It took him no time at all to find the bomb, but he was dismayed when his x-ray vision, fuzzy though it was, confirmed the presence of a second explosive. He tried to get a feel for the design of the weapons, knowing his x-ray vision was unlikely to work the closer he got. Each one consisted of a few canisters of liquid explosives, attached to a pair of triggering mechanisms. Tied into both triggers were shards of Kryptonite. In both bombs, the Kryptonite couldn’t be extracted without detonating the bombs. Both bombs had bases made of lead, probably to make them too heavy for him to try hurling them into the stratosphere in his weakened state. And both were built with thin, retractable lead shields, which he surmised had been included to keep him from noticing them before they were scheduled to go off. He also noticed the cameras on the explosives, guaranteed to give the bomber a ringside seat to the action. Since the bomber had shielded the Kryptonite in the devices, he had clearly wanted to make sure that Superman and Ultrawoman didn’t know about their presence until it was too late. Not wanting to alert the bomber to the fact that he’d gotten a head start, he didn’t approach either weapon until he’d figured out what he was going to do.
He was about to start with the first of the bombs when he noticed a tiny radio receiver attached to the top of each device. It had to be for a remote detonator, he realized. If he managed to defuse one of the bombs, he was sure his bomber would simply blow the other one. From his vantage point on the newsroom floor, however, his x-ray vision gave him direct line of site to both receivers. Despite the dizziness and the nausea, he would have to concentrate hard to keep both his x-ray vision and laser vision functioning long enough to burn through the interior walls and destroy each receiver before his bomber could realize what had happened. If he missed, he could have accidentally set off one of the bombs.
Clark didn’t have the luxury of worrying about that possibility. The timers were busy counting down and the building had not yet been evacuated. He idly imagined the Planet and its insurers wouldn’t mind the holes he was about to put in the building’s interior walls and floors, compared to the mess the bombs were likely to make. Forcing his double vision to come back into focus, he stared down at the bomb on the lower level, through layers of pipes and wood and tile that stubbornly resisted his x-ray vision. He focused on the receiver and held his laser vision steady for as long as it took to destroy the receiver in a puff of smoke.
He didn’t have time to celebrate its destruction. Somewhere nearby, the bomber was going to have noticed that. Clark immediately focused through the wall separating the storage room from the bullpen floor to destroy the other receiver. His laser vision grew weaker, sputtering and fading, and the overwhelming fear that he might not succeed crashed over him. It felt like an eternity passed in the fraction of a second it actually took him to turn the other receiver into a small bit of fried electronics and a melted antenna.
He grabbed his head in pain from the effort. If his life depended on it, he wouldn’t have been able to see through a piece of paper at that moment. But he didn’t have time. The bombs were still armed, still ticking away.
********
Hsiao cursed as he stood up. They’d gotten there too soon. His monitor informed him that both radio receivers were dead. He squeezed the trigger on the first device repeatedly. Nothing happened. He tried the second device as well. Nothing. The camera signal was still functioning and both bombs were still sitting alone, unnoticed in their quiet, tucked away locations.
But Hsiao didn’t believe in bad luck. It was no coincidence that the signals had gone out. He wasn’t willing to dismiss the unfortunate occurrence as interference from lead in the bombs or a downed power-line somewhere or a more powerful signal from one of Planet Square’s TV stations, jamming his connection to the bomb.
Someone had been alerted to the presence of the bombs. Someone who had the ability to incapacitate both receivers at the same time without tipping him off to their presence. Frantically, he cut the signal from one of his monitors and flipped through the local news channels.
Nothing.
The third time through, however, he saw it. From shaky video that was probably taken from a traffic helicopter, LNN was showing a steady stream of people pouring out of the Planet building. There was a chance that Superman or Ultrawoman would actually be able to disarm both bombs before they could kill them. He buttoned up his suit coat over the pistol he carried at his side. Plan B was both simpler and messier than Plan A. Should the bombs have failed to kill the two superheroes, he was going to have to shoot them. He could only hope they’d been sufficiently weakened by the Kryptonite.
His margin for error was rapidly vanishing.
********
Clark started with the one on the lower level. Its timer left him less room for error. Just entering the supply space where it was waiting nearly knocked him to the ground. A wave of pain washed over him and his vision blurred. He felt his skin burn hotter and hotter the closer he got. Dropping to his knees, he reached for the device. With thick fingers, he ripped the face off of the timing device and pulled out the correct wire, killing the main timer. As expected, the backup timer started to count down in its place. He coughed violently, feeling as though his lungs blistered and shriveled with each shakily drawn breath. His body crying out pitifully against the continued exertion, he fumbled with the second timer. After what seemed like an eternity, he disarmed it, too.
He fell forward onto his hands and knees. Behind the timing systems, the tiny chunks of Kryptonite gave off a sickly glow. He grabbed the thin lead lining that had at one point covered the bomb and ripped it away from the device, bloodying his hands as he worked. He felt the searing pain as he continued to rip the metal apart, his blood made his hands sticky and slowed him down. At long last, he worked off a large enough piece to wrap around the chunks of Kryptonite. His hands seemed to catch fire as he gathered the little shards into the lead and wrapped it up tightly.
The radiating, pulsing waves of pain subsided, but the fever and aches that wracked his entire body remained. He exhaled hard, each labored breath demanding more of him than he thought he could give. Clark tried to stand, but he fell to the floor. On his hands and knees, he crawled out of the supply room, leaving a bloody trail.
He dragged himself out of the supply closet and started for the stairwell.
********
Lois cursed fate silently. There was a Kryptonite-laced bomb in the Newsroom. She had two minutes to disarm it. She didn’t know where Clark was. And the floors above the Newsroom had been slow to start evacuating, even though someone had pulled the fire alarm. They probably thought it was a drill, she thought bitterly. She burst through the window on the top floor of the building, hardly able to control her flight. “Everyone out of the building,” she shouted. “Take the stairs, get out now. This isn’t a drill.”
Startled employees in the Planet’s executive offices stared at her for a moment, before remembering how to respond. “Come on, folks, let’s go,” she shouted again. She had to repeat the process on the next two floors down. Each time, risking that she wouldn’t actually be able to fly down, but might instead finally drop like a rock out of the sky, no longer free to flout the laws of gravity. Her x-ray vision grew so weak she could barely see through the thin interior walls of the building, and even doing that caused her headache to worsen. A quick search of the newsroom confirmed that it had been evacuated. No scared little kids hiding in the bathrooms. No oblivious reporters trying to track down a source. There was still no sign of her husband.
Her patience was gone. To hell with the bomb. She had to find Clark.
From the stairwell, she could hear shouting. “Let him through, let him through,” someone called out. She figured someone must have been injured in the rush to get out of the building. Still operating at far less than full capacity, she had to do whatever she could to make sure no one got trampled to death in the evacuation. She wrenched open the door to find Clark on the other side, struggling to make his way up the stairs, against the tide of people. ‘Idiot,’ she thought darkly to herself. Why hadn’t she figured she should have looked for him there?
She managed to catch him before he could fall on the landing, but she staggered under his weight. Dragging him into the newsroom and away from the press of people was her only choice, even though it meant getting closer to the Kryptonite.
********
He tried to stand, but his legs were useless. His entire body refused to cooperate. The momentary relief he’d felt when he’d gotten the Kryptonite chunks wrapped up was gone. His proximity to the second bomb meant a whole new wave of pain. He realized who he was leaning on and cursed silently.
“Jon?”
Clark could hear her labored breaths. “He’s with your parents. We have to get you out of here,” she gritted out.
“There’s another bomb,” he managed weakly. He knew they hadn’t finished evacuating the building. People were still trying to get out.
“There isn’t enough time,” she countered, her voice threatening to break on the words.
Which was precisely why she shouldn’t have been there. “Go,” he slurred. “Jon should have at least one parent.”
“I’m not leaving you,” she replied obstinately, but he could feel her crumpling under his weight.
He’d been past the breaking point of his body before. Past the point where he could stand or even take a real breath. He’d existed in the sliver of space between life and death before. The place too small for even the will to live to exist.
And this was not it.
Leaning one bloodied hand on the wall, he straightened himself up. “Then we do this together,” he declared.
They stumbled and staggered into the storage room, toward the source of their burning pain and waiting death. He sunk to his knees in front of the bomb and grabbed for the lead shielding. His body shook as a coughing fit seized his frame. “Same as the other one,” he managed hoarsely. “Green wire first. Then the blue one in the backup,”
She tore apart the timing mechanism and did as he instructed, shutting off the bomb with less than half a minute to spare. A palpable sense of relief washed over him, even as the Kryptonite continued to poison his body. She grabbed the piece of lead shielding he’d been trying to rip apart and tore it off in her hands. He gathered all the Kryptonite fragments directly in his bloodied hands and dropped them in the lead, hearing himself cry out from the burning pain. He fell over completely, only the retreating of the waves of agony from the Kryptonite signaled to him that she’d succeeded in getting it surrounded by the lead.
“Come on,” she said, staggering to her feet. He tried to stand, but only made it as far as his hands and knees. Lois grabbed his arm and wrapped it around her shoulders. She struggled for a long moment, but finally managed to get him to his feet. He wondered idly why she was in so much better shape than he was. Thankfully, she probably hadn’t been exposed as long to the Kryptonite. He shuffled forward with only the smallest of steps. There was no way in hell that they were going to get down the stairs like this. She had to practically drag him to the elevator. Even the half dozen steps up from the newsroom floor to the elevator banks was the equivalent of climbing a mountain. His entire body screamed out in agony from the effort.
Finally reaching their destination, she staggered forward and smashed the “Down” button with the flat palm of her hand. He collapsed against the wall, sinking down to the floor. For a long moment, it was all he could do to keep breathing. Sweat poured down his face in rivers. His suit was spattered in the blood that still flowed from the wounds on his hands. In the distance, he could hear police sirens. Seemingly ages ago, as he’d told Perry to evacuate, he’d warned the older man to keep the police and emergency crews, as well as everyone else, as far away from the building as possible. But with the bombs now defused, he really hoped that they’d get some help soon. He wasn’t sure how much further Lois would be able to carry him.
The chime of the door told him it was time to drag himself up from the ground. Lois helped him into the elevator, struggling with the exertion needed to move his much larger frame. He tried to be as helpful as he could, which wasn’t saying very much at the moment. Once in the elevator, he collapsed again.
********
Lois leaned against the elevator wall as the doors slid closed, trying to regain her strength. The nausea had subsided, but she still felt weak and feverish. But compared to Clark, she was running on all cylinders. He was pale and his skin had felt clammy to the touch. His hands were an awful, bloody mess. The cuts were superficial, but the burns looked terribly painful. She hoped time and enough sunlight would allow them to heal. She wondered if it was the relative lengths of their exposure to the Kryptonite that had rendered him so much worse off. But he’d told her before that his first experience with Kryptonite had been, by far, the worst. It had almost immediately knocked him unconscious. Feverish and ill, it had taken him the better part of a day just to get to human normal and several more days passed before his powers returned.
The elevator seemed to take an eternity in traveling the few floors between the newsroom and the lobby, but finally, the car stopped and the doors slid open. She summoned whatever strength she had, which was pretty much just the strength she’d had as an ordinary person, to help Clark back to his feet. He leaned heavily on her, one arm draped over her shoulders and they dragged themselves toward the revolving doors. God, he was heavy, she thought to herself as he stumbled forward. The swaying of his movements nearly caused her to lose her balance. It wasn’t that much further now.
From the other side of the glass doors, she could see paramedics breaking through the security cordon the bomb squad had established. They were wheeling a gurney toward the two of them. Thank god, she thought to herself. She needed to get her husband to STAR Labs and to Bernie. He was the only person who would really know what to do. She pushed open the doors and helped her husband limp out of the Daily Planet building. She could see the not insubstantial crowd staring at the two bruised and battered superheroes.
The crowd that had formed outside the security cordon parted, but it wasn’t for the medics. Near another set of barricades, a single figure – a slight looking Asian man in a suit strode purposefully toward them, the pistol he held straight in front of him made rather clear what that purpose was. She heard the sounds of screaming, people yelled out “he’s got a gun!” and “get down!”
She heard herself yell “no!” as she tried to push Clark out of the gunman’s line of fire. She heard a pair of shots. The sound of broken glass. And then she felt the white hot pain tear through the flesh of her leg. Lois fell to the ground, taking Clark unceremoniously with her. There was another gun shot. It sounded different from the first two.
Suddenly, at least a dozen emergency rescue workers were lifting the two of them onto gurneys. “STAR Labs,” she managed to murmur, or at least she thought. The pain lancinating through her muscles managed to crowd out most of her other thoughts.
********
Bernie Klein had not gone into science for this.
He searched frantically through the lab’s supply closets, trying to find anything that would be useful in treating his little patient. He’d already called most of the practicing physicians he knew, cajoling them into bringing him things like pulse ox monitors and IV bags, all the while refusing to explain why. Throughout the lab’s hallways, he knew he was drawing curious stares from his colleagues and subordinates, but he didn’t care. He raced up and down the medical research facilities, wondering why the hell it was so hard to find a damn child-sized blood pressure cuff around here.
Bernie cursed the pager on his belt that had just started to buzz. He grabbed it and deciphered its code.
Damn it.
He’d been expecting this. Jon being exposed to Kryptonite, even briefly, had meant there was a good chance both his parents were going to show up in rather worse shape. It looked like paramedics were bringing both of them in. And the GSW abbreviation in the message meant at least one of them had been shot. Terrific, that meant he had to learn to be a surgeon in about five minutes. Bernie jogged breathlessly back to the top secret medical lab where he treated his three patients. He swiped his ID, underwent the retinal scan and entered his PIN number, the door finally sliding open to grant him entry. Within the larger secured lab, he’d placed Jon in one of the small exam rooms. From their places sitting beside the little boy’s bed, Jon’s grandparents leapt to their feet as soon as he entered.
“Dr. Klein…” Jon’s grandmother started.
Bernie glanced at the bed, where Jon lay sleeping. “Superman and Ultrawoman are being brought in,” he said tersely. “I’m afraid their conditions are worse than Jon’s.”
The Kents’ expressions grew even more ashen. He knew they were terrified for their grandson, but though the little boy was very sick, his condition had stabilized. Bernie now had to figure out how to prepare an operating theater in the lab without the right supplies or the right personnel. “Stay here with Jon,” he instructed. “I’ll try to update you on their conditions as soon as I can, but for now, the best thing you can do is be with your grandson.”
Bernie pulled the door closed behind him and grabbed the nearest phone on the wall. He dialed a number he normally would have been loathed to call. “Get me Dr. Millard. It’s an emergency,” he said impatiently into the receiver, wondering why the only trauma surgeon he knew was a woman he’d dated in medical school who could no longer stand him. “It’s Bernie Klein,” he said as she picked up the line. “Don’t hang up,” he felt the need to add. “I’ve got incoming trauma patients to STAR Labs. Get here as soon as you can. And bring a couple of units of O negative.” Of course, she’d demanded to know why on earth trauma patients were being directed to a research lab, but he didn’t have time to explain. “You’ll see why when you get here,” he said testily. “Just hurry.”
He slammed down the phone and made his way back to the supply closets to ransack them for the tools he’d need. He grabbed whatever he could – surgical tubing, lavages and gauze, packages of sterilized instruments – nothing fancy, certainly nothing any decent hospital would have. He was stuck with a couple of different scalpels and pickups and some packets of sutures and nothing more than local anesthetic. He’d have to make do. With his armful of supplies, he returned to the lab, struggling to disarm the door without dropping everything.
Finally dumping his “surgical supplies” on an exam tray, he dragged it and a powerful lamp over toward one of the exam tables. He was going to have to conscript at least a few of the paramedics into acting as his scrub nurses. He hoped Abby would hurry the hell up and get there soon.
The sound of sirens wailing outside told him the medics had beaten her there. Reception had already been informed to let the medics all the way through the facility to where he was. Within moments, there was a pounding at the door. He swung it open as two gurneys were wheeled into the lab.
“Female GSW, male…frankly doc, we don’t know what the hell is wrong with Superman or why he’s bleeding, or why Ultrawoman was wounded by a gunshot,” the lead paramedic said, baffled.
“All of you,” Bernie shouted to the five medics who were crowding his lab. “Get clean gloves, gimme a hand.”
Lois was at least conscious, but the blood soaking through the bandages around her leg made it pretty damn clear where she’d been shot. “Please, see if he’s okay,” she demanded, her voice shaking.
“Get her on the exam table,” he told the medics before swiveling to see the other patient.
“Dr. Klein.” He heard Superman call his name weakly.
“Superman, are you all right?” Bernie said breathlessly as he leaned over his friend, trying to determine the source of the blood on his uniform.
“Superficial cuts on his hands, along with partial blister burns,” one of the paramedics nearest to Clark said. “No other visible injuries. But he’s burning up and his pulse is almost two hundred.”
“Get the wounds washed with distilled water, dress the burns, bandage his hands, and monitor him,” Bernie instructed tersely, figuring there was at least the possibility of traces of Kryptonite in the wounds.
The medics had transferred Lois to the exam table in the intervening thirty seconds and were cutting away the boot and leg of her uniform. “Exit wound?” Bernie asked.
“No sir,” one of the medics replied.
Of course not. Why on earth would anything be easy today? It looked like he had to go fishing for a bullet. He really needed whole blood, but the only transfusion-grade blood products he could get from the lab were plasma. Where the hell was Abby? He shouted to a paramedic to start the transfusion of plasma while he tried to gauge the damage the bullet had done from the blood loss. Another medic gave her a shot of lidocaine not far from the entry wound. It would hardly be enough to take the edge off the pain from a gunshot wound. He tried to be delicate as he examined the injury. She wasn’t losing blood quickly enough to have been hit in the femoral or any other major artery, which was the first lucky break these two seemed to have gotten today.
He reached for the pickups he was going to have to use to find the bullet. One of the medics took her hand while another braced her leg, far from the site of the wound. “You’re not going to crush my hand are you?” the medic holding Ultrawoman’s hand asked nervously.
“Right now, I couldn’t crush a bug,” she confessed.
Willing his hands to remain steady and still, Bernie braced himself. “Lo…Ultrawoman,” he began, almost screwing up royally. “This is going to hurt like hell.”
“What the hell is going on here?” a familiar voice boomed from behind him. Confound that woman, he thought to himself as he dropped the pickups on the exam tray.
“Shut up and give me a hand, okay, Abby?” he said testily.
“Good lord, Bernie,” Abby Millard muttered under her breath as she pushed him aside. She pulled on a pair of surgical gloves and picked up the forceps he’d dropped. With deft hands, she quickly found and extracted the bullet and began suturing the wound. All the while, Lois tried not to scream through gritted teeth. He’d been relegated to the role of scrub nurse, but Bernie Klein, certified lab rat, was glad not to be the one digging around in the quadriceps muscles of a superhero, looking for a little piece of lead.
Abby stepped away from the table. “Keep the wound as clean as you can,” she instructed. “God, Bernie, Civil War field hospitals were better than this.”
“This isn’t a hospital, Abby,” he responded impatiently. “It’s a lab. I had to improvise. I need to check on the other patient,” he said, looking for the easiest way to get out of the room.
He found Clark in another of the small exam rooms, fully conscious, but looking like hell. The medic who’d taken to caring for the superhero stood up as Bernie entered the room. “Give us a few minutes,” Bernie instructed the paramedic, who merely nodded and left, closing the door behind him. “How are…” Bernie began to ask.
“Lois?” Clark interrupted immediately.
“Will be fine,” Bernie said. “The bullet is out, the wound has been closed. No powers yet, but I think they’ll come back.”
“How can you be sure?” Clark demanded.
“I have a theory,” Bernie explained. “But first, I need to examine you.”
“What about Jon?”
“He’s stable,” Bernie replied. “He was pretty sick when he got here, but his temperature has come back down and he’s sleeping comfortably. I’m going to check his blood work in minute, but I don’t think there’s any Kryptonite in his system.” He could see the relief settle on the other man’s face.
“When can I see him?” Clark asked.
“When we’re done here.” He went through Clark’s vitals; they were still nowhere near normal for him, but they were better than they were when he’d arrived. “How do your hands feel?”
“Like I was digging through shredded metal for shards of Kryptonite, Bernie,” Clark replied darkly. His foul mood lifted, if only slightly. “They still hurt, but not as much as before,” he amended. “Now can I see my son?”
“Let me get the paramedics and Dr. Millard out of here, then I’ll take you to see Jon and Lois.”
Clark tried to stand up and practically fell out of bed, forcing Bernie to catch him before he could tumble to the floor. “Stay in bed,” Bernie commanded, not thinking about the oddity of giving the most powerful man in the world direct orders. Resignedly, Clark lay back down. With a weary sigh, Bernie left the room, pulling the door closed behind him.
Bernie managed to get rid of the paramedics easily. None of them seemed particularly comfortable in that lab, performing surgery on superheroes. He turned back toward Abby, who was scribbling down post-op instructions. “Thank you,” he managed, somehow.
She handed him the folded instructions. “Next time, leave surgery to the surgeons, Bernie,” she said before walking out of the lab. Confound that woman, he thought to himself again. His lab back in some semblance of order— excepting the three very unusual patients—he exhaled deeply, relieved to have gotten through this particular crisis. He checked Lois’s IV drip and the sterile dressing around her wound before drawing some blood. He ran her blood through the spectrometer and found the results from Jon’s tests.
No Kryptonite present.
He closed his eyes, relieved. The remaining tests would take at least a day to complete, but then he’d know for sure whether his theory made sense. Bernie crossed the lab to knock softly on the door to Jon’s room. The Kents looked up at him, a mixture of nerves and hopeful expectations in their expressions. “They’re going to be fine,” Bernie said. “But they could use a few changes of clothes, stuff to make them comfortable because I’m going to want them to stay for at least another day or so.
“I’ll go,” Clark’s father said, his voice rough. He stood slowly from his chair.
“Do you have the results from Jon’s tests?” Clark’s mother asked.
Bernie nodded with a slight smile. “The tests look good. He’ll probably feel better by morning.”
********
Dressed in sweats and an old t-shirt, with gauze wrapped around his hands, turning them into useless paddles, Clark sat beside his son’s bed, gazing down at his little boy through a film of tears. In a split second, Jon had almost been taken from him. If the bombs had been configured just a little differently, if they’d been any slower to react, those explosives could have cost him everything he held dear in life. In the other little room, Lois lay sleeping under the fog of pain killers. Her body no longer invulnerable either to the drugs or the bullet that had torn through flesh and blood. What on earth had possessed her to run back into the building after him? He knew the answer of course. She’d run back into a waiting nuclear detonation for him once. She wouldn’t have been Lois Lane otherwise.
They both could have easily died, leaving Jon orphaned. There was a strange, ironic symmetry to that. Just like his own parents, he and Lois loved Jon far more than they loved their own lives. And just like his own parents, they’d had to face down death to protect other people. But unlike Jor El and Lara, he and Lois had won their fight with death. They’d survived. He knew that was something they couldn’t take for granted.
Stiffly, he stood up and leaned down to kiss his son’s forehead. He slipped out of the room quietly, finding Bernie waiting for him on the other side. Clark tried to fold his arms across his chest, his bandaged hands making it impossible. So he stood with his hands awkwardly by his side. The doctor looked nervous, his complexion devoid of any color. “What’s up?” Clark asked.
“Lois’s blood work,” Bernie began.
“What’s wrong? Is she okay?” Clark interrupted anxiously.
“She’s pregnant,” Bernie said simply.
Clark could feel his heart leap into his throat. He tried to say something but the only sound he could produce was a strangled “huh?”
“I figured you didn’t know,” Bernie continued. “From her hormone levels, it’s likely Lois didn’t know either. I doubt she’s more than a few weeks along.”
The entire room started to spin and Clark leaned against the wall, knowing that without its support, he was likely to fall down. His eyes grew wide and he struggled to breathe. “The Kryptonite…the baby…” he managed to gasp. This wasn’t happening. Not to them. Not now. How completely awful could their timing be?
“Clark,” Bernie began, grabbing Clark’s arm to steady him. “Lois is doing really well; she’s healing faster than any normal human being should, which means we have reason to be hopeful. But it’ll be a while before we know how, if at all, the Kryptonite exposure might have affected the pregnancy.”
Did she know? Could she have known? *Should* she have known? The thoughts swirled around in his head in a confusing storm of recriminations. Had she run back into that building knowing that it wasn’t just her life at stake? Had she risked the pregnancy they’d both wanted so badly in order to protect him? What if the baby wasn’t okay? What if…He felt his body sway as he staggered forward, only Bernie’s presence kept him from collapsing to the floor.
Bernie said something incomprehensible. The words were incapable of penetrating through the thick fog around Clark’s mind. He stumbled and fell into the chair Bernie was guiding him to. There, he sat and stared blankly ahead, his eyes seeing nothing.
