Oh, no! What a setback for Clark's emotional health.
Yes, he's heard Scardino reassuring them it won't go anywhere, and no one recognized him as the person in the photo, but just hearing those people repeat everything that Moyne and Trask told him must have him about ready to curl up into a ball. The poor guy can't catch a break!
This Daily Planet reporter is clearly not one of their hotshots, based on how she ran her interview, although I am surprised that Menzies confirmed anything at all to her. I would think the public relations fallout would be a lot less serious from a story about a drug-addicted CIA agent spinning delusional stories of alien life than having a CIA higher up confirm they had once captured an alien. (After all, that photo could have been faked, or of someone completely unrelated to aliens.) But I guess he's still trying to protect his wife and her memories of their family ... and if Nightfall really is going to hit in two days, he apparently has decided it doesn't matter what gets printed.
(Though by that standard, he could have told her to print the Moyne-on-meth story, too, with the same expected non-results. "I'm sorry that you got roped into this, Miss, but the fact is, that agent had lost touch with reality and we were in the process of trying to bring him back to Metropolis when he was killed after attacking a law enforcement officer. Nothing he says can be substantiated, and if you print his allegations, it will only serve to destroy your credibility." She might keep looking into it, but by the time she gets any sort of story pulled together, the planet would have gone kerfluey.
)
You're taking us on a real roller coaster ride, Corrina! I figured that, with only three parts to go in this story, we'd be wrapping up the "escape" part of the plot and be moving into the "find Martha" storyline. But clearly you have much bigger things in store for us, especially if Nightfall really is on its way. And given the pace of this story, I have a sneaking suspicion that part 29 is going to end on a huge cliffhanger ...
Thank goodness you've already been hard at work on Highway!! I don't think I could handle a break in posting before the next story!
Kathy
