TP&S II - The Return of a Superman
by Tank
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was a long, slow, painful journey back to consciousness for Clark Kent. The fact that he regained consciousness at all amazed him. He shouldn't be lying in the dark, his body wracked with pain. He should be dead.
He had no idea where he was, except that he was still in a wooded area. He could see stars and a bright moon peeking out between the branches of the tall pines. The grass under him was sparse and mossy. The ground was hard and he could feel every stone and root that he lay on.
Cautiously, he levered himself to a sitting position and scooted over so he could lean back against a tree trunk. He took several deep breaths, which hurt like hell, and tried to recreate how he got to where he was.
The shock and pain of the two gunshots came back to him, and he found himself reaching down to his chest. His eyes had adjusted to the dim light provided by the clear night sky such that everything appeared in a black and white version of the world, as if from an old fifties television show. He could see the dark staining on the front of his shirt. It felt hard and crusty to his touch. The blood had obviously dried... but why had it stopped flowing?
Tentatively, he reached his fingers inside his shirt and felt around. He winced at the tenderness he felt. Clearly his chest was badly bruised, but bruising should be the least of his worries. He let his fingertips do more exploring until they came upon a couple of raised, welt-like lumps on his left pectoral.
He was surprised when, with continued careful probing, he felt something come loose into his hand. He pulled it out to look at it under the pale illumination of the moon. It appeared to be a flattened piece of metal. Like a pellet of some sort. Was that the bullet? Reaching back into his shirt. he was able to carefully dislodge a similar pellet from the other minor chest wound.
He closed his eyes as he considered his situation. He was shot at close range - twice. He should have been killed, but he hadn't been. He was then blown who knows how far through the air by the super clone only to land on hard, rocky soil. He had probably crashed through more than a couple of tree branches on his way down also. Glancing up, he noticed an irregular tunnel through the forest canopy which confirmed his suspicions. Even if he had survived the fall, he should, at least, have several broken bones.
He slowly got to his feet and did an inventory of his aches and pains. No, nothing broken, just a lot of soreness and tenderness to the touch. The bullets had obviously broken the skin because he had bled, but they hadn't seemed to penetrate the muscle more than a fraction of an inch. It was as if his body had been battered and bruised, but hadn't suffered any serious deep tissue damage.
Had his invulnerability come back? He winced again as he moved. Well, not entirely. He was clearly badly bruised, and perhaps even lacerated in a few spots. Still, he must have regained much of his invincibility back to have survived the trauma he'd been subjected to.
He'd always theorized that his invulnerability was due to an aura of some sort that he generated. When he was at his peak, that aura would project a few millimeters out from his skin which is why his suits could withstand anything he encountered, but was always needing to replace torn, burned, and tattered capes.
Was that what had happened here? Was his aura coming back, only it hadn't quite reached all the way to the surface of his outer skin?
He remembered back, as a child, invulnerability was one of the first powers that he'd developed. And it had developed slowly over time. As he'd grown, his resistance to bumps, bruises, and illness had grown until he'd reached the point where nothing seemed to hurt him anymore. Was that what had happened? Was he now in the later stages of his aura being fully regenerated?
He knew that he'd been feeling inexplicably good the last few days... physically. Had that been a signal that his powers were coming back? He willed himself to listen to the sounds of the forest around him. Hearing had been the next power to manifest itself as he grew toward adolescence. The forest was pretty silent, but he could just barely make out the chirp of crickets some distance away, and the restless movement of some small creatures rustling in the underbrush. Still, he couldn't tell if what he was hearing was merely normal sounds that anyone could hear, if they made the effort, or not. He flashed back on the cell phone ring that he'd heard but Lois hadn't. But that could just've been a case where Lois was distracted. It was something he'd have to keep in mind.
Next, he tested his vision. He wasn't sure if his clarity of vision was a product of his powers returning, or merely that the moon was so bright. It was obvious that he still couldn't see *through* anything.
Another indicator that his invulnerability was coming back was the fact that he could see his breath in the grayness, but only felt the slightest of chills.
Buoyed by the fact that he was alive, and the possibility that his powers might be returning, Clark began to have hope that things just might be breaking in his favor.
He took another deep breath, which didn't hurt quite as much as the last one. First things first. He had to find out where he was, and then figure out what to do next. What had happened to Lois? he wondered. Was she St. John's prisoner, as was Henderson? Before he was shot, Nigel had mentioned that he still needed Lois, so that probably meant she was still okay. He had to believe that. He couldn't let himself believe anything else. Otherwise, what was the point of his survival?
Noticing the faint tinge of the dawn beginning to color the eastern sky, Clark had to wonder how long had he been lying there. Had it just been through the night, or had he been out for days? And if it had been days, what did that mean for Lois? Was she still a captive of St. John, or had he forced her to go back and do his bidding in Metropolis?
What had she thought had happened to him? Most likely she figured he was dead. That would've been the most logical conclusion. But how would that have affected her? Clark knew that Lois cared a great deal for him, but she also cared a great deal for Bill. If St. John still had Henderson to use as leverage against her, Lois would have no choice but to bend to his will.
She might grieve his loss, but Lois was tough. She would do what she had to do until she could find a way to bring St. John down. That was a certainty. She *would* find a way to bring St. John, and his cronies, to justice.
Trying to get back inside the complex wouldn't make any sense. He didn't know if Lois was even still in there. He needed time to heal, and he needed time to gather more information. He didn't even know where he was, exactly. The only logical course of action was to head back to Metropolis, gain the knowledge he needed, and plan a new course of action.
Knowing he had a walk ahead of him, and putting it off any longer would serve no useful end, Clark started moving. Using the coming sunrise as his compass and knowing that the main highway was east and south of the small mountain, he veered slightly right of the apparent dawn and picked up his pace.
***********************
Lois woke to the sounds of movement outside the single door. She gently dislodged the arm that was draped over her shoulder. It was a small bed and she had snuggled into Bill's arms out of necessity... and she needed the comfort his presence gave her. But now it was morning, and it was time for the nightmare to begin in earnest.
Every time she let her memory stray to the awful events of yesterday it was like a knife wound to her heart. It was useless to deny it any longer. She *had* fallen in love with Clark, but now that love was just a painful reminder of what could never be. It almost made her want to give up.
But she would never give up. She was Lois Lane, and she wouldn't let her friend and partner down too. She would find a way to bring Nigel and his goons to justice. She just had to. And that included the creature masquerading as a super hero.
By the time the door opened Lois was on her feet, combing her fingers through her hair. She heard Bill rousing behind her. She gave St. John, and his ever present gargantuan shadow, a glare of hatred, then stepped into the tiny bathroom, closing the door with a definitive thunk.
After taking care of nature's needs, she faced herself in the small mirror over the sink. Not a pretty picture. Her hair was disheveled, and sticking out at all angles. She wet her hands and halfheartedly attempted to smooth it into place. Her eyes were still red and puffy from having cried so much in the last several hours. The sweat shirt she wore was looking quite ragged, and was torn in a few spots. But what drew her gaze like a magnet were the now red-brown stains that covered the front of the once comfortable old shirt.
Her heart clenched yet again as she turned away from the image. She took several deep breaths, forcing herself to focus on the present. Clark was dead. She had to accept that. Whatever she had once thought life might hold for her with him was now over; but she still had a purpose. It was something to concentrate all her efforts on. A reason to get up every morning. Until that day arrived, her every waking moment would be dedicated to freeing Bill, avenging Clark's death, and bringing down St. John and the bogus Superman. Once that had been accomplished, all bets were off.
She stepped out of the bathroom and faced the placid Brit. "I'm ready."
Bill got up and placed a hand on Lois' arm. "Lois, I..."
She shook her head. "Don't worry. I'll be all right." She turned and gave him a warm smile. It felt good to smile but she didn't think she'd be doing too much of it for a long time to come. "Stay strong... for me." He just nodded as she, St. John, and the jolly silent giant left the room.
"We located your vehicle last night," Nigel began, as they moved quickly through the hallways. "I daresay, if we hadn't known you were coming we just might have missed you. I doubt if anyone knew of the existence of that old path since the days the mine was actually in business."
Lois stopped, causing the others to to halt as well. She turned and faced St. John. "Tell me something. How did you get a Superman to kill?"
Nigel looked a bit taken aback by the seemingly anomalous question. "What ever do you mean?"
Lois rolled her eyes. "Look, I know what this place is. I know what it was originally used for. It's obvious that the clown you have dressed up in the skin-tight spandex is some sort of cloned copy of the real thing."
If he was at all surprised by Lois' statement he didn't show it. "Really?"
"Do you deny it?"
Nigel shrugged. "No. I suppose that you've seen enough to realize that the Superman we employ is not the same one who used to fly around Metropolis doing all those good deeds."
"Which brings me to my question." Lois sighed. "I know what kind of man the real Superman was. He'd never agree to work with scum like you - or Luthor. And he'd never, under any circumstances, kill. So how did you do it? You had to use the DNA from the world's most compassionate being, yet the creature you seem to be able to control has none."
Nigel actually chuckled. "My dear, just what *do* you know about clones and the cloning process?"
Lois shrugged. "Nothing."
Nigel nodded. "Frankly, I know little more than that, but what I am told by those who do know is this: a clone is the duplicate of the original in every way - physically. But that which makes us who we are is our brain. More specifically, the knowledge and experiences that we've had from the womb to the grave. Our emotional growth, our sense of values, our hopes and dreams, these all come from our brain's ability to assimilate and store this data as we mature." St. John resumed walking, forcing Lois to follow along.
"A clone is grown as a full adult specimen," he said. "But the brain, or the mind, as you will, is a blank slate. There have been no stimuli to allow it to function beyond autonomous, reflexive actions. We must provide that."
Lois felt confused. She never liked overly-technical explanations for things. They were usually used to mask a simpler truth. "So, what? You program these creatures? Like a computer?"
Nigel inclined his head slightly in deference to her surmisal. "Yes. And a very complex program it was too. It took Mamba many months to finally get it right, but now that we have it, any future clones can be programmed with only slight variations on the original."
"You're cloning more Supermen?"
Nigel chuckled softly. "No, one is quite enough." He raised a brow at her. "I'm just talking hypothetically now."
Lois' brow furrowed. For some reason she didn't feel St. John was telling her the whole truth. "So, are you saying that the clones can never learn on their own?
"Not at all. Once they've achieved their full consciousness, they will progress like any normal person. Let's just say that we've already provided them with those *formative years* that everyone experiences growing up. In a very real sense we've already given them their basic personalities." A very chilling smile frosted the face of Nigel St. John. "Value systems are learned behavior, Detective. We've just given our Superman a set of values that dovetail nicely with our own."
"I would think that someone as powerful as Superman, with the moral compass of scum such as yourself, would be cause for more than a bit of ... apprehension?" She noted the look on Nigel's face. "But you have ways to control the clone, don't you." It wasn't a question.
Nigel extended his hand toward a doorway in front of them. "We have arrived at the exit. This way, Detective."
**********************
Clark swatted at the swarm of black flies that continued to hover around him as he made his way through the brush. His invulnerability might have been mostly back, but it was clear from all the bug bites he was enduring that his aura wasn't all the way back yet.
He'd been walking long enough for the sun to have risen sufficiently to have burned off the early morning mist, and held a promise for a rather warm fall day. He only hoped that he had figured correctly and would find the highway soon.
He shook his head in wonder as he thought back on the events of yesterday. What had they been thinking? It had been a foolish plan, born of desperation. Their chances of pulling off some sort of rescue had to have been next to none. It was a scheme doomed to failure. In fact, part of the reason it had been doomed was because they really hadn't even had a solid plan.
The old air shafts had been a viable way to enter the complex, but once inside what were they to do? They had no idea where Henderson was being kept. Neither he nor Lois had enough familiarity with the facility to have known where they might keep him. Lois had mentioned that, from the video they saw of Bill, she was pretty sure he was being kept in one of the dorm-like rooms that had been used as living quarters by the technical support staff. But there were several dozen of such rooms, in several different parts of the complex. Bill could be in any one of them.
They really needed more information. If his powers were indeed returning that could be a huge advantage to them. But it wasn't like he'd be able to just bust in and corral the bunch of them like he used to be able to do. Even if his powers came back in full, there was still the matter of the clone Superman to deal with.
Clark didn't doubt that his experience would be a help, but he also couldn't be sure that he wouldn't be rusty after all these months without his powers. And there was still the possibility that they wouldn't come completely back, which would put him at a definite power disadvantage against the clone.
The other major stumbling block which still haunted Clark was the fact that the clone seemed to have no moral or ethical values. From what Lois had told him, the bogus super hero had enjoyed taunting Henderson that night, and was deliberately cruel. Add in the fact that the clone obviously had no compunction against killing, made Clark very uneasy.
Killing was never an option for him. Not even to save his own life. There must always be another way. Trouble was, he had no idea what it might be.
The other obvious problem was that he might not even get a chance to square off against his evil doppelganger. He had to assume that St. John had some kryptonite handy somewhere. He'd never risk dealing with a super-powered being without some way to protect himself in the event that the 'colleagues' ever had a falling out.
Which, of course, begged the ultimate question. If by some miracle he and Lois were able to bring these crooks to justice, how does one imprison a Superman? Using kryptonite over an extended time would kill the clone, just as surely as it would kill him. And there was the ethical question of whether or not it would be considered cruel and unusual punishment to continually subject the bogus Man of Steel to the effects of kryptonite. Having felt its painful and debilitating effects on more than one occasion, Clark wouldn't wish that punishment on anyone.
His brooding was suddenly interrupted by a brightening of the area in front of him. The forest seemed to be thinning, and it looked as if there was a break in the trees up ahead. He pushed his pace a bit.
Within a couple of more minutes, Clark, stepped out from under the forest canopy and into the ditch that ran alongside the highway. He'd finally reached his goaL Now all he needed was a ride.
Scrambling down the one side and back up the other side of the ditch, Clark took a moment to get his bearings. He'd been correct in his estimation of the direction he'd needed to go to eventually hit the highway; he just didn't know exactly where he was. Not knowing how far he'd been blown by the cloned Superman, it was hard for him to guess just how far out of Boynton this stretch of highway was.
He shrugged and turned to face the southeast. It really didn't matter where he was, only where he was headed, and that meant Metropolis. The only way he'd be able to discover what happened to Lois was to get back home and see if she'd made it back. If not, he would have to figure out a way to come back and look for her back at the site. He hoped that his powers would make a full recovery before then, because he was really going to need them when he had to come back.
He looked back as he heard a car coming up the highway behind him. Since he was still not able to fly, he was going to have to rely on more mundane methods of transportation. Sticking his thumb out in the classic hitchhiker mode, he tried to catch the attention of the approaching vehicle. It roared by without even slowing down.
Clark grimaced as he watched the sedan disappear into the distance. With a sigh, he began walking along the road's shoulder. He hoped that his luck would change soon, otherwise it was going to be a long walk back to Metropolis.
**********************
Lois had a hard time keeping her attention on the road ahead of her. Luckily there wasn't a lot of traffic to contend with. She was hunched over the steering wheel, trying to focus on her driving, yet still let her mind work on the problems she was going to have to deal with once she got back to Metropolis.
She wasn't supposed to be back from her visit to Smallville for another day, so that would give her some time before she had to go back into work and face more of St. John's manipulations. She supposed she have to deal with the snide comments from her co-workers, and she wasn't looking forward to...
She nearly lost control of the car as her mind seized on the one problem she'd been trying hard not to focus on. What was she going to do about Clark? She was supposed to have been going to Smallville to meet with Clark's parents. They'd made sure that everyone knew about it. What was she going to say to them when it was obvious that Clark wasn't around anymore?
What was she going to tell Perry White? He knew they'd only used the Smallville trip as a cover so they could sneak away to continue their investigation of St. John and try to free Bill. Even though they hadn't given Perry a lot of details on what they'd had planned, he knew that they were heading into a possibly dangerous situation.
Now she had to tell him that his best reporter was dead. Killed because she was stupid enough to think she could put one over on Nigel St. John. She gasped audibly as her thinking took her to the next logical place. What about Clark's parents?
She gripped the wheel tighter. They didn't know her. She'd never met them, but she was sure that Clark had confided some of what they'd been doing to them. How was she to tell them that their son was dead!
Lois tried to take some deep breaths to calm herself. It wasn't working. Perry White, he was the answer there. He most likely knew the Kents, perhaps even had met them at some point. It would have to be Perry who would tell the Kents the bad news.
How far should she go? She would have to tell Perry, but what then? Clark was dead. He wasn't going to be coming back, but what excuse could she give to everyone for his absence? She was a cop. She should just go and report the murder. There were procedures that needed to be followed. That was what she should do, but how could she? She had no idea where Clark's body landed. It could take search parties days to cover the enormous amount of remote territory where his body might have landed. Lois' heart twisted again as she realized that the murder victim she was having her internal debate about.
But, really, what could she do? Other than his absence, she had no proof that a murder had even been committed. She couldn't very well say that he'd been killed by Nigel St. John during their attempted break-in of his secret complex. They'd take her away wrapped in a coat with extra long arms. Besides, St. John still had Bill.
Tears began to fall again which began to obscure her vision. Rounding a bend in the highway, she had to swerve suddenly to avoid clipping a man walking along side the road. She hadn't seen him till she'd been almost on top of him.
She slowed as she glanced in her rear view mirror to make sure the fellow was okay. She shook her head and slowed a bit more as she wiped at her eyes and looked again. Why did the fellow seem so familiar?
She pulled onto the shoulder of the road and turned her head so she could see him more clearly. He'd begun jogging toward her car. Her heart was suddenly in her throat. She was going crazy! Clark's loss had been too much for her. She was hallucinating.
It was a shaky hand that fumbled at latch on her car door. Stepping slowly out, she watched in total bewilderment while the man slowed as he approached. He gave her a slightly confused smile.
"Lois?" he said.
"Clark?" Her voice was barely a whisper. "Clark?" Louder. "Clark!"
Suddenly her feet sprouted wings as she ran toward him. Tears poured down her cheeks, but she could still see his smiling face as he braced for her.
She was still several feet away when she launched herself at him. He caught her and swung her around, his laughter sounding like the sweetest music she'd ever heard.
"Oh, Clark," she sobbed. "I thought you were dead?" She placed her hands on either side of his head. "How are you not dead?" Her whole body shuddered in his arms. "Please tell me you're not a hallucination."
His voice was soft, yet betrayed a sensual edge. "Could a hallucination do this?"
He tilted her chin up with his finger as he lowered his lips toward hers. She lifted her own, eagerly, to meet his. The touch was electric, and comforting at the same time. They stood in each other's embrace at the side of the highway, their lips hungrily seeking the taste of the other. For several moments along that stretch of highway, time ceased, and the world shrunk to encompass just one woman, and one man.
