The book sitting on Lois’s coffee table was like an indictment. Clark felt his heart drop.
“Activating Evolution” by Chandra Suresh. He had another copy on his bookshelves, written in the original Hindi. It was dog eared and well worn, part of Clark’s attempts to understand his own nature.
And now Lois had a copy. Had he been careless, would he have to move already?
Lois stepped around the corner with two steaming cups of coffee.
“A little light reading before bed?” Clark asked. It was better to confront things now, get them out in the open. If he had to tell his parents they were going to have to move, he’d rather have a little lead time.
Lois’s smile faded, and she shrugged noncommittally. “Someone recommended it to me. It’s a little overrated.”
“I didn’t think so,” Clark said. “I thought Mr. Suresh made a compelling argument.”
“You believe in palm readers, tarot cards, psychic hotlines, Clark. You’ve got to wise up! This whole wide eyed innocent thing may have played in the hills of Borneo, but…”
“I’ve seen some things,” Clark said. “There was this medicine man in Borneo who…”
“That’s just like you, Clark. Always with one story or another about your trips to the backwoods of some country nobody has even heard of. I suppose you are going to tell me you’ve been to Timbuktu.”
“It’s a city in Mali,” Clark said. “They have some spectacular Mosques…”
“So you spent years traveling to places nobody else wants to go to, when all the real action happens right here.”
“Not everything happens in Metropolis.” Clark said.
“I suppose a few things happen in London, New York and LA.” Lois said. “But if you want crazies, they all seem to move here. This Suresh fellow moved here, I understand.”
“He was killed,” Clark said. “Driving a taxi.”
He’d tried to find Chandra Suresh hoping for the answers to some of his questions. He’d gotten there too late.
“How do you know that?”
“I was going to do a story about him,” Clark lied. “He was already dead by the time I got into town.”
Clark’s head jerked a little as he heard the sounds of a news broadcast downstairs.
A train wreck in Texas…people trapped inside.
Lois continued talking, but Clark found that he wasn’t listening.
The old itch was there…the one that had forced him to move time and time again. Clark couldn’t sit by and allow things to happen without trying to stop them.
“Lois…I just realized that I forgot to pay my phone bill. If I don’t get it in before closing time, they’ll cut me off.”
Clark made his excuses and stood up to go.
Before Lois could protest, he was out of the room. By the time she moved to call after him, he was already out of the building.
Clark hated taking the time to change, but flying by day was just too risky not to. Nondescript black slacks, a ski mask, a black t-shirt. He looked like he was ready to rob a bank.
He glanced up at the figure on his mantle, the picture of the man in the red cape. The bright primary colors were reassuring, friendly. People could see him from a mile away and know he meant to help.
He was going to have to talk to his mother soon about the plan which was forming in his mind.
A moment after that he was streaking across the country at speeds that would hopefully leave him as only a ghost on most radar nets.
If he flew too low he was going to shatter the windows of cars.
As he came upon the sight of the disaster, a flash of memory caused him to pause for a nanosecond. He’d seen this before, in the artist’s loft.
Jaws gritted, Clark slipped inside, faster than the eye could see.
With his breath he stopped fires that were starting. He helped people as anonymously as he could, but that slowed things down. He started at one end of the train, and as he made his way through the smoke, he realized that there was another man he had to save, on in the far end.
Before he could react, there was a flash of white, and a young girl dashed through the flames to grab the man.
Clark could see that she was burning. Her arm was on fire, and she ignored it.
Before he could react, the ceiling began to collapse. His cold breath and the hot metal had caused stress fractures, and the whole place was unstable.
He found time slowing. The man was in worse shape, unconscious and with an ugly sound in his lungs.
The cheerleader was already turning to look at him when he rushed toward her.
He grabbed the ceiling beam which weighed almost a ton. The girl stared up at him for a moment, and then started to drag the man out from under the collapsing roof.
She ran outside, and into the arms of the waiting medical personnel.
He heard one of the men exclaiming in surprise that the girl wasn’t burned.
That couldn’t be right. He’d seen her arm, and it had been burned almost to the bone.
Clark saw another fireman approaching, and he deliberately allowed the ceiling to collapse as he fled out the back.
He barely missed being caught on camera, and had to do some fancy maneuvering to keep out of everyone’s line of sight.
By the time he thought to look for her, the girl was gone.
It was only then that he realized that the fire had burned most of his ski-mask away.
She’d seen his face.
