Story TOCChapter 8Lois was immersed in her background notes from the Johnny Corbin story when her phone rang, jolting her out of the zone.
“Lois Lane.”
“Ms. Lane? This is Ramin Tarbush,” his voice sounded strange, and flustered. “Your partner? Mr. Kent?”
The hair stood up on the back of her neck as she rose from her chair. “Yes, what about him? He’s supposed to be there with you.”
“Well, he was, but then, this man showed up and I think he had a gun,” Ramin said.
“Man? What kind of man?” Lois felt her chest tightening.
“A tall, old guy. He made Mr. Kent go with him,” Ramin said. “There’s a lot of people around. I can’t talk too loudly.”
“Go with him where?” Lois asked, frantic. Clark was kidnapped. So many people had already died. She had to find Clark.
“If you want, meet me at the homeless shelter and I’ll show you. Come alone. I’m laying low from the cops. My parole officer is looking for me, and I can’t have them on my case.”
Lois’ mind was racing, she could hardly think straight. Clark told her to stay put. But he hadn’t counted on himself getting kidnapped. All she could think about was finding him. For the thousandth time in her life, she wished she knew how to contact Superman.
She looked over at Perry, who was going over an afternoon edition mock-up with Charles in copy. Clark was going to kill her for this, even if he was in danger, but she had to go.
She left a note on her desk, just in case someone needed to find her.
Gone to meet Ramin Tarbush. Homeless shelter. - LL And she was gone.
__________________
Clark emerged from the stairwell, bulletproof vest in hand, and immediately felt himself grow hot. He couldn’t hear her heartbeat.
“Jimmy!” he yelled, his voice frantic. “Where’s Lois?”
“I, uh...I don’t know, I was downstairs looking over some negatives and I...”
He cut him off, and ran to Perry’s office. “Chief, do you know where Lois went?”
His eyes grew wide when he saw Clark’s white-faced panic. “Uh, no, son, I don’t. I was just in here with Charles. She was at her desk doing some research a little while ago.”
“How long has she been gone?”
“Uh, I don’t quite know. Twenty minutes maybe?”
“CK?” Jimmy called from his desk.
“What, Jimmy?” he spat angrily.
“Uh, that guy you just met with, Ramin? He was just found dead near the homeless shelter...along with Nigel St. John.” Clark’s eyes grew wide. Two more dead at the hands of Luthor. His entire body was coursing with adrenaline.
Lois. Luthor. He spun around wordlessly, his heart pounding, angry and frantic. There was a note on her desk.
Ramin. Oh god, Lois, what were you thinking? He took the note and ran to the stairwell, leaving a bluster of papers in his wake.
It had been a trap. Clark wasn’t here, but Gretchen Kelly was. And now Lois was strapped to a bomb with her wrists tied behind her back. Typical. Superman was her only hope. Of course. If this bomb didn’t kill her, Clark certainly would.
“You’re wasting your time. Everyone knows where I am. Superman will be here any minute.”
How many times did she say this a month? Gretchen smirked. “I’m counting on it.”
“Oh god,” she whispered. It wasn’t her they were trying to trap. It was Superman. She was the bait. And that meant they had kryptonite.
“Why are you doing this? Why are you helping Lex? He’s an insane, maniacal killer.”
“He’s brilliant, and powerful, and cunning. And he loves me.”
“I have a newsflash for you. He could never love you,” Lois said as she tested her wrists against whatever was binding her to the chair. Damn. The woman was as good at tying knots as she was crazy. “He doesn’t love anyone but himself.”
“He loves you,” she spat back at Lois with a glare as she moved towards the far wall and what appeared to be a slipshod desk with a computer and all sorts of electronics.
God, she was delusional. Lois worked on scanning the rest of her surroundings—dark, smelly, and most probably underground, which tracked, really. Following Ramin so blindly into the sewer system had seemed like a goo—well, time had been of the essence. Clark was missing. He was still missing.
Lois shook her head. The longer she kept her talking, the more time she had to come up with a plan. “He loved the
idea of me. To him, I was just something else to conquer, a prize to be won.” Her ankles were carefully bound too. “And it didn’t hurt that I was one of the people who could most readily bring him down. He wanted to keep me close.” As she had when she’d first realized it, Lois wished she had figured this out sooner. She had been so sucked in by his power and his devotion to her, it had blinded her to everything Clark had been trying to tell her about Luthor. Never again, she vowed.
Dr. Kelly shook her head as she entered a few keystrokes at the terminal. “No, my dear. He really loved you.” She turned back to Lois to sneer, as if it were her fault. Then she moved toward a tall, dilapidated bookcase along the wall that...held, among other things, a few crystal decanters of liquor, some wine glasses and wine bottles. Wine. In a sewer.
Dr. Kelly was still spouting off as she grabbed something small off one of the shelves. “He would have given you the world, you know. And you took him for granted. You could have had everything. You threw him away. You didn’t deserve him.”
“Why are you doing this?” Lois asked again as she tried to puzzle out just how long Lex had been
living here and how on earth they’d gotten all this stuff down here. How intricate, how truly dangerous was this plan of theirs?
“Because I
do love him. And once you and Superman are handled, he will see how devoted I am to him, and we can finally begin our lives together.”
She rolled her eyes. “Good grief,” she muttered. Delusional.
Dr. Kelly clicked a button on a remote control, and the bomb began to tick down.
__________________
Clark scanned the homeless shelter, his blood still pounding in his ears. Nothing. Heavy police activity. But no Lois. He forced his heart rate to calm. He needed his hearing. Needed to listen for her heartbeat.
He widened his search, scanning the city. Across the city and back, scanning every building, the basement of every building Lex had previously owned. Searching. Searching. But no Lois.
Lois.
The panic raced through his veins as he raced through the skies. Buildings. Too many buildings. Warehouses. Skyscrapers. There was no order to his search. He needed to slow down. Think clearly. But time, there was no time.
Where had Luthor taken her? She had to be underground somewhere. Nothing else made sense.
Would he find her in time? Was she already gone?
Lois. Luthor. Lois. __________________
Her mind was spinning. What would she do if Superman arrived in time? How would she warn him? More importantly, what would she do if he didn’t? Was the bomb a fake, or would Lex actually blow her up? What was above this building again? A homeless shelter? How many people would die as a result of Luthor’s crazed lunacy?
The timer continued to tick.
“If this is a real bomb, why aren’t you leaving?” Lois asked. At this point, it couldn’t hurt.
“Let’s just say Superman has a pretty good track record with you, my dear. It must be nice being the object of affection of the two most powerful men in the world.”
“By the looks of it, Lex has been living in an underground lair in a sewer. I’d hardly call him powerful anymore,” Lois replied. “And Superman is just a friend.” She wasn't even sure why she bothered clarifying with this lunatic; the woman hardly cared if her relationship was real or fabricated. The fact stood that, when she was in trouble, Superman showed up.
“Oh, please,” Gretchen groused, oblivious to Lois’ inner torment. “Even Lex knew Superman came first in your heart. That’s the original reason he made the cage.”
“Cage? What cage? Where is Lex, anyway?” What did she mean by the cage? She looked around, not seeing any such cage in sight. Yet her heart still hammered in her throat regardless.
“Lex had some...business to take care of. I’m sure he’ll be back soon,” she said coolly.
Lois’ eyes grew wide, a chill running down her spine. Was his “business” taking care of Clark? Superman?
“What makes you think you’re not next, Gretchen? He seems to be on quite the killing spree,” she said, her heart feeling colder by the minute. This was bad. So much worse than bad...
“Easy. I gave him life. I built the cage. I’m indispensable to him. The only one he trusts. Now, if you’ll excuse me, that bomb is ticking down a little too quickly for my comfort...but I’ll have a feeling we will be meeting again soon,” she said, backing out of the sewer and starting up the ladder to the surface.
__________________
Lois. Luthor. Lois. His panic was threatening to overtake him. He’d never felt like this, his mind racing, nearly paralyzed, unable to think about the next move. And all his energy was focused on his search—vision, hearing, flying.
Find. Lois.
Lex was the closest he’d ever come to losing her before. And now again. Luthor’s self-fulfilling prophecy—arch nemeses, they were. What was it that made him so vulnerable, so susceptible to Luthor? Would his weaknesses cost him Lois’ life?
His heart lurched, halting his flight for half a second. He was frozen, fearing that this time, he’d be too late.
Think, Clark. Think. Ramin. She had been going to the homeless shelter. She hadn’t been gone that long. Thirty-seven minutes and ten seconds. Too long. That was far too long.
But he needed to check again. Slower, more methodical. Nigel and Ramin had been killed there. It only made sense that Lois was nearby too. Alive. Oh god, please let her be alive.
With a sonic boom, he blasted back to the shelter, just in time to spot Dr. Gretchen Kelly emerging from the adjoining sewer. The sewer! Of course! He kicked himself mentally. He should have thought...should have known that was why he hadn’t heard her heartbeat.
__________________
Okay, now she was starting to panic. So it was a real bomb, Superman had no idea where she was, and she had no idea if Clark even knew she was missing or if Clark himself was missing. Oh god. And what was this cage she kept talking about?
Oh, why hadn’t she brought Jimmy along? Or why couldn’t she have just stayed put? He’d asked her—begged her—to stay put.
Clark. Her mind went completely blind with fear the minute she’d heard Clark had been held at gunpoint. His near-death at the hands of Capone and Barrow was too fresh, too traumatic for her to think about anything other than rescuing him, the way she had when he had been kidnapped by Rollie Vale. She couldn’t lose him. Wouldn’t lose him.
And she hadn’t been able to think rationally enough to realize that she’d been set up.
She couldn’t believe she had fallen for the trap. In hindsight, it was so obvious. If she got out of this, he was going to be positively furious with her. And if she got out of this, once he was done lecturing her, once he had calmed down and forgiven her, she needed to tell him how she felt. She needed to tell him she loved him. Had loved him for a long time.
Suddenly, she was shaking, and tears were filling her eyes, hot tears that streamed freely down her face and onto her throat because her hands were still bound behind her back.
It was happening again, but the other way around...
she was going to die without him ever knowing.
Comments
