“I can’t believe he pulled us off the serial murder case for this!” Lois said.
For once, it was Clark who ignored her. He was looking forward to being officially back in Smallville. He saw his parents quite often, but his visits with old friends had to wait for his official visits.
“Murder, mayhem, skulls cracked open like walnuts…and he has us wandering around in the middle of small town America looking for soil contamination!” Lois shook her head. “He’s losing it, Clark. The man is officially out of his mind.”
Clark glanced over at Lois and said “We haven’t had a single lead on the case in more than a week. Maybe looking into something a little different will let us get back to it with a fresh attitude.”
He pulled to a stop, and watched the train pull by.
Lois fidgeted. She’d always been high strung, but it wasn’t until he’d gotten her out into the silence of the country that he’d begun to notice just how high strung she was. She’d stick out like a sore thumb in Smallville.
He couldn’t be more proud than to be seen with her.
“How long is this going to take?” She asked irritably.
“As long as it takes,” Clark said.
“When did they start teaching the art of Zen in the barns of middle America?”
“We’ve got TV and everything,” Clark said. “Have I told you about the corn festival?”
The train rumbled on.
******************
Trask glared at the man in the horn rimmed glasses.
“He’s not one of your freaks,” Trask muttered sullenly. “You’ve got no right to come here.”
“So he’s what? An alien?” The other man chuckled. “Have you ever heard of Occam’s razor?”
Trask shook his head stubbornly. “I’ve got work to do.”
"We've been tolerant...given you a little extra leash to engage in these witchhunts of yours. We'd hoped you might dig up a few prospects. That's over now."
Trask shook his head. "You come here and try to tell me that?"
He gestured and a dozen men filled the room, encircling them all.
The man in the glasses gritted his teeth. It took the Haitian ten minutes to erase the minds of everyone, and by that time Trask was long gone.
***************
It was stunning to realize just how much he’d come to take his powers for granted. Being able to see everything, hear everything for miles around…it had taken him years to learn to filter it all out. Part of his wanderings through the rural parts of the world had been to avoid the maddening din of the big city.
Now it was as though he was viewing everything from the bottom of a deep pool. The sounds were muffled and strange, his vision was blurred, and all he could think about was that for some reason, paper cuts really hurt.
It was Lois who noticed them first. She blinked for a moment, then stiffened.
Clark turned to look.
“Isn’t that the Chinese guy we saw back in New York?”
Clark shook his head. “He’s Japanese.”
“What’s he doing here?” Lois hissed. “Do you think he’s following us?”
“Why don’t we ask him?”
They both rose and approached the other table. The two men were both speaking in rapid Japanese. Clark could tell that Lois couldn’t understand a word.
“Konichiwa,” he said quietly.
The older, thinner man looked up at him without recognition, but the younger man stared up at him and grinned.
“*I saw you before!*”
He fumbled through his small pack and pulled out a comic book. He flipped through the pages until he found the one he wanted.
There on the page was the scene of their first meeting. He and Lois standing bemused as the Japanese man shouted at the sky.
Before he could speak, Lois grabbed up the comic. “I recognize this! It’s that painter…Mendez.”
She flipped through the pages, then said quietly, “This was published a month before we first saw this guy.”
“Why are you here?” Clark asked quickly.
“We are here to find Superman and help him save the world!” The younger man’s voice was enthusiastic, but his friend looked mildly apologetic.
“Save the world from what?” Clark’s throat felt dry. The idea that the world might be endangered at a time when he might never get his powers back again was terrifying.
“I’ve been to the future. Metropolis is going to explode in six weeks unless we do something to stop it.” For once the younger man’s enthusiasm was muted.
“So you can bend time and space?”
The younger man nodded enthusiastically. “I can’t control it all the way yet. But I will train hard!”
“I know Superman,” Clark said.
Lois looked suspiciously up from the comic book she was reading. “Superman? What about Superman?”
The word was the same in both languages.
“He needs to get in contact with Superman. He says Metropolis is going to explode in six weeks.”
“Like the mural on the Mendez guy’s floor?” Lois asked sharply.
“I thought you didn’t believe he could…”
“He had us down to the tacky tie you were wearing that day, and he printed it a month before it ever happened. I’m not galactically stupid Clark.”
Hiro was staring out the window, entranced at something Clark could not see.
He looked up and blinked. If he wasn’t mistaken, Nathan Petrelli was outside staggering around in his bare feet and pajamas. He was shirtless as well, and there weren’t any cars in sight.
Before he could open his mouth, he felt something poking him in the back. A quiet voice said “If you don’t want me shooting up this store, you’ll come with us.”
Clark felt chilled as he recognized the voice of Jason Trask. Although he suspected it was a bluff, he couldn’t risk it.
A second person had stepped behind Lois.
Hiro was still staring out the window and his friend had already left for the car. No one else in the diner seemed to notice a thing.
By the time Clark was shoved into a van, he saw the younger Hiro talking animatedly with Nathan Petrelli.
He hadn’t even had time to give him his number.
**************
Clark staggered up out of the water, and he stiffened as he heard Trask coming up from behind him. He started to turn, feeling as though he was moving in slow motion as the gun raised to fire.
The sound of the gunshot shocked him, as did the blankness of Trask’s expression as he slid into the water.
He blinked, and saw that a man he didn’t recognize stood by the side of an unmarked car, a pistol raised and pointed.
The man’s horn rimmed glasses glinted in the sunlight.
As Rachel Harris pulled up in her police cruiser, a dark skinned man stepped out of the vehicle and touched her on the shoulder.
“Pardon my friend,” the man with the horn rimmed glasses said. “He’s mute.”
Clark lay on the ground gasping for air as the Haitian helped his mother and father out of their bonds, stumbled against Lois and came to help him to his feet.
The Haitian stared at him for a long period before shaking his head.
The Haitian leaned forward, then said “You remember nothing of this.”
Shortly afterwards, the Haitian and the man with the horn rimmed glasses were gone.
And somehow, everyone seemed to assume that it was Rachel who’d shot Trask.
Without his powers, Clark didn’t see the point in arguing.
***************
The Haitian drove as the man in the horn rimmed glasses pulled a small box from underneath the seat.
He opened it, the green glow from inside casting strange, unearthly lights on his face.
“Let’s get this to the lab as soon as we can.”
He leaned back with satisfaction. If there were problems with the man in the red cape, with any luck, they’d be ready for him.
Extraction would be easy.
