Hello all! I am back!
As always, thanks to my two lovely Betas, Saskia and LaraMoon. Along with making me giggle insanely, they also caught some rather embarassing booboos
And thanks to CapeFetish, who always brings out the pointy stick guys on MSN.
Now, the next part has been started, but I'm going to attempt to go through what I have so far and make sure this is going where I wanted it to.
I had originally not planned to leave it where it ends, but the next part after that is rather quite long for this, so I just slapped it in a new file and called it part nine
Enough yammering, Brucie!
***
Part Eight
-
Michael Reynolds sat back in his tall leather chair, tapping the end of his pen against the hard oak desk.
“I don’t care what you have to do, just take care of it,” he said.
Beneath the silky smooth voice he reserved for the press was a steely hint of danger, daring the person on the other end of the phone to refuse him. He hated having people disagree with him. It set his teeth on edge.
He grinned slyly. “Good choice, Tom,” he condescended, twirling the pen between his fingers. “One day, you may actually grow a brain.”
He hung up a short while later, rubbing his temples in the attempt to remove the beginnings of a headache. Talking with that man always felt as though he were sacrificing IQ points for the effort. One thing was for sure, he had not hired that man for his intelligence.
There was a slight breeze from the window, followed by the quiet sound of feet landing on his plush carpeting.
“I told you never to come here during the day,” he pointed out irritably.
“You also never said that he would come back,” the tall man said as he took his seat in the empty chair across the desk. He picked up the letter opener from the desk and held it between his fingers.
Michael, of course, was annoyed by the man’s impertinence. But one thing he had learned over the course of the past several months was that this was a young man whom he did not really want to irritate. There was still a hole in the wall that proved this point.
“I never expected him to,” Michael said. “I figured he would be too consumed by guilt to do anything, even if he ever found out about you.”
“Yeah, well I have enough problems dealing with street trash. I don’t need that glorified Boy Scout breathing down my neck,” he flipped the letter opener through the air, imbedding the blade several inches into the wall. “And what’s this I hear about Lane suddenly reappearing from the dead? Didn’t we take care of her?”
“There were some… complications,” Michael conceded. “She refused to break, even with that much serum.”
“So Raxilfin was a complete failure,” his partner said.
“No, not necessarily,” Michael returned, leaning forward in his chair. “While it didn’t work quite the way we had expected, it
did work.”
Raxilfin was supposed to be the next generation of truth serums. In lab tests, it had shown a great decrease in the patient’s higher cortical brain functions, much greater than that of sodium thiopental and other truth-inducing barbiturates. There were also some other effects that the serum had, sending the subject into a near hallucinatory state where they were not really sure what was real, and what was not.
It was supposed to get the truth from Lois Lane, but apparently, due to her tenacity and high dosages, it had succeeded to block all information regarding to Superman from her own mind. While a failed attempt on some fronts, it had also been a great success on others.
“I don’t like her,” the man commented petulantly, hunching down into his chair. “She’s to blame for Superman ignoring his true calling. If not for her, the world would be a much better place.”
Michael resisted the urge to roll his eyes. For a good while now, his prodigy had been lambasting the wonders of Kryptonian instincts, how if the man of steel would just embrace his true nature, the world would be in order and control.
“Don’t worry, Alex,” Michael promised. “We’ll take care of him and that little bitch of a reporter soon enough.”
-
Henderson stepped inside the brownstone home as Lane held the door open, taking a moment to look around. For some reason, the small townhouse wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind for the young couple. He had expected something more modern, less aged.
“Thanks for seeing me, Lane,” he said as he stood in the living room. “Although I expected that husband of yours would have answered the door.”
“Yeah well, Clark decided to be elsewhere today,” she replied derisively.
He wondered what she meant, but as the reporter slammed the door shut behind her, he knew that perhaps now wasn’t the best time to inquire any further.
He was led to one of the couches, where he sat as he placed a file onto the coffee table. Lois took a seat on the opposite couch, trying and failing at looking comfortable. Henderson figured that maybe she was not yet comfortable in her new surroundings. Or rather, not really new, but surroundings that she did not remember.
“So to what do I owe for such a pleasure?” she asked sardonically.
He grinned wryly. No matter how uncomfortable, she was indeed the same Lane that he had come to know and tolerate. He turned sober quickly as he opened the folder. “There’s been another attack.”
Lois craned her neck forward to see what he had brought. “So? You had told me that the attacks were pretty regular.”
Henderson nodded, not really looking forward to say what he was about to. “There were fingerprints this time. Prints that were actually in the database.”
“But that’s good, right? This means that we have an idea of who’s behind this.”
“Lois,” he began, more gently than he knew was normal for himself. “The prints belong to Superman.”
“Let me see that,” she demanded, snatching the folder from the coffee table and inspecting it for herself. She looked over it for a moment, then adverted her eyes to him. “These are circumstantial. They don’t necessarily
prove that he was the one who actually killed him.”
“Yes, but it proves that he was
there. And if he was innocent, why didn’t he call it in?”
“Well, I-I don’t know, maybe he was in a hurry to get somewhere else,” she stammered out.
That struck him as odd. Lane usually only stammered when she was hiding something. Otherwise, she was known for the barbs at the end of her razor tongue. “Have you seen Superman recently?”
She huffed, her eyes turning steely. “Look, I
know that he didn’t do this. He
couldn’t have. It’s not in his nature!”
Henderson nodded, knowing he wasn’t going to get any more information on the subject from her. “I also came about something else,” he started. “I’ve been doing some digging, and I found out… who was buried instead of you.”
Lois shifted uncomfortably. “Who was she?”
“Lorna Travis. Which doesn’t make any sense, because she died in 1994.” He pulled out a slip of paper on which he had scribbled some notes. “Dr. Heller, the doctor who signed off on her death certificate was a plastic surgeon, and was not anywhere near the hospital when she died. Coincidentally, he-”
Lois interrupted him, almost in a daze. “He was the plastic surgeon who altered that woman to look like me.”
Henderson’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You remember that?”
“No, I’ve been doing some reading on old stories,” she admitted.
He felt an inkling of disappointment. “Well, I have an appointment to meet up with Arianna Carlin later this evening. Hopefully she’ll be willing to cooperate.”
Lois nodded, and he stood up. “I should get going, I have some other work to catch up on.”
“Yeah, thanks for coming by,” she responded distractedly.
Henderson headed for the front door. Before he touched the doorknob, he turned back to her. “Be careful around Superman.”
She sighed. “Look, I may not
remember him, but I
know him well enough to know that he wouldn’t do anything like that. It’s not who he is.”
He stood for a moment. “Sometimes, the death of someone you love can change a person. Especially when you feel it was your fault.”
He left before she could realize that he was speaking from personal experience.
-
The cell, while comfortably furnished for a maximum security prison, was small and cramped. Arianna knew every square inch of her confines by heart, and would be able to see it clearly with her eyes closed. She hated this place, hated the people who had sent her here, but had decided that she hated the traitorous Reynolds more. So, she was sitting at the small desk, doing something that she had never expected herself to do before now.
She was writing a letter to Lois Lane.
Of course, she knew that she could always arrange a visit, but that would raise suspicions. She had gotten the news earlier that morning that Inspector Henderson was coming to pay her a visit, and she knew that that would be the perfect time to see that her letter got delivered.
Finally satisfied with her correspondence, she folded the small stack of paper and inserted it into an envelope. As a final touch, she neatly penned the reporter’s name onto the front before sealing it closed and slipping it between two books on her desk.
Finding herself with nothing left to do, she curled up on the springy cot with a well-worn novel. She had read it several times already, but it was a favorite, and there was very little choice in reading material in prison.
Forty pages later, there was the sound of a door closing down the hall. Normally she wouldn’t pay any attention, but a part of her figured that maybe the inspector had come by early. Standing up, she placed her book on her pillow.
The cell door opened. A shadow figure took two steps in and as she opened her mouth, a cloth was pressed firmly against her mouth.
The face of Tom Berry was the last thing she saw before her world went black.
-
After Inspector Henderson’s visit, Lois decided that it was time that she took matters into her own hands. The only lead that she had, aside from Arianna and Lorna, was Biomedic Industries.
There was nothing that she could do for Clark at the moment, although she was firm in the belief that he had nothing to do with the murders. She held on to the slim hope that she would find something there, though logically she knew that the odds of that were miniscule.
It wasn’t difficult to break into Reynold’s office. In fact, it seemed a bit too easy for her liking, and she briefly wondered if he had a silent alarm.
With that thought in mind, she decided to move quickly. There was a locked drawer in his desk, but with a fluid twist of a paperclip that seemed more instinct than skill, it popped open. There didn’t seem to be anything of great interest in there, or at least, not until she got to the bottom file.
Pulling it out, she flipped through the pages, wondering why it had called to her.
Then, on the last page, she paused while staring at the document with disbelief.
Dr. Heller had been employed by Biomedic?
Quickly, she tore the sheet of paper from the binder, and, after folding it up, slipped it into her pocket. There was a slight breeze behind her, slightly familiar, when she heard a voice speak up from behind her.
“Hello Lois,” the voice was deep, eerily familiar, but with a dark edge to it. “Didn’t I kill you already?”
She spun around to be faced with a bizarre twisted image of Superman. He looked just the same physically, except there was a cold gleam in his eyes that would never have been on the Man of Steel.
“Who are you?” she asked, trying to keep her voice strong and steady as she involuntarily took a step back.
She had never realized how intimidating Clark could be if he chose to be so, but his doppelganger exuded an air of threat and power. She had no doubt in her mind that this person wasn’t actually her husband.
“Don’t you recognize me, sugar dumpling?” He grinned, a sick facsimile from the man she remembered. “I’m Superman.”
Lois barely had time to scream before a hand jabbed against her throat, and she felt her airway close.
She struggled, clawing at his immoveable forearm, trying to gasp oxygen into her lungs.
-
Clark bolted awake on the utilitarian cot, heart hammering in his chest. He strained his ears for the sound that woke him up.
Lois, his mind cried out, clawing through his subconscious.
You have to get to Lois.He scribbled a brief note to Evie, thanking her for all that she had done, and then, before he could think twice, he was airborne.
He wobbled through the air, not used to the sensation of air currents battering against his speeding body. Following the sound of her slowing heart, he ignored the wind and rain, concentrating only on the one thing.
He could hear the sounds of Metropolis long before he could actually see. Night had fallen several hours ago, and it was only the instinctual feeling of where to go that led him to the tall building.
There was an open window near the floor level, and he could see a mirror copy of himself pinning a helpless Lois against the wall. Furiously, he flew through the window, the wake of his speed smashing the panes of glass.
The other Superman had Lois by the throat, and Clark could
see his own hands around her throat as her lifeless eyes stared up at him…
Shaking his head to clear away the morbid images, he started for the two. “
Hey!”
Startled, the other man dropped Lois to the floor before turning to him. Clark took a moment as a wave of disorientation swept over him. He was staring at a facsimile of himself, a mirror image that had been twisted into something more insidious.
“Well, well, looks as though the prodigal son has finally returned,” the copy sneered. “If I had known that all it would take was to go after her, I would have done so much sooner.”
“Leave her alone,” Clark threatened, anger finally replacing his shock.
“Or you’ll do what? Hide away and brood again?” The laughter was dark. “I’m shaking in my boots.”
He wasn’t sure who moved first, or if they both moved at once, but they met in the center of the room in a collision that shook the walls.
They grappled at each other, trying to gain the upper hand. Suddenly, Clark found himself flying towards the wall, his back crashing into drywall as a support beam cracked at the impact. Several framed awards and diplomas fell off their hooks, crashing to the ground.
Using the wall as leverage, Clark launched himself back into the fray, using his own momentum to shove the other man through the opposite wall. He panted for a moment, catching his breath. He was seriously out of practice.
“Who are you?” he demanded when his twin flew back in.
“Don’t you recognize me? I’m the new and improved
you.”
“There is
nothing improved about you,” Clark spat.
The man laughed. “Oh, please, I am who you
would be if you weren’t so weighed down by your morals.” He looked over to where Lois was sprawled. “By your
weaknesses,” he snarled in abhorrence.
“Sorry to break it to you, but you are
nothing like me.”
“Thank god for small favors.” Before Clark could react, the other man barreled once more into him, catching him off guard. Blows rained down on his head, against his sides, and before he knew it, he was on the ground.
“What’s the matter, Superscout? Getting tired already?” His own voice taunted as Clark coughed violently. “Well, okay then, though I suppose it’s only fair to warn you.”
He felt himself being lifted into the air, and his own face filled his entire field of vision.
“Once I’m done with you, your little sweetheart here won’t stand a chance.”
The threat caused Clark’s vision to swim with red. With a cry of rage, he slammed his head forward, ignoring the pain that lanced through his skull as his blow connected. He lashed out, connecting fists with a ribcage, a nose, a throat, anything that he could reach. Then, not caring that he was playing dirty, not when his wife’s life rested on the line, he brought his knee up swiftly to the other man’s groin.
As his duplicate doubled over, Clark rushed over to where Lois was slumped against the wall.
“No, no, no,” he begged as he knelt down beside her, his hands fluttering between her bruising neck and her still chest. Tilting her head back, he sealed his lips over hers and breathed air into her lungs. He pulled back and brushed his fingers across the smooth skin of her cheek. “Come on, honey. Breathe.”
She can’t die.Air shuddered into his lungs as he bent down again, forcing his body to stop trembling as he breathed into her once more.
Don’t leave me. Not again.-end Part Eight
