A/N: I split it in half for easier reading, but this was really part of the last chapter - so without further ado...
[CHAPTER 17]
---
The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. – I Peter 4:7-8
---
Sunday
Clark held Lois against him with one arm while he shaded his eyes with the other. His invulnerability made the sandstorm harmless to him but the little specks of blowing debris were still annoying.
He flew above the guard shack and hovered for a moment so he could listen. When he was confident that their cover was sufficient, he flew on to the mountain, searching for anything that would denote an entrance.
Finally finding what he was looking for at the base of the south face of the mountain, he landed. He placed Lois on the ground and released a deep breath to keep the swirling dust airborne. He turned to face Lois, who was still holding her hands against her eyes.
“Why did we stop before,” Lois asked, daring a peek at him through barely parted fingers. “Is something wrong?”
“I was listening in on the guards. Their cameras were blinded by the storm and they don’t suspect anything suspicious.” He turned to the door. “I can’t say the same for whoever is inside, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t find any cameras or listening devices anywhere within a mile of the mountain, and from the way the guards were reacting, it’s almost as if they don’t even know what they are guarding.”
“They don’t.”
Clark spun around at the sound of the new voice. He frowned as he tried to scan for an intercom system.
“The guards from the Brickwater Group are paid a considerable amount of money to not ask questions.”
“Lana,” Clark said gruffly.
The voice chuckled. “Clark,” it responded, mocking his tone. “Come in.”
The sound of a latch clicked and the door in front of them slid open.
“Clark?” Lois questioned. “What’s happening? Why did you just say her name?”
Clark gazed warily into the newly revealed space in front of them.
“She’s here,” he answered, realizing that Lois hadn’t heard the voice. “She’s inviting us inside.”
Clark gently guided Lois through the door, watching with interest as the door slid shut behind them. The room they were standing in was well lit and reminded him of a hospital. Three hallways branched in different directions away from the room they were in.
Lois lowered her hands from her eyes and looked up at him with raised eyebrows. Understanding the unspoken question, he reached up and pointed to his ear.
“I figured that you were due for a visit but using a haboob for cover? That was quite bold of you.”
Both Lois and Clark turned at the sound, and he stiffened at the sight of the petite woman who was standing about ten feet down the center hallway. Lana Lang had always been very pretty. Her silky hair had once been worn long and straight, but now it was cropped at chin level in a stylish bob. To any other man, she would have been quite attractive, but their history created a stark contrast of her in Clark’s mind.
He felt the muscles in his jaw tighten as she began approaching them. Beside him, Lois was watching the woman with interest while brushing the sand from her clothes.
“I would have never expected that from you,” Lana continued. “But then, I would have never expected you to pull a stunt like *Superman* either.” Her eyes narrowed as she switched her gaze to Lois. “You must be Lois Lane.”
Lana chuckled at Lois’s expression. “Oh, don’t look so surprised. That was an incredible investigative piece that the two of you put out. The Kerth nomination alone was enough to be circulated by the Associated Press.”
Lana stopped at the end of the hall and lifted her hands to gesture toward the other two hallways. “I’m afraid we were forced to downsize a few years ago, so those areas aren’t part of the tour, but if you’ll just follow me…”
“We didn’t come here for a tour, Lana,” Clark said, finally breaking his silence.
Lana turned back to face him. “Right. So, let’s talk about why you *are* here.” She crossed her arms on her chest. “Let me guess. It’s sick, isn’t it? And you are here to try and save it. How tragically poetic.”
Out the corner of his eye, Clark saw Lois stiffen and ball her hands into a fist. “His name is Jory.”
Lana threw her a sympathetic glance. “Jory,” she repeated with the slightest hint of satisfaction. She turned her attention back to Clark. “Didn’t want to share your name, Clark?”
“Can you help him or not?” Clark demanded, refusing to acknowledge Lana’s facetious questioning. He was ashamed that her words held some truth.
Lana flicked a glance at Lois and then gave him a knowing look. “Help him?” she repeated, thoughtfully tilting her head to the side. “Is that what you really want, Clark?”
“What kind of game are you playing, here?” Lois asked incredulously. “Of course it is!”
Lana’s gaze hadn’t wavered from Clark’s eyes during Lois’s outburst.
“Of course it is,” Clark repeated flatly. The dry delivery he gave earned him a look from Lois.
“I can help i… Jory.” With a smirk, Lana turned away from them and began walking down the hall. “You’ll need to see my lab.”
When Lois moved to follow, Clark reached out and stopped her with a hand to her arm.
She looked at him questioningly. “What’s wrong?”
Clark frowned in Lana’s direction. “I don’t know.” He looked back at Lois. “She doesn’t… help people.”
Something about the entire situation made him uneasy. It seemed impossible that Lana was the only person in the entire complex – but he sensed no other person inside but the three of them.
“She brought him to you, “Lois answered under her breath. “She brought him to you when she could have taken everything she knows about you public. She had the science to make him… she must have the science to save him too.”
She placed her hand over the one of his that was on her arm. “I don’t want to trust her either, Clark, but we’re here. What other choice do we have but to follow her?”
With a final imploring look, Lois turned and began walking down the hall. After taking a deep breath, Clark used large strides to catch up with her.
They followed the path of the stark hallway, passing a few doors as they went. “Where did she go?” Lois asked. Lana was no longer in sight.
Squinting, Clark found that he could not see through the walls. “It’s reinforced with lead,” he announced. “I can’t see.”
Before Lois could respond, they reached an open door on the right hand side and entered. The L-shaped lab was large and sectioned off in three areas. The part they had just entered was at the head of the longer straight portion, the short part of the L was hidden around a corner. Lana was standing next to one of the far tables, patiently waiting for them to appear.
Clark glanced around the room at the large canisters lining the work tables and suddenly felt lightheaded.
There were 8 large vats sitting on the tables. They were filled with green colored water… and masses of deformed tissue ranging from fetus to infant sized.
“The rest of your family,” Lana announced as if making an introduction.
Clark moved before he thought about doing it, and in a millisecond, he was glaring down at Lana with a raised hand. Even with all of the anger and hate that was filling his psyche, he couldn’t find the nerve to follow through.
“Still can’t hit a girl?” Lana asked, not even remotely shaken by Clark’s sudden threat of attack.
Gritting his teeth, Clark slowly let his hand fall to his side and stumbled backwards, still shaken by his surroundings.
Lois reached out to steady him, narrowing her eyes in the other woman’s direction. “Maybe he can’t, but I can, you sick…”
Lana raised a hand to stop her from completing the statement. “Maybe it would be best to wait until you’ve got what you came for before starting the name calling.”
Lois turned toward the vats. “What are these, your trophies?”
Lana looked to the vats with what could only be deemed affection. “No, not trophies, Lois. Mistakes – but not in the sense of failure. See, in science, mistakes are the things that lead to advanced technology.”
The largest vat was closest to her, and she reached over to place a hand against it. “These copies were flawed. They weren’t viable,” she said. “But without them, I would not have been able to discover a way of creating the perfect clone.”
“Jory’s not perfect,” Clark entered.
Lana turned away from the vat and faced him. “No, the one you have isn’t.” She gestured for them to follow her and then disappeared around the corner into the part of the room which hadn’t been visible.
Clark exchanged a look with Lois and together they moved to follow. When they rounded the corner, once again, Lana was nowhere to be seen.
“Now where did she go?” Lois asked. She huffily walked over to the door that was embedded in the wall, figuring that Lana had exited through there.
Clark looked around as he moved to join her. This portion of the lab was suspiciously empty.
“What the hell?”
At Lois’s exclamation, Clark looked up.
“It’s locked,” she said, pulling ineffectively on the handle.
“I’ll try,” Clark decided, but after he had taken his second step, he fell to the ground suddenly overcome with pain.
The sound caused Lois to turn from the door. “Clark!” she exclaimed, rushing over to him. To her surprise, laser green lines were streaming from the ceiling between them and the rest of the lab.
“Kryptonite,” Clark muttered through clenched teeth.
Lois crouched next to him and placed a hand against his forehead. It scared her that he had gone pale so quickly. Suddenly standing, she darted toward the green lines. Kryptonite would have no effect on her.
She swore loudly and jerked back when contact with the one of the lines sent a painful shock through her arm up to her shoulder.
“Ooo. That had to hurt.”
Lois massaged her numb arm with the other hand and glared at the woman who had appeared on the other side. “Bitch!”
“And we’re back to name-calling again,” Lana said shaking her head sadly. “I started to warn you that the kryptonite lasers were reinforced with electric current, but somehow this is much more satisfying. Sometimes experience gives the best lesson.” She held up a remote and pressed a few buttons. “Though I *will* warn you that what you just felt was a much tamer voltage than it is now.”
The depressing of the buttons seemed to affect the kryptonite settings as well because Clark suddenly groaned in pain.
Lois stepped as close as she could to the laser fence without touching it. “You said you would help him.”
“I said I *could* help him. There’s a difference. Why would I stop something that I put into motion a long time ago?”
Lois couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “What did you put into motion?”
Lana smiled and tilted her head in mock sympathy. “Come on, Lois. You’re an investigative reporter. You live for the puzzle. Put this one together.”
Lois wanted nothing more than to wipe the smug look from Lana’s face. Staring the other woman down, Lois realized that the game was what Lana was after – so she decided not to play.
Turning her back on Lana, Lois returned to Clark’s side. He was breathing shallowly as if trying to endure the pain. “What can I do?”
“…Too… close,” he managed.
Lois looked around searchingly. “Okay, we need to get you over to that wall.” It was the furthest away they would be able to get. “Can you sit up?”
As she struggled to help Clark into an upright position, Lana began to speak. “It won’t matter, you know. He’ll be better off once he passes out.”
The words only made Lois put more energy into dragging Clark away from the green striped barrier. She definitely didn’t want Clark to pass out.
“He’s going to die,” Lana’s voice announced from behind her. “That’s the plan.”
Lois spun and approached the enclosure again. The fact that this appeared to all be some elaborately planned trap was making her sick to her stomach. “Okay, fine. You want me to put your puzzle together? You knew Jory was a flawed clone when you left him with the Kents. In fact, that’s the reason you sent him. You wanted Clark to become attached to something that would die. So he would feel like you.”
Lana smiled appreciatively. “You’re even better than I thought you would be,” she commented. “I bet you carried the load of the partnership. Was Superman your creation?” Her eyes shifted to look beyond Lois. “Not so super now, is he?”
“Shut up.”
Lana chuckled. “You’re kind of Mother Cub-like, Lois. It’s endearing,” she said with overloaded sarcasm. “You know, I could have killed him before. Did he tell you that story? I was already working for Trask at the time. The man was an idiot, but he had his uses. There we were, a man in search of an alien invasion, and a woman who had all the proof.”
“But you never gave him the proof he was looking for,” Lois inserted.
“Again, he had his uses. I didn’t want Clark exposed. I wanted him to pay. I knew all of his secrets – his desires, his fears. Did he tell you about his fears, Lois? Did he tell you about his greatest one – to be alone? He was always on the outside. The only one of his kind.”
“So you gave him the one thing he’d always wanted… only to slowly take it away.”
“God, you make it sound so melodramatic,” Lana drawled, rolling her eyes.
“So why kill him now?” Lois demanded. “Why now after you’ve gone through all these lengths to keep Clark and your success in cloning him a secret?”
Lana waved dismissively. “New partners, new promises.”
“Lex is only using you.”
“Lois, Lois, Lois. Lex Luthor is a lot smarter than Jason Trask, but his intelligence is still no match for mine. He doesn’t even know half of what I’m doing here. I got him to continue to fund my research and this lab even though I’m the only one here. I give him no reports; there’s no surveillance. I have him eating out of my hand on the fumes of a promise. Luckily for him, it’s about to payoff.”
Lana laughed again. “Men are all the same, hon. They each have a fetish for something, and if you find out what it is that they want – you can get them to do anything.” Lana shrugged affably as if they were having a pleasant chat over noon tea. “Lex’s obsession is power. Superman challenged that.”
“So now he wants *him*,” Lois finished.
“No. Not him. He wants his very own programmable copy.” Lana smirked. “It wouldn’t be good to have the original still flying around, now would it?”
Lois remembered what Lana had said earlier about knowing how to create a flawless clone. If that was what Lana had promised Luthor, the world was in great danger. A rogue Superman was a weapon of mass destruction.
“I just happen to be all out of my stash of alien tissue, so your visit is quite fortuitous. Amazingly enough, the cloning procedure only works with Clark’s DNA. It has something to do with his genetic makeup, and copies of copies deteriorate at cell level. I needed the original.”
The way she was looking longingly at Clark angered Lois. To the madwoman, he only represented the possibility of unlimited experimentation. “What about me? Do I die too? You can excuse your vendetta against Clark because you don’t consider him human. How can you excuse my death?”
Lana’s eyes seemed to harden. “This is a war, Lois Lane. You chose your side the moment you decided to get in bed with the enemy.”
Lois moved dangerously close to the green lines. “When I get out of here,” she said in a low steady voice. “I’m going to kill you.”
Lana looked at her in awe. “Then, I guess I should make sure you don’t get out.” She lifted the remote again and pressed more buttons. Immediately, Clark began to scream.
Lois spun around and moved to his side.
“It won’t be long now, Lois. We’ll talk some more later.”
Lois tried to soothe Clark while watching Lana disappear around the corner. “Stay with me, Clark.” She swore again and grimaced as his face contorted in pain. She could tell that he was trying to hold in the screams.
“Lois… ‘m sorry…” he muttered through gasps. “…Shouldn’t… brought…”
“Don’t even start with that,” she said forcibly, using the sleeve of her shirt to wipe the sweat from his brow. “If you hadn’t of agreed to let me come with you, I would have exposed your secret myself.”
He coughed out a weak laugh. “Prob… true…”
“Of course it’s true.”
Seeing that he was starting to lose consciousness, Lois leapt to her feet and began inspecting the walls for any structural weaknesses. She didn’t know what she would do if she found any, but she looked all the same.
“Hey, Clark, I need you to keep talking to me. Tell me something about you that I don’t know.” When he didn’t respond, she returned to his side and shook him roughly.
He groaned and swallowed. “…K… I had… a dog.”
Nodding, Lois returned to her search. “A dog? What was its name?”
“Shelby.”
“That’s not really a dog’s name, but I like it… I never had a dog, but if I did I probably would have named it Hund.”
“Isn’t… German… for dog?”
“Yeah,” she answered, “but that way he wouldn’t have had an identity crisis.” She frowned as she noticed a light depression in the right-hand wall just in front of the kryptonite beams. Moving quickly to the opposite wall, she realized that there was some kind of sliding partition embedded into it. She smiled when she realized that it was a fire door.
Some of the higher tech laboratories had built-in safety features like a fire room. In this case, the part of the lab they were in could serve as a safe haven in the event of a fire or toxic-based explosion. In an emergency, the fire door could be closed, sealing the bay off from the rest of the room, allowing exit from the door Clark was now leaning against. If she could get that partition to slide shut, it would also seal them off from those deadly poison spreading lasers. She only needed a way to activate the sensors so the blast door would close.
“Tell me something else, Clark.”
“..Ike what?”
“I don’t know, I bet you had a pet cow or two.”
Lois began checking her pockets for anything she could use. The type of mission they had set out on that day had required that they travel light. Their purpose had been to retrieve things of interest, not to bring them. From the left cargo pocket on her pants she withdrew her digital recorder. From the other matching pocket she pulled out her cell phone. That was it. She hadn’t even brought her keys with her – having left them at Clark’s apartment before they flew to Nevada via Superman Express.
Given the remoteness of their location and the fact that they deep inside a mountain bunker, Lois was not surprised that her phone was able to get no signal.
“…Bessie.”
“Did all your pets have people names?” she asked.
“Mom… didn’t like... in… the house.”
On the other side of their kryptonite cage, shelves of chemicals lined the far wall. If she could find a way to break those canisters so their contents mixed, then maybe the resulting fumes would be enough to reach the sensors.
Lois tested the weight of the recorder in her palm and sighed. Even if she could throw it with enough force to travel the required twenty feet to reach the shelves, she would be lucky if more than one bottle broke.
She turned and moved back to Clark’s side and sat down next to him. Lana had claimed that there wasn’t any surveillance but Lois didn’t really put much confidence in anything that woman said. “Do you have anything in your pockets?” she asked in a low whisper.
Clark nodded painfully and used his chin to gesture to his right side. Lois reached in his side pocket and pulled out his cell phone. Even though he paid for extra coverage to support his job as Superman, he couldn’t get a signal either. She put the phone on the floor and stared at the glowing green lines in front of her. If it wasn’t sure to kill her, she would risk third degree burns and run through them.
She remembered the story Clark had told her about the first time Lana had attacked him with kryptonite. He had been immediately incapacitated from the pain, but she wondered how long it had taken for his powers to dissipate. “Do you think you could break those canisters from here?” she asked quietly.
Clark cracked his eyes open to see what she was talking about and shook his head. “Hurts to… move,” he forced out. “Can’t throw… no strength.” His eyes fell shut again and he dropped his head back against the wall.
Lois blew out a sharp breath and glanced down at their collected treasures. A foggy idea began to form in the back of her mind. She began unbuttoning the long-sleeved linen shirt she was wearing. “Clark, I need you to pull yourself together as best you can, okay. I need you to use your powers.”
“Not super,” he grunted. “Lana knew…”
Lois tied a knot in one the shirt sleeves and shifted so she was on her knees beside him. “I don’t give a damn what that woman said,” she replied vehemently. Checking herself, she lowered her voice again. “Look at me.”
He drew in a haggard breath and slightly opened his bloodshot eyes.
“What gives you strength comes from here,” Lois said, placing a hand on his chest. “She expects us to just give up and die, but that’s not who I am.” She gave him a leveling look. “That’s not who you are either. You’ve been laying down too long, Clark. It’s time to fight.”
His eyes slipped shut again but the flaring of his nostrils told Lois that he was responding. Nodding curtly, she pulled her hand from his chest and reached for her cell phone, openong the back panel so she could remove the battery. “Just one little blast of heat vision, okay? You can do that.”
She dropped the battery into the shirt sleeve and repeated the actions with Clark’s phone and the digital recorder. She then rolled the shirt into a ball around the three batteries and reached to lift Clark’s arm around her shoulders. “Come on, Clark. Fight it. Help me.”
“Okay.” His breathing was still shallow and his face contorted in pain, but the determination she was looking for was apparent.
Together they crawled toward the fence. Lois watched Clark’s face closely during their slow advance, and when they were as close as she dared to go before his concentration would succumb to the pain, she stopped. She slid the bundle through the laser lines and watched as it stopped midway between them and the canisters on the far wall.
“Okay, Clark,” she said, turning and putting a hand against his face. “One blast. Just hit the shirt and the batteries will blow.”
Nodding, Clark opened his eyes. Lois watched as he frowned and affixed his gaze to the shirt but nothing happened. Silently, she began praying. They just needed enough for the shirt to light. It was too bad she hadn’t brought any perfume along… or better yet, liquor. A shot of tequila would be nice right about now.
Clark released a loud groan and collapsed; his energy and ability to fight the pain finally spent. Lois shifted quickly to keep his head from smacking against the floor and breathed a sigh of relief. He had done it. The shirt was on fire.
Lois knew the explosion would be happening soon, so she stood and grasped Clark under the shoulders to pull him away from the cage. Now that he was unconscious, though, his dead weight was almost impossible to move. She had only gotten a mere two feet when the makeshift bomb went off.
As she had planned, the blast door’s sensors activated and the partition began sliding out, but not before a second explosion sent shards of glass flying through the air. The chemical bottles were reacting to the sudden heat from the battery explosion.
Lois had crouched to shield Clark’s face with the first blast, so her back was exposed to the glass projectiles resulting from the second. The yellow tank top she had been wearing under the long sleeved shirt did not offer much coverage from the shrapnel, but she felt lucky that the only area that got hit was behind her left shoulder. It hurt like a mother, but she would live.
She let out the a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding when the fire door finally slid home, effectively cutting them off from the sickly green glow that had meant Clark’s death. Another muffled explosion sounded and Lois glanced down at Clark. She decided that it was probably for the best that he was unconscious. Perhaps it would help him regain his strength.
“What have you done?!”
Lois looked up to see the face of an irate Lana Lang in the small window embedded in the rear door. She stood and rushed to the door. “Let us out, Lana!”
Lana continued as if she hadn’t even heard Lois’s demand. “You stupid woman. Do you know what you’ve done?! *Everything* is in that room. Everything!”
Lana stared at Lois through the glass and Lois could have sworn that she was about to witness the spontaneous combustion of a human female. She flinched involuntarily when Lana suddenly hit the window with her hand.
“Lana!” Lois screamed as the other woman spun on her heel and walked away. “Open this door!”
Lois pulled on the handle a few times before giving up and sliding to the floor. She tentatively tried to brush the tiny glass fragments from her shoulder as she tried to think of what to do now.
The sound of a huge explosion shook the room and Lois jumped to her feet. It occurred to her that Lana must have opened the main door to the laboratory. Having been sealed off from the rest of the complex, the fire in the lab would have eventually died out after it consumed everything in the room and run out of oxygen. Opening the door would have created a backdraft, adding additional fuel and power to the fire.
“Stupid woman,” Lois muttered, returning the insult that had earlier been bestowed upon her.
In her state of mind, Lana would have been trying to save her precious projects… and would have only made the problem worse.
Lois saw flames rising outside the window Lana had just been glaring through and knew that the entire place was about to catch fire. The cage that had been meant for their deaths was now a safe haven in the middle of Dante’s raging inferno.
~.~
The sound of rumbling machinery pulled Clark back to awareness. He opened his eyes to locate the source of the sound and saw that a wall partition was slowly sliding open. Turning his head, he noticed Lois sitting against the rear wall. Her legs were drawn up against her chest and her elbows were on her knees. Her attention was on the moving wall as well.
“Lois?”
Her gaze flicked to meet his. “Hey, how are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been run over by a truck. How long was I out?”
She shifted stiffly and pushed herself to her feet. “About six hours.”
To Clark, she seemed oddly subdued. “What happened?” he asked, groaning as he struggled to sit up. Every muscle in his entire body screamed in protest to the movement.
Lois nodded to the moving wall and he turned to see that its opening revealed a blackened room beyond. “The lab blew up,” she informed him.
Clark blinked and thought about what had happened just before his world had gone black. “The batteries? It worked?”
“A little better than expected, but yeah,” she replied, walking over to him. “Can you get up?”
After taking a deep breath, he attempted to shift his weight around so he could stand, but his legs were as weak as wet noodles. Lois stepped close to help his stabilize his balance and he noticed her grimace in pain when he swung an arm around her shoulders. Frowning, he tilted his head so he could look. The back of the shoulder his hand had grazed was streaked with dry blood.
“It’s okay,” she said, cutting off the question that was forming on his lips. “Just a little glass. Once I can get it cleaned, it’ll be fine.”
He looked at her with doubtful concern.
“It’s okay,” she repeated. “Come on. I want to get out of here.”
As they shuffled toward the part of the lab they had been cut off from moments before, Clark was careful not to put any pressure on her wounded shoulder.
“You told me that your powers were sapped by Kyrptonite exposure, but how long does it last?” Lois asked.
Clark shook his head. “I guess it depends on how long the exposure lasts,” he offered, trying to think about it. “The time at the gorge lasted about a week. I remember because it was after Pete’s funeral… I got so angry that day that I…” He trailed off and swallowed. “And then the time with Lana… It was much worse. I was under longer that time and my body had to heal from her impromptu surgery. I’d guess that it was about four months from the time I regained consciousness to the time I could do anything remotely super.”
They carefully picked their way through the charred debris and broken glass as they moved through the lab. It was no longer recognizable as the lab they had first entered. The walls were blackened with smoke and soot, and the cabinets that were still standing had their doors blown open. Not one of the vats that had lined the tables was intact; the contents spilled and destroyed.
The sight of an abandoned shoe near a burnt work table caused Clark to stop in his tracks. Pulling away from Lois, he stumbled over to the table and leaned against it heavily. Moments later, Lois was behind him with a hand on his shoulder.
“There was nothing you could have done,” she said softly.
Clark leaned down to place a hand against the neck of the woman lying on the ground. As he had suspected, there was no pulse. With a sigh, Clark averted his eyes and saw that there was something under Lana’s hand. When he slid it out, he found that he was looking at a fire damaged palm-sized computer of some sort.
“After the explosions started, she came back in,” Lois explained. “It would have been contained but she opened the door.”
Clark was having trouble reconciling his feelings at that moment. Lana Lang had tortured him and had tried to kill him twice. She had manipulated him and had played God with the life of a little boy she had created with the intent that he should die. She was a villain, and yet she had still been a person… and had once been his friend.
“There was nothing you could have done,” Lois repeated.
He met Lois’s gaze and something in it revealed that she was sharing in his feeling of guilt. He returned his attention to the PDA, picking it up and studying it carefully. “This couldn’t have been what she came back for,” he said.
Lois took it from him and looked at it herself. “I don’t know. It could be where she kept all of her notes.”
“Yeah, but that looks like something you would keep with you, not something you would leave in a lab.” Clark looked up at the cabinet that was hanging precariously on the wall. Before, he had assumed that the door had been blown open by the explosions, but now he noticed that there was a key in the lock.
Standing, he took a closer look. The cabinet had been a refrigerated container and inside he found around a dozen broken vials. Whatever had been contained inside of them had burnt to nothingness. He reached in and pulled out one of the broken tubes. Enough of the burnt label was left that he could make out the words ‘Vitality Catalyst.’
Clark dropped his head as he used the support of the work table to step back to Lois’s side. Once again, his search for answers would be left unrequited. “How about we work on a way to get out of here?”
She looked at him sympathetically but didn’t comment on his demeanor. “Sure.”
Again, Lois offered her support as they made their way out of the lab and into the hall. As they moved toward the main entrance, they took enough time to rummage through the destroyed contents of rooms that had been locked and closed earlier. There was a sleeping and bathing area, a kitchenette, a place that obviously acted as Lana’s private office, and even a recreation room, but none of them offered anything more promising than what had been in the lab.
Finally, they made it back to the main area, and just like the hall they had just left, the walls were charred. Clark realized that the air was surprisingly clear. “Where’s the smoke?”
“My guess is that whatever systems they had in place for fire control would have flushed outside air in once the flames had been extinguished.”
Clark imagined how it would have appeared to people outside to see a nondescript mountain in the middle of Nevada suddenly start to spew smoke.
“We should try these other areas,” Lois said, gesturing to the other two hallways.
“Lana said they weren’t used.”
“I know, but maybe they lead to another way out. Maybe someone was once working on an advanced technology ATV or something. I mean, how are we supposed to get past those guards and back to civilization now?”
Clark was about to respond when the main door to the complex began to slide open. Quickly, ignoring the painful protest the movement elicited from his body, Clark ushered Lois into the darkness of the furthest hall. His jaw dropped when the door finished opening and two men stepped through.
“What the hell happened here?” the bald one demanded of his taller companion.
Clark glanced at Lois. “Lex Luthor,” she mouthed with wide eyes.
They heard Lex swear as he and his companion moved down the hall.
After exchanging a shared look with Lois, Clark hurriedly moved across the room and out the door. Lois was right behind him as he ducked through the open space and into the shadows outside. In the time they had been inside the mountain, the day had turned to night. The only thing that offered light aside from the stars in the sky was the idling chopper that was sitting 50 feet away from them.
The helicopter’s pilot was standing outside of the rig smoking a cigarette.
In the darkness, Clark felt Lois lean close. “I see our ride.”
Clark frowned in her direction but she shook her head at his oncoming protest. She was already backing away from him with a finger to her lips. A few seconds later, she had blended into the darkness and he was bemoaning the loss of his enhanced vision. Feeling helpless, he resigned to trust her. Her wits had saved his life that night.
After spending ten minutes flicking anxious glances at the main entrance, he saw the pilot jump to attention, obviously having heard something. The man dropped his cigarette to the ground and moved his hand to his back, most likely reaching for a weapon, but before he completed the move, he fell to the ground limply.
A second later, Lois appeared and waved for him to join her.
---
End of Part II
