Chapter 9
“Morning, Lois.” Jimmy fell into step with Lois as she strode down the ramp into the bullpen the next morning.
“Morning, Jimmy. What’s the latest?”
“The death toll’s over a hundred now.” The young man sounded quiet and sad, his usually irrepressible optimistic cheerfulness gone.
Lois’s usual brisk, businesslike step faltered. Over a hundred people… People that had just been going about their daily business, heading to work, to school, to run errands… People that would never be going home to their families and friends ever again. The sheer magnitude of it was horrifying. She swallowed hard, blinking back tears and forcing herself to remain professional.
“Superman?” she asked.
“No sign of him.”
Lois sighed. What was going on with him? Where did he keep disappearing to? And what was so important that he would miss the two biggest disasters the city had experienced in years?
Clark looked up as she neared his desk.
“I found out what happened to the train,” he stated, skipping over the social niceties. Lois took note of his stiff tone and tight jaw. So he was angry with her, was he? Well, that was mutual. “The brakes failed.”
Her brow furrowed in confusion. “But what about the emergency brakes?”
“They worked, but not quickly enough.”
Lois raised one eyebrow questioningly.
“It was peak hour, right? So the trains are packed. A fully loaded subway train moving at that sort of speed doesn’t just stop, Lois. It takes time and distance.”
“So if the brakes fail and there’s another train stopped at the next station…”
“Then you have what happened yesterday,” Clark finished.
“Isn’t there supposed to be a big enough gap between trains to stop that from happening?”
Clark shrugged one shoulder. “Supposed to be.”
“Jimmy!” Lois called out, getting the attention of the younger man. “I need information on subway trains. Weight, stopping distance, everything you can find.”
“You want help with that?”
“I’ve got it. Besides, don’t you have the MetroCon follow-up to do?”
“But-“
“I said, I’ve got it,” she snapped.
She walked away, feeling Clark’s eyes following her as she went to her own desk. He’d already been mad at her, and she’d just poured fuel on the fire. Mentally, she shrugged. Too bad for him. She didn’t have time to deal with his issues; she had work to do.
***
Clark stared after Lois as she stalked off to her desk. While she was occasionally abrupt to the point of rudeness with others, it was rarely directed at him these days. He must have annoyed her more than he thought.
Or…
Was it possible that Luthor was doing his best to poison Lois’s mind? To distance her from his enemy? After all, Lois had proven herself time and again to be one of Superman’s staunchest allies.
He had to tell her. Swallow his own anger, his frustration at her blind refusal to listen to him, and just tell her. And soon, before she became completely buried in her work…
Even as the thought formed, he saw Jimmy deposit a stack of folders on her desk.
Too late.
Sighing internally, he pulled his notebook closer to hand and got started on the MetroCon follow-up. He’d try later- maybe at lunch.
***
Carlos Rodriguez pushed the storage slab all the way in and sealed the door. This one- a Jane Doe pulled from the Hobbs River- felt wrong to him. As a morgue attendant, Carlos had no formal medical training; nevertheless, in his fifteen years at the Metropolis City Morgue, he’d developed a certain sense for these cases. He went over to the desk and flipped through the file quickly. The medical examiner had put down a preliminary finding of possible suicide by drowning, but Carlos wasn’t so sure. She was young, attractive, well-dressed… No, something didn’t sit right. He signed out for his lunch break, leaving the somewhat ominous-looking building and heading for the payphone down the street. Dropping a quarter into the machine, he dialled a number from memory.
“Clark? It’s Carlos. We got a body here that I thought you’d be interested in.”
***
Clark shouldered his way through the half-closed elevator door, barely aware of the greetings of the two other people already on board. He could still see the lifeless face of Nicole Moore on the retractable slab at the city morgue; her skin cold, mottled and bluish, light brown hair tangled and full of unidentifiable river junk.
Luthor had had her murdered.
He knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt. He’d used her to draw him out and then discarded her like yesterday’s paper.
But once again Clark had no proof.
Grief for a life cut short and rage filled him. When the elevator stopped at the newsroom level with its inappropriately cheery ‘ding’, he strode out of the still-opening doors and made a beeline for Lois’s desk. He had to make her see sense, to look beyond the line Luthor was selling her. And he had to do it now. Before anyone else was killed.
***
Lois regretted rejecting Clark’s help a few hours later.
Jimmy had brought her the information she’d asked for. File after file after file of specifications, loaded weights, unloaded weights, stopping distances, formulas for calculating minimum distances between trains… it just kept coming. Clark was good at sorting through this sort of stuff, and he was infinitely more patient than she was with it.
But.
Just because he could be helpful didn’t make up for the way he’d been acting lately. And she’d sorted through many a pile of information that was much more complex than this before Clark Kent had come along. She’d gotten lazy, relying on him to do the tedious stuff… now, where had she put that…
“Lois.”
The sound of Clark’s voice right next to her desk distracted Lois as she sifted through the piles of folders. Frustrated, she swiped an errant lock of hair out of her face.
“What do you want, Clark?”
“I just want to talk.”
“Fine.” She glared at him. She knew exactly what this was going to be about, and she was sick of it. Whatever the reason for his antipathy towards Lex, it was getting out of hand.
“Talk.”
She dumped the folders she was still holding back onto the messy pile.
“But if you’re going to start in on how evil Lex is again, then let me stop you right there.”
“Lois…”
“I’m serious, Clark! I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, but I am sick of your constant digs and comments-“
“Lois, if you would just-“
She cut him off ruthlessly. “No, Clark. I am not going to stand here and listen to you attack someone I care about; someone that I like and happen to respect.”
“You don’t know him like I do.”
“You’ve said that before. Well, I’ve got a newsflash for you, Clark. I am in a relationship with Lex. I know him a lot better than you do. And if you can’t accept that, then…”
She hesitated, taking in his tightened jaw, thinned lips, and the twitch of the muscle in his jaw. He was as angry as she’d ever seen him.
“Then what?” he ground out.
“Then maybe we shouldn’t be partners anymore.”
He reeled back as though she’d slapped him, swallowing hard.
“If that’s what you want, then fine.”
“Fine!”
She stalked away from her desk, fuming. How dare he do this? For the first time in her life, she was in a real relationship. Why couldn’t he just be happy for her? How could he let his petty jealousies get in the way of their friendship?
Well, she didn’t need him.
She shoved Perry’s office door open, letting the momentum of her anger carry her to the editor’s desk.
“I can’t work with Clark anymore,” she announced.
