Thank you to all of you who commented on the previous part. I am sorry for the delay to the posting of that part. I've sent the part to a beta-reader to be edited. Unfortunately, she had been hurt. I hope she will be fine. All my best wishes to her. In the meantime, I will resume the posting. I try to find the time to post one chapter every day. Please, keep feeding me reviews
Previously:"Because that could mean that we have all been looking in the wrong direction. Maybe Luthor is not guilty here, maybe he didn't have the time to do anything of what he wanted. Clark went missing while warning Superman, and Superman was trapped by Luthor, but there is nothing there to indicate that Clark had been trapped with him. Maybe this doesn't have anything to do with Luthor, but with Superman. He could have put Clark out of danger somewhere before visiting Luthor, in case it would be a trap," he explained with hope.
Jimmy sometimes came up with silly theories, but it was nevertheless a possibility. And if Superman had put Clark out of danger somewhere, far away from Metropolis and where he couldn't read a newspaper, he could even be unaware of what was going on in Metropolis.
She really had to discover how Clark contacted Superman. Maybe by knowing that, she would discover where Clark was.
Except, naturally, if it was indeed Lex who was behind it. Or if it was something else, connected to Clark's secret, that happened to him. It was possible as well that he was a random victim of a crime.
The more she thought about it, the more Lois saw the countless number of possibilities. Nobody had the slightest clue. Anything could have happened to Clark. And she didn't know if she would ever be able to find him.
She was feeling so terribly lost.
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And now:Part 4: Getting to know ClarkFor days, Lois had studied relentlessly the files on the criminal businesses of her ex-fiancé, trying to know to whom Lex would have been able to confide the task of getting rid of Clark. But the more she studied these files, and the more it seemed to her useless to continue.
Lex almost never asked to somebody else other than his assistant Mrs. Cox, his butler Nigel St-John, or his servant Asabi, and when he did it, it was always because he needed a very particular competence. It was highly improbable that it was the case concerning Clark. And even if that didn't exonerate him completely, she doubted all the same, more and more, that Lex was at the origin of her partner's disappearance.
It was of no use to pursue mercilessly on this way, she was only wasting time. Luthor was still a suspect, but he was now at the bottom of the list.
She just had to find somebody else to put at the top of the list. But there, she missed inspiration.
Methodically. She had to proceed methodically if she wanted to have a chance to succeed. No one could find the good answers if one didn't ask the good questions; it was one of the first lessons she had learnt in school of journalism. So, what were the good questions?
At first, who would have an interest to made Clark disappear, except Lex Luthor?
At once, a very long list of names formed in her mind. When one is a journalist of investigation, and when one revealed to the world the criminals' secrets, one isn't much appreciated. All those that he had helped to arrest, by the stories he had written alone or with her, could want to take revenge on them. And even if most of the time, she was the one to be attacked, a criminal could have shown a little originality and attacked Clark.
She thus had to draw up the list of all the persons damaged by the stories they had written during the past year.
Or the stories he had written alone. It could explain why it was him who had this time been attacked and not she. Even if most of the stories that he had written alone were social stories, not really the kind of stories which could attract him enemies.
Unless it goes back up to an article which he had written before Metropolis. He was a very good investigator, thus he had certainly had to make some journalism of investigation during his travelings. Maybe that he had enemies who went back up to this period. Somebody who just came to go out of prison maybe? She needed to dig.
But that brought her directly to the second question that she had to ask herself. What did she really know about Clark? What did she know about his past, for example? Not much, she had to admit. Raised in a farm in Smallville, he had played football at the secondary school, had studied journalism at the university of Kansas, and then he had traveled all over the world during years. Where had he been, who had he met, what had he done during this period of his life? She had no idea. She had to try to discover more on his past. His disappearance was maybe connected to something that he had lived back then.
And when Henderson had interrogated her the first day, she had noticed that Clark was hiding a big mystery in his life. It could be connected to his past. Maybe not. It was possible that he had been involved in something dangerous, that she would never have suspected.
No, she was becoming paranoiac. It wasn't because Lex had lied to her and hid a criminal's life that Clark's lies were hiding the same thing. Clark wasn't like that. She knew it deep inside. She loved him, she couldn't imagine him doing something reprehensible.
Whatever it was that took place during his years of wandering, whatever was the mystery he was hiding, his parents certainly had to know. Clark was very close to them. They knew probably what it was all about. She should speak to them.
And for the first time, she envisaged the disappearance of Clark from the point of view of his relatives. They were very close, and Clark went missing. Their only son had disappeared. They must be absolutely destroyed. She had not spoken to them since it had happened. She had been too much monopolized by her own sorrow.
She was nevertheless aware that Perry and Henderson had contacted them to give them news and ask them some questions in case they would know anything that could help in the search of their son. But they had said nothing. Maybe there was nothing to say. Maybe it wouldn't be there where she could find an explanation. Or maybe that they lied, protecting at all costs the famous secret of their son… No, she was being paranoiac again. Lex's lies made her doubt everybody, now. The Kents were charming persons, she appreciated them a lot. They probably weren’t hiding a thing. They had to want that their son was found safe and sound as much as she was wishing it!
Nevertheless, she should speak to them all the same, to be sure.
She asked to Jimmy to examine all Clark's stories, the one he wrote alone or in partnership with her, which have lead to arrests and to see if some of these criminals had just gone out of prison, or if they could have contacts with criminals still outside, people known to have soaked into kidnappings, murders…
When her young colleague went away to begin to make the researches that she had asked for, Lois dialed with a trembling hand the Kents' number. What could she say to two loving parents who had just lost their only child?
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Martha was sitting at the table of the kitchen. She read again the article of the Daily Planet about Superman's health. «No noticed improvement.» These words that she was reading again and again were hurting her, and nevertheless, she couldn't refrain from reading them one more time.
She didn't understand. When Clark had been exposed to kryptonite the first time, here, in the farm, he had fainted, but he had woken up quickly after he had been taken away of this cursed rock. His powers had disappeared during two days, but he had eventually got them back. Just at this moment, Trask had exposed him again, and Clark had collapsed on the ground. He was at the edge of fainting, but he had managed to get rid of the kryptonite. His powers had returned 36 hours later.
And a short time before the fall of Luthor, he had phoned home, to tell them that he had felt the presence of kryptonite near him, while he was discussing with a security guard in a bank which had had a problem with its alarm. He had said that he had felt stunned, and that he had had to hold on to the guard not to fall, but that the sensation had disappeared very fast. He hadn't even lost his powers that time.
Thus Martha understood that the reaction of his son to kryptonite depended on its time of exposure, on the nearness of the rock, and probably on other things also. But she also knew that once taken away from the kryptonite, he had always recovered rather quickly. And now, he had been a complete month in a coma.
Her eyes slid on the photography which accompanied the article. It was a picture some weeks old, of Superman carrying in his arms a baby whom he had just taken out of a burning building behind him. She started to cry by looking at this photography of her son. How anybody could be so cruel to try to kill him?
A complete month without any improvement noticed, but he wasn't near kryptonite anymore now. He should have quickly recovered. Why was he always unconscious? Had he crossed a tolerance limit or something like that, beyond which he couldn't return any more?
She looked again at the photography and she wondered if she would ever see her son again. She had always wanted to be a mother, but she couldn't. She had prayed during years, and the day she had found Clark in this field had been the most beautiful day of her life. He had never been sick or hurt and she had never had to do what every other mothers were doing, stay with her sick child and take care of him… She had been grateful for it. She didn't want to see her child suffer. But then, he was in a coma, maybe even dying, and what she wished more that everything in the world, was to be with him.
But she couldn’t. They would never authorize Martha Kent, a simple farmer wife of Kansas, to stay with the famous Superman, until he wakes up. It wasn't as if she could say that she was his mother. She was obliged to stay away.
She had briefly intended to go to Metropolis all the same, as soon as news had reached her, but Jonathan had dissuaded her from it. In the eyes of the world, Clark had disappeared, and they, they were to be worried of not knowing what their son had become. If they went to Metropolis, they could never hide to the others than they were more worried for Superman than for the disappearance of Clark. They knew where Clark was, it wasn’t a problem for them, but they couldn't let anyone else discovering it. Then they had stayed in Smallville, looking every day in the newspaper for news of their son.
Hoping every day to finally see the story which would declare Superman out of danger. But the doctors hadn't noticed any improvement, and it seemed more and more obvious in their comments to the press that they had lost hope to see him waking up some day.
The telephone rang, and she dried her tears quickly before going to pick it up. It was probably Perry who called them to say to them that they still had no new lead to find Clark, but that they weren't abandoning. He had promised to them not to abandon the searches until Clark was found. And he continued to print Clark's picture in the newspaper, every day.
Martha knew that it was perfectly useless, but she couldn't tell him that. And she was extremely grateful to him for all his efforts. She had taken the resolution to tell him that Clark was Superman if he eventually died. But in the meantime, she preferred to keep the hope that her son eventually returns to consciousness, and until then she would continue to keep his secret.
She picked up the phone.
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The phone conversation with Martha hadn't helped Lois to understand what Clark was hiding. They had both shown themselves very emotional, and Lois had eventually admitted by lamenting to Martha that she had realized that she was in love with Clark too late to be able to tell him. Martha had seemed very touched when she had listened to her confession.
But Lois couldn't bear any more the wave of emotion which had submerged her while discussing with Clark's mother, somebody who missed him as much as herself, somebody who understood perfectly what she was living. The exchange had become too emotional for her, and she had terminated the conversation soon after.
If she was letting herself go now, she would never be able of coming back again, and she wouldn't be able any more of taking charge effectively of the investigation on Clark's disappearance. She had to regain her self-control and act.
Jimmy would still need hours before finishing all the research for which she had asked, thus she needed to find something else to do in the meantime. She couldn't bear waiting with crossed arms.
And because the phone call to the Kents had not helped her to understand what was Clark's secret, she had to discover it another way.
Resolved, she got up from her desk, put on her coat, took her bag, and went to Perry's desk to ask him for the keys which she needed. It was time to go to Clark's apartment. She hadn't go back to his place since the time when they were still friends, before his disappearance, before the explosion of the Daily Planet, before Lex' proposal.
After their quarrel, the atmosphere between them was too turbulent for her to go there, and after his disappearance, she hadn't just had the strength to go back.
Lois remembered vaguely that Perry had told her that he had spoken with Clark's parents, and that, between them, they had settled to continue to pay his rent, so that he finds all his things as he had left them when he will return. At this time, Clark's apartment had still sheltered Perry, Jimmy and Jack. Since then, Jimmy and Jack had found a small apartment they had decided to rent together to save on expenses. And Perry had bought a new house in Metropolis. Contrary to what he had believed, the time had not come yet for him to retire in Florida.
But Perry still had the keys of Clark's apartment. He kept them till his return. And Lois needed it if ever she wanted to go there.
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To convince him to entrust her with the bunch of keys had been easy. The problem had been to enter the apartment. Lois had hesitated for a long time on the step of the door. She wasn't sure to be ready to see again the place where he had lived. But she had finally taken her courage in two hands and entered.
The apartment was exactly as she remembered it, but it seemed to her much colder and empty. It was too silent. Every time she had come in the past, she had always found the place warm and alive, but now, everything seemed cold and dead. The difference was that Clark wasn’t there any more.
A new wave of despair seized her. She so missed him.
Furiously, she dried her tears. It wasn't the moment to cry. There was still hope. She could still find him. Jimmy was examining his old stories, and that could maybe carry its fruits. And her, she had come there with a mission. She had to discover what he was hiding. That could allow her to find his whereabouts.
It wasn't the moment to cry on his absence. It was rather the moment to concentrate on the means to bring him back.
She searched his apartment from top to bottom, in search of the slightest indication which could lead her to discover his secret. She knew that Henderson and her men had already looked everywhere and hadn't found a thing, but maybe she'd be luckier. She could see maybe something that would have escaped them…
She didn't found anything that could help her. She now knew more about him than previously, but nothing that could help her find him.
She had examined his book collection, and to her great surprise, they were in numerous different languages. He spoke far more foreign languages than she had imagined. She had examined all his pictures albums. Pictures were chronologically arranged there. She had examined them all.
She had smiled in front of his baby's photos. He was so good-looking, and it was so evident that his parents loved him more than everything else in the world. He had grown to become a child full of energy and joy of living. She had even laughed in front of certain pictures apparently taken by surprise. Apparently, he had had a very happy childhood.
So she didn't understand why, abruptly, on photos taken at about his 11-12 years, he had stopped smiling so much. She could see that he had become very reserved and distant, and that he felt alone. Many teenagers had problems to bear this stage of their life, but she could feel that there was more than that to him. Something had changed him. It had apparently been a very difficult period of his life.
He had begun to wear his hair pretty long for a boy. And soon, the only pictures of him smiling were those taken during his football matches, or the pictures where he was with a young blonde cheerleader. His girlfriend, apparently. Something in his face at the time seemed very familiar to her, but she couldn't place it.
At about 17 years, he had begun to wear glasses, and he cut his hair short again. Pictures became rarer on the time when he was at the university, and then she arrived at pictures taken during his journeys around the world.
He looked happy to live again. He had really traveled in a lot of places, seen and done a lot of things. Lois didn't think that he had traveled so much. All in all, there was nothing there which could help her to discover his secret.
She went through a folder which grouped together many stories that he had written during his journeys. They were almost all in foreign languages and she had no idea of what that was all about. His byline, Clark Kent, was the only thing which she could comprehend.
But when she reached the files at the bottom of the folder, she found another lot of stories, written in different languages too, but Clark wasn't their authors. Why did he preserve these old stories from the period of his journeys? Some stories were written in english and she could read them. They were about mysterious rescues, about miraculously saved persons… And if she trusted the pictures of the stories she couldn't understand, they probably were about the same subject.
Here was finally something interesting. It almost seemed as if Superman was already present at the time, but that he helped in secret instead of doing it publicly. And Clark, apparently, knew it… Clark had followed him all over the world, to Metropolis. Lois remembered when the court had ordered Superman to leave the city. Clark had resigned, he was ready to leave. And when Superman had been allowed to stay, Clark had returned.
It was a shock. Here is thus why Clark seemed to know so much about Superman. He had studied him for years. But he had never tried to expose him, while he would have probably been able to compete for a Pulitzer! No, instead, he and Superman had become friends.
Wow! Lois thought. Clark was really an excellent investigator, much better than she had never been. He was the one who had managed to unmask Luthor, and before that, he had probably managed to unmask Superman, although he had never said anything about it. That forced the respect. But that did not help her to know where Clark could indeed be right at the moment.
And that did not help her either to understand how Clark was managing to contact Superman. And she would have liked to know. Not that that could be useful for her as long as Superman was at the hospital, in a coma, but if ever she was able to learn more on the superhero, that could permit her to find a person who would be able to help the doctors to understand how worked the kryptonian biology, and to help them look after him.
What was it that Superman had said the first day when she had seen him? Ah yes, that it was his mother who had made the suit for him. Thus he had relatives. They had to know that Superman was in a coma, it was in every newspaper, and nevertheless, nobody had shown himself… It was so strange.
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When she returned to the Daily Planet, Jimmy had finished the researches she had asked him for, but it was of no use either.
All those whom they had put behind bars during the past year were still serving their sentence, and they had apparently no contact with persons having been able to attack Clark. And those who were always in expectation of judgment were strictly watched.
And anyway, the police had already studied all these leads, verified all the alibis… There was nothing to hope on this side.
There was nothing more to hope of no side. Lois did not know any more where to look. She had looked under every stone of the road and she had seen nothing that could give her the slightest idea of what had happened to Clark. It was as if he had evaporated in thin air.
She didn't know what more she could do to find him. She had already looked in all the directions. And nevertheless, she must have neglected something. Nobody could disappear so completely. He was necessarily somewhere.
And as long as the police had not found his corpse, she would continue to believe that he was alive, somewhere. And as long as he was alive, she would have a chance to find him.
She just needed a clue, a beginning of track, anything to indicate to her where she should continue the searches. And in the current situation, there was only one person who could maybe give her that indication. But he was in a coma.
Clark had disappeared by passing on to Superman Lex's message. Superman would probably know what Clark had done after that, while himself was heading for the billionaire's trap. And with this information, she could investigate new leads, and maybe discover enough clues to find Clark.
But Superman was in a deep coma for almost a month. His doctors did simply not know what to do to take care of him and help him to wake up, and they began to doubt that the superhero will ever survive his ordeal.
She could not let him die. Besides the fact that he was precious for the World, and that she liked him very much, as a friend, although she had tried to deceive herself for months and had sincerely believed to be in love with him, he was important all the more for her today as he held this small bit of information which she so needed to find Clark.
Nevertheless, was there even something that she could do to help Superman to wake up when even his doctors, among the most renowned of the country, didn't understand why his state wasn't showing any improvement?
Maybe that was the problem. The doctors who looked after him. It was the first time they treated somebody who wasn't human. Maybe they weren't open minded enough to understand how an alien biology could work? Maybe what Superman really needed at the moment was a doctor used to investigate less usual science fields? Somebody who would keep the mind open to every possibility?
Lois wasn't in speaking terms with her father, but she knew that he was a very bright doctor, and that he had investigated numerous parallel fields to the conventional medicine. She could forgive him everything if it was what would cost her to help Superman.
She took her phone and called her father. While she waited that he picks up, she hoped that Henderson wouldn't make too many problems to sign all the necessary papers so that her father would be granted access to Superman.
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