Despite his best efforts to focus on his work, as his 11:30 lunch period approached, Clark’s anxiety was only getting worse. Twice he had lost his train of thought while discussing Romeo and Juliet with his freshmen during fourth period, and his distraction was obvious enough that he noticed a couple of his more observant students shooting each other looks of concern.
He’d been mostly fine during his early classes, once he got settled in at school, and had even managed a few light-hearted conversations with his students about what they’d done over fall break. But with each passing hour, he found it harder and harder to concentrate, with the most recent 45 minutes being the worst of all. His heart was racing, his mind was foggy, and his hands felt clammy. He felt like he was losing his mind.
The moment the bell rang, he made his way across the building to the Athletic Director’s office, where he could be assured of enough privacy to make a phone call during lunch. It was only as he closed the door behind him that he realized he had completely forgotten to assign any homework to the class. Pushing the thought away as a problem for later, he pulled his wallet out of his pocket and extracted the long-distance phone card he kept for emergencies when he was traveling. Clenching his fist for a moment to quell the way his hand was trembling — when had that started? — he slid into the chair and dialed the long string of numbers to access the money on the card, then punched in the number of Lois’s desk at the Daily Planet. He was overreacting, surely … and he would be just fine as soon as they talked. Just like before work this morning, he would calm down the minute he heard her voice.
After four long rings, it went to voicemail.
Clark hung up and dialed her apartment, just in case she’d gotten delayed at home. And then tried the newsroom a second time, and then a third.
Voicemail, each time.
Fighting the panic that kept building, Clark tried to think things through logically. Lois had spent the morning working from home, but she was planning to be in the newsroom before noon for her meeting. It was now just after 12:30 her time, so she was probably still talking to Perry and Henderson.
After only a moment’s hesitation, he picked up the phone and dialed her pager number, punching in the number of the Athletic Director’s office. She had promised to call him back immediately if he paged her, even if she was busy. He hated to do that, to pull her out of a meeting, especially an important one. But the burning in his stomach was getting worse. He had to hear her voice.
He waited. And waited.
Nothing.
He forced himself to take slow, deep breaths as he watched the second hand on the wall clock tick slowly around the circle. Once. Twice. Five times. Eight times. Still nothing.
He reached for the phone and punched in his code and then her desk number again.
This time when it went to voicemail, he left a message. “Lois … honey, it’s me. I’m sorry, I know we just talked this morning, but I was really hoping to reach you over my lunch break and you’re not answering anywhere. Can you … look, I know you think I’m being ridiculous, but can you just … call me when you get this? Your pager has the AD’s office number, but if you don’t get me here, can you call the front office of the school and ask for me? Tell them it’s important and someone will come get me out of my classroom. Please don’t be mad. I swear I’m not normally like this, but I’ve had this terrible feeling all morning, like something awful is about to happen. Please. Just … just call me, OK? I love you. I love you so much.”
Clark heard his voice break as he ended the message and tried to get ahold of himself. Surely everything was fine. The police had added a patrol to her apartment building, and an officer was in the Daily Planet’s lobby, and she was taking extra precautions with her routine. There was absolutely no reason for him to have worked himself up into such a state, for his anxiety to be so bad. He was being ridiculous.
And yet …
With a whine of frustration, he dialed one last time, feeling pathetic but hoping that if he could just talk to her, this terrible feeling would go away.
This time, the call was picked up on the third ring. “Daily Planet, Lois Lane’s desk.”
“Lo— Jimmy?"
“Yeah … CK? Is that you? Hey, is Lois with you?”
Clark’s blood ran cold. “What– what do you mean, is Lois with me? I’m in Smallville. I talked to her this morning before I went to work. She was in her apartment, and she said she was going to work from home and then head into the newsroom for her noon meeting."
Jimmy exhaled heavily. “Well, that’s just it. She didn’t show up for the meeting. We’ve been trying to reach her for the last 45 minutes, but she’s not answering either her home number or her pager. But her desk phone has been ringing on and off for the last half-hour, so I took a chance and answered it."
“Yeah, that’s been me! Has anyone checked her apartment?”
“Inspector Henderson is here, and he’s already sent someone over there. We’re waiting to hear what they find. You want me to call you back when they report in?”
Clark’s vision tunneled, and he wondered if this was what people felt like right before they fainted. “No,” he croaked. “Don’t— you won’t reach me; I’m on my way.”
“On your way? To Metropolis? No, CK, look, I’m sure it’s fine. You just left yesterday, right? And Lois will kill me if I made you book a last minute flight for nothing. Because she went back to bed and turned the ringer off or whatever."
He focused his attention on not squeezing the handset so hard he crushed it. “No. No, she— she wouldn’t go back to bed. She was already dressed— Look, I’ll talk to you later, OK? When I get there.” He hung up before Jimmy could respond.
Working hard to control his breathing, Clark stood up and ran his hands roughly through his hair, trying desperately to gather his thoughts. He needed to get back to Metropolis. He never should have left. Something was terribly wrong, and he hadn’t been there to prevent it.
He crossed the room and pulled open the door, but in his haste to leave, he nearly ran over Jake Porter, social studies teacher and one of his assistant coaches for the football team, who was just about to enter the room.
“Whoa, Clark, sorry. I didn’t know anyone was in here. I just need to grab some papers I left on the desk last week. How was your break?"
“It was … fine, great. But— Jake, I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
Jake studied him, his face showing his concern. “Hey, man, are you OK? You look like you’re about to pass out. Are you sick?”
Clark swiped a hand over his forehead and found it damp. Was he sweating? “I’m— not sure. But I have to go.”
“Dude, you look terrible. Did you catch something over break?”
“There was a—“ He floundered for a moment, then remembered his time in the newsroom. “A stomach flu going around in Metropolis.” Not a lie. A misdirection, maybe, but not a lie.
Jake cringed in sympathy, even as he took a step back. “Yeah, we had one of those go through our house last Christmas. All three kids, one after the other, then my wife and I got it. Totally ruined the holiday. Look, you should go home. We don’t need you spreading your germs around here. I’ll handle practice tonight, and you can rest.”
Clark looked at him helplessly, feeling desperate and lost. “How do I— Who do I— I’ve never taken sick time before.”
Jake chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll stop in the office and let Mark know you need a sub for the rest of the day. If you need to take tomorrow too, just call the absence line by six a.m. and leave a message.”
Right … there was a number he was supposed to call if he was ever sick. He had never needed to use it before.
“Jake … thank you.”
“No problem, man. Do you need a ride home? Seriously, Clark, you look like you’re about to drop. Maybe you shouldn’t drive.”
“No … no, that’s OK, thanks. I’ll— I gotta go.” And with that, he took off down the hall towards the parking lot, not even stopping in his classroom first to gather his belongings.
*****
After driving his truck home as quickly as he could get away with – the trip feeling like an eternity rather than the five and a half minutes it was – it took Clark less than 90 seconds to reach the skies above Metropolis … and the realization that he was trapped by his secret. He couldn’t appear at the Daily Planet or the police station and demand answers when he had been on the phone with Jimmy from Smallville less than ten minutes earlier. The soonest he could possibly show his face was four hours – enough time to drive to Wichita and fly to Metropolis. Even that was a stretch. If anyone looked at flight schedules or really examined the math, they were sure to realize even that was too soon. But he had to hope no one looked too closely. Hopefully she would be found long before that, and he could wait and watch her until a reasonable amount of time had passed. As soon as he laid eyes on her, he would feel so much better.
He went straight to the Daily Planet building, since that was where she had been headed. Hopefully there was a mix up and she would be there sitting at her desk.
But no. Instead, he found Perry in his office with Jimmy and Henderson and a couple of uniformed police officers. He reached out with his hearing immediately, listening to their conversion without an ounce of remorse.
“...no sign of her at the apartment,” an officer was saying. “Ramirez escorted her to her car at 11:25 this morning. He saw her drive away, but she never arrived at work. We’re knocking on her neighbors’ doors now to see if anyone saw her come back this morning.”
“No luck finding her Jeep?” Perry asked.
The officer shook his head. “We’ve got cars out looking. And two officers in the parking deck checking to see if she made it here.”
Clark’s heart raced. He never should have left her. He knew this was going to happen. He had known all along, and he had convinced himself that she would be fine. If he had just stayed … if he had just escorted her to work … but he hadn’t. And now she was who knows where.
“Get out there and look for her Jeep,” Henderson barked at the two men in uniform. They nodded tightly and took off. Henderson turned back to Perry. “I’m sorry, Perry. I really thought the protection we had was overkill. We didn’t have any direct threats. We had no reason to believe Luthor was going to attempt anything. We haven’t seen any sign of him….”
“I should have pushed for a full protective detail,” Perry said, rubbing his temples.
“I never could have gotten that approved,” Henderson said. “It was hard enough to justify this much coverage just based on speculation. We don’t even know for sure that someone really did take a shot at her. She was convinced it was just a car backfiring. That boyfriend of hers twisted her arm until she called that in. She didn’t even report it for twenty-four hours. I sent some uniforms down to check out the scene – there were no casing or bullet holes anywhere. I was honestly inclined to believe her car-backfiring explanation at that point, but I figured the extra patrols wouldn’t hurt.”
Clark thought again of the bullets in his hands, turned to dust in his grip. If he hadn’t caught them… if he had instead pushed her out of the way and let the bullets hit the steps….
He swallowed back the nausea and took a deep breath.
“She wouldn’t have agreed to it anyway,” Perry said. “You know how she is.”
Henderson snorted out a short laugh. “I was amazed she was as cooperative as she was about this. The uniform in here last night said she called for him to walk her to her car and let him do a sweep before she got off the elevator. He told her he was going to radio and let the patrol by her house know she was headed that way, and she thanked him.”
Jimmy’s shock was palpable.
“That’s Kent’s doing,” Perry said softly. “She said he was really concerned. He didn’t want to leave to go home. She promised him she would take the protection seriously. That’s why she wasn’t coming in until our meeting today. She was varying her routine.”
“Has anyone talked to him since he called the first time?” Henderson asked.
Jimmy shrugged. “He said he was on his way. I think he was serious.”
“From Kansas?” Henderson asked.
Jimmy shrugged again. “He was pretty adamant.”
Clark gave up on listening to their conversation. He wasn’t learning anything he didn’t already know. She was gone, and no one knew where she was. At least he could spend his time searching instead of beating himself up.
He scanned the parking deck, looking for her silver Jeep. He could search faster than the officers, who he saw creeping around the underground parking spiral in their black and white car. He checked every spot on every floor. Nothing.
He flew to her apartment next, scanning first the apartment itself, checking inside every closet and under every bed plus the couch. Two uniformed officers were there looking for clues along with an older mustached man Clark assumed must be Lois’ super. He scanned the rest of the building, but found nothing unusual or helpful.
For the next hour, he flew back and forth between her home and work in larger and larger circles looking for anything that could shed some light on where she went; any clue that could tell him where she was. He tried not to think about how much time was passing and what could be happening to her in that time. But his hands began to shake anytime he thought of her alone with that monster.
He had been monitoring the police frequency as he flew, half-listening to reports of car accidents and petty thefts. Finally, there was news about the search. Her Jeep had been located two blocks from the Daily Planet building, parked on a side street.
Clark didn’t know what to make of that. Clearly she had left for work as planned. But why had she parked on the street rather than in the deck? She had been so clear about that being her plan. She had reiterated to him over and over that she would park in the parking garage and not on the street. And last night she had. She had parked where she’d promised and had even asked the officer on duty to escort her to her car. So what had changed this morning? Something must have prevented her from reaching the deck.
Clack hovered above the clouds, watching as the officers fanned out around her Jeep, looking for evidence.
He swept his gaze ahead of them, looking along the road and the sidewalk for anything that might have belonged to her, for any signs of a struggle. A half-block up from her parking spot, in the direction of the Daily Planet building, there was a tiny alley between two buildings. He swept his gaze down the alley, not even sure what he was looking for, when something caught his eye. Half under a dumpster, in the shadow of the gray metal, was something small and black.
He recognized it immediately, and his stomach dropped.
That explained why she hadn’t answered his page earlier.
The ground rushed up at him, and he worried he was about to faint for a moment before he realized that he was falling. In his panic, he had lost his ability to maintain his altitude. He pulled himself back up, careful to stay above the clouds and took a few deep breaths. He needed to get himself under control. He wasn’t going to be any good to her if he was losing it.
He needed the police to find her pager. Assuming it was her pager. He couldn’t just walk up to them and tell them. He needed to draw their attention to it. If only he could lure them into the alley.
His gaze went back to the little black device, and his memory drifted back to this weekend. The pager sitting on the coffee table, it’s incessant beeping and vibration interrupting their kisses. The way she dragged her lips from his, groaning in irritation.
The beeping. Of course.
He scanned the street for the nearest pay phone, then lowered himself to the ground as close by as was safe and hurried to the phone. Pulling a quarter out of his pocket, he inserted the coin and punched in her pager number, entering the Daily Planet number as the call back number, figuring that would make sense. Surely someone at her office was still paging her regularly.
He hung up the phone and waited, extending his hearing until he heard the distinctive little click and then the beeping. He waited, listening for someone to follow the beeps and pick up the pager, but he didn’t hear anything. So he paged her again.
And again.
Finally, when he was down to his second to last quarter and wondering where he could break a bill in his wallet to get more change, he heard shouts and exclamations, and he knew his plan was successful. He snuck back to the nearby alley where he had landed and launched himself back above the cloud cover, hurrying to the alley where he had lured the police. Sure enough, a couple of uniformed officers were on their knees beside the dumpster. One was taking photographs while the other waited with a glove and evidence bag to collect the pager. At the other end of the alley, where it connected to the main street, a third officer was speaking into his walkie talkie, reporting the discovery.
He scanned the entire alley again, looking for anything else that could tell them what had happened. Anything else that could point them in her direction. But there was nothing.
Why had she parked on the street two blocks from work? And why had she turned down this alley rather than going straight to work once she was parked?
This had to be where…whatever happened, happened.
“No sign of blood,” he heard one of the officers say.
His head swam, his heart racing. He didn’t want to think about blood. Her blood. The fact that they were looking for her blood.
He couldn’t let himself go there. He couldn’t think about her being injured or…. He had to stay focused. Every minute that ticked by was another moment closer to being too late.
He took to the skies again, crisscrossing the city. He kept an ear on the police frequency while he patrolled, but as minutes and then hours ticked by, still there was nothing. Her neighbors hadn’t seen anything suspicious. No one in any of the buildings near where she parked had seen anything. There was only one set of prints on her pager, which they assumed belonged to her.
Clark drifted above the city, trying to block out every sound, thinking only of her. If only he could hear the familiar sound of her heartbeat.
Nothing. He had no idea where else to look.
Neither did the police.
Roadblocks were set up. Photos of Luthor enhanced with disguises – different hair cuts, hats, facial hair – circulated on television as the dinner hour began to approach and Lois’ colleagues began to realize one of their own was missing and in danger.
The atmosphere in the newsroom was grim – a far cry from the frenetic excitement of the afternoon Luthor had gone missing. The pace was the same, but everyone spoke in whispers, their voices clipped and worried.
Perry paced in his office, alternating between yelling and throwing things at anyone who dared enter without a positive update and sitting morosely at his desk, head in his hands.
Clark looked at his watch. Just over four hours. He really should wait another twenty or thirty minutes before making himself known, but he couldn’t do it. He had done everything he could from the skies, and he needed to be on the ground looking for her.
He dropped into the alley beside the Daily Planet, his hands trembling as he reached nervously for his slightly-askew tie.
He forced himself to ride up in the elevator, the floor indicator creeping slowly up as they rose.
He was through the doors, into the newsroom, before they had even slid all the way open. He scanned the newsroom, looking for her automatically and then stopped, realizing what he was doing. She wasn’t here. Of course she wasn’t.
“CK?”
He looked up and saw Jimmy headed his way. He looked as frantic as Clark felt, and for just a moment it felt good not to be alone in his fear and misery.
“Where is she?” Clark said, the words tumbling out, not actually a question but a lament.
Jimmy shook his head guiltily. “I don’t know. They found her car and her pager, but there’s still no sign of her. The whole city is looking.”
An angry roar from Perry’s office caught his attention, and he looked over in time to see a woman with a stack of file folders skitter out of his office with a grimace.
“I should….” he said, tilting his head in that direction.
Jimmy nodded. “He’s…not himself today.”
Clark huffed out a humorless laugh. He knew the feeling.
He stood in the doorway and tapped. Perry’s head snapped up, ready to blast whoever was interrupting him, and then Clark saw the anger on his face melt into grief and guilt.
Perry waved him in, and Clark entered, closing the door behind him.
“She was fine this morning,” he said softly. “I talked to her right before I left for work. She told me about the TeleCorp CEO’s wife. We made plans for this weekend. She told me she was going to work from home all morning. She was– She was fine. She said she was fine. Why didn’t she park in the garage? Where is she?”
“Why don’t you have a seat, son?” Perry said softly. “You look like you’re about to collapse.”
Clark ignored him. “I should never have left her. I should never have gone home. I told her. I begged her. I knew this was going to happen. I knew I shouldn’t leave her. Where is she? Where is she?!”
Perry stood and came around his desk, placing his hands on Clark’s shoulders and guiding him to sit in one of the chairs.
“She’s a fighter,” Perry said. “Wherever she is, she’s not giving up. We can’t give up on her.”
“I have to find her,” Clark whispered. “I don’t know where else to look.”
“The police are looking,” Perry said. “All we can do is wait.”
“That’s not good enough,” Clark insisted, his voice like ice. He stood, unsure where he was going next, but unable to sit still any longer.
The door to Perry’s office burst open, and Clark looked up to see Jimmy in the doorway, camera in hand. “The CostMart office building is on fire! Eduardo and I are headed–”
Clark’s stomach plummeted. Of course.
“CostMart!” he gasped, shoving past Jimmy and through the doorway. Behind him, he could hear Jimmy and Perry calling his name, but he didn’t bother to pause or look back. He burst through the door into the stairwell, shooting up the stairs instead of down, not even bothering to check first to make sure it was unoccupied.
CostMart. He should have known. Of course the final act of Luthor’s revenge play would be to take Intergang down in a blaze of glory. And wouldn’t it be poetic if the reporter who set this all in motion was there to watch the fire burn?
