“It explains a lot,” he said finally.
“What?” Lois asked.
“Why you are all so damaged.”
Instantly she bristled. “We aren’t…”
“I feel damaged,” he said quietly. “Just from watching this.”
Despite the part of her that said it was impossible for this to be his first time to see the horrors of the terrorist attacks, Lois felt a moment of sympathy.
While she’d been in the middle of the ashes, struggling to breathe and do whatever she could to report on the situation and help however she could, Lois had felt numb, almost detached. It hadn’t been until later, when she’d finally come home, that the pain had finally begun.
She’d stood in the shower until the water had run cold trying to scrub the accumulated ash and muck that had covered her entire body. No matter how she’d scrubbed she hadn’t felt clean, and finally she’d just stood and let the water run over her as the horror of the day had finally struck home.
She hadn’t felt clean even after getting out of the shower.
Sometimes she still didn’t.
“We’re under attack,” she said quietly. “Every day they push just a little bit farther, and we have to push back. Sometimes we lose a little of ourselves in the process.”
“How long before you lose everything that makes you different from them?” he asked.
“We’re not there yet,” Lois said.
“From where I’m sitting, it doesn’t look like you have far to go. I’ve read the Washington Post. Secret prisons? Holding people without due process or access to lawyers? This is America?”
“Nobody is happy about it,” Lois said. “But what choice do we have?”
“They could give your sister access to a lawyer,” Clark said.
“I’m working on that now,” Lois said.
The difficulty was contacting a judge without violating the non-disclosure agreement. Lois was going to do everything she could to get her sister out.
“What about the other two hundred passengers?” he asked. “What about the ones who don’t have family members standing up for them, or whose families don’t even know they are out there?”
“According to you, they aren’t really their families, are they?” Lois asked. “If I’m to believe you, that means that Lucy isn’t really my sister…she just happens to come from another universe and look exactly like her.”
“You share the same genetics,” Clark said. “Effectively, it’s no different.”
“If I believed your story, that would mean that Lucy…my Lucy really did die in the accident that killed my parents. It would mean that the girl in the car wasn’t just some homeless person they’d picked up on the way back.” Lois shook her head and stepped away from him. “I’m not ready to believe that just yet.”
They were both silent for several long moments, and it was Clark who looked away first.
Slipping off the couch, he began gathering the DVD’s and tapes scattered around. “I’m sorry I went through your things.”
As many times as her possessions had been pawed through over the last few days, Lois wasn’t inclined to quibble over a few discs and movies.
“There’s nothing here that really matters to me,” she said.
It surprised her a little, the moment she said it. It was true. Her life had been empty since her parents had died. Losing her family had left a void in her life, one that had already begun on the day she’d been on that street in New York and had the foundations of her life begin to crack.
She’d had friends who hadn’t made it.
Those two defining events in her life had led her to where she was today: an empty shell living alone in a home that wasn’t really a home.
“I barely stay here four months out of the year,” she hurried to explain.
“So why pay for such a nice place?”
Lois stared out the window at the view. She could see the Potomac River in all its glory. Washington had laws preventing high rise buildings so that the monuments and the city itself wouldn’t be obscured. This meant that for someone living right across the river in Arlington, you could see the whole city spread out beneath you.
“My parents were proud that I’d made something of myself,” she said. “They liked to tell everyone how successful I was. They saw this place before they died, and they were happy for me.”
In the emptiness there were always ghosts.
“Lois,” he said.
His voice was oddly deeper, and when she turned to face him she felt the urge to laugh.
If he’d had glasses, he’d have pulled them off.
“If you are going to tell me you really are Superman, save it,” she said. “This is the real world, not a movie.”
She shook her head. She must be more jet lagged than she’d thought. She’d actually allowed the thought of alternate worlds to cross her mind once or twice.
He shook his head and deflated a little. “I’m not Superman,” he said. “But there are things I can…”
His head snapped around and he said, “Are you expecting company?”
Lois shook her head.
“Well you are about to have it,” he said.
He stood up quickly and moved through the doorway to her bedroom.
A moment later her door rattled as someone on the other side pounded heavily on it.
Lois moved quickly to grab for her purse. She grabbed the wrapped wallet and tossed it into her bedroom, where she could see Clark standing indecisive.
“I found this,” she said. “It’s yours.”
“Open up,” the voice on the other side. “We have a warrant!”
Lois approached the door, keeping her new pepper spray in her hand. She peered through the peephole and barely kept herself from jumping back when it rattled again.
There wasn’t any way for Clark to get out. Lois would have to hope that whatever they were looking for didn’t include her bedroom.
If it did, she’d just have to think of some way to explain why she had a fugitive in her apartment.
Slipping the chain in the door, she opened it cautiously.
“I’d like to see that warrant,” she said.
The men on the other side were wearing black suits. None of them were Agent White. One of them was oddly familiar.
One man handed her the warrant, which she scanned quickly.
“I’d like to have my lawyer look over this,” Lois said.
“We’ll break your door down,” the man on the other side said. “And then we’ll lead you out of the building in handcuffs. I’m sure the other news networks are going to love getting pictures of you for the evening news.”
Lois undid the chain and opened the door.
“What’s this all about,” she asked as she stepped back.
The men stepping through the door were scanning the apartment already, staring at every small detail as though attempting to commit each one to memory. Maybe they were.
“A few days ago, in the interest of national security, you were placed under surveillance as a person of interest. Shortly afterwards, the equipment began to malfunction. We’d be very interested in knowing how you knew that equipment was there and how you managed to disable it without showing as much as a single frame on tape.”
Lois shrugged. “Maybe someone was asleep at the wheel. It’s hard to get good help these days.”
The man in charge, a tall dark haired man gestured to the others. “Fan out. Find whatever she’s hiding.”
Lois said, “I’m calling my lawyer.”
“Not right now you aren’t,” the man said.
“Where’s Agent White?”
“He’s been transferred,” the man said. “He was getting a little too close to the case.”
“I’m surprised you even bothered with a warrant,” Lois said as the men began to ransack her apartment.
One of them went into her bedroom and she tensed. However, other than the sounds of things being flipped over, there was no sign of conflict from the other room.
“There’s no sign of any of the equipment,” The man coming from her bedroom said, “She got it all.”
“So how did you do it?” he asked. “There were cameras on the front door, and none of them showed a thing. Just a flicker and that was it.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Lois said, wondering exactly how Clark had managed it. He never seemed to have any trouble getting into her apartment, despite multiple locks she’d installed herself. Of course, neither had the government.
“We already found them in the trunk of your car,” he said.
Lois shrugged. “Someone was illegally surveilling me. I was going to take the evidence to the police.”
“If that’s true, then you disturbed a crime scene.”
“Since you’ve said it was you doing the surveilling, I guess I don’t have to worry about why someone put a camera in my shower,” Lois said sweetly. “You know, I’ve been thinking about writing an article about governmental abuses of power. I wonder how the public will feel about being spied on in their own bathrooms?”
“You visited a number of people suspected in an ongoing national security matter. As I see it, either you are involved or someone in our agency leaked the information to you.” The man leaned forward slightly. “Did Agent White give you the list of names?”
“What list of names?” Lois asked. “You mean the people you are running DNA tests on? The retinal scans didn’t convince you?”
It was a stab in the dark, but the slight change in the man’s expression told her she was right.
“You have people with the same fingerprints, retinal scans and DNA as people already in the contiguous United States, and you don’t think that’s newsworthy?”
“Any information Agent White gave you is not printable under the conditions of your nondisclosure agreement.”
“I didn’t get the information from Agent White,” Lois said, finally realizing where she knew the man from. “Actually, I got the information from you.”
Scowling, the man said, “There’s no point in lying. If you don’t cooperate, I’ll…”
“I’m not lying, Agent Randal.” At the expression on his face Lois grinned. He hadn’t introduced himself, but she’d seen his name tag and had remembered the name. “You were in Walter Reed hospital talking on the telephone about there being two Lieutenant Evans, fingerprints matching and you complained to someone…a shorter man, heavyset man about him even being there.”
The blood ran from Agent Randal’s face, and a vindictive part of Lois wanted to dance with glee.
“I’ll be happy to talk to your superiors about how pleased I am to have had your cooperation.”
“That wasn’t a public conversation!” he said in a low tone.
Lois shrugged. “You had it in public place. I didn’t exactly have to break into your house and listen at your door.”
Angrily, Agent Randal grabbed her purse from the desk and handed it to one of the men. “Go through it.”
They began pulling things from her bag, and Lois was glad she’d given Clark his wallet back.
Pulling her satellite phone out, one of them said, “She’s pulled the battery.”
“I’m trying to duck my publisher,” Lois said, lying. In actuality she knew about the government’s ability to turn cell phones into portable microphones without ever having to touch the phone. It had been used against organized crime. All of her messages went to voice mail, and she checked regularly when she wasn’t saying anything that she didn’t want anyone to hear.
It was a good thirty more minutes before they were satisfied, and this time they took her laptop and film equipment too.
Lois was suddenly glad she’d had the foresight to mail herself copies of her notes from several different drop boxes.
As she saw them leave, she discretely pulled the battery from her satellite phone and then locked her door. She wondered if they’d added more bugs while they were going through her things. She’d look for them later.
First though, she had to find Clark and get him out. However he’d managed to hide in her small apartment, he wouldn’t be able to do it forever.
A quick search showed no sign of him. The agents had tossed her place just as thoroughly as they had the last time.
There was literally no place to hide, and yet somehow he’d vanished.
As the wind outside began to pick up, Lois’s window began to whistle. Although it had once been openable, because the building had been built before central air had become ubiquitous, the window had been sealed before she had come to live there.
It had been air tight in the past, and now it was whistling. Unlike her living room, which had a single large picture window, her bedroom had three smaller windows.
The window closest to her bed was whistling, and Lois approached it with a feeling of dread in her stomach. She lived on the sixteenth floor. Although there were projections and cornices outside the window in plentiful supply, only someone insane would even try to hide.
As the window slid open a little under her hand, Lois let out a breath.
The sort of man who would jump out of a moving plane wouldn’t let a little something like possible death slow him down.
She opened the window further.
“Clark?” she called out softly, not wanting to alert anyone listening through whatever bugs they’d left in her bedroom.
There was no reply.
