplane rescue again.”
“Silly?” he choked. “People could have died.”
“I know, and I am really proud of you for saving them, sweetheart.” She smiled down at him. “I didn’t realise you could do anything as clever as that,” she said. “In fact, the press are saying it was a miracle.”
How could she go from half-killing him to telling him how wonderful he was in less than the blink of an eye? He didn’t understand it – he could hardly think straight, let alone get inside Lana’s head when his own was still spinning. “So...so they don’t suspect anything?” he said.
“Not this time, but they will next time.” She waved her finger at him as if to scold a small child. “You can’t afford to take the risk, Clark, you know that.”
“I could wear a disguise.”
“Oh, don’t be silly!” she exclaimed. “Sweetheart, I know how much you like helping people. That’s why I’m doing this, can’t you see? So you won’t feel so bad when something serious happens like today. You won’t feel guilty if you can’t do anything to help.”
Her logic was astounding. Had she always been like this and he just hadn’t noticed before? Or perhaps the strain of her double life had finally got to her and turned her head. “And when I recover?”
“Then we’ll see how well you manage. If you don’t do anything rash, then we won’t need to do this again.” She smiled. “Just think of this as your chance to rest from your conscience for a few days.”
She pulled the bedclothes up around his chin and kissed his forehead. “Try to get some sleep. I’ll be just next door in the spare room if you need me.”
He could hardly believe it - she was back to the caring wife routine again. Did she really believe he’d buy it this time? Particularly since she’d all but admitted she was in cahoots with someone else. In fact...
“Who are ‘they’, Lana?”
She paused at the door, then swivelled around to face him. “I’m sorry, darling? Did you say something?”
“You said ‘they’ll’ take me away from you,” he said. “Who are ‘they’?”
“You know,” she replied, a note of exasperation in her voice. “We’ve talked about it often enough.”
“We have?”
She threw her hands up. “There are all manner of agencies out there who’d like nothing better than to get their hands on a real, live alien. Not to mention the press and the media. They’d all want a piece of you – literally, in some cases.”
“Sure, but you sounded pretty specific earlier,” he said. “Like you were referring to a particular organisation.”
“Did I?” she replied. “Don’t forget you were in a lot of pain – you probably didn’t hear me right.” She shrugged. “Look, let’s not talk about this now. You know how sick it makes you, and you’re already unwell.”
Thanks to you, he thought bitterly. Resigning himself to losing this particular battle of wits – he just wasn’t up to the fight - he rolled onto his side, muttering, “Go away, Lana.”
He waited until he heard the door close and then pushed the bedclothes down. The cooler air on his bare skin made him shiver, adding to his general feeling of total lousiness, but there was simply no way he intended to remain where she’d left him, meekly awaiting her next assault.
Slowly, he sat up and swung his feet down to the carpet. Sitting on the side of the bed, doing his best to ignore the shivers knocking his teeth together, he planned his next move while gathering his meagre strength together. Clothes. His next priority was to get dressed with the minimum of effort and as quietly as possible. Sweats and his running shoes were probably easiest. Then his wallet and keys from his jacket and he’d be out of here.
Fifteen minutes later he was dressed and standing by the door, one ear pressed to its surface while he cautiously eased the handle down. Momentarily, he allowed himself to sag against the door before he opened it. His trembling legs didn’t feel steady enough to carry him onto the landing, let alone downstairs and out into the street. Still, he’d got this far and he was damned if he was going to give up now.
Gingerly, he opened the door and stepped out. Glancing along to Lana’s door, he saw that it was closed and there was no light coming from the room. Hopefully she was already drifting off to sleep. He gripped the top of the banister and made his way shakily downstairs. Thank God for a new house and no creaky floorboards – this would never have been possible at home in Smallville where every step you took resounded through the entire house.
At the bottom of the staircase he paused, torn between resting on the bottom step and forcing himself to continue while his luck still held. Willpower, he told himself. You could move heaven and earth with an ounce of willpower. Sitting down was for wimps.
So he continued, clinging to whatever he could – the wall, door handles, the back of a chair – until he was at the front door. He fumbled the key into the lock, turned it and quickly opened the door, stepped out into the cold night and locked the door behind him.
Success and freedom. But as he turned away from the door, the steps down to the sidewalk tilted away from him like a sheer cliff face. Willpower, he reminded himself. He took them one at a time, regrouping and rechecking his balance after every step. Everything was going pretty well until a cat suddenly let out a squeal and darted across his field of vision. He started, and then he was falling, the hard stone steps coming up to meet him and sending him tumbling downwards. He tried to gain some purchase, hands and feet flailing desperately in all directions, but his momentum carried him relentlessly down until he came to a bone-jarring halt at the bottom.
For a long time, he lay still, not sure which way was up and praying fervently that Lana hadn’t heard his fall.
Then sensation began to creep back slowly. Bits of him started to hurt. He discovered he was shivering. And he was nauseous. “Willpower,” he muttered grimly and pulled himself painfully to his feet. One knee protested when he put his weight on it, his hands were scraped and bloodied and his side hurt, but he was otherwise intact.
Now all he had to do was walk a couple of blocks to the main street, hail a cab and within less than half an hour he’d be tucked up in a nice clean bed. Easy.
Not that he intended to go to Lois’s apartment. Oh, no, not this time. Not in this state, having just been assaulted by his own wife and barely able to limp along the street. Lois would think he wasn’t able to take care of himself. That he was a wimp who always ran to her whenever he was in trouble. No, enough was enough: he had no intention of admitting to Lois that Lana had attacked him.
So he was going to check into a motel for the night. He’d figure out what to do next after a good night’s sleep.
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