Does One Kiss Change Everything?

“Put this on,” he told her.

He dropped the sweatshirt down on the floor next to her. Lois Lane looked up, the side of her face throbbing from where her assailant had knocked her unconscious elbow first. She couldn’t see the bruise but she could feel the pulse of burst vessels in the tender flesh of her cheek. Opening her eyes, her vision took a moment to adjust to the dim lighting before she saw his silhouette standing a few feet from her.

When she tried to push herself up from the dust covered floorboards, the small fibers of wood bit into her skin, reminding Lois that this SOB had knocked her out while she was still in her towel and had deign to leave it behind. She was naked in front of him. That thought alone polarized her desire to move and faster than she had any right to expect, her arm shot out and grabbed the garment on the floor.

“What do you want?” She growled through grit teeth, shaking off the disorientation.

He didn’t speak at first but instead pulled up a chair and sat down. “Nine bodies before you and not one of them survived long enough to even manage a call to the paramedics. So I guess the 64,000 dollar question is, how did you survive?”

“You got sloppy,” she bit back.

“Don’t be testy,” he warned with enough menace in his voice to send chills down Lois’ spine without having anything to do with her state of undress. “I’m asking again, how did you survive?”

“I don’t know,” Lois snapped slipping the sweatshirt on. It barely covered her. “You left an air hole for us to breathe.”

“No I didn’t,” he said firmly. “I planned on killing you. Now why would I go do something so stupid like leave an air hole?”

Good question, Lois found herself asking as she glared at him. Now that her equilibrium had been regained, she was observing everything. It looked like she was in what looked like a basement. Dank, stale air surrounded her and through the dim light of the one light bulb overhead, she could see odd shapes that indicated the usual junk people stored down there. Old furniture, dying electronics and other things that had passed their prime was stashed away for no other reason than it was out of sight.

Like her.

Where was Clark? She asked herself. He had gone straight through the floorboards and the space between the ceiling and the floor was a good 14 feet. He could have been hurt badly. Concern for him flooded her being, overriding even her own fears for herself. It made her angry and she looked up at her attacker, eyes blazing with unconcealed fury.

“So now what, you keep me down here until you get your answer?” Lois demanded, her voice sharp and cutting.

“Not at all,” the man retorted. “Just until I figure out if you’re lying or not. Then you’re going to keep that appointment I made for you in the cemetery. I want to know if you manage the same trick twice.”

****************


Searching the Talon and the surrounding area had yielded nothing except to drive Clark into a state of near panic. However, the intruder had escaped with Lois, he had done so quickly and without being seen by anyone. Clark couldn’t even begin to imagine the basis of his powers. It was as if he was able to manipulate the mass of an object so that it could pass through another. It was the only explanation that Clark could think of to explain how he had managed to send both of them into the ground like they were in quick sand.

Coming to the conclusion he was going to need help, Clark grabbed Lois’ laptop and raced to Metropolis and the Daily Planet. He had to find their meteor freak and prayed that Lois’ investigation into the murders at the cemetery would reveal some clue that would lead him to her. As he ran faster than he had ever pushed himself, creating a whirlwind behind him as he streaked across the landscape, creating periodic explosions of sound whenever he breached the threshold of the sound barrier, Clark tried not to worry.

Lois could take care of herself, Clark reminded himself. Unlike Lana, that was the one thing he could be confident of. Hell, there were times she had even came to his rescue. The woman was resourceful, a product of her father’s strict military background. All of Lois’ rougher qualities could be attributed to the General’s influence but it also made her the most capable woman he had ever met. She’ll be fine, he told himself. She had to be.

He’d be no good to her if he didn’t believe that.

**************


“Okay I think I got it,” Chloe Sullivan exclaimed triumphantly after she and Clark had spent the better part of an hour trying to hack into Lois’ laptop.

Apparently working at the Inquisitor had made the budding journalist a little paranoid and they had fired up the laptop only to be confronted with a rather formidable password protection program that was not responding to Chloe’s usual hacking skill. After trying every permutation from ‘Ollie’ to ‘Lucy’ and even ‘Smallville’, Clark was ready to put his foot through the thing. What was even more infuriating was everyone in the Daily Planet newsroom seemed to be going about their business, oblivious to the fact that a woman was in grave danger.

“I hope so,” Clark grumbled, “because I’m not ready to go back to her place and tearing through her stuff trying to find a password.”

“It’s a long shot,” Chloe confessed and started to type.


S-H-E-L-B-Y


ACCESS DENIED

“Damn!” Chloe cursed.

“Wait,” Clark said looking at those words as a stray, absurd thought flashed through his mind. However, knowing Lois, absurd was just thing she’d go for just to make a joke at his expense, especially when he didn’t know about it. Rolling his eyes because she was just being Lois, Clark frowned and suggested, “try Clarkie.”

“Clarkie?” Chloe threw Clark an amused glance as he leaned over her shoulder.

“It’s what she used to call Shelby,” he grumbled.

“Okay,” Chloe tried not to laugh and started to type. “Clarkie, it is.”

Suddenly, the password protect screen dropped and Lois’ files lay open for their perusal. “Nice call Clark,” she sniggered.

“Thanks,” he said shrugging it off as he was reminded of just another reason of why he wanted Lois back so badly. Kiss her or strangle her, the jury was still out on which was first. “So is there anything on this story of hers?”

Chloe was already shifting through the directory called Story Research and immediately called up all the information she had gathered on the disappearances on the numerous victims.

“Wow she really did her homework on this thing,” Chloe remarked seeing all the faces and news clippings Lois had meticulously collated. In fact, as Chloe perused Lois’ work, she had to admit Lois was really coming into her own as a journalist. If she ever gave up the Inquisitor, there was a good chance she could make it as a legitimate newswoman. “Names, dates of disappearances, next of kin and even the police missing persons reports.”

“Seems like the police were starting to think that this was the work of some kind of serial killer,” Clark pointed out, noticing the sheriff’s office making comment on one front page.

“Not according to Lois,” Chloe replied, opening a word pad page and seeing a number of bulleted points. “She actually thought it might be a little more specific than that. She keeps referring to something called the ABC murders.”

“What?” Clark stared at her puzzled. “What does that mean?”

“Hang on,” Chloe said switching directories and finding the file that Lois had marked as ABC. “Clark, it’s the synopsis of an Agatha Christie book.”

Clark brows went up in surprise, unaware that Lois was into that sort of literature however, when Chloe opened up the file, he began scanning the content as super speed.

“It’s about a series of murders that appeared to be random at first,” he started explaining. “They look like a part of a serial killing, with all the victims names following the alphabet, one after the other but the detective in this thing, figures out that victim no.3 wasn’t random at all. In fact, it looks like the whole reason for the murders was so that the third victim’s kid could collect a huge inheritance or something like that.”

“And making it look like a random killing would take the suspicion off that’s its murder for profit,” Chloe concluded, looking up at Clark with a dark expression. “Damn that’s cold Clark.”

“But it makes sense,” Clark agreed, somewhat impressed that Lois had figured this out. Maybe she was better at this investigative journalism than either he or Chloe had given her credit. “You kill a couple of people, you make sure that there’s a stink about it and even if there are no bodies, there’s enough noise to look like there’s some psycho out there is picking people so no one looks too closely at the families.”

“Right,” Chloe returned to the files of lodged missing persons’ reports and started opening up each of the scanned pages. “Now you saw a guy right? Any clues as to what he looked like?”

“Let me think,” Clark returned to the memory of the fleeting glimpse he had caught of the meteor freak in the cemetery. “He was about our age,” he began, “about 5’8, Caucasian, wearing a sweatshirt with a hood above his head and I couldn’t see his eyes because they were glowing green…”

“Okay, two of the victims were reported missing by their son Wallace Echols,” she read out. “Andrew and Irina. They were the third couple to go missing.”

“Anything on where this Wallace lives, or what he might look like?” Clark asked automatically, praying they were on the right track.

“I’ll have to do some digging,” Chloe replied, switching screens again and begun doing the search on Wallace Echols, whoever he was.

**************



She was going to die.

The realization dawn on her and for a while at least, Lois tried to remain calm. She tried to tell herself that Clark would be tearing the town apart trying to find her. He always seemed to arrive in the nick of time in situations like these to save her. Who knew that the farm boy had such impeccable timing? Stop that, Lois told herself, stop talking about him like he’s an ignorant hick, you know better.

Lois did know better.

Long time ago when they had first met, he had said something to her that stuck in her mind, that it bothered her when she couldn’t quite peg someone within the first five minutes of meeting them. This was especially true of Clark who was never quite what she expected. Naïve farm boy on one hand and on the other, this self assured guy who was never phased by anything and always eager to help. Clark didn’t want to save the world; he just wanted to help the parts of it that needed him most.

And right now she needed him.

She needed to hear him tell her with that certainty in his voice that he wouldn’t let her screw up what they could have together. There was something about Clark’s faith that was so safe, that it could be wrapped around you like a warm blanket to make you believe nothing in this world would stand in the way of that promise. When Lois kissed Clark, his lips conveyed all that to her and more than anything, she wanted to tell him that. She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t afraid of letting him in, wasn’t afraid to trust him because Clark had been the only man she had met who didn’t let her down and always came through when she needed him.

Blinking away her tears, she looked up at the solid wall of concrete barely an inch from her head. Her legs were pulled up almost to her chest and she could feel the strain in her muscles. It was pitch black inside this prison and when she moved, her shoulder hit the rough surface of bare cement. Her head ached from the lingering effects of the chloroform the bastard had used to knock her out again. He probably suspected how much she would struggle to keep from being forced into this Gordian knot she was now in. Thus when she woke up, Lois woke with the knowledge that this time there was no escape.

There wasn’t even enough room for her to kick or struggle to escape, vain as the effort might be. All she could do was lie there inside this hollow and count how many minutes would pass before her air ran out.

In a soft voice, far from the hearing of anyone, Lois Lane whispered trying not to cry. “Find me, Smallville. Please find me.”