In some FDK-FDK for Adrift, I said there was no death in this story. I was wrong. However, it’s not Clark and it’s not Lois, so you can probably read on without further details!!
From Part 8 ...
At seven o’clock, Lois, dressed in the nurse’s uniform, walked towards the pony corral at the circus.
A hand fell on her shoulder and turned her around.
Two police officers faced her.
“Lois Lane?” one asked. Without waiting for her to reply, he continued. “You are under arrest as a suspect in connection with the disappearance of Clark Kent.”
Part 9
Lois sat in the drab room at the police station. A young officer, who looked like he’d skipped high school for the day, watched her with an intensity that left him nowhere to go if he ever guarded a serial murderer.
She’d been told nothing. Brought to the station, put in this room and left with the very rookie officer.
Ostensibly, she’d accepted it all with minimal protest, having realised immediately that a prolonged scene at the circus couldn’t help her or Clark. And she really didn’t need the photos of her arrest sprawled across the front of tomorrow’s National Inquisitor.
But inside she fumed. At her own naivety. And at Hodge’s duplicity.
He’d set her up. It *had* to be him. No one else knew of their meeting. No one else knew she would be at the circus.
So how much, of everything he’d told her, was true? Did he really know Clark’s whereabouts?
Hodge had said Clark was hurt. Badly hurt. Was that possible? Or just part of Hodge’s story?
Lois grunted her frustration. She was stuck here, still with a thousand questions. Knowing more, but sure of less. Did Trask really plan to kill Superman? Was Hodge really going to bomb Trask’s control centre?
Why did Hodge even need a bomb? Surely one zap with Clark’s heat vision could disable Trask’s computers. Hodge didn’t know that of course, but why hadn’t Clark acted days ago?
Why had he just let them hold him?
There must be something she didn’t know. A reason why Clark had allowed himself to be caught, held and rendered ineffectual for three days.
He was probably protecting the secret.
But if he had to choose between the secret and the lives of thousands of people, Lois knew he wouldn’t hesitate.
So why had he done nothing?
So many questions.
But, one thing was clear ... she couldn’t stay here.
Lois smiled hesitantly at her minder and his expression deepened a couple of levels of trepidation. “Why am I here?” she asked in as non-threatening manner as she could muster.
He looked at the sheet he’d been clutching. “Lois Lane, arrested in connection with the disappearance of Clark Kent,” he read in a stilted voice.
“Who ordered the arrest?”
He scanned the notes. “Inspector Henderson.”
Henderson! “I want to see him,” Lois said, her manner no longer affable.
“My orders are not to leave you,” he stammered.
“There’s a phone on the wall,” she barked. “Use it and tell them if I don’t see Henderson within three minutes, every last second of this unconstitutional arrest and detainment will be plastered so thickly over the front page of the Daily Planet you won’t be able to see the paper underneath.”
He stood, picked up the phone, and repeated what she’d said verbatim.
A minute later Henderson walked in.
“You can leave,” Lois brusquely told the kid cop.
He did. Very thankfully.
“OK, Henderson,” Lois snarled. “What’s going on?”
Henderson sat opposite her, his face impassive. “Clark Kent is missing and all the evidence points to you as the most likely suspect. So we brought you in for questioning.”
“So question me and let me go,” she said tersely. “I have work to do.”
“It isn’t quite that simple.”
“Then make it simple,” Lois snapped. “You can start by explaining exactly how you made probable cause for my arrest.”
Henderson folded his hands on the desk and stared at her, unmoved. “You were the last person to see Clark Kent alive. You have been in his apartment on at least two occasions since he disappeared. You didn’t report him as missing. You didn’t inform his parents he is missing. You told Perry White he was chasing a Superman story. You told me he had run off with a high school girlfriend. You had a secret rendezvous with a highly dubious pirate in a circus caravan, having elaborately set up a sham medical procedure as an alibi. Frankly, Lois, it’s about as textbook as they come – jilted ... or possibly bored - woman does away with lover.”
Lois stared at him, speechless, as a dozen explanations volleyed through her mind and she dismissed each one of them.
"And," Henderson continued. "Amongst your personal items, we found a government-issue bug detector - so you will likely be charged with theft as well."
“I didn’t hurt Clark,” she said eventually. “I love him.”
Henderson sighed wearily. “You know, Lois, you’d be surprised how many times I hear that ... and how many people are incarcerated right now for the crimes they committed against the very person they proclaim to love.”
“Clark has been captured,” Lois said, a little breathlessly. “By a government agent who is threatening to blow a canyon through the middle of America if Superman doesn’t come to stop him … and if Superman *does* come, he’s going to shoot him with a quantum thi- … weapon.”
She hadn’t realised, before now, that Henderson’s eyebrows could stretch quite so far up his forehead. He stood and opened the door.
“I need to get out of here, Henderson,” Lois said desperately.
Henderson looked at her, poised between scorn and pity. “You won’t be getting out of here anytime soon,” he predicted.
“You can’t just leave me here,” she protested.
“There’s been a new development,” Henderson said. “Someone will be in to question you as soon as possible.”
Henderson bellowed for the junior cop to return. He scurried in and Henderson said, “Say nothing to her. Don’t answer her questions. If she tries anything, call for backup.”
The junior nodded and Henderson left, shutting the door firmly behind him.
+-+-+-+
Fifteen frustrating minutes later, the door opened and a stocky man in a way-too-cheerful shirt sauntered in. He had dark wavy hair, nice teeth and a boyish grin. “I’ll take it from here,” he told the junior cop.
The kid stood his ground, raising himself to his full height, which still fell short of the other man’s chin.
The newcomer slipped what looked like ID from his shirt pocket. The kid perused it, then nodded and silently left the room.
As soon as they were alone, the man darted to the window, opened it and, using a wrench from his pocket, removed the outer grill. He turned to Lois with a dazzling smile. “Ready?” he asked as he held his hand in her direction.
“Ready for *what*?” she squeaked.
“Well, I assume you don’t want to stay here all night and Clark is –“
“Clark?”
He nodded. “Clark is waiting for you. He sent me to get you because, clearly, he can’t show his nose around here.”
“Why not?” Lois asked sharply. “If *he* came here, they’re going to have a hard time charging me with his abduction.”
Her would-be rescuer flashed an ingratiating smile. “Lois, you weren’t arrested because they think you had something to do with Clark’s disappearance,” he explained smoothly. “Henderson *knows* where Clark is – heck, Henderson’s had a part in this right from the beginning.”
Her stomach dropped. “A part in *what*?”
“The plan to kill Superman. He and Trask are like this.” He crossed two fingers, signifying closeness. “They’re not sure if they believe your story about Superman going home to his mom, so they thought bringing you here would test it. That’s why they’re keeping you waiting. If Superman doesn’t come, they intend to rough you up a bit. So Clark sent me - to get you out of here before they hurt you.” His hand stretched towards her, his face persuasive. “Come on, we need to be gone when Boy Sleuth gets back.”
Lois hesitated. Torn.
Could it be true? Henderson working with Trask? Even Clark had said he thought Henderson’s job as a city inspector was a cover for other, more furtive activities.
And Hodge’s card had predicted they would use her.
The man stepped closer to her. “Clark knew you would not trust me easily, so he gave me a message for you,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “Your farmboy misses his honey.”
Lois stood and followed him to the window. “What’s your name?” she asked, as she began climbing through the window.
“Please call me Daniel,” he said.
+-+-+-+
Daniel drove Lois to a warehouse on Bessolo Boulevard – the peeling sign on the front said it was, or had been, used for office furniture. He shepherded her into a small office inside the warehouse. “Where’s Clark?” she asked.
“Sit down,” Daniel said, with another smile. “Wait here, he won’t be long.”
Lois waited, a strange feeling - part apprehension, part anticipation – churning through her stomach. Could it be possible Clark would walk through that doorway any moment? The thought of being with him again made her mind swirl.
Or had she just made one of the stupidest mistakes of her life?
The door opened … and one look to the man who entered, and Lois knew the answer.
“Ms Lane,” he said. “How lovely to see you again. I’m Jason Trask.” Another man, one she didn’t know, came in and stood behind Trask.
Lois stood. “Where’s Clark?” she said icily.
“He’s here,” Trask replied with an oily smoothness.
“Can I see him?” she asked eagerly.
“Sure.” Trask stepped closer to her. “When you have answered some questions.”
“What questions?”
“Where’s Superman?”
“On his way to New Krypton,” she said airily.
“Where are the other aliens?”
“If by alien you mean a Kryptonian, then on New Krypton I suppose.”
Trask’s eyes darkened and the crease between his eyebrows deepened to a line. “Define your relationship with Superman.”
“He does stuff, I write about it.”
“Beyond that.”
“I have no relationship with Superman beyond that,” she stated primly.
Trask strode to the nearby desk and picked up a piece of paper which had text printed on it. Facing her, he read, “Superman smiled as he received the check to the enthusiastic applause of the gathered crowd. He’s our hero and he knows it. He’s become comfortable around us and we’ve realized Metropolis wouldn’t be the same without him. The austere barriers of division and difference have evaporated.”
Lois recognised her story but could not see how it signalled a special relationship with Superman. Every other reporter had written essentially the same thing.
Trask read on. “We can only hope that one day soon, the Suit will too.” His eyes lifted from the paper and drilled into Lois’s, glowering. “Did you write that, Ms Lane?”
She would not cower to this bully. She would not. “Yes, I did,” she said, in the same unconcerned tone.
“Explain the final line.”
“It wasn’t in the story.”
“We record every keystroke on your computer,” Trask informed her. “Explain the final line.”
“He’s a man, I’m a woman,” she said with lazy insolence.
“He’s not a man, he’s an alien,” Trask snapped, his voice rising with barely-contained anger.
“It was a throw-away line,” Lois said contemptuously. “That’s why I threw it away.”
“Can you contact Superman?”
“Not anymore,” she drawled. “Unless those very clever Sewells have discovered a way to communicate across a couple of galaxies.”
Trask stepped towards her, his hand raised threateningly. She faced him, eyeball to eyeball. “Go ahead, Trask,” she taunted. “Hit me. Superman won’t come.”
He stared at her for a long moment, eyes dark, face angry. “You want to see Kent?” he sneered.
Lois’s heart jumped. “Yes.”
Trask pulled a photograph from the internal pocket of his jacket and handed it to her.
Lois gasped. It wasn’t possible to hide her horror.
The photograph was of a man, sitting on a concrete floor, slumped against the wall. Dressed only in sleep shorts, his bare chest and legs were a mass of bruises and open wounds. His ribs and thighs sported ugly clouds of colour which suggested he had been repeatedly kicked. Behind his glasses, his right eye was swollen and a trail of blood ran down his temple from the gash above his eyebrow.
It was Clark. Without question, it was Clark. Lois’s eyes welled with stinging tears. She blinked them away. “Did *you* do this?” she demanded of Trask.
He smirked. “Not personally,” he said in a tone that left her in no doubt it had been done on his orders.
“Take me to him,” Lois demanded, cold and hard.
“How long is it going to take for you to realise that you do not call the shots here, Ms Lane?” Trask said in his oily voice. He snatched the photo from her and peered at it, his face creased in sadistic satisfaction. “This,” he said, waving the photo, “This is a warning. You have half an hour to get Superman here. If you don’t, you will be taken to Clark and he will observe while you are given a taste of what he has endured the past three days. Then, you will watch while we kill him – slowly and excruciatingly.”
Lois stared at him, but said nothing.
“Not so clever with answers now, are you, Ms Lane?” Trask jeered. He turned to the man standing behind him. “Put her in the third room. Tie her up.”
The man grasped her arm.
“How am I supposed to contact Superman if you’ve got me tied up?” she asked Trask.
Trask smirked again. “That,” he replied cruelly, “Is not my problem.”
+-+-+-+
Lois was hustled the length of the empty warehouse. At the far end, there were three doors along a wall extending half the width of the warehouse. She was taken through the one furthest from the exterior wall. The room was small and bare other than a waist-high, unadorned window. Trask’s accomplice tied her wrists together, pushed her to a sitting position and secured her hands to her ankles. “Don’t try anything,” he warned, pointing high into the corner. “There’s a camera.”
He left, shut the door and she heard it lock.
Lois closed her eyes and was immediately assaulted with the mental image of Clark, beaten and bleeding. Her eyes shot open.
Clark was hurt and there was nothing she could do to help him.
The ropes were tight around her wrists. Painfully tight. A camera recorded her every move. And the door was locked.
Hodge?
Had set up her arrest.
But there had been truth in what he’d told her. Trask *did* have Clark. Clark *was* hurt. Trask *had* bugged her computer.
Was there *any* chance Hodge would come?
Maybe not. Maybe the whole bomb story was bravado. And even if he did come, she was no longer completely sure he was on her side. Maybe he *was* working with Trask. Maybe they had set this up together.
Lois groaned, but pulled it short as she heard a muffled sound from the other side of the door. Her heart rocketed around her ribcage. The half hour wasn’t up already.
She heard a familiar click, click and realised with a jolt that someone was picking the lock.
Clark? No, he didn’t have those skills; he’d never needed them.
So who?
The door swung open and a figure dressed completely in black – pants, sweatshirt and a bandana covering the lower half of his face – entered the room. He closed the door, crept along the far wall, then reached up and disconnected the power cord from the camera.
He slipped a knife from his hip and closed in on her.
Lois gasped.
She pulled her eyes from the knife to the upper section of his face and connected with familiar blue eyes. Hodge. He crouched in front of her and scythed through the ropes that held her. “Clark’s in one of the other two rooms,” his said, voice low. “Go to him and *stay* with him.”
When Lois was free from the ropes, Hodge pulled her to her feet and then followed her through the door. He sprinted across the warehouse. Lois ran to the middle door and opened it.
It was similar to the other room except it had no window. In the corner was a spaceship – small and blue. It had been covered with an old tarp once, but the tarp had slipped partly, revealing the blunt nose of the spaceship. With a jolt, Lois realised it must be the spaceship that had brought Clark to Earth.
An assortment of scientific equipment haphazardly surrounded the spaceship. Stacked against the wall was an untidy pile of manila folders with dog-eared notes protruding from them. Scattered on the floor were about ten green rocks, each approximately the size of a baseball, and a small globe with unfamiliarly-shaped blue oceans and reddy-brown land masses.
Lois ran to the final room. She pushed open the door … and there he was.
Clark.
His pain-filled eyes sought her and recognition and relief flooded his face. “L ...” he croaked.
She rushed to him and crouched beside him. “Clark,” she sobbed brokenly. She tenderly cradled his face, sinking her fingers into his short, scruffy beard. He didn’t feel like Clark. He didn’t look like Clark. He didn’t smell like Clark – his clean, coconut aroma had been replaced with the grime from the warehouse floor and the acrid smell of blood.
Never could she have imagined him like this, but when she locked into his deep brown eyes, she found him. Beyond his broken and battered body, he was still Clark.
And he still had the power to calm her and strengthen her.
She gently wrapped her arms around his head and nestled him against her chest. She kissed the top of his head and caressed his forehead with the side of her thumb.
He lifted his hand – blood encrusted and grimy – and seized her arm. “Lo ...” he rasped. “G … go … a … way.”
“It’s OK, Clark,” she soothed, between soft kisses into his hair. “We’ll wait a few minutes, then we’ll get out of here. Together. I’m not leaving without you.”
He wanted to argue. She felt him tense with the effort, then sag in defeat.
As Lois held him, she scanned the length of his body, tears stinging her eyes as she grasped the extent of his injuries. When she saw his right foot, she quickly turned away. It was swollen and grotesquely misshapen.
Lois looked around the almost empty room. There were a few more of the green rocks - tossed into the corner, like someone had thrown them there and immediately forgotten them.
The door flung open and Hodge burst into the room, bandana gone, face aghast. “Get him low,” he ordered urgently.
Without waiting for her to respond, Hodge grabbed Clark’s ankles and hauled him into a prostrate position and twisted him onto his side. Clark moaned in agony.
“Be caref- ,” Lois snapped.
“I miscalculated,” Hodge said as he folded Clark’s legs up against his body. “This end will go too.”
“What do you mean *miscalculated*?” Lois screamed.
“I didn’t know the green stuff was scattered throughout the warehouse.”
“It’s green rock,” Lois gasped. “How much difference could it make?”
Instead of answering, Hodge clasped the back of Lois’s head and pushed her down on top of Clark. Her hands hit the floor as she tried to prevent her weight falling on him.
It was impossible, because Hodge came down heavily on top of her.
Her angry protest was lost in the loudest sound Lois had ever heard. It stormed her ears like a physical force. And continued. Long enough for her to wonder if it would ever stop.
Finally, the noise ebbed, then, very close, came a series of thunderous booms, followed by a crashing sound.
She felt Hodge jolt. His anguished cry screamed past her ear.
The room had gone dark. And silent … except for a muffled roar that sounded like fire and the occasional screech of small explosions.
The rising dust wafted into her nose.
She was going to sneeze. She pressed her nose against her upper arm.
Why didn’t Hodge get off her?
If anything, he seemed to be pressing even more heavily into her.
“Hodge!” Lois cried. “Get off.”
He didn’t respond.
Lois squirmed violently and managed to back out from between Clark and Hodge. There was hazy light, coming from … somewhere; enough to see Hodge’s outline, still slumped over Clark.
Lois lifted the nurse’s blouse across her mouth and nose and shook Hodge’s shoulder. “Franklin!” she said. “Get up. It’s over.”
Still he didn’t move.
Lois took a deep breath, dropped the blouse and, with both hands, tried to haul him onto his back.
His shoulder gave a little, but his lower body wouldn’t follow. With a combination of touch and limited vision, she tracked past Hodge’s shoulders. Halfway down his back, her hands encountered a large, solid pylon of wood. With sickening dread, she realised it was either part of the wall or the ceiling – and Hodge had taken the brunt of it.
Coughing now from the dust, Lois frantically tried to move the chaotic wreckage of building materials off Hodge.
“Lois,” she heard Clark croak. “Leave it.”
“I c.c.can’t. Franklin is under there.”
“He’s gone, Lois,” Clark said, his trademark gentleness surfacing, despite his pain.
“G..g..gone?” she cried.
Clark struggled to a semi-sitting position, his lower left leg still wedged under Hodge’s body. Lois squeezed her hands between Hodge’s shoulder and the floor and heaved him high enough that Clark could extricate his foot.
Hodge’s cell phone fell and clattered onto the concrete floor.
Lois lowered Hodge’s body. She hovered above him and peered into his blank, unseeing eyes. Gently, she closed his eyelids and brushed back a lock of his hair.
“Lois,” Clark said. He lifted his arm, wincing, and pointed in the direction of the light.
Significant sections of both interior walls had gone and the light, from the street, was coming through the smashed window of the room where Lois had been held.
Between them and the window was a seemingly insurmountable pile of debris.
Then Lois smelt it – smoke.
They had to get out.
Lois snatched Hodge’s cell and dialled Hank, Sarah’s driver. When he answered, she said “Hank, it’s Lois Lane, Sarah’s friend. You drove me from the hospital today. Could you pick me up from the furniture warehouse on Bessolo Boulevard, please?”
She expected him to refuse. “I’ll come now,” he said amicably.
“Come to the side,” she said. “The …” she looked around the ruins.
“East,” Clark murmured.
“The east side.”
“OK.”
Lois shuffled across to Clark, and realised with appalling certainty that moving was going to hurt him – a lot. “Can you make it?” she asked.
He nodded grimly. He reached for her shoulder and painfully, slowly straightened himself into a standing position. He leant against her, heaving.
“You all right?” she asked.
“Dizzy.”
Lois grasped Clark’s right hand where it was draped across her shoulders. His right foot hung between them, bloated and useless. “Lean on me,” she directed.
They manoeuvred across the littered floor, taking, where possible, the path of least resistance. Once into the middle room, Clark stopped, his head low, his breathing tortured. “Just ... a ... minute,” he gasped.
Lois supported him and glanced around the room. The spaceship was buried under the fallen roof. With a fleeting, totally illogical thought, Lois wished she could take it with them. It would mean so much to Clark. Before the idea had even formed completely, she dismissed it as impossible. She needed to get Clark out. Everything else was unimportant.
The globe had been smashed to tiny pieces.
The floor was littered with chips from the green rocks. Lois bent low and picked up a small piece, just inches from her feet. She slipped it into her pants’ pocket – it might be the only thing Clark ever had of his home.
When Clark straightened, they inched through the room.
Suddenly the portion of debris under Clark’s good foot gave way and he stumbled forward. Lois didn’t have the strength to save him from falling heavily. She heard his groan of anguish and crouched beside him.
His face set, Clark rose onto his hands and knees and crawled across the rubble. Lois moved with him, knowing every inch of progress was a victory paid for with intolerable pain.
Eventually, they reached the window. Clark used the ledge to haul himself to a standing position. Leaning against the wall, he brushed away the shattered glass and offered her his hand to help her through.
“You’re going first,” she insisted with don’t-bother-arguing finality.
Clark sat on the ledge. Lois lifted his legs and manoeuvred them up and through the window. Her hands on his waist, she steadied him as he slid out of the warehouse.
Lois followed. She peered along the street, praying Sarah’s car would materialise through the smoky haze.
Clark had collapsed against the warehouse wall, pale, labouring to breathe, and shivering violently. Several of his wounds had opened and were bleeding freely, and there were new grazes on his hands and legs. Lois covered as much of him as she could with her body.
Then she heard them – sirens – in the distance.
She felt Clark tense. “Please,” he wheezed. “Please ... don’t let them ...”
Then Lois saw it – the Crawford car. Lois was pretty sure that if she ever saw the face of an angel, it wouldn’t look too far removed from the face of the old Dutchman behind the wheel.
Hank pulled up next to them. He jumped out, but Lois had already opened the back door and shoved Clark into the spacious back seat. She followed and slammed the door. “Quickly, Hank,” she said.
Hank slipped into the driver’s seat, smoothly turned the car and accelerated away from the burning warehouse.
Lois sank into the plush leather. She looked across at Clark. His eyes were closed and his face was set with pain.
But they were together.
“Where to?” Hank asked.
“The cottage,” Lois said without hesitation.
Hank nodded.
Lois glanced behind them. Nothing was following and the sirens had faded into the background.
She took Clark’s hand in hers, closed her eyes and tried to think ahead.
