“You know there are three different unmarked vans surrounding this place,” Clark said, as Lois retrieved her bag. “Maybe we should do this somewhere else.”
“You mean they’ve been listening in on me after all this time?” For some reason, Lois’s cheeks were flushed and rosy.
“They’re having a little problem at the moment,” Clark said, “But I didn’t do anything permanent. I doubt we have more than a few minutes before they realize how easy it is to fix the problem.”
Lois took a deep breath and then said, “Then we need to do this somewhere else.”
Clark nodded. “I think I know a place.”
She reached for him, and he hesitated only a moment before taking her in his arms. She was as soft as she had been before, but she smelled even better. There was something about her that made the pain he had been experiencing somehow more tolerable.
No matter how he failed, she somehow made him feel like he was the person he’d always wanted to be. With her he wasn’t Clark Kent, foster kid. He wasn’t the aimless drifter who had taken years to decide on a goal or direction in his life.
He wasn’t the person who hid and turned a deaf ear to people he was fully capable of helping.
With her he felt like he could do anything. He felt like he really was Superman.
***********
“I know it’s not much,” he said, “But at least the government doesn’t know we’re here.”
“It’ll be fine,” Lois said setting up her camera. She wouldn’t have expected the wind to cooperate, but tonight the wind was eerily still. It made sense, doing the interview on a rooftop, but his choice of background was outstanding.
Doing the interview on a roof with a view of the Potomac River and the city strung out behind them like a sea of glittering stars was going to be a little more interesting than the plain white wall she had envisioned.
He’d found several portable flood lights from somewhere and setting them up, Lois was pleased to see that she wasn’t going to have the ugly greenish look that her camera produced with its night vision.
Of course, this was only a three story building, and someone was sure to notice the lights, but Clark assured her that no one was in the building down below. By the time anyone investigated, they’d be long gone.
“Just hook this to the back of your belt,” she said, reaching for it before stopping and flushing suddenly.
“This is all a little new to me,” he said. “I’ve always tried to avoid cameras.”
“This will make sure the audience hears you and not the wind,” she said. As he tucked the boxy unit into the back of his belt, she ran the small wire up his back and slid the microphone around his neck. Her fingers brushed the side of his neck and she found herself flushing a little, wondering if he could hear her heart racing.
She tucked the microphone into the neck of his costume and hastily stepped back. Normally the wire would have had to go up inside the shirt, but with the cape she thought it would work out all right, especially as she planned to have him sitting at a three quarters profile.
Stepping back she turned to make sure that the lights were in their best position and the camera. It wouldn’t be the same as working inside a studio, but it would work. The view would make a statement, telling the world a little bit about how this man saw it from above in all its beauty.
Finally setting the camera with her remote, she moved forward and said, “Are you ready?”
He stared at her for a moment, as though debating whether or not to tell her something. Lois found herself holding her breath.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
She sat in the chair across from him, hoping that Susan wouldn’t mind that she’d borrowed them.
“My name is Lois Lane,” she said turning slightly toward the audience. “I’ve spent most of my career trying to overcome the name my parents gave me. But tonight, it serves as more than just a tribute to a fictional ideal.”
She glanced at Clark and said, “I first reported on the emergency landing of Flight 1013 several days ago. Over the course of the last few days, I’ve struggled with my beliefs in just what is and isn’t possible.”
“Tonight we will explore the mysteries of LexAir Flight 1013 and its passengers, including one person who has become the subject of numerous news reports over the past day.”
“In 1978 movie producers told you that you would believe a man could fly. Tonight you will know he can. “
She turned toward Clark and said, “You wear a Superman suit. Are you claiming to be Superman?”
“Until I came to this world, I didn’t even know who Superman was,” Clark said. “Yet I am able to do things that seem pretty similar to what the character can do.”
There was no need to go into the fact that his name actually matched that of the comic book character. That was a coincidence that would stretch people’s sense of credulity.
“So you wear the costume as a homage to the character.”
“I wear it because people know what it means,” Clark said. “I have seen the insignia in Myanmar, in Iraq in Turkey and Istanbul. People who have never seen a word in English still recognize the costume and they know what it means.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means I’m here to help.”
************
Pei was the most beautiful girl in all of Deyang city. It was difficult to Cho to concentrate on his schoolwork or on anything at all when all he wanted to do was to stare at her all day. It was as though the universe itself seemed to shift around her.
The portions of his day when he was away from her felt muted and dull. He was only truly alive when he was near her. Even though he’d never told her how he felt, or really talked to her much at all, it didn’t matter. He knew they were meant to be together.
She glanced at him for a moment and then looked away, a slight smile all the encouragement he needed. Even when the teacher began shouting at him, he barely noticed.
It wasn’t until the earth itself began to shake that he was able to pull himself from his dream.
The teacher began to shout out commands for an orderly evacuation, but some of his classmates were already running out into the hall. They were on the third floor, and it was a long way down in the middle of an earthquake.
Cho felt his stomach knot with fear. He’d been through earthquakes before, but none had been this severe. He waited on Pei, whose bag had caught on one of the desks.
It wasn’t until he heard the sound of rumbling that he realized just how much trouble they were in. The students who had gone before him screamed as the floors gave way, and as Cho began to slip and fall, he realized that he felt a small hand slip into his.
He turned slowly and saw Pei staring at him, even as his grip was ripped away from her. He tried to scream, but a moment later everything descended into darkness.
**********
“I have to go,” Clark said as Lois was moving to change tapes. The battery was running low, and she was going to have to change it.
“Why?” Lois asked, although she knew why. It was what Susan had warned her about, the world calling to him.
“There’s been an earthquake in China,” he said.
“You can hear it all the way from there?”
He shook his head. “We’re only a few blocks from your news office. It’s already hitting the wire.”
She felt a sudden wind and suddenly the area around her was dark again. The chairs had disappeared, and she hoped he’d gotten them back to Susan without scorching them.
“It’s time to go,” he said.
“Take me to the CNN building,” she said. “Drop me off a couple of blocks away. I know an editor who owes me a few favors, and if I can get inside the building, I can have this up and ready for sending out tonight.”
“You should get some sleep,” he said.
He was making all the right gestures, but she could tell his heart wasn’t in it. He wanted to be gone, to help.
If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be the person Lois had come to….admire.
“Let’s go,” she said.
**************
Being buried alive was worse than Cho could have imagined. He was blind, the darkness in front of him more total than any he’d ever experienced before. Worse, he could only breathe shallowly, and when he tried to move he could feel something shift painfully in his chest. It hurt to breathe.
In the distance he could hear the sounds of the others, those who were still alive trying to call out. He wondered if Pei was even still alive, if his brothers and sisters were all right. Would his parents even have a body to bury?
He heard the sound of material groaning above him, and suddenly it was even harder to breathe as matter shifted above him, shrinking the tiny pocket that had sheltered his body.
If he’d had the breath he would have screamed and screamed. As it was, all he could manage was a whimper. He felt a tear coming to his eye. He blinked, but the dust wouldn’t let him wipe it away, and the worst of it was that he couldn’t move.
He was trapped and he wasn’t ever going to see his family or anyone else again.
************
His face tight, Colonel Kwan ignored the crowds milling aimlessly in the streets. He stared out the window, his mind racing. The reports had already come in; five schools in the city had simply collapsed. Part of his duties as an officer of the People’s Liberation Army was to assist in disaster preparation and relief.
He knew just what the chances were for the survivors and how little time they had.
His wife was already racing toward the site of the elementary school where their younger two children had been studying. That left him with the grimmer task. At least their children in the elementary school were safe; it had been a newer, one story building, and the reports were that everyone had gotten out.
The high school hadn’t been so lucky. He’d often been disappointed in his son Cho; his grades were substandard, and he knew the boy didn’t apply himself enough.
Now all he cared about was seeing that his son was safe, and seeing that as many people came out of this alive as possible.
They’d received criticism enough for having three children, although as both he and his wife were only children the province had allowed them two. Twins didn’t count against them, and so they had a surfeit of children.
Too many parents, however, one child was all they would ever be allowed. Many had been sterilized after their first child, and if they lost them here, that would be all they would ever have.
“Drive faster,” he muttered to the private driving beside him.
The young man nodded, his face drawn. He knew what was at stake, what the next few days were going to be like.
As they rounded the last corner, followed by truckloads of men, they pulled to a sudden halt.
“What are you-" Colonel Kwan asked before seeing it for himself.
A man was floating in mid-air above the collapsed remains of the high school staring down at the rubble.
Pulling himself free of his seat belt, Colonel Kwan opened the door and stepped out. He ignored the other military vehicles pulling to a halt around them, and he noted that the private had pulled his weapon.
The man flashed downward and threw several chunks of rubble away from the top of the pile before stopping and cocking his head as though he were listening.
Each of the chunks he had thrown weighed several hundred pounds.
The man turned and floated toward him.
“I need your help. There are fifty dead, but the other eight hundred are still alive. I can move the rubble, but I’m afraid of shifting it and making things worse.”
The costume had been bothering Colonel Kwan; he’d seen it somewhere before. It occurred to him now; his son had dragged him to see the silly western movie about an American who could fly.
This man however spoke Mandarin with a strong Shanghai accent. He’d probably learned to speak Wu first.
Colonel Kwan tapped the arm of the private, forcing him to bring his weapon down. A gesture caused the men around him to do the same.
“I can’t do this without you,” the man said.
************
“I can’t do this without you,” he said, staring into the camera. “Without the help of ordinary people I can’t do what I need to do.”
“What exactly is that?”
“To help.”
“Some people would say that’s a slippery slope, that some of the worst crimes have been perpetrated in the guise of helping others.” Lois thought she looked a little pale on the small screen, but that was something that was easily corrected.
The Clark on the screen said, “What else can I do? It’s easy not to help as long as you can tell yourself that you can’t make a difference. I don’t have that luxury. I can hear people crying out for help every day and if I look, I can see them.”
Lois was silent on the screen and Clark turned to the camera.
“Could you listen to someone screaming in pain and know that you could save them and turn away? I can’t.”
Lois stopped the footage for a moment and turned to Gabriel, the editor who owed her more than one favor. “What do you think?”
“The sound quality is good,” he said noncommittally. “I don’t know what the network is going to say about you going non-exclusive with this.”
“They fired me,” Lois said. “As far as I’m concerned they can go suck a lemon. If they don’t want what I have, they can go without the footage while the other networks run it.”
He shook his head. “They’ll complain a little, but they’ll go along with it. Just don’t tell them that I did the editing for you.”
“And give them some sort of claim on the work? As far as I’m concerned we’re just having a friendly chat during your break.”
He was silent for a moment. “Is this real? All this sci-fi stuff about the rifts and everything else?”
Lois nodded. “We were one step away from having everything go to hell in a hand basket. There are things I haven’t even put in here because I signed some non-disclosure agreements.”
They were planning to stop any further experiments, Lois assumed and so downtown Denver ought to be safe enough. She felt a vague sense of guilt. This was exactly the sort of story she had been born to tell, and she was hesitating.
The fact that she needed the government’s goodwill to help her sister and Clark played more into it than the desire not to go to jail.
“Ok,” she said. “Let’s add the You Tube sequence in here, and the bit from the meteorologists here.”
He glanced at her. “Don’t tell anybody I’m helping you. I hear the food in Guantanomo is particularly bad.”
“This isn’t an anti-American thing we’re doing,” Lois said. “It’s our duty as journalists to be the watchdog, to give the people the information they need to make informed decisions.”
“Even so,” he said, “I wouldn’t want to be within a hundred yards of you when this hits the press.”
Lois shook her head irritably. Once this was out she would actually be safer than she had been before, because no one would be able to make her just disappear. There would be questions asked and inquiries and it would all be more of a hassle than it was worth with the information already released.
**************
Trapped within the darkness, unable to move and knowing in his heart that he was going to die, Cho wondered why he had wasted so much of his life dreaming. He should have taken chances, risked rejection, asked Pei out.
There was very little that he could remember ever doing that he regretted. It was the things he hadn’t done that pained him, the things he was never going to get to do.
At least with him gone, people wouldn’t give his parents so many problems for having three children. People had twins all the time. They’d at least have a normal life.
For a moment he almost thought he heard voices, and he grunted as loudly as he could.
The rock shifted around him and he bit off a scream, but a moment later he was blinking, blinded by the blazing brilliance of the light.
He felt arms lifting him out of the rubble, and a moment later he was on a stretcher.
He blinked as he saw his father, but he knew he had to be dreaming. His father had always been calm, impassive, and difficult to anger. He’d never been one to show his emotions.
But at this moment he felt his father’s hand wrapped around his and his father’s eyes glistened suspiciously. Behind his father floated a familiar figure in blue and red.
When his eyes finally focused enough to see what he was seeing, he knew that the drugs had already kicked in. He worried for a moment about the hallucination, and then decided not to mention it.
There was no point in worrying his father.
“Pei?” he said. “Is Pei all right?”
His father nodded. “We found her first. She asked about you.”
At the prick of an injection, he realized that he hadn’t had any medications until this moment. He stared up at the floating figure above until his world faded to black in a haze of painkiller induced delirium.
The one thing he knew was that as long as his father was there, everything was going to be all right. His father could do anything. He was the closest person to being Superman Cho had ever known.
Current hallucinations notwithstanding.
