An unidentified airplane heading for Washington was ominous. There were no records of this commercial jetliner leaving from any airport in the world, and given what had happened six and a half year before, no one was willing to take any chances.

Breathing heavily, Lois tried to ignore the pain in her side. If it hadn’t been for the heavy Kevlar vest, she’d be dead again.

Lois Lane. How often had she despised her parents for giving her that name, no matter how into Superman her parents had been? It hadn’t been worth the years of teasing, the snickers, and the double takes when people saw her name on applications.

It hadn’t helped that she’d been drawn to journalism. The name had made her have to work three times as hard as her colleagues just to be taken seriously. She could have changed it, or chosen a pen name, but by the time it had occurred to her she’d been too stubborn.

Her parents had saddled her with the name and she would live up to it.

She just had to hope that it wouldn’t kill her.

For all that she hated the name Lois Lane, this was a world that desperately needed a Superman.

Lana was going to kill him.

This was going to be the fourth time he was late for dinner in a row, but it was beginning to be hard for him to care.

Glancing around, Clark stepped into an alleyway. Lana would have an aneurysm if she knew he was still doing this, but flying was the one thing he refused to give up. It was too much a part of him, and even with all the risk, it was one of the only things he enjoyed any more.

He rose into the air quickly, but carefully staying slow enough not to create a sonic boom. Hiding what he was had become a part of him a long time ago. Lana’s countless diatribes had pushed the point home.

Yet the longer he went hiding what he was, the more distant he felt from Lana. All she saw was the image of normality that she wanted to see. He felt like he was drowning, and now that she was pushing for marriage, he sometimes found himself wishing he could fly away forever and never come back.

He’d been losing bits and pieces of himself for as long as he knew her, sacrificing the things that were important to him for her sake. It was almost as though she’d been intentionally isolating him from everyone else in order to have him to herself.

The world had changed, and he was going to find out what had happened to it. It wasn’t just the disappearance of Metropolis. It was everything. The attitudes of the air traffic controllers, the threats of blowing an American plane out of the sky. This was a scary new world.

Lois Lane. How often had she despised her parents for giving her that name, no matter how into Superman her parents had been? It hadn’t been worth the years of teasing, the snickers, and the double takes when people saw her name on applications.

It hadn’t helped that she’d been drawn to journalism. The name had made her have to work three times as hard as her colleagues just to be taken seriously. She could have changed it, or chosen a pen name, but by the time it had occurred to her she’d been too stubborn.

Her parents had saddled her with the name and she would live up to it.

She just had to hope that it wouldn’t kill her.

He’d been losing bits and pieces of himself for as long as he knew her, sacrificing the things that were important to him for her sake. It was almost as though she’d been intentionally isolating him from everyone else in order to have him to herself.

A moment later he blinked, his vision returning. He stared below him. Metropolis was gone.

The world had changed, and he was going to find out what had happened to it. It wasn’t just the disappearance of Metropolis. It was everything. The attitudes of the air traffic controllers, the threats of blowing an American plane out of the sky. This was a scary new world.