Hearing movement in the darkness, Lois stiffened. She wiped her hand against her eye and grabbed the door handle to help lever herself to her feet.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me,” Clark said quietly.
Lois gasped. She found herself rushing forward to where Clark was sitting at the side of the bed.
She embraced him tightly and found herself crying again.
When she finally regained control of herself, Lois asked, “What happened?”
“I stumbled across a blonde woman shooting two federal agents,” Clark said. “She pushed me out of a window.”
Lois felt a moment of shock again. “So how did you get away?”
**********
“Superman saved me,” Clark said.
“He couldn’t have heard you from all the way…”
“He flew the both of us out here. He’s worried about that woman…the one who could make people do things.”
“So he’s been watching all this time.” Lois got a familiar look on her face, and Clark felt a moment of irritation.
“I was the one who was thrown out the window,” he said irritably.
Lois patted him on the shoulder. “You get used to it after a while.”
She stood and headed for the telephone. “We’ve got bigger problems.”
“Bigger problems than me almost dying?” Clark asked incredulously.
“Linderman has been buying pictures from that painter…Mendoza, Mendez, whoever he was. He had one of me in his office at the exact time you fell by the window.”
Frowning, Clark said, “So you think he set it up?”
“Or he waited to invite me up until the time shown on the clock. Either way he’s trying to make the things that happened in the paintings real.”
“There are a lot of those paintings that should never become real.” Clark said.
He’d tried using his memories of the paintings to stop some of the disasters, but somehow he had never been able to identify enough to get to anything any earlier than was in the picture. It left him feeling helpless.
Frowning, Clark said, “ I saw Nathan Petrelli coming in the entrance earlier. I got sidetracked trying to follow him, and that’s when I ran into the woman upstairs.”
“Did you call the police?”
Shaking his head, Clark said, “I went back upstairs. The bodies were already gone, and maids were cleaning the floors with bleach. They looked scared.”
“If Linderman wants you dead, then you need to get out of here,” Lois said suddenly. “And he might have another painting showing Superman saving you or something.”
Clark frowned, suddenly uncomfortable with the idea of a picture of him flying around in front of a Vegas casino in his civilian clothes.
“Did Linderman say what he wanted?”
“He never even got around to the interview.”
************
The battered jeep was on its last legs. The interior had been slowly blackening, a sign of his rage as the miles passed.
He’d killed more than one hundred men, and he knew that more would be coming. They would never stop unless he could cut the viper off by the head.
Random sparks of energy flashed across his knuckles, and as he drove down the road, transformers exploded behind him.
Half of Nevada would be in the dark by the time he reached Vegas, and it would be contaminated with radiation that wouldn’t go away for a thousand years.
At this point, he didn’t care.
*************
“Linderman keeps his art in a vault,” Lois said. “I overheard him talking to someone about a sword being stolen.”
“You want to go take a look at paintings in a place where they covered up the deaths of two federal agents.” Clark shook his head. “Do you have a death wish?”
“First, you aren’t sure they were federal agents. Just because they were wearing suits and running some sort of surveillance…”
She stopped at Clark’s withering look.
“We need this,” Lois said. “We need to see what he’s planning.”
“What the artist says is going to happen.”
Lois rose to her feet and began to pace. “He got every detail of Superman’s suit right. He had me wearing a space suit…and he even had the exact view I had of Superman after I was allowed up with the other colonists.”
“Just because you know the future doesn’t mean it can’t be changed,” Clark argued.
“We have to know what’s going to happen if we are going to change it.”
Clark grimaced. He could see the future already, and it didn’t involve him winning this argument.
*************
Sneaking in was easier than Lois would have thought. Security should have been tightened after a theft, but instead it was as though most of the security guards had been drawn away by something else.
Row after row after row of paintings safely secured by slide out patricians.
There were more of these than they had time to look at. Luckily, Lois had her small hand camera from her purse.
She slid painting after painting out of it’s slot. Most were paintings of disasters she’d already seen, but one…
“Take a look at this, Clark.”
Nathan Petrelli was standing inside the oval office.
It was obvious now why Linderman wanted influence over Petrelli. Having a link to the white house would buy him more power and influence than he could acquire in any other way.
She took a picture, then stepped back.
“Clark?” she asked.
He was staring, white faced at a picture she couldn’t see.
Lois stepped toward him, and although he tried to step in front of her, she ducked around him.
The picture was clearly of Clark’s apartment. Lying on the floor, with the top of his head cut off was Superman.
A familiar green rock glowed sickly near his body.
Lois found herself becoming pale as well. She heard a noise from the corridor, and she snapped a quick shot.
She found a hiding place quickly behind one of the rows of paintings. Clark was beside her.
It was Linderman.
“My men are taking care of the problem as we speak.”
Lois risked peeking behind the row of paintings, and she saw that he was speaking on a telephone.
“He won’t reach the city limits.”
Clark staggered against her, and Lois turned.
To her surprise, he was sweating profusely, and his face was even paler than before. He looked clammy, and if Lois’s rudimentary medical knowledge was anywhere near the mark, he was going in shock.
The sound of a patent leather shoe behind her warned her just in time.
“I see your friend managed to survive his fall.” Linderman’s voice was pleasant, jovial even.
Lois gaped up at him, and Linderman wryly pulled a painting out of the wall.
It had a picture of the both of them crouched before Linderman in this very room.
Lois shook her head. “This is getting a little ridiculous.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” Linderman said..”The penalties for trying to rob a casino in Las Vegas are quite steep.”
Lois glanced back at Clark, who had fallen to his knees. With each step closer that Linderman came, Clark seemed to be in more pain.
“What have you done to him?”
“I’m just bringing him a little present,” Linderman said. He pulled a familiar glowing rock from his pocket.
“You’ve seen the pictures. You’ve been following Silar yourself for weeks now.”
“What does that have to do with us?” Lois asked as her mind raced. Linderman had Kryptonite.
Kryptonite was making Clark sick.
Kryptonite didn’t affect normal people.
Lois closed her eyes for a moment as the truth rolled over her. Her partner had been lying to her all this time. He’d been lying again just minutes ago.
And if she didn’t get him away from Linderman, he was going to die.
“Silar is a serial killer who stalks people with powers. He is somehow able to acquire their abilities by eating their brains. With each victim, he grows stronger and stronger.”
“So you think he’s after Superman.”
“As the grand finale, the piece de resistance?” Linderman shook his head. “Superman is too rich a target to pass up. With the power of Superman, Silar could bring the rest of the world to it’s knees.”
“So you plan to give him the very rock that will make that possible?”
“You know,” Linderman said. “You partner looks ill. It would be a shame to have to incinerate his body before he spread something contagious.”
Destroy Clark’s brain and save the world.
Lois wasn’t going to let that happen.
**************
Despite his anger, the wild eyed man slowed the jeep when he saw the scantily clad blonde woman by the side of the road.
She was beautiful. She looked like some of the women he’d seen on the internet.
Consciously, he dampened his radiation abilities and hoped the car wasn’t too hot already.
“Need a lift?” he asked.
She smiled. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to pick up hitchhikers?”
He didn’t know where she’d kept the gun, but the last thing Ted Sprague saw was the flash of smoke as the bullet entered his eye.
The car exploded, killing both him and Jessica Sanders.
One of the men watching from the rise ducked down and spoke into a walkie talkie.
“It’s done.”
