I'm not sure there's very many people left that are still interested, but here's part 3.
~.~.~
When Lois walked into the newsroom, early that morning, she was livid. She marched toward Clark's desk and threw a copy of the Planet's latest edition over his keyboard. On the front page was an article about the city's plans to rejuvenate its business district in an effort to attract international companies and investors.
An article written by Clark Kent.
"What's this?" Lois barked, eyes narrow. "What happened to the story that was supposed to be right here -" she jabbed the front page with her finger "- just below the logo? Huh? What happened to my story? How dare you! You had no right to submit this... this... whatever the hell that is... instead of the story you were supposed to turn in for me. And to think I actually trusted you! You're... You know what you are? You're the lowest form of life imaginable, Clark Kent. That's what you are!"
Not once during Lois's angry tirade did Clark try to interrupt her. He neither blinked, nor winced, keeping a straight face the entire time. He could understand her frustration - he'd felt the exact same thing when he'd seen the front page this morning, too.
Ever since they'd left the newsroom to visit Platt again, two nights ago, things had taken turns that neither of them had anticipated.
When he and Lois had arrived at the abandoned warehouse that Platt was calling his home, they'd made an unexpected discovery: the scientist was dead. Sitting in a chair, his feet in a bucket of water into which an exposed electrical wire had fallen, Samuel Platt had died, electrocuted. Their best lead had become a dead-end, quite literally.
By morning, even though the police detectives who had investigated the scene had concluded that he had committed suicide, Lois strongly suspected that it was murder. But no matter how much she or Clark had tried to argue with them, all circumstantial evidence pointed to suicide as the cause of death, and no one had any other proof to offer.
They'd immediately sent Jimmy to see his contacts at STAR Labs with as much of the scientist's report that they'd been able to make sense of, while they tried to follow any and all other leads they had or could manage to find. Late that afternoon, Jimmy had come back from STAR Labs with a verdict: according to their analysis, had the particle isolators been manufactured per EPRAD's original specifications, they would not have required any additional heating, which was what had caused them to malfunction.
A little bit of sleuthing and some digging around, and they'd gathered the bases they needed for an article pointing the finger at Wayne Aerospace for criminal negligence in the manufacturing of the parts, and strongly hinting to a link between that and Samuel Platt's death. Lois had started writing the main article, while Clark had worked on smaller companion pieces.
They'd still been waiting on one last confirmation when Clark had suggested that Lois go home and get some rest - they'd been up for over twenty-four hours by then, and it was clear that she was exhausted. When she'd hesitated, he'd offered her every reassurance that he'd wait for the confirmation, tweak the one or two paragraphs that would require it, and submit both her article and his to the editor. She'd made him promise - and he had.
So when Clark had awoken to find the morning edition of the Planet on his doorstep, with an article he'd written his first day but which had been put on ice for the time being, he'd known right away that something was very wrong. That, and that there would be a one-on-one with Mad Dog Lane in his immediate future.
And, just as expected, she'd just given him an earful, which he'd taken without so much of a complaint. He knew he probably should have stopped her after the first few words, but there was something about a very angry Lois Lane which was somehow...mesmerizing.
"Well?" Lois asked impatiently, when it looked like Clark might not ever speak again. "Don't you have anything to say for yourself?"
"I would," Clark replied, shrugging, "but I have a feeling, no matter what I say, you won't believe me."
Eyes narrow, she replied, "You're right, I wouldn't! I know better than to trust you, from now on."
She was about to go back to her desk when Jimmy came running.
"Hey guys, have you heard the news?" he asked, a bit out of breath. "We have a new owner. The Planet's been sold."
The news hit Lois like a right hook between the eyes. "What?"
Clark nodded. "Yep. As of midnight last night, the Daily Planet is now the property of Wayne Entertainment."
"Of who Entertainment" Lois asked, eyes wide in disbelief. "Wayne? As in...Bruce Wayne?"
"The one and only," Jimmy said. "Wayne Entertainment is one of the newer divisions of Wayne Enterprises, which also owns--"
"Wayne Aerospace," Clark cut in, sensing that Jimmy might be going for a full listing. "And whether you'll believe me or not," he added for Lois's benefit, "that is why neither your article, nor mine, are anywhere to be found in today's edition."
Lois suddenly felt as though her legs had been cut off. "What? You're not seriously implying that he bought the paper to stop the article from being printed, are you?"
"Well, that, or perhaps he stopped them from being printed because he bought the paper." Clark shrugged. "I'll admit there's a difference, but the end result is the same. Either way, from what I understood, he personally requested the articles be pulled."
Clark watched in amazement as Lois transformed into some sort of human tornado - her speaking voice reaching the highest octaves, words strung together into sentences at light speeds, hands thrown up in the air constantly, completely oblivious to the people around here and whatever looks they might be giving her.
"I don't believe this! This can't be happening! We need to fight against this treatment, Clark! The nerve of this man! We can't let him get away with it! This goes against-- against our constitutional rights, that's what! We have a responsibility to the people out there, to tell them what's going on in the world, and that's why there's such a thing as freedom of the press!"
Lois didn't notice Jimmy ducking and running for cover, nor did she realize that someone had walked up to her, even though Clark had attempted to attract her attention to the fact.
"I believe in freedom of the press just as much as you do, Miss Lane," said Bruce Wayne, arms crossed in front of his chest, a displeased expression on his face. "And when you have facts to support your wild theories, I have every confidence that any article of yours will be printed, as it should."
"They aren't wild theories," Lois protested, not the least bit intimidated by the billionaire. "And my article would have been printed had it not for your very timely new acquisition. If you seriously think you can manipulate what gets printed in this paper by purchasing it then you--"
"Quite the contrary," Bruce cut in. "I bought this newspaper because it made good business sense. And if there was anything newsworthy about me, I should think we'd be the ones to print it. But for as long as I've had a subscription to the Daily Planet, never once have I read anything in its pages that remotely resembled the sort of garbage hearsay that the National Whisper likes to plaster all over its front page, and today is not the day we're going to start. I suspect if you checked with your editor, you'd find that Mr. White completely agrees with this point of view." He nodded curtly, then added, "Good day, Miss Lane," before walking away.
Lois watched him leave, daggers in her eyes, her hands closed into tight fists. She mumbled something and walked off toward the elevators, barely stopping long enough to grab a notepad on her desk.
"Lois, wait!" Clark called after her. "Where are you going?"
Just as he was getting up from his desk to catch up to her, Perry White came out of his office, with a look to give interns nightmares. "Lane, Kent, my office. Now!" he bellowed over the clatter of the newsroom.
Torn between running after Lois or getting an earful from his editor, Clark made the choice that would best insure he would still have a job the next morning.
He immediately knew he'd made the wrong choice when his super hearing picked up Lois's last words as the elevator doors closed behind her.
"He wants facts?" she was saying angrily, "I'll get him facts!"
~.~.~
To be concluded...
