28


Sunlight filters through the trees that line the sidewalks of Clinton Street as I navigate Lois’s Jeep into a parking spot in front of my old apartment. It is still early—about 8:30 a.m.—but I can’t stay away any longer. I need to see her. It had been a rough night, and I’d maybe gotten only a couple hours of sleep, which had been filled with nightmares. But now, I feel much more hopeful, particularly as I climb out of the Jeep and lift my head up toward the Sun. Its healing rays warm me, and I linger on the sidewalk for just a moment before taking the steps up to Clark’s front door two at a time.

I knock lightly on the door and stuff my hands into my pockets as I wait patiently. However, the apartment is quiet; no one answers, and I don’t hear any sounds come from inside. I frown as I bend over a bit to try to peek through the curtains blocking the windows. The apartment is dark inside. Lois must still be sleeping, I figure, and of course, I’d left the apartment key with her the night before. I knock again, a little louder this time, and force myself to take several deep breaths to keep my anxiety in check. She’s fine; she’s just sleeping still.

When there is still no response, I turn back and jog toward the Jeep. I suppose I can just wait for a bit and then try again. She’s usually a pretty light sleeper. I settle myself back into the driver’s seat and turn the radio on. A news broadcast is discussing the fake bomb threat from the previous evening, and the two anchors bicker a bit about whether Superman should have stuck around longer to help the police mitigate the crowds of anxious students, parents, and school administrators. It seems his quick exit was noted by the press. I shake my head a bit and look up toward the apartment again, hoping to see some lights on inside. However, the windows are still darkened.

Lois, come on, hon, I think to myself. I close my eyes and rest my head back against the headrest. I will not panic. Nope, I’m totally fine. Totally fine.

A sudden wave of concern hits me, and my eyes snap open as I sit upright. I scan ahead of me. An older man walks down the street, leaning heavily on a rickety black cane. Otherwise, the street ahead is still quiet and abandoned. Then, I glance into the rearview mirror.

To my surprise, my doppelganger approaches, jogging down the sidewalk toward the apartment. He’s up. And mobile. Actually, he looks perfectly healthy. It hasn’t even been twelve hours since he was exposed to the modified kryptonite. So he’s not only stronger and smarter than me, but he also heals faster. Great.

Our eyes meet in the rearview mirror, and I wave as I start to climb out of the car. I grab the old baseball cap I’d brought with me and pull it on over my head. Then, I scan the street again as I shut the car door and hurry ahead of him up the steps. As he gets closer, I see his color is normal, not sickly pale like last night, and he gives off an aura of power—just like he always has.

“You look like you’re feeling much better,” I comment shortly, watching him carefully as he unlocks the door. His hands are steady and confident. Unlike mine. I’m almost shaking already. Can’t he hurry? I need to see Lois; the feeling is so strong right now that I find myself fidgeting, shifting from foot to foot. I consciously block my thoughts from him so he can’t sense my unease.

“Yes, thank goodness,” he agrees, directing a weak smile at me. “The sunlight helped a lot.”

“I bet. Lois must still be sleeping, huh? I knocked, but no one answered.” I try to keep the concern out of my voice. But it’s difficult. She should be awake by now, particularly if he’s up and about. And his reaction does not exactly assuage my fears. He freezes, one hand turning the door handle, and I feel a strong sense of dread from him.

“Wh-what? You mean she’s not—she never went home…?” he asks, his voice trembling.

I feel my chest constrict and my stomach lurch. I want to grab him and shake him and demand to know where she is. But he looks as concerned as I feel. Frantically, I reach forward, push open the door, and usher both of us inside. As the door shuts behind us, I quickly scan the room. A blanket is folded neatly on the couch, and our two half-empty mugs of tea from the previous night still sit on the coffee table.

There is no evidence that she’s been here in quite some time. I feel dizzy.

“What do you mean? Where is she?” I demand, turning toward him.

Clark shakes his head as he switches on the light by the front door. He glances over at me and starts down the steps toward the kitchen, pulling off his glasses briefly to rub the bridge of his nose. He suddenly looks much more tired than he did outside.

“She left about two hours ago,” he replies.

I can sense his mind racing, as mine is, and I hear and see his thoughts fairly clearly. Lois was here, and they talked briefly about something. Then, a fragment of a memory flashes—she is angry, yells at him, and starts crying, then leaves the apartment hastily. Anger flares up inside me, and I jog down the steps after him. Foolish, I know, but I grab his shoulder. The room around me seems to glow slightly red as all of my focus narrows to the man standing in front of me. He made her cry.

“What did you do to her?” I growl. “Why was she so upset?”

“I-I didn’t do anything,” he argues, shaking his head. His thoughts are jumbled now, and although I sense his sincerity, I can’t contain my fear, especially after having just spent too many hours alone without her. He continues, his voice faltering unsteadily, “I j-just—she got upset when I—”

He shrugs out of my grasp as he turns back around to face me, and he seems to open up our connection as our eyes meet. “Here, just see…” he communicates to me silently, and he then closes his eyes as he projects a memory to me.

He sits at the table, and she sits across from him. He smiles at her briefly, but then frowns as he begins telling her how he’d overheard Luthor planning a ‘test’ for Superman. He explains how the bombs were a decoy, and after he’d disposed of the fake bombs out in space, he’d been about to find and arrest a man named Nigel, who was an associate of Lex Luthor and had orchestrated the whole debacle at the high school, when he was exposed to the kryptonite outside the gym.

He tells Lois all of this, and I hear her concerned voice as she says to him, “But, Clark, they had the whole area blocked off. No one would have been allowed access to the area outside the gymnasium, except police and the bomb squad…” I feel his agreement, and then, he concentrates to remember the scene at the high school.

He recalls landing next to Police Chief Adams after returning from space. There were four other officers nearby. He’d stepped toward the gymnasium. A small click to his left distracts him, and he notices a weak green glow in his peripheral vision. He shifts his focus and sees it—the features of a familiar face lit up by the glow of the green rock, milliseconds before his eyes shut tightly in pain. He pulls himself out of the memory and tells Lois, “Bill Henderson was the officer with the kryptonite.”

In his memory, I feel his disbelief. He knows his memory is correct, but Bill is a friend, and the realization is alarming to him. And Lois—she stands abruptly and begins arguing with him. “No, no. Not Bill. He wouldn’t—”

He tries to get her to listen to him, to sit with him and talk about it. But Lois is too upset, and she gets angry and yells at him. I sense his confusion and dismay; he really just wants to discuss it, but she won’t listen. He tells her, “He’s a good man, Lois. I know that. So that’s why—that’s why we need to—to t-talk to him and get to the bottom of this. M-maybe they blackmailed him, or something?” I hear his thoughts at the time. He’s nearly begging her. She’s crying now, and he can’t stand to see it. No, please don’t cry, Lois, he thinks. But she’s too upset. She yells at him again, but the words are fuzzy in his memory now, and then she spins around angrily, grabs her coat and purse, and leaves. He wants to follow her, but he’s too tired and weak. He says again, “P-please don’t leave, Lois. Please, let’s just talk about this for a minute. Please.” But she refuses and tells him not to call her, and then she leaves.

As I watch his memory replay, my anger slowly fades. He cuts off our connection for a moment and then steps back away from me, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his pants. I feel his sadness still, despite him blocking his thoughts from me, and I realize that Lois’s reaction—her refusal to even consider what he’d said—had hurt him. He doesn’t know all of their history—Lois and Bill, that is. Or he’d understand her reaction more.

Lois, God, hon, where are you? I blink several times and stumble over to the couch, barely managing to keep myself on my feet. I sit at the edge of one cushion and lower my head to my hands. And my own disbelief grows as well. I mean, I believe Clark. But, really? Henderson? I look up at Clark, who stands watching me, his face contorted into an anxious expression mirroring my own feelings.

“Bill Henderson? I-I can’t believe it. I—there must be a reason—like you said,” I fumble, shaking my head as I rub the back of my neck. I sigh and stare at the coffee table as I quietly explain Lois’s reaction to him. “But Lois, I know why she got so upset,” I start, my voice low. “Bill, he helped her when her sister Lucy almost…committed suicide. He saved Lucy’s life and helped her turn her life back around. Lois, she respects him a lot. He’s a good man, a good cop. There has to be a reason—like you said. I—”

A sudden strong fear invades my mind, and I abruptly push myself up to stand and cross my arms over my chest. Lois. She’d left so upset, with no car, and she’d never made it home, which means…

“She probably went to find him and confront him,” I blurt out, my knees starting to shake. My eyes shoot up sharply, meeting his. He stands solidly a few feet away. Why is he not panicking like me? She could be in danger. My hands begin to tingle as a weight grows on my chest. I can’t breathe again. I shut my eyes and mumble, “We—we have to go now. I don’t like her off by herself with all this going on—with Luthor and Intergang and—and I have no powers and can’t protect her if something…”

“I will protect her,” he tells me silently. “I will always protect her.”

His voice in my head is strong, confident, like Superman. However, I feel myself losing control over my anxiety. Panic builds as the room begins to turn red, wind howling on the edges of my consciousness, dust blowing across the ground and up into my eyes. No, I will stay present.

We have to go find her, I insist. I rub the imaginary dust out of my eyes and clench my jaw as I look over to him again. She probably went to Bill’s house, I tell him telepathically. I try to take deep breaths, but my chest won’t seem to expand completely.

He nods, agreeing with me, and tells me, “Let me go get the suit on. We can’t be seen together otherwise.”

“Please hurry,” I plead, and I start pacing, my legs moving almost of their own accord. The room continues to grow red. An explosion rocks the floor, and I nearly stumble into the kitchen table. No, it’s not real. It’s not real.

“Yeah, of course. One second.”

I’m only vaguely aware of his response. But a sudden gust of wind, actual wind, in the room brings me back to the present, and I look up sharply as Superman halts in front of me, his arms crossed over his chest. I can’t contain my surprise.

Your powers are back already? I ask, rhetorically, of course. It’s been less than twelve hours, and he’s already got his speed back. He’s more than superhuman. It took mine much longer, I manage to add silently.

He tosses me a pair of glasses, and I grimace as I slip the glasses on. Familiar and yet also foreign. I haven’t worn glasses in over four months now. But I suppose they are necessary since Superman and Clark Kent are going out together.

“I do not miss having to wear these,” I confess, glad for the distraction. My anxiety does not ease, however, and I immediately start toward the door.

“I’m not at anywhere near full strength yet,” he says quietly, following me. “So, uh, maybe we can just drive there, if that’s okay…”

Of course. My response is terse, and I hurry, my anxiety fueling me. I jog down the steps outside the apartment and head toward the Jeep, the bright red material of Superman’s cape fluttering in my peripheral vision. Shakily, I pull the keys out of my pocket and unlock the car.

His voice reaches out to me, tentatively, and asks, “Are you okay to drive? I could—”

“No, I’m fine,” I assert. I raise my eyes to meet his over the roof of the vehicle and nervously push the glasses up higher on the bridge of my nose. “I’m j-just… I’m worried about her. And I-I don’t like being powerless when she’s in trouble.”

I lower my eyes and climb into the car, and I sense his agreement as he copies me. We both settle in and fasten our seatbelts—yeah, so Superman doesn’t need to wear it, really, but if he’s anything like me, it’s become a habit to put it on, regardless of whether the suit is on—and I pull away from the curb, racing through the streets at speeds that should probably get me an expensive speeding ticket. Surprisingly, given my state of mind and tendency to easily forget things, I remember how to get to Henderson’s house. We head north out of the city, enter the small suburb of Valley Glen, and navigate through a new housing tract.

Minutes later, I pull the Jeep up behind Henderson’s old police cruiser, my heart racing, and I sense panic in the man sitting in the passenger’s seat next to me. Before I even stop the car, Clark leaps out and flies inside. I look up sharply, following the blue and red blur, and a stabbing pain—his dread, I realize—forces all the air out of my lungs. I hurry to follow him, unfastening my seatbelt and sprinting up the walkway into the house.

“Oh God,” he thinks, unintentionally sharing the sentiment with me. And as I enter the house, I stagger against the door frame, barely managing to keep myself upright. My lungs burn from the short run into the house, but I force myself to breathe as I scan the room. My stomach churns.

Broken windows. Furniture pushed over and out of place. Blood on the floor, staining the carpet.

Superman stands in front of me, holding something in his hand, but his back is to me, and I can’t tell what it is. His shoulders hunch as he shakes his head. “Oh God,” he thinks again.

What is it? I demand, standing up straighter and moving another step into the room toward him.

He turns around slowly, a neutral expression on his face. But I can sense his fear and concern. The object in his hands catches my attention—a familiar black faux-leather bag. Lois’s purse.

No, no, no. God, no.

The room turns red around me as a terrifying fear builds. I lunge toward him to grab the purse from him. It is all I have of her right now. But instead, I trip and fall to my knees. The carpet slightly cushions my fall, but my hands hit the ground hard, and I grunt in pain. None of that matters right now though. All that matters is her. Where is she? She was here. She had been here. The blood. My head turns sharply toward the dark red stain on the carpet, not more than a few feet from me. Is it hers? God. No. Lois. I can’t breathe. I shut my eyes tightly.

Two very strong hands grip my shoulders and lift me to my feet, but I stupidly fight against him. This is his fault. Dammit.

My eyes fly open as I scream at him in my mind, How could you let them take her?! You said you would protect her!

I have no control over anything right now—not my emotions, my actions—nothing. And so, I again idiotically push against him with all my strength. Unprepared, he actually moves a step backward, and I swing a fist at him, my vision turning an uglier shade of red.

This is his fault.

But I seem to have forgotten that he is Superman, and I’m not. This time, he is ready for my feeble attack, and he sidesteps and grasps me around the waist. A second later, we are soaring several hundred feet up in the air, toward Metropolis. Dammit.

I struggle in his grip. Foolish, yes, but I don’t care. I’m so angry that my vision begins to blur. Lois, I’m sorry. I trusted him, and I shouldn’t have. Please be okay, my love.

“Clark, we’ll find her. We’ll find her. Please trust me.”

His voice penetrates my mind, and he sounds calm and confident. But I can’t contain my fear and anger. And I can’t breathe.

Let me go! I have to find her. I can’t lose her. You don’t understand! I yell, silently. I push against him, but he doesn’t budge. Stupid superhuman strength. Dammit.

“I do understand. I do understand. And I promise you, we will find her. I will not let you lose her. I will not lose her.”

Something in his voice breaks through my rage-induced daze, and I stop struggling. Nausea hits me as I stare down at the ground, far, far below us. The Daily Planet globe glints in the morning sunlight to our right, and rows of skyscrapers stretch out in every direction. We’re already hovering over downtown Metropolis. I hadn’t even noticed that we’d been flying so quickly. I close my eyes tightly, and I feel him slow and focus his attention outward.

“Please let me focus so I can find her,” he tells me, a sort of urgency in his tone. Yes. He cares about her too, after all. Probably as much as I do. I force my breathing to steady a bit and channel my thoughts to avoid interrupting his concentration. Not a second later, his head snaps up and to the left. “She’s at the Lexor.”

Something is wrong though. Immediately, he shoots off as quickly as he can in the direction of the distinct building, a towering forty-five-story hotel off Fifth Street and Main. I can hear his thoughts now, though they are not directed at me. He sees her and hears her. And Bill is there too. And that Nigel person. And something is very, very wrong. He suddenly veers us both toward the ground, and I hear a scream pierce the air. Lois.

“No, no, no. God, why am I not faster?”

No, no. What? I barely have time to register what is happening as he sets me carefully on the ground in front of the hotel and immediately launches straight up into the air, his burst of speed breaking the concrete at his feet. I look up as the screaming abruptly stops.

Superman has saved the day. Or at least, he has saved the only thing that really matters to me.

He holds her gently with one arm and Bill Henderson a bit less gently in the other, and he floats them down slowly. I feel his fear subside, though my own has still not ebbed. Not until she’s here with me in my arms. My hands shake uncontrollably, and I shift uncomfortably. Come on, fly down here faster.

My eyes remain glued to Lois, and I step back as Superman lands the three of them lightly on the ground next to me. He stabilizes himself, Lois, and Bill, and then snaps the bonds holding their hands together. Lois grimaces as she rubs her wrists and then turns toward me. Her hair is tousled and her cheeks red from her unplanned fall off the side of the building. She gives me a weak smile.

“Lois.” My voice barely works. She doesn’t care. She nods and collapses into my arms, letting out a long sigh. I hold her tightly, burying my head in her hair. She is shaking, as am I, and she loops her arms around my waist. “God, Lois, I was so scared. You—are you—are you hurt?” I pull away from her slightly and study her face quickly. There is no blood anywhere on her. I touch her cheek with my hand.

“No, no, I-I’m fine, sweetheart,” she promises.

She glances up toward the roof briefly, and my eyes follow hers. Superman now stands near the ledge, his arms crossed over his chest, and an older gray-haired man leans over the edge about fifty feet away, sneaking a peek down to the ground before refocusing his attention on Superman.

“Nigel—Nigel has kryptonite, Clark,” she whispers fearfully. “How did he—his powers—how? When?” Lois pulls me back to her, kisses my cheek, and then rests her head on my chest.

“He’ll be okay,” I say, holding her against me. I’m vaguely aware of several police cars pulling up along the curb and Bill Henderson sitting with his head in his hands, mumbling something about his wife and son. But my main focus is how soft she is. Her hair, her skin, her lips. My cheek still tingles where she kissed me. And her hands press into my back, bringing us closer together. I close my eyes.

After another moment, however, a sense of panic begins to grow. It’s not mine. It’s his. I hold Lois tightly still as I look up toward the roof. Nigel has moved closer to the ledge, and Superman now floats a few feet up in the air, maintaining a safe distance from the older man. He is trying to negotiate with Nigel, but the man isn’t having it. The kryptonite—Superman can’t save him if he jumps. His mind is racing, and it almost makes me dizzy. My shoulders tense, and I shift a bit for a better view. A terrible thought enters my mind. I try to shake it off, but it returns, ballooning until it’s all I can think.

Just let him jump. Just let him die.

“Excuse me, Miss Lane,” says a young police officer as he steps up to us. He’s holding a notebook in one hand and a pen in the other. Another four officers congregate lazily around Henderson, occasionally glancing up toward Superman on the roof. They are so certain, so sure that Superman will take care of the problem that they don’t even pay much attention to the man about to jump off the roof.

Wait, what?

I look back up sharply and gasp as Nigel pulls himself up onto the ledge, leaning precariously over. I feel Superman’s panic. The man may actually jump. And what can Superman do? Nigel is wearing a ring studded with kryptonite.

The same thought I’d had earlier pops back into my head. Let him die. He tried to kill my love. He doesn’t deserve to live. I shake my head. Next to me, Lois pulls away.

“Clark, what is he—”

An odd sound escapes her lips as Nigel steps off and over the edge of the roof, and she startles back into my arms, burying her head in my chest. I wrap my arms around her and watch as Superman shoots down toward the man. Pain fills me as Superman grabs Nigel’s arm, barely managing to hang on without getting pulled over the ledge himself. The pain is his. Pain, weakness. I start shaking; Lois feels it too.

“Clark…”

“Shhhh, don’t look, hon,” I say quickly, placing my hand on the back of her head and pressing her gently into me.

He is terrified right now. Nigel is slipping. He has no strength. “No, no, no!”

Lois pushes away from me and looks up just as I feel an explosion of pain in my head and Nigel’s arm slips from Superman’s grip. My eyes widen, and the police officers next to us all jump to attention.

“Oh, God!” Lois cries, gripping my arm tightly.

I can’t do a damn thing about anything. I can’t comfort her. I can’t help Clark. I can’t save Nigel. Not that I’d want to, I realize. No, no, that’s not right. No one deserves to die. Oh, but Nigel. Nigel does. So does Luthor. They did this. They almost killed her. I shake my head and blink back the angry rage growing in my chest.

And then, I see a flash of red and blue tumbling off over the side of the building. My breath catches in my throat. No, he can’t be; he’s not fast enough, and he was just exposed to that kryptonite. How? Superman swoops down in a wide arc, avoiding getting too close to Nigel. He lands only a few feet away from us, grunting in pain as the ground fractures beneath his feet. He looks upward, his singular focus on saving the man who just tried to kill him.

Superman takes a deep breath and begins blowing air upward to slow the man’s fall. It happens so fast that I barely have time to feel all of his emotions. But the final one—relief—hits as Nigel’s fall slows until he is floating on a cloud of wind at a safe distance about fifty feet up in the air.



29


Nigel St. John. Apparently, that is his name. He’s a known entity to the FBI and CIA and has been on the no-fly list for decades. Wanted for too many crimes to list, including murder and extortion, by national and international organizations. And allegedly tied to Intergang, the Russian mafia, and the Clerkenwell Crime Syndicate. I overhear all of this as I sit on the curb and stare at him sitting in the back of a police cruiser, handcuffed and effectively neutralized.

He looks straight ahead, an unperturbed expression on his face. He doesn’t see me staring at him. That’s probably a good thing.

Lois is off somewhere to my right, explaining again to the police how she ended up at Bill Henderson’s house just as Nigel arrived. She tells them she needed to talk to Henderson about a story. They don’t know about the kryptonite. Or Luthor. Or exactly how Henderson is connected to Nigel and Luthor. I hear the frustration in her voice as she answers the same questions that they’d asked her minutes ago.

But my eyes remain trained ahead on the man who tried to kill her.

And my thoughts from earlier—scary, rageful, vengeful thoughts—continue to surface. I legitimately want to kill him. I’ve killed before. It’s not that hard, actually. My hands are strong enough now. They could easily wrap around his neck. Or just…snap it. Yeah. That would be faster and cleaner.

God, what is wrong with me?

Superman returns, landing with a blonde woman and dark-haired young boy next to the ambulance to my left, where Henderson’s wounds are being treated. They’d kidnapped his family to use as collateral if Henderson didn’t do what they wanted. That’s the kind of people we’re dealing with here. My vision turns red with renewed rage.

Nigel St. John. The name will look good on a gravestone.

The thought lingers as I feel Clark nudging me telepathically. He can sense my anger. Good. He should feel it. And part of this is his fault. Why save the man? Why risk his own life to save that monster who tried to kill Lois? I shift my gaze to him and swallow hard as our eyes meet. My fists clench against my knees.

He tried to kill her. You should have let him die, I assert. Wind howls around us, dust blowing across the street in front of me and covering everything with an orange tinge. My hands are red with blood. I feel it dripping from my fingers. It’s not real though. It’s not. Is it? Clark’s eyes don’t leave mine. He shakes his head slowly.

“No, that’s not what I do. You know that,” he tells me.

Of course, I know that. Superman doesn’t kill. Superman doesn’t just let someone die if there’s any way to save them. But that man there—Nigel St. John—he tried to kill Lois. My love. My life.

And I’m not Superman anymore.

The anger inside me grows, and I growl in frustration as he refuses to agree with me. I lower my eyes to the pavement.

I want to kill him, I admit.

My head starts to pound, a pulsing pain that originates at the base of my skull and works its way around to the front of my forehead, right between my eyes. Ching’s voice echoes in my head. Words professing that killing and death are necessary to bring peace. My hands—they were agents of death. They can so easily finish this job that Superman can’t. After all, I’m not Superman. I open my hands and stare at them. Blood. Where did the blood come from? The dark red liquid seems to seep from my palms and drips onto the ground, pooling in front of me.

No. It’s not real. It’s not real.

God, what is wrong with me?

I look back up at Clark, who watches me with concern still. My jaw trembles, and I shake my head as I force myself to breathe. Help me, please.

I need to get out of here, I tell him urgently. He understands, but I explain anyways. Away from him. Now. Before I do something that I can’t take back.

He nods quickly and scans the area. His gaze lands on Lois, who is still talking with the two police officers. She is a bit more animated and less frustrated now.

“I can take you back to the apartment and then come back to get her,” he proposes, stepping toward me.

No. No, that won’t work. I can’t leave her. I’ve been apart from her for too long, and that is how we got into this mess in the first place. I let her stay with him… My Lois. My eyes wander to her. She laughs at something one of the officers said, then shakes her head. She’s beautiful. And I can’t leave her here. Nope.

I don’t want to leave her, I communicate silently, my eyes fixed on her. She glances at me briefly and smiles. She’s so beautiful. And then she turns back to the officer, her hands on her hips, and continues the conversation. My heart starts to hammer in my chest. I can’t leave her.

“You can trust me. I’ll drop you off and come right back here,” Clark tells me.

My gaze shifts sharply to him. Trust? Trust him? Last time I trusted him… I’m shaking again now. I grip my knees as my vision turns red. I see Lois falling from the roof of the building, screaming. She’d almost died. A few seconds later and… No.

I don’t trust you, I grumble angrily.

The shaking in my hands worsens, and I feel a stinging pain in my chest. A black blade pushes into my sternum. God, it hurts. No. No, it’s not real.

But Nigel is.

My vision tunnels to the police cruiser. The old man sitting in the back seat. Now he is staring straight at me, a mocking grin on his face. That monster. That man deserves to die for what he did. And this other me, this other Clark Kent, this Superman—he insisted on saving the monster’s life. I drop my hands to the ground, and the hard concrete under me pushes back, rough against my palms. Rough like the hard, barren rock of New Krypton. He would be executed there, Nigel would be. Executed for his crimes. That’s what he deserves. That smirk taunts me now. I can’t hold my anger back.

I shift my gaze back to my doppelganger. You almost let her die. And you let her would-be killer live. I’m gonna kill him myself.

I move quickly, jumping to my feet and stepping toward the police cruiser. My hands ball into fists as I imagine pulling him out of the backseat and wrapping my fingers around his neck. That way I can feel when he takes his final breath. But Superman is suddenly standing in front of me, his hands on my shoulders, stopping me. His voice is in my head. Calm but insistent.

“Let me take you home. Then I’ll come back and get her.”

I don’t think so.

“Let me go,” I snap, my voice low. I stare past him to the police cruiser. The monster glares back at me, sneering. Pain pulses in my head and chest. And rage. But Superman doesn’t let me pass.

“You know I can’t let you hurt him. Let him rot in jail. Luthor will probably have him killed anyways. Let me take you home, Clark,” he pleads.

He shifts slightly so I have to look at him, not at the monster.

Dammit, Superman. Move.

I push against him with all my power, but he doesn’t budge. Instead, he seems to sigh with resignation as he grasps my shoulders and, for the second time that day, launches up into the sky, me in tow.

Not again. Oh, no. I push against him, struggling to get loose. The reddish tint to my vision darkens as we fly higher. I close my eyes and try to twist free. I have to get back there. He doesn’t understand.

“Dammit,” I yell. The wind blows in my face, and my glasses fall, dropping hundreds of feet down to the street below. Rage fills me. “Dammit, let me go! What are you doing? Take me back there. I’m gonna kill him. And she’s alone again.
You let her be left alone. Let me go!”

“Listen to yourself, Clark,” he says quietly, but firmly. His grip doesn’t loosen, and I keep struggling against him. He sighs again and raises his voice a little. “Calm down. Please. What good will you be to Lois if you kill him and then go to prison?”

The pain pulses in my head, and I screw my eyes shut tighter as I finally still. Except my hands—they won’t stop shaking. And I can’t seem to breathe right. My chest hurts.

We start to descend, and I open my eyes. Lois’s apartment is just ahead. He reaches out and pushes open the window. As soon as my feet hit the floor, I move away from him, stumbling toward the couch. But I can’t sit. I can’t stop moving. My hands grip my chest as the pain amplifies. Blood oozes down my shirt as a black blade slips out of my chest and clangs on the floor.

No. No, it’s not real. God.

Please bring her here. I need her. I need Lois. I spin around to face him. Why is he still here?

“What are you waiting for? Go back to her. You’re leaving her alone too long. If she’s not safe—”

I can’t breathe again. I fall to my knees, my shaking hands covering my face as I try to hold back tears. What is wrong with me? I’m a mess. This whole situation. All of this out-of-control behavior.

This is not me. I shake my head. This is not me. I’m sorry, Clark. God.

I’m sorry. Please, hurry. I can’t stand these feelings. I need her.

Immediately, he responds, his thoughts calm and empathetic, “I will be back. Please stay here. Less than one minute, and I’ll be back with Lois. Okay?”

Please, hurry, I say again, unable to look up at him. My hands fall to the ground as I feel the breeze from his rapid departure.