This should get me back up to date 
Table of Contents
From Part 16:“Okay, Lois. You want to know; I’ll tell you,” he said heavily.
“At last! It’s telekinesis, it’s it? And hypnotism?”
“Huh?” Clark stared at her. “You’re kidding! No... I don’t have any kind of... of psychic powers. I’m not even sure anything like that exists.”
“Then what is it?”
“I’m not really sure how to explain it,” he said awkwardly. “I... you’re the first person I’ve even had to try to explain it to.”
Lois hesitated, then said, “Let me make some coffee. Then we can sit down, and *you* can talk, buster!”
*********
Now read on...Lois used the time it took her to make coffee to regroup her thoughts and focus on the task of getting information out of Clark Kent. That was the way to do it, she told herself: treat him like any other interview subject who had something to hide, and where it was her job to find out whatever it was they didn’t want her to know.
Well, no-one got the better of Lois Lane when she was determined to get to the truth. Clark Kent certainly wouldn’t be an exception.
She laid the coffee-tray on the dining table; it was best to keep this business-like, instead of conducting the conversation on the sofa. Clark, who had been gazing out of the window, came to join her, surprising her by pulling out a chair for her before sitting himself.
“Okay, so just what is it that you do? And how do you do it?” Lois asked him, not giving him time even to take a sip of his coffee. Take him off guard, that was the tactic, she told herself...
Clark cupped his palms around his mug, gazing down at the dark liquid as if, Lois thought, it might give him inspiration. Then, after the silence had lengthened more than Lois was comfortable with, he said quietly, “I have these... abilities.”
“Abilities?”
“Yeah.” He fell silent again. Then, just as she was about to prompt him again, he continued. “Things I can do. That normal people can’t.”
“Such as?”
Clark shrugged. “Lots of things. Uh... well, it’s probably easier if I show you.” He got up and crossed into the lounge area, paused...
...and then suddenly he was holding one of her sofas aloft in one hand.
Lois gasped. Even though she’d *known* that there was something different - unusual, if not unique - about Clark Kent, actually seeing evidence of it was something else again.
“So... uh... you’re strong,” she said, as he lowered her sofa back into place and stood looking at her.
“Yeah,” he confirmed. He sounded very nervous, she thought.
“So, how do you do it?” she asked.
“How...? Uh... I just lift things,” he said, clearly confused.
“Yeah, but there’s got to be a trick to it. Like all illusions, once you know how it’s done, you’re not fooled any more,” Lois commented scathingly.
Clark shook his head. “It’s not an illusion, Lois. I really am that strong.”
Okay... Well, he did have a good muscle structure. She had noticed that in passing. So maybe he worked out a lot. But still...
“That doesn’t explain anything you did tonight,” she pointed out.
Clark hesitated, then asked, “Have you got a knife? I mean, an ordinary dinner knife? One you don’t mind losing?”
Lois shrugged and went into the kitchen, taking an old knife from her drawer. As she brought it to him, he paused before accepting it. “Try to bend it,” he instructed.
She did. It was a heavy knife, made of good-quality stainless steel. She couldn’t do a thing to it.
Clark took it from her, exerted what looked like very little pressure on the handle... and it snapped in two. Lois took one of the halves from it; it had very definitely broken, very cleanly, and without any sign of twisting or force.
He *was* strong. And that kind of strength couldn’t be gained from workouts, she was sure. It was... well, the only word she could come up with to describe it was superhuman.
“Okay... so what else can you do?” she asked, a lot less breezily than when she’d started the conversation.
“Remember the lights which kept burning out?” he asked.
“Of course! But how on earth did you do that?”
Clark gestured towards his face. “With my eyes.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t know how to explain it,” he said. “But I can look at things and make them... well, burn.”
“Show me,” Lois said instantly. This was... well, to say that it was incredible was putting it mildly. A man who could set things on fire by *looking* at them?
“Watch that newspaper over there,” he instructed, gesturing at a messed-up several days’ old copy of the Planet which lay on the kitchen counter.
She did. And in under a second, a thin spiral of smoke was eddying upwards. Followed by an amber flicker.
“Oh my god!” she exclaimed. “You... it... it’s on fire!”
“Yeah.” He was walking over towards the paper now. It looked to Lois as if he was blowing on it; suddenly, the smoke and flame disappeared, and in its place was blackened ash and newsprint.
“That’s how I do it. And if I do that to something like a lightbulb, it will explode. And that’s how I sabotaged the security lights earlier.”
“And the desk-lamp in Baines’ office?”
“Yes, that too. I didn’t make it explode; I just wanted to make the bulb burn out.”
“And what about... I mean, you were in Baines’ office when it was on fire, and you came out unhurt... how did you do that?”
He gave a slight shrug. “I’m invulnerable.”
“You’re... what?”
“Invulnerable. I can’t be hurt, Lois,” he explained. “So the flames couldn’t have harmed me.” He picked up the broken knife again and handed it to her. “Stab me with it.”
Shocked, she exclaimed, “I can’t!”
“Yes, you can.” He extended his arm towards her. “Anywhere you want.”
Torn between horror and a kind of fascination, Lois raised the knife and then brought it down sharply, aiming for Clark’s palm.
The knife buckled, sending a jarring pain through her arm.
“Sorry. I should have warned you about that,” he said contritely as she dropped the remains of the knife to the floor.
Lois took a sharp intake of breath. “So you wouldn’t have been hurt by the explosion?”
He shook his head. Lois gasped. “So much for me thinking that you were being brave, staying with me and not trying to run away! I thought you were risking your life when you didn’t need to!”
Clark grimaced; probably because he’d been found out, she thought cynically. But then he said, “No, I wasn’t risking my *life*, Lois, but I was risking my safety, and that of my family. I’ve always kept what I can do a secret - and for good reason. But I knew that if I was going to get you out of there, I’d have to use my abilities - and that I probably wouldn’t be able to hide it. So I did make a sacrifice, and as far as my parents’ safety is concerned, that’s worth more than my life.”
“Oh.” Yes, that made a difference, she supposed. And of course people would be interested in a man who could do the things that Clark Kent could. He’d be the story of a lifetime, if anyone managed to prove it. And... Lois shook her head slowly as more implications of all of this slowly sank in. If Clark could do all these things... just think what a fantastic investigative reporter he could be!
He’d be more than competition for her... that was alarming.
On the other hand, he’d make a great partner. In fact, she already knew he made a great partner, and not only because of what he’d been able to do to help
that evening.
She didn’t know what she was going to do about him yet. Friend or foe? Partner or competition?
And that was before she even thought about the kiss!
But she didn’t want to think about the kiss. No. Not at all. She wasn’t going to go there. Better to get back to the topic at hand.
“And the chains?” she asked. “Your strength?”
“Yeah. I just had to tug and they...” He picked up the broken half of the knife again, and snapped the piece in two. “Snapped. Just like that.”
“How did we get out of the warehouse? You couldn’t possibly have got us to the other side of the compound that quickly!” Lois objected.
Clark shook his head. “Yes, I could. I can move very quickly when I want to. Watch.”
And, suddenly, he disappeared.
One second, he was standing right in front of her; a split second later, he’d vanished.
“I’m here.” His voice came from behind her.
“Huh?” Lois spun around to look at him. “What...? Teleportation or something like that?”
“You watch way too much sci-fi on TV, Lois,” he told her dryly. “No, really, I just move very quickly. That time, it was faster than the human eye can see.”
Stunned, she could only stare at him.
“This is unbelievable, Clark! I can barely take it in! You can do all this stuff...?”
He simply nodded.
Lois reached behind her for a chair-back, then leaned against it. “This is
amazing! Next you’ll tell me you can fly,” she murmured, feeling stunned.
“Well, actually...” He trailed off, and her jaw dropped as she saw that his feet had left the floor.
Clark Kent was hovering several inches off the floor in her living-room.
********
The look on Lois’s face was almost worth all the trauma he was putting himself through over confessing to her. She hadn’t believed anything he’d been telling her about his abilities, he’d seen that. Even when he’d demonstrated, she’d convinced herself that it was all some sort of illusion. She probably still imagined that he was hypnotising her.
She probably still thought that now, despite her slack-jawed expression!
“Come here, Lois,” he instructed her. She came closer.
“Feel under my feet,” he told her. “There’s nothing there. I’m not standing on anything. You’re not imagining that there’s just thin air between me and the floor.”
She did as he instructed, crouching on the floor and exploring the area beneath him thoroughly. “There’s nothing,” she confirmed. “How are you doing this?”
“I really can fly,” Clark assured her. “Let me show you.”
She was still looking disbelieving, but also very unsure of her ground, as she got to her feet and stared up at him. Clark drifted down until his feet were touching solid ground, and then he held out his hand to her. After a hesitation, she accepted it. He drew her closer, until she was standing in front of him.
“Put your arms around my neck,” he said. She did, and he took her waist between his hands, holding her securely. Then he floated off the floor again and ‘walked’ on the air around Lois’s living-room. Just so that she could have no doubts about what they were doing, he rose upwards and floated over one of the sofas, and then came to rest on top of her coffee-table, allowing Lois to feel the solidity of the wood beneath her feet, before he lifted her upwards again.
“Now do you believe me?” he asked her, before setting her down in the kitchen.
Her expression stunned, she nodded. “You really can fly.”
“Yes. And lots of other things too. I flew us out of that shed, then ran the rest of the way.”
“That’s incredible,” she gasped, almost beneath her breath. “But... how...?”
“That’s what I don’t know,” Clark said, looking away from her. Even after all this time, it still bothered him more than he could explain that he knew nothing about his origins, about what made him so different from normal people. He didn’t even know if he was human!
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“Just that, Lois.” He shook his head briefly, then realised that he’d said enough to mean that he couldn't get away with leaving it there. Not given his interlocutor. “I was a foundling. My parents found me, as a baby, in a field near our home. In a... spaceship.”
“A *spaceship*?” she repeated, disbelief in her voice.
“That’s what it looked like to them.”
“You’ve never seen it?”
“Once,” he admitted. “I was curious - it was when I was about ten or so. My folks never made any secret that I was adopted, and by the time I was ten we already knew that I was... well, different. I could run faster than all the other kids. I was starting to hear things we all knew I shouldn’t be able to.”
“*Hear* things?” Lois interrupted to ask. “You mean... voices in your head or something like that?”
Now she was back to thinking he was crazy! “No, nothing like that. I mean that I can hear things from a long way away. If I concentrate, I’d be able to hear the conversation your neighbours are having as they walk up to the front door of your apartment building,” he added, giving her a wry look. “A man and a woman, and they’ve both had too much to drink.”
Lois’s expression screamed disbelief - but then the clearly-audible sound of the
front door, just along the hall, being unlocked made her freeze. Two voices, one male, one female, echoed along the silent hallway, the sounds of people who were trying to be quiet but were too drunk to realise the noise they were making.
A few seconds later, a door slammed, and silence again reigned.
Lois broke it. “So... you can hear things too.”
“Yes. And I can see through objects. And see from a long way away,” he said, glancing around looking for something he could ‘X-ray’ in order to prove it. After all, she’d demanded proof of everything else.
But this time she didn’t. “I’ll take your word for it,” she said, still sounding overwhelmed. “So... you said you saw your spaceship?”
“Yeah. Well, it was becoming very obvious that I wasn’t like other kids. So my parents told me exactly how they’d found me, and Dad got the spaceship - he’d kept it locked in - well, he kept it locked away,” Clark amended, remembering that he certainly didn’t need to give away all the family secrets.
“What was it like?”
“Small,” he said, remembering the vaguely egg-shaped object. “Metallic. With a lid which opened when I touched it - inside, it was lined with dark blue fabric which felt like silk but was much stronger. And warmer. And the outside had some strange hieroglyphics on it. I remember asking Mom and Dad if it could be Russian - you know, Cyrillic script - but they said it wasn’t. They’d checked it out themselves - they’d wondered if I could be a Russian experiment. Anyway, it didn’t look like any form of writing they could identify, and they’d got dozens of books on different character types, even those from ancient civilisations.”
“So... your spaceship might not even be from Earth?” Clark glanced sharply at Lois; she looked as if she couldn't believe she was even saying the words.
“That’s possible, I guess. I mean,” Clark added, “if humans were travelling through space, if we landed on the moon in 1969, what’s to say that other civilisations couldn’t have mastered space travel too?”
“Yeah... I suppose,” Lois said, still sounding as if she was struggling to accept everything. “It’d even have been around the same time, wouldn’t it?”
“1967,” he said. “Not that long before. But - assuming that there is intelligent life on some other planet out there - there’s no reason to suggest that they’d have to be at the same stage of technological development as the Earth. I mean, if they were able to send an unmanned craft to another planet, and equip it with the means necessary to transport a baby...”
“So you really think you’re from another planet?” Lois asked.
Clark shook his head. “I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what I am. I don’t think I’m human, but I just don’t know. And I have no idea how I can find out.”
**********
This had to be a dream. Lois stood facing Clark, wondering whether she could surreptitiously pinch herself. After all, she couldn’t really be in the kitchen of her apartment at after four in the morning, listening to a work colleague tell her that he might be from another planet. He hadn’t really flown her around her apartment, had he?
No, of course he hadn’t. It was impossible. It was contrary to all the laws of physics. Humans couldn’t fly under their own steam.
But he’d said he didn’t think he was human...
No. It wasn’t possible. Aliens from outer space? Next he’d be telling her that Mork was his first cousin!
And yet it was real. At least, unless she was dreaming that pinch too.
“I... just can’t take this in,” she said, castigating herself for sounding weak. “I mean, what you can do... it’s just not possible! It’s against all the laws of physics!”
“You think I haven’t told myself that all my life, Lois?” Clark asked her. “Look, if you need more demonstrations, I can give them - but I’ve answered your questions. You wanted to know how I got us out of there; well, I told you. What more do you want?”
He sounded frustrated, and his words reminded Lois that he hadn’t wanted to explain anything in the first place. She’d been the one to refuse to accept his evasions and attempts to change the subject. So it was hardly as if he was boasting, trying to make her believe things which were simply ridiculous.
So, if she wasn’t dreaming, and he wasn’t lying to her, and he wasn’t hypnotising her...
... then he must be telling the truth.
Clark Kent really possessed amazing abilities which no-one else on Earth had. He could fly. And he really could be from another planet.
********
...tbc
