Clark conducted his usual scan of the alleyway before settling to the ground with a sigh. He’d spent most of the last twenty-four hours out in California, helping to repair the damage done by their latest earthquake. Then, when he’d finally made it back to Metropolis, he’d been booed at every rescue. Lois was right; the tide of public opinion was starting to turn against him. He couldn’t do his job without the support of the public. Wearily he spun into his street clothes.
A soft metallic scrape was all the warning he had before he felt the sickening pain of Kryptonite roll over him.
“You should be more careful, Kent,” Luthor’s voice whispered silkily from the dark. “Always check the doors onto the alley, not just the alley itself. Although… well, I suppose it wouldn’t make much difference.” Clark felt his skin burn even through his clothes as Luthor jammed the chunk of crystal hard up against his lower back. “I have eyes everywhere, Kent. Everywhere you go, every person you visit… I will find out.”
“Is that a threat?” Clark managed.
“A warning. Just in case you get any ideas.” Luthor shoved the crystal harder, tearing the fabric of Clark’s t-shirt and breaking the skin. Then he stepped away, leaving Clark shaky, powerless, but relatively unharmed.
It didn’t last. Clark barely had time to touch a hand to the small trickle of blood on his back before Luthor’s thugs appeared. Four of them this time, he noticed as they circled around him. And then they were on him.
Clark hadn’t had much of a chance against three. He had absolutely none against four. He tried his best to fight back against the rain of kicks and punches, but every time he made contact with one of his attackers, another would land a fist or a foot where it would cause the most pain. One of the assailants got him in a headlock that none of his struggles could free him from; helpless, he watched in horror as the biggest man bent and removed a small black bar from his boot, flicking the telescopic baton out to its full eighteen-inch length. The big man looked Clark dead in the eyes before calmly lining up and swinging the baton, full force, against Clark’s lower leg.
The sound of the bone snapping echoed like a gunshot through the alleyway, followed by Clark’s scream of agony. As if the scream had been a signal, the headlock loosened; dropping Clark to the ground, the attackers melted back into the shadows.
Lying on the dirty asphalt surface of the alley, Clark gasped and coughed until he got his breath back before trying to see where the group had gone. Finally, satisfied they weren’t coming back, he propped himself on one elbow.
It couldn’t be a coincidence. Every time this had happened, there’d been a major disaster. He was almost certain there would be another one; another awful and unprecedented loss of life in Metropolis. And it would happen in the next 24 to 48 hours.
The problem was, he didn’t know any more than that.
And without that information, his warning would be useless. Metropolis was too big to guard every public place against the threat of a disaster.
He needed more. But trying to find out more at this moment was impossible. He shifted, feeling the edges of his broken shin bone grate together sickeningly and bit his lip against the searing pain. He was no doctor, but he couldn’t see any deformation of his leg; he had to assume that the ends of the bone were aligned as he couldn’t risk going to a hospital. He scrabbled around, finding his glasses and sliding them back onto his face before trying to recruit his strength to stand. The glasses were a little worse for wear; they hung lopsidedly from his nose, but they’d serve until he got upstairs.
Getting upstairs… now that was a problem.
He raised himself to his hands and knees, being careful to hold his injured leg up so it didn’t drag on the ground. Even so, he gave it several painful knocks, wincing with each one. The end of the alley seemed an almost insurmountable distance, littered with bags of rubbish and the unidentifiable detritus that built up in places like this. Taking a deep breath, he moved forward, his arms shaking beneath him as the attentions of Luthor’s thugs made themselves felt. Looking forward was daunting; the distance didn’t seem to get shorter. Looking at what was right in front of him was easier as he inched his way towards the mouth of the alley.
Manoeuvring around a pile of garbage, he let his foot scrape against the ground and bit back a yelp as the pain seemed to radiate up his entire body. Time to take a rest. Gratefully he sunk to the ground, leaning back against the side of his apartment building and closing his eyes. Some use he was right at the moment. He’d disabled nuclear reactors with less effort than this was taking.
“Kent? Is that you?”
Clark opened his eyes to see the rotund figure of Floyd, his landlord, staring down at him.
“What the hell happened to you? Here.”
The portly landlord thrust out a hand to pull Clark to his feet. He took advantage of the help, dragging himself upwards slowly and carefully, mindful of both his leg and the knowledge that his Kryptonian physiology made him much heavier than a human male his size.
“You want me to call the cops?”
Clark braced himself against the wall and shook his head. Floyd eyed him with the curiosity he’d displayed at their first meeting almost a year ago, but to Clark’s relief, he didn’t start to question him.
“You’ll never make it up those steps,” the older man commented. “Come on.”
With Floyd’s assistance, Clark hopped up the few steps up to his apartment and down into his sunken living space. Sinking with relief onto the couch, he thanked the other man for his assistance, inwardly amused at the covert glance Floyd cast at him and around the apartment before leaving. He’d never quite been able to make up his mind whether he liked his landlord or not, but he was definitely grateful for his presence tonight.
Dispassionately, he took stock of his injuries. A broken shin was the worst of it; everything else was just bruising, comparatively minor and nothing that wouldn’t heal as soon as his powers returned. His leg was a different matter. While he was no expert, he assumed that letting it heal crooked would be just as bad for him as it was for humans; worse, actually, as the only way it could be fixed once it was healed was to expose himself to Kryptonite. He needed a splint of some kind. Something stiff and strong to keep his leg straight until his powers returned, and something to attach it to his leg.
He cast his mind back to the first aid class he’d taken shortly after becoming Superman. They’d been talking about the different kinds of emergency splint commonly available… and improvised ones. A strong stick, a cane, piece of wood… he didn’t have any of those to hand.
Broom handle.
A broom handle would work. He could use belts or strips of a torn-up sheet to tie it.
He struggled up from the couch and set about the painful task of collecting the items he needed.
***
John Black scanned the area carefully before signalling to his kid brother Pete to keep a lookout and sliding down the narrow passageway in the bowels of Metropolis General Hospital. He hated this place. Hated the smell, the ugly neutral paint on the walls, the staff that had let his mother die and left him and his brother alone. Fifty thousand dollars to cause a little damage to the place that'd taken so much from him? He would've done it for a lot less. Besides, nothing beat the thrill he got when he saw a fire on the news and knew that it was one of his, that he'd created the fear and the panic and the confusion. Nothing beat the smell of the smoke.
Reaching his destination, he pulled the incendiary device out of his backpack and set it in place, making sure the timer was still set for an hour before he activated it. He and Pete had to get away from here and back to the flop that was their current digs.
Plenty of time.
Making his way to where Pete kept watch, he jerked his head in the direction of the exit.
“C’mon. Let's get out of here.”
***
An hour passed.
With a soft ‘whoosh’, the incendiary device sparked into activity. Soon the fire was licking its way across the surfaces inside the disused room. The sprinkler system, sabotaged earlier that day by another Luthor operative, trickled its ineffectual stream into the growing fire. Even so, it would've been enough to contain the damage to a single room. Only two circumstances allowed the blaze to spread; the proximity of the device to the exterior wall, and the cladding of this section of the outside wall with highly combustible aluminium/polyethene composite panels.
Soon the panels reached their ignition temperature; they began to smoulder, and then smoke before the outside air caused flames to leap up the side of the Luthor Children's Wing of Metropolis General Hospital.
