The bullet stung slightly as Clark snatched it out of the air a fraction of a second before it would have landed between Lois’s eyes. A momentary glimpse of a silhouette on a rooftop nearby had been his only warning. He still wasn’t up to his full speed. He attempted to turn his head and get a better look at the shooter, but his movements felt sluggish.
The world snapped back into real time, and Clark was thrown forward in his seat belt as Lois crashed the vehicle into a light pole.
Another shot rang out, and although Clark attempted to speed time yet again, it wasn’t working.
He reached out and snapped Lois’s seat belt, grabbing her and pulling her down into the seat. His head stung, and it took him a moment to realize that he’d been hit. The ping of the bullet ricocheting and hitting the window beside him was a reminder that he needed to get Lois somewhere safe.
Lois still hadn’t moved, and for a moment Clark was afraid that she’d been hit. A quick look showed that she was simply frozen in shock, staring at him and gaping in amazement.
He ducked himself, looking carefully over the dash to get a good look at the shooter.
The squeal of tires was his only warning, as a battered green Chevrolet sedan pulled up beside him. Clark had only a moment to see a grinning dark skinned face before the shotgun poking through the back window registered.
He barely had time to throw himself on top of Lois before the blast hit him in the back. It stung slightly, and Clark was thankful that his abilities had returned to the extent that they had. Both he and Lois would otherwise be dead.
He heard the sound of two car doors opening, and he realized that the men inside the car were coming to make sure they finished the job.
He glanced back, and noted the familiar prison tattoos on the forearms of the two men stepping up to the car. He kicked out, still uncertain of his strength, and the car door flew off it’s hinges, hitting both men, and leaving them lying bloody on the ground.
Three other men were pulling themselves out of the vehicle. Clark glanced back at Lois, who’d been watching the whole thing. He was surprised to feel the jerk as she pulled the car into reverse at full speed.
The tires squealed as the rental car sped backwards. Lois drove backwards for almost a block as the men piled back in to the green Chevrolet and attempted to turn the car around. They were hampered by having to grab their injured members.
At the intersection, Lois shifted gear and turned, accelerating as quickly as the car would go. She’d had some training in combat driving; he’d seen bodyguards driving like this when he was helping guarding a Nigerian princess.
“What the hell was that?” Lois asked as Clark held tightly to the car to keep from being thrown out. His own seat belt was in shreds, and he’d snapped Lois’s in his desperation to get her out of the like of fire.
The Chevrolet was visible in the distance. Lois had a head start, though, and Clark doubted that they’d be able to catch up.
“A random drive-by shooting?” Clark said quickly. Gang violence had been a problem in Wichita for the past ten years and longer. Several of his foster brothers had been in gangs; it was what had gotten Jess killed in prison.
“You’ve been shot!” Lois said, and there was a note of hysteria in her voice. “More than once!”
Clark shook his head. “Do I look like I was shot?” There hadn’t been time to conceal what he was doing from her; hopefully, the human tendency to dismiss what it couldn’t understand would help explain things away.
“I saw it!” She insisted. “You-”
She didn’t have time to continue. The smell of smoke was becoming obvious now. Something was wrong with the engine, and a quick look with his special vision showed Clark that the shooter had missed several times and had left several holes in the radiator and in several hoses.
Fluid was dripping from several different places, and the smoke slowly rising was only increasing. A quick glance back showed that the Chevrolet, which had been dropping back was now closing on them. The car was losing power, and quickly.
“Turn!” Clark said, pointing.
Lois didn’t ask questions. She pulled the wheel sharply to the right, and the vehicle protested loudly. Clark could hear the popping sound of shots from the vehicle behind them, but they were too far away to be accurate.
The alley they turned in to was a dead end. Lois turned to stare at Clark, and before she could speak, he grabbed her and pulled her out of the car, through the opening left by his absent door.
A moment later, they were airborne. Clark had time to see the Chevrolet pulling into the mouth of the alley, and then he was moving away as quickly as he could. This felt agonizingly slow compared to what he could normally manage, but Lois didn’t know the difference.
She was stiff in his arms, the shock having rendered her speechless for the first time since he’d met her.
Lois still hadn’t spoken as Clark gently floated to a stop. She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes luminous in the light of the rising moon.
“It explains a lot,” she said, her eyes never leaving his face.
Clark frowned slightly, unsure.
“This has all been just a little too outlandish even for me. I’ve got three Kerths, and I’ve been investigating aliens.” She seemed to be speaking to herself as much as to him.
“Okay...” Clark said.
“I’m in a little white room somewhere, and a doctor is giving me an injection. All the pressure got to me, and I started having the delusions about aliens and flying men and evil rednecks.”
“Lois...” Clark said.
“It’s too bad, too. I really liked the way it all started out. The date, this out of this world guy...I should have known that something was wrong then. You don’t meet people that perfect.” Lois laughed, and there was a slightly hysterical note to it.
Clark’s heart sank.
“I’m not perfect.” Clark coughed slightly. “And Lois, you aren’t dreaming. If you were, I doubt you’d be dreaming about Smallville. Fiji, maybe, but Kansas?”
“Well, if it isn’t a dream, what is it? You can fly, you’re really strong and fast, and you’ve been trying to derail the whole alien story since Perry gave it to us.” Lois paused. “And people are shooting at us. This sounds like a bad episode of the X-files.”
“You’re getting pretty close,” Clark admitted slowly. “I’m not exactly like other people.”
“The next thing you are going to tell me is that the ship Wayne Irig was lugging around was yours.”
Clark didn’t say anything.
“Oh.” Lois said, looking him straight in the eye at last. “Oh!”
Clark turned away, staring out over the horizon. This was the moment of truth, the moment that decided whether he had to abandon everything he’d accomplished and start again in a new life, or whether he could enter a new chapter in his life, one where he had someone to confide in, where he was no longer alone.
If she rejected him, it would be a nightmare come true.
“The ship was really small,” Lois started. “Unless you can change your shape...?”
Clark shook his head dismissively.
“That means that you came here as a small child. That means that someone had to raise you. That was the Kents?”
He nodded, refusing to look at her, or give any credence to the rising hope in his chest. She hadn’t rejected him yet; that was far more than he’d ever expected from anyone.
“Did they know?”
“They found me in the spaceship. I was born normal, but I’d already started changing by the time they died. They knew.”
He’d heard the arguments; they hadn’t realized just how powerful his hearing was even then. His father had worried that he’d be taken away; his mother had been more concerned with what he would become. They’d loved him in spite of it all.
“It must be lonely.”
Clark finally looked at her. “I wasn’t lying, the first time I met you. There were just things I wasn’t ready to tell you yet.”
“So this is why you’ve been dragging your feet. You didn’t want the world to know your secret?”
Clark felt a moment of panic. “You can’t tell anyone! Nobody...I barely have any power left, and if the government caught me...my father always said they’d dissect me like a frog.”
Lois frowned. “You don’t think that people would...?”
“If I’m not human, then I’ve got no rights. Technically, I’m not even a US citizen. A lawyer might make a case to the contrary, but they’d have already killed me, so it’d be considered a moot point.” Clark hated feeling this vulnerable.
“Lois, I-”
He didn’t get a chance to complete that thought. The thin plume of smoke from their car was joined by a black, ugly trail of smoke, with flames licking up the sides of the building from which they’d come.
“There are still people in there.”
There had been a night watchman, a janitor and their contact, a lab technician. Clark didn’t know whether there were more people inside or not.
Clark moved as quickly as he could, stepping toward the trap door leading to the roof. He reached down and pulled the handle, tearing through the door jam and heaving the door open.
“If I don’t come back, you need to get out of town as quickly as possible. I don’t know who’s after us, but I’d feel a lot better knowing that you were out of danger.”
“What are you going to do?”
“There are people inside that building. I’ve got to get them out.” Clark spoke with a conviction that had become foreign to him over recent years. This was the one thing that he’d remained sure of. He’d been given his gifts to help others.
“Are you going to be ok?”
Normally, Clark wouldn’t have any question. But weakened as he was, there were no assurances.
“I don’t know.”
Before Lois could say another word, he levitated unsteadily into the sky and began to make his way back in the direction from which they’d come. His head was already hurting. He hoped that the people would have already gotten out, but he knew better.
Whoever had burned the building didn’t want the evidence to get out. It was all tied together- the murders ten years ago and what was happening today.
With that, Clark headed into the burning building. Whatever happened, he wasn’t going to let another person die when he could stop it.
Never again.
