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LAST TIME ON EMII:

"CJ..." She reached and took his hand in both of hers. She gently stroked his skin, desperately wanting to make him feel better. "I know you want more, and so do I, but we need to be patient and persevere. Isn’t that what you keep telling me? And at least we've now made a start. Let that be enough, just for today."

He smiled, but it was a feeble effort and it didn't reach his eyes. Lois could tell that he was having to force it. "You're absolutely right, of course," he said. "After all, Rome wasn't built in a day."

"No," answered Lois, tightening her grip on his hands and smiling impishly at him. "As I understand it, Rome's still a work in progress. So far it's only taken a few of millennia."

Just as she'd hoped, he laughed abruptly. This time his smile was genuine, and it outshone the it's fake predecessor as the sun outshines the moon. "So long as it doesn't take quite that long to bring Luthor down," he said.

NOW READ ON...


CHAPTER FOURTEEN


A discordant symphony of street noises drifted through an open window and into Lois's living room. They were less frenzied than they would have been during daylight hours, but the night imbued them with a hollow quality, and they seemed to be magnified as they echoed up from below.

Without conscious thought, Lois tuned the sounds out, just as she was ignoring the majority of the television programme that was playing softly in the background. Occasionally a word or phrase would register, and then she'd look up to see whether the item being discussed was of any interest. So far none had been, and so she had invariably turned her attention away again.

Lois wished she could have as much success at controlling her other thoughts. She wanted to focus single-mindedly on her story, but her mind had other ideas, wont to wonder hither and thither. Two things in particular were nagging for her attention.

The first – and she no longer found this surprising – was CJ. Indeed, if anything about the CJ situation surprised her, it was how quickly she had stopped being surprised at finding him intruding on her consciousness.

She'd sent CJ home soon after their meeting with Saxon broke up because she'd known that his presence would be a distraction, and she'd wanted to get the story written up this evening. The only problem was that his absence was distracting her as much, if not more, than his presence would have done. She missed him almost as if a part of herself were gone.

When she searched for an analogy to explain how she felt, the best she could come up with was that it felt a little like it had when she'd chipped a tooth. It had been a tiny chip, to be sure, but it had felt huge, and she'd kept probing the gap with her tongue, unable to ignore it. CJ was so much more than a fragment of tooth, though, and her sense of his absence was magnified correspondingly. His absence was a hole somewhere deep in the core of her being.

How had he got so close to her, so quickly? She wondered whether she should be worried by that. Her affection – love – for him made her vulnerable. That's what her head was trying to tell her, but her heart disagreed vehemently.

And, probably for the first time in her life, Lois knew that her heart was right.

The second thing that was nagging at her was more worrying in so far as she didn't know what it was exactly, just that it was there. She felt as if she was missing something obvious, something that was staring her right in the face.

She sighed, pushed the nagging sensation to one side and read through what she'd written so far. Just one or two concluding sentences, she thought, then she'd be done. She typed quickly then sat back and grinned.

Wriggle out of that one, Luthor, she thought with satisfaction.

The story was good, she thought. Very good, and it made all the right people look bad. Plus it was backed up with enough evidence that not even the Planet's squeamish lawyers would block its publication.

Perry would be pleased.

But still... She still couldn't dismiss the thought that she was missing something. Indeed, if anything, the niggling feeling in the back of her head was growing stronger, not weaker.

It was something Saxon had said, she realised for the first time. She didn't know where that realisation had come from, but the sudden revelation would not be dismissed. She knew it was correct with a certainty that she could not have justified to anyone else, but it was a certainty that had always stood her in good stead in the past. She'd learned to trust that kind of feeling; she had to trust it now.

Something Saxon had said...

She frowned, scanned the article, then scanned through her notes yet again. Nothing leapt out at her, and yet she was sure that it had to be there somewhere.

She'd been more meticulous than usual in taking her notes. She'd realised that the facts about the EPA were going to be complicated, and she'd been determined to get all the details down, to make sure she made no mistakes. If there was nothing in her notes, she reasoned, then it had to have been something else he'd said, maybe over dessert.

Frustration at her failure to pin the matter down clawed at her.

Lois leaned back in her chair, turning her face to the ceiling as she closed her eyes and ran her hands through her hair as she tried to play through the conversation in her head. Again she drew a blank.

But still. It niggled. If only she could work out what "it" was!

Fretting was getting her nowhere, she thought. Maybe, if she took a short break and came back to it later... Certainly, doing that sometimes worked for her. Yes, she thought. She'd keep her consciousness occupied elsewhere for a while, and leave her subconscious to struggle with whatever it was on its own.

She clambered to her feet, stretched, and went off in search of the tub of chocolate ice-cream she'd stashed away in the freezer and her well-worn Ivory Tower video.

*****

Across town, CJ was also feeling frustrated. He was investigating a couple more names from what he had come to think of as the Luthor lists and, as he'd come to consider usual, he was drawing a series of blanks, one against each name. The number of people remaining to be checked was diminishing rapidly, a fact that he found disquieting, to say the least.

He kept telling himself that he had to stay positive... that whatever he could do was enough... that he would strike lucky one of these times... But the platitudes were wearing ever thinner, and as the evening drew into night, he found it increasingly difficult to retain his optimism. Only thinking of Lois and of the pep talk she'd given him earlier seemed to help keep his spirits up. Clinging to the memory, he forced himself to soldier on.

When, just after his neighbour had switched off the ten o'clock news headlines, he heard footsteps approaching his front door, he found himself welcoming the distraction.

He cocked his head to one side and concentrated. The footsteps belonged to a woman, he decided, and for a moment he hoped that Lois had come over to see him. The depth of his disappointment when he realised that the footsteps were too heavy to be hers was almost shocking in its intensity. In any case, he realised belatedly, there were two sets of footsteps, which also seemed to rule Lois out. As far as he could determine, Lois, her willingness to work with him notwithstanding, was one of nature's loners. The idea that she would come to visit him with someone else in tow was almost inconceivable.

CJ frowned. There was something familiar about the footfalls, and about one set in particular. However, he couldn't match names to the sounds. Whoever the visitor was, he concluded, it was someone he was familiar with, but not overly so.

Out in the vestibule, there was a whispered exchanged between his erstwhile visitors, but he missed the most of the first speaker's words because he was still focusing on their feet. The first voice was quiet, little more than a whisper, but held a distinct note of panic. Again, CJ felt a tug of familiarity, but the speaker's identity stayed just beyond his grasp.

The reply was louder, clearer. "Come on. If anyone can help us, it'll be Kent. Besides, what have you got to lose?"

That speaker was easy to identify. But what, he wondered, perplexed, was Mayson Drake doing coming to his apartment so late on a Sunday night? Indeed, why was she there at all?

Any reply the other woman gave must have been non-verbal, but CJ knew that there must have been at the very least an acknowledgement of her words because, moments later, there was a rap on the glass of his front door.

"Coming!" called CJ. Then, galvanised into action, he quickly shut down his computer's browser, tucked the sheaf of papers he'd been working on out of sight, and got up. No matter that he now had reason to trust Mayson's honesty, he didn't want her stumbling upon his work. Files on people who did not exist, or whose histories were twisted differently from this world's reality, would be hard to explain away. True, he'd gone through the whole thing with Lois, but that had been necessary. Besides, he doubted Mayson would be similarly broadminded.

CJ jogged up the steps that led to the front door. He released the catch and pulled it open.

He tried to look surprised at finding Mayson Drake on the other side of the threshold. He didn't have to try too hard, either, because this wasn't a Mayson that he knew. For a moment, CJ thought she'd tried a different style of make-up, but then he realised that was because she hadn't bothered with any make-up at all. Her clothes and her hair were slightly unkempt, and dark, almost bruised, skin around her eyes suggested that she was running short of sleep.

"Mayson?" CJ said, as though there might actually be some doubt. "What are you doing here?"

"I..." Mayson trailed off as though she wasn't sure how to answer him. Either that, or her resolve was failing her and, despite her earlier encouragement to her companion, she was having second thoughts about having come here in the first place.

Then someone else stepped out of the shadows and into his line of sight – someone unexpected, someone he had known was involved with Luthor but who, because she had no counterpart in the other world, CJ had overlooked in his investigations. That, he thought as he stared at her, had been a foolish oversight.

"Could we... May we come in?" asked Mayson.

CJ stepped backwards, and pulled the door open wide so that they could pass. Mayson Drake and Rosemary Tierney crossed over the threshold and into his apartment.

*****

The last of the credits had finished rolling and the television screen turned from black to snow. The fading music, replaced by the quiet hissing of white noise, jolted Lois out of a light stupor that bordered on sleep. Lingering drowsiness made her fingers clumsy as she fumbled with the remote control. She set the Ivory Tower tape to rewind, and LNN popped onto the television screen.

There was Robby Roberts again – didn't LNN have any other reporters?

And then it hit her. Just like that. Abruptly, with no warning.

Saxon had told her that he'd gone to LNN and to the Star, and neither media outlet had wanted to touch his story. That alone wasn't enough to cause undue alarm; after all, she hadn't thought the story worth her time either. But, now she thought about it, it wasn't just the Saxon piece...

Her mind raced, all lingering drowsiness banished in an instant.

The Allen trial, she thought. Roberts had filed a report on the steps outside the courthouse, but it hadn't made the evening news. At the time, she'd supposed LNN had found a better story to run with, but what if...

Excited, she jumped out of her seat and began to pace.

What if the story had been pulled because it wasn't the story Luthor wanted told. It certainly hadn't been the story Luthor had expected to be told. Dropping it from the schedule might have had nothing to do with its newsworthiness at all, or, if it did, it had been dropped because it was newsworthy, not because it wasn't.

And if Luthor was manipulating the news... If she knew which stories had been dropped, then she and CJ would know where to direct their investigative efforts.

But she was jumping ahead of herself. She needed more evidence. She needed to be sure.

She sat down again, grabbed her laptop, pressed the keys to connect to her ISP and cranked up her browser. Minutes later she was searching through the Star's website, looking through all the archived stories there.

There had been stories posted almost daily in the two weeks leading up to, then during, the Allen trial, all except for the last day. There was nothing whatsoever about the mistrial.

Lois found herself grinning wolfishly. She was on to something here. She knew it. She could feel it in her bones.

So, she knew about two stories – Allen and Saxon – that had been dropped. What else might there be?

Step one, she thought. Identify the most important news stories of the last few years. Well, that was easy enough; she'd covered most of them herself, for the Daily Planet, so all she needed to do was go through her files. Step two: match her stories with coverage in the LexCorp controlled media. That would be more time-consuming, but it would not be difficult to do. Thanks to the rapid growth of the Internet, all the stories from LNN and the Star, plus of more minor outlets, should be available on-line. A few hours spent with the computer and she'd have evidence to prove that her hunch was right.

*****

While tonight's incarnation of Mayson Drake was at odds with her usual self, CJ decided that the contrasts in Mayson's demeanour were as nothing compared to her friend's. True, CJ had rarely, if ever, seen Tierney outside a courtroom – maybe at a couple of dinners – so he could hardly claim to know her well, but he had always perceived her as being confident, assertive and, in an odd way, even intimidating. The woman currently sitting on his sofa, shoulders hunched, head lowered, and hands clenched into fists, was a complete stranger. The coffee CJ had offered her on their arrival stood on the low table in front of her, untouched. CJ wasn't sure that she'd even noticed it was there.

He wondered what he was supposed to do now and he found himself glancing across at Mayson, who was seated next to Tierney, seeking her help or an explanation. He wasn't sure which.

Mayson opened her mouth soundlessly once or twice before she managed to squeeze any words out. "I'm sorry, Kent," she finally said. "Maybe we shouldn't have come." But, CJ noted, she made no move to leave. In fact, she picked up her own mug, took a sip from it, and stared at him over its rim.

Then Mayson glanced sideways towards Tierney. CJ followed her gaze and noticed that Tierney hadn't reacted to Mayson's words. CJ doubted that they had even registered.

"No, no. It's okay," said CJ absently. "But I still don't understand why you've come."

"Because we didn't know who else to turn to. You..."

Mayson stood up abruptly, paced two steps, turned around and paced two steps back. Then she sat down again, her back stiff with tension. She stared at CJ, and the only word he could find to describe the manner in which she did so was beseechingly. "I know we're not exactly what you'd call close, Kent. And I can't say that you've had my complete trust in the past. But you've made me think, these last couple of days. You and Rosemary, both. She says you're not one of Luthor's... people." The "and she would know" hovered, unspoken, between them. "So, unlikely as it may seem, I'm willing to take a chance that your anti-Luthor rhetoric is honest."

CJ wondered how much of his amusement showed, even as he struggled to keep his expression neutral. The phrase "damning with faint praise" skittered around the edges of his consciousness even as he listened to Mayson.

He didn't comment on her assessment of his character. Nor did he take offence. How could he, when he'd entertained similar doubts about her? Instead, he reflected on the irony of the situation. He and Mayson had distrusted each other too much to realise that they could have been allies.

Until now.

Knowing Luthor's reputation as he did, and how far his influence extended, he realised just how big a risk Mayson had taken, coming to him. He wasn't sure whether it was a measure of her new found confidence in his integrity that had driven her to him, or her desperation. Probably both, he guessed; certainly, taking her current mannerisms into account, there had to be a fair proportion of the latter in the mix. That she'd decided to take the risk at all spoke volumes about the strength of her friendship with Tierney.

Mayson, he realised, had stopped talking and was waiting for some kind of response.

"I understand that we've got a common... interest... in Luthor," he said pensively. "But I still don't see why you've come to me. And I don't understand what she's doing here, either." He gestured vaguely in Tierney's direction. "What, precisely, do you want from me?"

"I..." Mayson floundered. It seemed to CJ that Mayson didn't know what she wanted, almost as if she'd thought only as far as seeking him out and no further.

To his surprise, it was Tierney who answered his question, speaking for the first time since she'd arrived. "I need help," she said weakly, her voice rasping. "I went to Mayson, but she didn't know what to do, either. But she said..." Tierney's words trailed off into silence.

Mayson picked up the thread of thought Tierney had left hanging. "We need – Rosie needs – advice, at the very least."

Tierney tried again. "Maybe you can't do anything. I sure as hell can't see a way out of the mess I'm in, but... You got a mistrial for Allen, though goodness knows how you pulled that one off, and Mayson seems to think you're okay. And, to be frank, I'm desperate, and I'll try anything. I..."

To CJ's horror, he realised that Tierney had begun to cry. She was quiet about it, burying her head in her hands, but the way her shoulders quivered was telling.

CJ half stood and dug a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket. He reached over, gently pulled one of Tierney's hands just far enough away from her face so that he could put the handkerchief in her palm. Then, watching as she dabbed at her eyes, he sat down again and sighed. "I don't know what I can do, besides listening. But I'll help if I can."

Tierney looked up at him, hope warring with disbelief. She smiled a very faint, watery smile, and said so softly that he almost missed the words, "Thank you."

Even after expressing her willingness to talk, it took a while for CJ to persuade her to say anything that was useful. It soon became obvious that Tierney was not going to offer up information of her own volition, though whether this was because her current state of mind rendered her incapable of putting the necessary thoughts together or because a more deep-rooted reticence CJ wasn't sure.

Then again, maybe her reluctance to talk was understandable. He'd already said he didn't know if he could help, that maybe all he could do was listen.

If he wanted information, it looked as though he was going to have to work for it.

If he gave them something first, would that work in his favour? If he told them that he was already working on ways to lessen Luthor's hold over the city, would that give Tierney the push she needed to talk? He didn't know, but it was all he could think of to do. Did he dare to do so? It was a risk, to be sure, but no greater than the one Tierney and Mayson had taken in coming to see him.

CJ took a deep breath and said, "There is something you should know, before we start."

Something in the way he said the words attracted Tierney's attention in a way that nothing he had said previously had managed to do. It also served to calm her, or perhaps it simply numbed her sensibilities. Leastways, she was looking at him and, while her eyes were red and watery, the tears had ceased to flow. He wondered what it was about his words that had provoked such a reaction and decided that it must have been the deep, sombre tone he'd used. It gave weight to the words that his usual speaking voice might not have done. It was the tone he used on juries in particularly gruesome murder trials. Usually he used it in a calculated manner; this time he'd done so unwittingly. He was surprised it worked on Tierney, though. He would have thought that, familiar as she was with his courtroom manoeuvres, she would never have been impressed by it.

"What?" she asked, her serious tone going some way to match his. CJ found himself being reassured by that; he knew, whatever Tierney decided to do next, the decision would not be taken lightly. She would weigh her options carefully, thinking before committing herself.

"I... I am carrying out an investigation into Luthor's activities. I'm looking for evidence that will bring him down. If you can help me in that..." He let the unfinished thought drift between them. The implication was clear, however. The more Tierney could help him, the more inclined he would be to help her. Indeed, the more reason he would have to help her. He reinforced the message by adding, "You help me and I'll help you."

He wondered whether he should have mentioned that he was not working alone. The thought of a single person trying to wage war on Luthor's empire was ridiculous, even laughable. Maybe showing that he had help would make his actions seem more plausible, more convincing. Not, he supposed, that two people were much better than one. The problem was that he still wasn't entirely confident of Tierney's trustworthiness, and, while he was prepared to risk himself, he was not prepared to put Lois in the firing line. If word got back to Luthor about what they were doing, he didn't want her placed in any unnecessary danger.

Then he almost smiled at his protectiveness. He was being absurd, he thought. He'd seen enough of Lois – both Loises, in fact – to know that danger was seldom, if ever, a serious consideration for her. She'd probably laughhis concern, he thought wryly.

Still... In case word did get back to Luthor... At least at this early stage, it was only sensible to give out as little information as possible.

Tierney stared at him for long seconds, then, finally committed, she nodded once and said, "Okay. Where do you want me to begin?"

CJ ran his fingers backwards through his hair as he marshalled his thoughts.

This wasn't like a trial. He hadn't had time to prepare; he hadn't had time to map out his questions and to plan for all contingencies. He felt out of his element, as though he was floundering in uncharted waters.

Then again, at least he wasn't in Tierney's position of having been cast into the role of witness, or even defendant.

He wished Lois was here to help him. She probably did stuff like this every day.

Thinking about Lois gave him confidence. Odd, he thought, how he could draw strength simply from the thought of her.

He took a deep breath then began to talk.


TBC