Pheromone, More Likely: 9/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
"You still don't understand, do you, Lex?" she said, and the laughter had vanished. "I did all of this for you. The perfume was my gift to you, my contribution to your business empire. With it, you can influence leaders and the masses all over the globe. I gave you all that, and now you're throwing me aside for Lois Lane!"
"Lois Lane isn't a part of this equation, Miranda. Don't bring her up again."
"No, she isn't," Miranda said. There was a soft hissing noise, and Lex began to cough. "You see, if I can't have you, no one will."
**********
And now, Part 9:
Clark jogged across the field toward the manager's office, consciously keeping his speed to that of a normal human being. After all the things that had happened in the last few days, he didn't want to give Lois any more reason to wonder about him. It was a minor miracle that she hadn't noticed his resemblance to Superman when she had seen him without his glasses two nights ago, but between the remaining effects of the pheromone and her headache, she simply hadn't been paying attention. He just hoped she wouldn't remember, later. As much as he trusted his partner, the thought of someone besides his parents being privy to his greatest secret was frightening. What would Lois do if she found out?
The truth was, he simply wasn't sure. True, they were friends, and the fact that she was attracted to him had been brutally revealed by the pheromone, but the thought of a Pulitzer was probably pretty attractive, too. Would she be willing to ruin his life and his parents' lives to win one? He didn't think she would, but there remained a small seed of doubt. Lois could be pretty rabid when in pursuit of a story.
It was indeed Lex Luthor's limousine, he saw, when he finally reached his destination. There was no sign of his driver, but the LEX on the license plate was a giveaway. He looked around, trying to determine where the billionaire might be. It was quite possible that he was in conference somewhere with Miranda. The question, of course, was what either of them was doing at the airport just at this time.
He lowered his glasses to check inside the manager's office. That butler and right hand man of Luthor's was seated in the small waiting room and perusing a magazine while sipping on a cup of coffee. From his appearance, he expected to be there for some time. Then where was Luthor?
Well, he certainly wasn't in the office. He glanced at his watch. It was two thirty-seven. Turning, Clark began to jog back toward Hangar 4.
**********
Lois tried to peer through the narrow crack of the door, attempting to get a look at what was going on inside. Where the heck was Clark, anyway? A quick glance at her watch told her that it had been about five minutes since she had sent him to check on the limousine. It simply seemed considerably longer.
What she had overheard simply confirmed to her that what Clark had told her this morning was nothing more or less than the truth, not that she had really harbored any doubts. Lex was up to his carefully brushed eyebrows in a really dreadful scheme. However, he seemed to have forgotten one of the first rules of the game: there was no honor among thieves, and, almost as important, a woman scorned could be a very dangerous thing. Miranda certainly sounded as if she meant business.
The door was suddenly pulled wide, and Lois found herself confronting Miranda. The blond woman was smiling. "Lois! Why don't you come in! I'm sure Lex will be glad to see you." The little snub-nosed revolver in her hand underlined her request.
Slowly, Lois obeyed. Where was Clark? she wondered, frantically. On the other hand, if Clark showed up right now, Miranda would probably simply take him prisoner, too, so it was probably a good thing that he wasn't here.
The room beyond the door was a combination storeroom, and makeshift office, she saw. A battered desk, piled high with papers of some kind, together with a metal, folding chair occupied one side of the room. Several metal canisters were shoved against one wall, and a metal file cabinet stood in one corner. Three or four more of the folding chairs were propped against the wall behind the door, scraps of packing material, and pieces of equipment, the purpose for which she couldn't begin to guess, were piled about the floor in no particular order that she could discern. Some type of large, metal tub occupied the space against the wall, near the right, rear corner, seeming somehow out of place amid all the other paraphernalia lying around. The layout, however, occupied her attention for only a few seconds.
Lex Luthor lay at full length on the floor so still that, except for the fact that she could see the slight rise and fall of his chest, she might have thought him dead.
Miranda smiled more widely. "It was so good of you to come," she said, gesturing at Lois to step away from the door. Cautiously, she moved around and pulled it shut. "I have everything ready for you."
"What ..."
"Of course, it was rather difficult replacing all the Malathion with my formula," Miranda said, conversationally, "but when they spray the city for fruit flies, they'll be spraying Revenge. Soon everyone in Metropolis will know the pain of love spurned."
"Why are you doing this?" Lois said, recognizing the inanity of the question as she asked it. Still, she wasn't trying for a scintillating conversation. She was simply stalling for time.
Mirranda laughed, a harsh, brittle sound that made her skin crawl. "Do you really have to ask, Lois? I should think it would be obvious!"
"I have no romantic interest in Lex," Lois said, trying desperately to convince the woman of her sincerity.
Miranda tilted her head. "Really? I was under the impression you had dinner with him last night."
"I did. But I'm a reporter! I've been trying to get an interview with him for weeks!"
The woman laughed, bitterly. "That's not what he thinks -- and Lex usually gets his way. If he wants you, he'll win in the end."
"Don't be silly! You act like I have no say in the matter!"
"You don't," Miranda said. "Or, you wouldn't." She shrugged. "In any case, it doesn't matter."
Lois glanced right and left, looking for a way of escape. There was a shuttered window to her rear, right next to the huge metal tub, from which, she noticed now, curls of vapor were rising gently. She wrinkled her nose at the acrid odor that filled the air.
Miranda laughed again, and there was an edge to her laughter that raised the hair on Lois's head. "You took him away from me," she said. "It doesn't matter if you meant to or not, you took him. You're going to pay."
"I don't want him," Lois said. "He's yours. Keep him." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Miranda raise her free hand. In it was some kind of aerosol container: probably the stuff Lois had heard her spray Lex with barely a minute before. Miranda compressed the button and vapor sprayed into Lois's face as she turned back to face the woman, a woman that Lois was now quite sure had completely lost her mind. Maybe it was from playing with her pheromone-spiked perfume for all this time, she thought, irrelevantly.
But she had been expecting the move. She held her breath and staggered back as if overcome by the spray, letting herself collapse to the floor.
The chemist gave a short bark of laughter and Lois heard a click as she set the canister down, and then footsteps. A peek through her lashes showed Miranda as she knelt beside Lex, beginning to tie his wrists together with a coil of rope. She had shoved the revolver into one of the pockets of her designer jeans. Lois lay still, watching for her chance. She would only have one, she knew.
Miranda was dragging Lex's slack body across the floor, and Lois gathered herself. A hook hung nearly to floor level, attached by a rope to a pulley dangling above the tub. Miranda looped the bindings that tied Lex's wrists together to the hook and, as Lois watched, matter-of-factly took the other end of the rope that was looped over the pulley and threw her weight against it. Lex's arms, head and shoulders were hauled from the floor.
She must be going to suspend him above the tub, Lois decided. She sniffed softly, trying to identify the scent in the air. It had a definite acidic smell. Well, whatever the stuff was that was in it, she didn't want to find out the hard way. There was a second pulley hanging beside the first. It looked strongly to Lois as if Lex had been lured here, just as she had. Miranda evidently intended to kill them both.
Miranda tugged on the rope. The upper half of Lex's body was off the floor, now, and as Lois watched, his eyelids flickered open. He gazed blearily around for a second and then seemed to come suddenly to full consciousness.
"Miranda, what the devil are you doing?" he demanded. "Let me go!"
"I told you if I can't have you, no one will," Miranda replied. She dragged on the rope again, lifting Lex from the floor. He kicked and struggled as she hauled him higher. His body swung back and forth, propelled by his struggles, and bumped jarringly into the side of the metal tub with a dull thud. Miranda laughed chillingly again.
If she was going to do anything, Lois thought, it had probably better be now, while Miranda's attention was on Lex. Silently, she rolled to her feet and reached for the doorknob.
There was a crash behind her and a yell of combined pain and fury from Lex. She yanked the door open. From behind her came the unmistakable sound of a gunshot and a bullet went over her head as she dived through the opening.
She took her weight on her forearm, tucked her head and rolled over her shoulder, exactly as she had been taught in her martial arts classes. Miranda's voice shouted at her to stop, but Lois didn't obey. She came out of the roll onto her feet and ran for her life.
**********
Clark jogged toward the hangar as quickly as he thought he could get away with. He didn't see Lois anywhere, which didn't surprise him. If he knew his partner, she was already in there, snooping around. He glanced at his watch. It was two forty-two. If Miranda hadn't arrived yet, she would soon.
A sharp report from the direction of the hangar startled him. That sounded like a gunshot! His jog became an all-out run. He passed the fuel truck and the plane that it was servicing at a speed faster than the human eye could follow, changing from a grey blur to a blue and red one in an instant, aware that the two men who were operating the fueling truck had turned to look in the direction of the sound.
Lois burst from the hangar as another shot sounded, and he reached out almost casually to intercept the bullet, never slowing his speed. At the back of the hangar, Miranda dropped her weapon and turned to flee. He scooped her up before she had gone two steps and an instant later had tied her securely in the rope that had bound Lex Luthor's hands. The billionaire rubbed his wrists and stared balefully at Miranda.
Clark came to a stop beside the man and glanced at the pulley arrangement and then at the contents of the big metal tub. He sniffed. "I'd say you're lucky she didn't have time to drop you in that, Luthor," he said.
Luthor met his gaze levelly. "Very," he said. "I trust that the police are on their way?"
Outside, in the main hangar, Clark heard the nearly silent footstep of a rubber-soled shoe. Luthor glanced through the doorway. "Lois, my dear!"
Lois entered the room, looking from Lex to Miranda to Superman. She smiled briefly. "I see you got her. Superman, you have to stop the fruit fly spraying. Miranda told me she replaced the Malathion with her pheromone formula."
Trust Lois to save the inevitable reaction for later, he thought. His partner had the coolest set of nerves of anyone he'd ever met. He nodded quickly. "Would you stay here with her while I call the police?"
Lois cast a quick look at Lex. "Sure."
He took one of the folding metal chairs that leaned against the wall, unfolded it and pushed Miranda onto it. "Thanks. See to it that she stays out of trouble."
**********
As Superman vanished through the door, Lois leaned slowly back against the wall, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on Miranda. Lex dusted off his clothing, distastefully. "I see I'm going to have to replace this suit," he said. He turned back to Lois. "You were amazing, Lois, but I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. You're everything a man could want in a woman: lovely, courageous and intelligent. Who could ask for more?"
He seemed to hesitate for a puzzled instant, then his gaze returned to her face.
Lois shot him a quick, dismayed look. He sounded almost like he had last night. Hadn't he told Miranda earlier that he was still having trouble telling which feelings were real and which were caused by the pheromone?
"Lex, I think Miranda's pheromone is still affecting you," she said.
He seemed to shake himself and nodded. "I think you're right, my dear. No woman could be as perfect as you seem to me at this moment." He gazed at her in a way that made her want to squirm. "I can't seem to help myself, though."
"It will wear off," she assured him. "Just wait."
Again, he nodded. Deliberately, he turned away from her, glancing around the room. "I believe that tank contains sulfuric acid," he said, irrelevantly. He walked to the door and looked out. "You saved me from a very unpleasant end."
"I saved myself," Lois said. "Superman saved you."
"Only technically," Lex said, with a smile in her direction. "You delayed things long enough for him to arrive." He stooped to pick up something from the floor, his back to her. "I find you absolutely fascinating, my dear."
Lois wished he wouldn't call her his dear, especially now, knowing what she knew. Proving his connection to this whole miserable mess might be nearly impossible, considering the way things had turned out, so until she and Clark were able to unmask him for the person he really was, she would have to let him go on believing that he had fooled her, along with the rest of the world.
He re-entered the room, glancing indifferently at Miranda. "You should have known better, Miranda. I always get what I want, you know."
Silence. Lois counted the seconds, wondering how long it would be before the police arrived. And where was Clark? He should have been back by now.
"Lois!" Clark's voice called, on cue. Lex turned his head toward the sound, and Lois saw him scowl. He didn't say anything, however, but moved easily away from the door and after checking the surface of a wooden crate, leaned casually against it.
"In here, Clark!" she answered.
She heard footsteps approaching, and a few seconds later Clark entered the room. He too glanced at Miranda, sitting silently in the chair, and at Lex, propped against the crate, his arms folded tightly across his chest. "Superman told me what happened," he said. "He's calling the police from the manager's office. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," Lois said, and she was, for now. Later, she would probably go home and eat a quart of chocolate ice cream. That was her usual way of coping with stress. "Not even a bruise." She added, "Superman is taking care of the fruit fly spraying, isn't he? I mean, not letting them spray?"
"He already alerted the authorities," Clark assured her. "The planes are grounded until further notice."
"Very efficient," Lex said. Lois glanced curiously at him. He sounded sarcastic, irritated. "And how about you, Mr. Kent? Why does Lois think you're the only man for her when my resources are so far beyond yours that there is no comparison?"
"Lex, it was just the effect of the pheromone," Lois said.
He smiled without humor. "But the pheromone only works if there is already attraction present," he said.
"True," Lois said. She pushed herself away from the wall. "But just because I'm a little attracted to Clark doesn't mean he's the love of my life." She glanced sideways at her partner, trying to catch his eye, trying to warn him. The look on Lex's face scared her. She had made a mistake, she thought, letting Clark in here, knowing that Lex was still under the influence of the pheromone. It made him unpredictable, and blurred his judgement. It made him dangerous.
Lex unfolded his arms. "You don't feel anything for me," he said. "I saw that the other day at the Planet. You said you loved him." He was glaring at Clark now, and in his hand Lois saw Miranda's little snub-nosed pistol. He leveled it at Clark and fired.
Clark dived sideways as Lex's finger contracted on the trigger and the bullet buried itself in the wall of the hangar. Lex took a couple of steps toward him and took aim again.
Lois moved forward almost instinctively, grabbing his arm. "Lex, no! If you kill Clark, that won't win you my love! We just need to get to know each other better!"
Lex didn't appear to hear her. He shook her hand free and lifted the weapon.
Reason wasn't going to get through to him, she knew, anymore than it had with Wally. In fact, only one thing had gotten through to Wally ...
Lois spun, grabbing one of the folding metal chairs that leaned against the wall, and as Lex started to squeeze the trigger a second time, she lifted it and brought it down hard on the back of his head. Lex folded to the floor, the revolver spinning away.
"What's going on in here?" a male voice asked. Lois turned to see a police officer standing in the doorway.
"Oh," she said. "Hi, officer. I can explain ..."
**********
(tbc)
