* * *
The black bag was finally removed from her head, and she shook hair from her
eyes. The first thing she saw was the business end of a machine gun, and she sucked in
her breath, edging away.
"Pretty lil' thing, ain'cha?" the man behind the gun said softly, lightly. His face
quirked a quick smile and he stood up, looking down at her a moment as someone else
was working on her wrists.
"What do you want?" she managed to ask, surprised her voice was low and calm.
They were in a big, open room, support posts here and there, and from the litter it
looked like it had been abandoned. The floor may have been shiny once, but ceiling tiles
and a layer of dust covered it. The only light came from two or three windows that let
the twilight in.
"Me? I don't want anything from you. I'd like my cut from this deal, and that's
about it. Someone else wants you." He gave her that strange smile again, a
conspiratorial wink, and moved off. She looked up quickly to see her wrists were bound
by cable to old heating pipes in the wall. Whatever it was, it wasn't rope its chill
suggested steel cable.
"So who runs this show?" she asked, hoping to draw the knot tier into
conversation. She had little to no idea where she was, but apparently they'd been
looking for her specifically, by the way they'd greeted her. She needed to find out
something about her situation.
The man busied himself in a big tool box, its lid blocking her view. After a
moment, he shrugged. "Hey, lady, I'd like to tell, but he wants to do so his'self."
He wants to tell me himself. A familiar heavy, cold feeling settled in her stomach.
"No . . ."
"Hol' still. 'Less you wanna trade your hands in fer hooks." He chuckled a
moment, weaving something through the knots at her wrists, then went back to the tool
box and took out some kind of blow torch. Lighting it with a cigarette lighter, he
adjusted the gas and pressure so the flame shot out blue and hot.
"What's that for?"
"Makin' sure you don't pick the knots." He turned the torch on the cable,
dangerously close to her wrists, and she gasped and twisted away.
"Hold still!"
She held her breath, heart pumping, feeling the intense heat close to her and
knowing it was burning her wrists. Counting the seconds, she squeezed her eyes shut
and tried to ease away from it.
The torch moved away and was shut off, the remaining gas escaping and causing
the flame to die slowly. Lois' breath came in gasps, and she flinched as she felt the
residual heat in the cable.
"There. Singed but alive." He set the torch down and tossed the lighter in the
box. "Prepped and ready. Your doctor will be here shortly." He gave a wolfish smile at
his own sense of humor, then dropped the lid down with a crash that made Lois jump.
Her painful wrists touched the cable again and she yelped involuntarily. The man left
the room without looking back, leaving her alone.
Clark. He knew she'd be late, was probably on his way to find her.
But how can he find me? I don't even know where I am! And for a moment she
felt her heart stop. She knew of only one person who could want her badly enough to
kidnap her. One alone.
She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself enough to think. Five minutes went
by and she was just starting to think clearly when she heard a sound in the doorway.
Not wanting to confirm it herself, she forced herself to keep her eyes closed as the
measured steps got closer, then stopped. That someone crouched down very close to
her.
"Hello, Lois."
The gentle greeting tricked her into opening her eyes, and she saw his eyes, a
dark, indeterminate color in an expressive face. "I'm glad to see you again."
Her mouth tightened. She refused to dignify his presence with an answer.
Instead she bore what she hoped was a stony stare back into him.
"I'd apologize for the treatment, the steel cables, but you see, I have respect for
your intelligence and resourcefulness, and so want to make certain you don't get out and
hurt yourself." His voice was low and affectionate, and the only way she held up against
it was to twist it to hate and throw it back at him through her eyes.
"I was delighted to hear of you here in Gotham," he continued, rubbing his hands
together absently. "You see, I thought I just might have worn out my welcome in
Metropolis. Gotham, though . . ." He trailed off, gaze traveling to the window over her
right shoulder. "Gotham, I think, has what I want," he continued slowly, standing and
gazing out at the early evening sky. "I've brought a few . . . assistants with me from
Metro for this. I believe you've met a few of them already. I've arranged a nice little
operation to break things in here in Gotham. This . . .this could be my city. I can feel
the minds here, see their touch, and I think they could like me. I could like them.
There's a different spin here. People see what they want and strive to attain it.
Metropolis never had that; the people too content with their poor lot. I never fit in
there. But I could be powerful here. This city has what I want."
"Which is?" It slipped out before she could stop it.
He crouched again, cat-quick. "What was taken from me," he hissed. "My
accounts were cleaned out. That's against the law," he said, a stabbing finger for
emphasis.
"Even a child learns, misuse a toy and it's taken away. Where do you think I fit in
in all this?"
He softened again. "My dear Lois, Metropolis won't take kindly to one of their
best reporters taken in Gotham. They'll lean on authorities here, make them give me
what I want. To sweeten the deal, I've got a few Gothamites here, too. Metro and the
Daily Planet will force Gotham to concede to my demands."
"It won't work, Lex," she answered, catching his gaze and trying to reason with
him. "How many times have you been stopped?"
"Exactly!" He bit the word off sharply, and held up his fist. "Now what has
stopped me? Superman. He's in Metropolis, and we're in Gotham. That's a long way to
fly, and if he does get here . . ." He gazed at his fist, now open. A brilliant green pulse
shone out in the dark like a lone candle. Picking it up, he held it in front of her eyes.
"This is kryptonite, and we're a long way from home. And in Gotham . . ." his voice
dropped to a whisper in her ear, " . . .no one can hear you scream." Then he shifted
around and kissed her, lightly, on the lips. Stunned, she stared up at him as he stood,
turned, and left the room.
* * *
She had learned last night that she could half-twist around, get to her knees, and
stand up, though with her arms twisted awkwardly. The bitter resentment raged into
fury when she found she couldn't even relieve herself without permission and assistance.
If she didn't know any better, her best case scenario was to lose her hands to get out of
this. She had only one hope.
It took Steel to break steel.
Much to her surprise, they fed her, but that was only slightly less humiliating at
first. It took something of a fight for them to allow her to hold a sandwich in her bound
hands and eat it, and someone stayed nearby in case she dropped it. In doing so, she got
good looks at the knots and her wrists. The metalworker had woven lines of something
else through the knots, then welded that metal to itself all through the tangle. And her
wrists were burned, at least first degree. Her shoulders ached and she was dull with
fatigue, not having slept much the night before.
"Dearie me, how the demands pile up," Lex Luthor said with mock weariness,
propping his feet up on a low table. He was reading a sheet probably sent in from the
Gotham authorities. Lois could hear the building was surrounded by the local
forces every once in a while she heard a snatch of a siren.
"Can you believe this?" he asked the three others there. "They're actually
threatening me. They're warning me," he emphasized, standing and crossing slowly to a
rack of weapons someone had brought in late last night. "They think they're in
position."
"You y'don't think it's--"
Luthor let out a slow, contented laugh, then looked up at the three others
standing there. "Oh, I don't think so," he said, enunciating each word as though it gave
him pleasure. "I really don't think so."
"So . . .like, what're they saying?" one of them asked; Lois guessed the
metalworker.
"I've given them a generous forty-eight hours, and they're telling me that I've
got twelve hours."
"Twelve hours . . .for what?"
Luthor held his hands up to his mouth as though praying for a moment.
"Methinks they refer to the Man of Steel." As the slow laugh started to roll again, the
three glanced around nervously.
"So . . .what're you hidin'? If I can ask--"
Luthor looked up, and it was eerie to see the laughter in his eyes. He walked over
slowly, coming right in front of the metalworker.
"Barry, I've got a surprise for them," he said, clasping the man on the shoulders.
Then he leaned in and said in the lightest whisper, "I've taken Superman out of this
picture."
* * *
It was late afternoon before Lois awoke from her fitful nap. She was still
dreadfully short on sleep, and kept nodding off. She started violently when she saw
someone had removed her skirt while she slept and replaced it with a pair of dark blue
sweatpants. Glaring across to the chair and low table, she saw Luthor was there, and
had been watching her. He stood.
"So, what's your crazy plan this time? A third world country?" she growled. He
smiled lazily and crouched down next to her.
"No. We'll start small. Money. Three hundred million."
"Who's we?"
"You and I."
"What?"
He chuckled. "You and I, Lois, you and I. I'm not doing this alone. I have no
intention of hurting you. I simply needed some leverage and your name. Gotham has
read and informed Metropolis that Lex Luthor and one Miss Lois Lane are the ones
making the demands."
Stunned, her jaw dropped. He continued. "When they give me what I want, then
we'll get out of here."
"You're sick!" she managed weakly.
"Oh, no. I'm quite well. Call this a sane reaction to an insane world. They
tightened my rein, so I've obliged them and taken it. Tonight, late, I start the
executions. I'm saving you for last, but I think when they start seeing people drop out
of the windows, they'll comply. Tit for tat."
"Where's Clark?" As soon as the words left her lips, she kicked herself. She had
just bluntly informed Luthor that there was another target in town, if he was interested .
. .
Luthor had just started to rise and he froze, giving her a strange, amused look.
"Oh, he's here. He came after you almost immediately; good little boy saving us the
trouble of hunting him down. I played a hunch and have found myself with the biggest
bonus of all. He's here." Luthor stood and started to move off, then paused and tossed
one more over his shoulder.
"Superman's here, too."
Lois felt her hope chill and fade.
* * *
Disrupt. Break things. Rattle them.
After another doze, Lois awoke with a strange feeling of calm determination. To
put it mildly, she had nowhere to run. Luthor had said he had kryptonite and
Superman, and the two in any radius of each other cancelled the latter. Luthor may
have won, but she was too used to living with the hope that a regal, red and blue
ultimatum would appear at any moment. Strangely, she found herself missing Clark's
company almost as much. She missed his almost absent-minded, optimistic outlook that
stopped just on the wise side of happy-go-lucky. Thinking of him brought some of her
nerve back, and she tried to imagine what he might do under her circumstances. She
needed to get her mind off of Luthor's words in order to keep her edge if--when that
break came. So she made herself a trouble maker. She rattled the cable against the
pipes until one of them jammed the muzzle of a gun under her jaw. She refused food
until Luthor himself nearly forced it into her mouth. She sang every Disney song she
could think of, as loudly and off key as she could, until they got hoarse from screaming at
her.
Now she was in the process of taking over a guard. Oh, she was tied up, but she
could still beat him. She sat down and made herself as comfortable as she could, sliding
the cable down the pipes until it was behind her head. Her elbows would get sore, but
she could ignore that. She only broke her hold on him twice, to sneeze in the dusty
room. All that time, she stared at him. Everything else zoned out and she developed a
weird sensation of tunnel vision. She didn't move, didn't make a sound, and within
fifteen minutes, he was getting nervous.
"Knock it off, slut!" He stood up and clicked off the safeties on his machine gun,
aiming it at her, but she knew Luthor had given them strict orders not to harm her. He
wouldn't shoot.
"Hey, Nails, gettin' tight?" one of them laughed.
"You know, that's the trouble with Nails," Red, the one who had brought her in,
said. "He's pointed in one direction and headed in another." It got a laugh from the
other one, Barry.
"She's starin' at me."
"Maybe she likes you."
Nails growled but reluctantly backed off. "I can't wait til' this crap is done. Four
hours." He slouched back down, but Lois still had him.
As the minutes went by, she not only had him, she owned him. He found a band
that had held the three machine guns together and strapped it around her eyes, and she
didn't even flinch. His smirk faded as he sat down and slowly realized she hadn't moved,
hadn't broken her stare behind the strap. He grated out some more words and she
heard movement, then footsteps. They had almost crossed to her when a voice froze
them all.
"What is that?"
There was silence for a moment, and Lois could only guess at what their reactions
were. Then she heard fast steps, almost a run, and the strap was wrenched painfully off
of her.
"The next one who lays a hand on her without my permission is going for a
swim." Luthor walked over to the glass-less window and tossed the strap out. There
was no mistake but that it hinted at what would happen to the next offender. It was
only then that Lois made the connection to the constant dull roar she could hear. They
must be near a bay or a river.
She found herself squinting and blinking up at him. "They'll never believe I'm
doing this with you."
He stood gazing out the window, making her think he hadn't heard her. Finally
he shrugged. "Metro may know, but Gotham isn't so sure. Either way, it's in the
interests of both cities that they get their people. Gotham's unhappy that a Metro
menace is in its belly and has some of its people, one from the West apparently along for
the ride and allied with me. Metro is leaning on Gotham for dragging its feet.
Superman's taken care of, and anything else can be dealt with."
"So what happens if they don't give you what you want?"
After a moment, Luthor smiled, crouching down by her. "I'll deliver a few bodies.
I'd really rather not, but I will get what I came for."
"And then you think I'm coming with you."
His smile softened. "I know you're coming with me."
Lois surprised herself. She hit her target. Spitting was a disgusting habit,
something she'd never done in her life. She doubted she could do it again, but at least
this one time she had dead on aim. Luthor cursed and lashed out with his hand, and his
aim was as good while he wiped spit from his eye, her right cheek stung.
"Bitch! I'll find you expendable."
"Do what you want. I'll make it exciting for you," she snarled.
It took control for him to turn away and leave her. Lois breathed a sigh.
Sometimes she did things without thinking, and that was probably one of them. She had
no bargaining power. She could keep pushing him, but what if he did suddenly find her
an annoyance not worth keeping alive? Would he kill her? Could he?
And was there any truth to his claim that he had Superman? That seemed
impossible, until she remembered the kryptonite. But even with that, she couldn't get
over the feeling that he had an eye on her, somehow. Did he ever show up in Gotham?
Maybe Luthor didn't know the situation. Maybe what he thought was kryptonite was
just a pretty green rock . . .
Maybe not.
