Chapter Text
Clark was jogging his knee at his desk again, staring at his monitor with his chin in his hand. His article on Metropolis’s oldest temporary scaffolding (15 years!) finally getting removed was… okay, boring. There was probably something there about developing more efficient inspection and construction processes and maybe some kind of expedition program for scaffolding that had been around too long. Maybe Superman could have a statement about how he wasn’t a licensed contractor and couldn’t heat vision building facades to be safer…No… Superman was an alien. This was too specific and localized for Superman to really have an opinion on it. Hell, for all Superman knew, Metropolis’s buildings were supposed to look like that. Clark could practically feel Lois over his shoulder going, ‘Come on, Smallville, you can rip into the story harder than this.’ Except… she wasn’t. He stood up and peered over the walls of his cubicle, looking over into Lois’s cubicle, where her chair sat empty.
“…that’s the third time you’ve checked in the past half hour,” said Jimmy, not even looking up from his own monitor as he tried to decide between two virtually indistinguishable levels of exposure on one of his photos.
“I wasn’t checking! I was just… stretching!” said Clark.
Jimmy just gave him a half-lidded look.
“…okay fine, it’s just… the Planet’s not the same without her,” said Clark, setting his chin on the cubicle divider, forlornly.
“Cheer up, Kansas,” said Jimmy, “I mean, she has been working here longer than both of us. And the story’s not big enough for the Planet to shell out for three round-trip air tickets.”
Yeah, but I don’t need a plane, thought Clark, then immediately feeling a bit childish for the thought. He had been experimenting with longer distance flights, and was thankfully small enough that he didn’t really turn up on most radars (“it’s a bird!”), though breaking the sound barrier attracted attention (to be fair, he didn’t really know he could do that until after he did it).
“I know that,” said Clark, plopping back into his seat, the swivel chair creaking, “It’s just… we’re a team, and I’ve never seen Coast City before.” He fidgeted with a pen cap on his desk.
“Ferris Air is putting out ‘The latest in cutting edge flight technology’ like, every three months. Or that star pilot of theirs is always pulling some wild stunt. You’ll get your chance,” said Jimmy with a shrug.
“I guess…” muttered Clark. He turned his attention back to his article. Scaffolding… scaffolding… scaffolding… Clark absentmindedly let his pen dip in and out of his knuckles as he stared at his screen. Jimmy could do that cool pen-knuckle spin a lot better than he could, but for Clark, it was just good practice for building up ‘don’t-wreck-things-with-super-strength’ coordination. But then a voice rang through his head.
“Hello!? Helloo-ooo! You know this isn’t legal, right?! HEY! I know you can hear me!”
Lois? The pen instantly snapped in two between Clark’s fingers, a burst of dark blue ink running between his knuckles and down his palm and wrist. He didn’t notice it at all, staring into space, trying to hone in on Lois’s voice.
“I want a lawyer! You know I have a right to one! What the hell are the charges, anyway!?”
His immediate thought had to be the airport. But she had sent him a ‘Taking off now!’ text from her phone earlier that morning. Her voice wasn’t coming from the airport, and for all its awful profiling, this didn’t seem like a TSA situation. Her voice wasn’t coming from any of the local police precincts—or Stryker’s Island. Then where…?
“Am I free to go?! Can I get my phone back!?” Lois’s voice was now punctuated by the furious rattling of a door handle and Clark flinched in his seat as there was now the sound of a heavy door opening. “Finally! I’m supposed to be on a flight right now, but once the Daily Planet hears of this, the city’s going to have your badges.”
But then there was a beat. A literal beat as Clark’s super-hearing honed in on Lois’s voice so intently, he heard a ba-thump of dread in her chest, he heard her swallow with a suddenly dry throat. She was reading their faces, he realized, taking in their own lack of a response. The outrage blanching out of her voice as realization to the isolation and vulnerability of her position flooded in. “Wh-where are your badges, anyway?”
The chill that went down Clark’s spine soon turned to a flare of panic as he heard a scuffle. There was a blow landing, a man’s grunt of pain, a crunch of cartilage that made Clark flinch, and Lois’s protests of, “Don’t touch me! Hey! Let go! Don’t—! No! What’s that—? No! You can’t do this! Let me—mmph—!” That last muffled grunt gave way to a quiet moan, and then silence. Clark’s breath went short and quiet and he squeezed his eyes shut. Concentrate. Listen. It’s not a voice and you don’t know where it is but—
Ba-thump. Ba-thump. Ba-thump.
Still alive. Lois was still alive. But where? And who had her? But then… voices around the heartbeat. One voice was thick and wet.
“Orh gord. She broke by doze.”
Clark eased up in his seat slightly. So that blow landing was Lois’s, and on one of her captors. Good for her, thought Clark.
“Jesus, go to the infirmary, we’ll get her prepped for transport.”
“We aren’t going to continue the interrogation here?” Another voice piped up.
“Orders from up top. We’re consolidating high-value assets. Taking her to Command D.”
“Command D? Seems like a tall order for one rookie reporter…”
“You didn’t see that video when Ivo went rogue? She’s buddy-buddy with the alien.”
“Wait—Shit—you’re telling me that’s her!?”
“Exactly. Does this place look equipped to stop a red-caped alien who can rip through steel to you?”
“I mean… it might slow him down—”
“Get her legs, moron.”
Don’t touch her, Clark’s own thoughts echoed Lois’s last conscious protests. His heart had dropped into his stomach but rage was prickling the back of his neck. This was his worst nightmare—people he loved being targeted just for associating with Superman. His eyes opened with a deliberate slowness. Command D. He had heard of that place before. He stood up and stepped over to Jimmy’s cubicle, lowering his voice, “Jimmy?”
Jimmy glanced up from his monitor.
“Do you still have the binder Lois and I found at the cabin?” Clark kept his voice low.
Jimmy immediately assessed the grimness in Clark’s tone. “What’s going on?” he asked.
Clark knew Lois was one of Jimmy’s best friends as well, and he felt he could trust Jimmy with anything, but for all the dread in his stomach right now, it didn’t feel right to start ringing alarm bells just yet.
“I’m still figuring it out,” said Clark, “But… I need to double check something.”
Jimmy opened a drawer in his desk and Clark blinked as he lifted up a false bottom in the drawer, revealing the thick black binder with ‘FOR LOIS’ label-maker’d dead center of the cover.
“…you were keeping it here this whole time?” Clark raised an eyebrow.
“I always figured the FBI would raid our apartment before it raided here,” Jimmy shrugged.
“Yeah, probably,” said Clark, as Jimmy handed him the binder.
Jimmy lowered his voice further. “Is this about Lois?” he asked.
“I really hope it isn’t,” said Clark, not meeting Jimmy’s eyes as he leafed through the binder.
Both of their phones suddenly dinged and they pulled them out.
A text from Lois to their group chat.
‘Just landed safe! :D’
Jimmy smiled at his phone screen, but his eyes flicked to Clark, who was frowning at his own phone. With his jaw set and a concerning exhaustion in his eyes, Clark texted back a cat face and a heart emoji.
Jimmy’s eyes flicked between Clark’s face and his own phone. “Okay, I’ve never seen anyone look that grim when sending a three-face… this is about Lois,” said Jimmy.
Clark glanced sharply over to Jimmy and made a, ‘Keep your voice down’ motion with his hand as he ducked into Jimmy’s cubicle to speak at a lower register.
“Super-hearing picked.. something up,” said Clark, “I… heard her saying she doesn’t have her phone, and judging by the volume, it sounded like she was still on the east coast. I don’t think she even made it to her plane.”
Jimmy perked up with alarm.
“Look, just stay calm,” Clark kept his voice low, but there was a slight rush of urgency to his words now, “If they know we know something, they might come after us, too.”
“Damn, and here I thought I was the most paranoid out of the three of us.”
“Jim, I’ve literally already been kidnapped by the government.”
“I know—I know—Just—Why would they target Lois first? I was the one who said I was Superman’s pal!” Jimmy whisper-hissed.
“I don’t know. Can—can you cover for me while I check some things out?”
“Where are you going?” asked Jimmy as Clark finally found the section in the binder he was looking for. Clark set the open binder on Jimmy’s desk—Lois had slipped her own additional notes into the binder, including a key to her father’s cipher, annotations on some references Sam had made that were specifically about events or locations in her own childhood, and, most importantly at this point, maps. This was a printed out map of the Jersey coast, with Blüdhaven as the central focus. Jimmy swallowed hard at the sight of a circled area where Lois had written out ‘Command D.’
Jimmy’s mouth hitched. The three of them had gone through this binder upside-down and backwards, and it had only referenced Command D in the briefest and sparsest of terms. What little it did say of it indicated it was meant to be the ultimate bunker, the ultimate shelter—but this was also in the context of a full-scale apocalyptic Kryptonian invasion.
“Are you sure about this?” Jimmy kept his voice low.
“I don’t care if that place is lined floor to ceiling with Kryptonite—I’m not going to let them hold Lois prisoner just for being close to Superman,” Clark’s voice was dark.
“That’s not what I mean,” said Jimmy, “I’m asking are you sure Lois is there, and not here?” He gestured to their group chat on his phone. “Last time you lost track of her, you ended up getting tricked by a little blue goblin into committing interdimensional larceny.”
“I know what I heard, and this doesn’t feel like Mxy,” said Clark.
Jimmy set his jaw and nodded. “I’ll cover for you,”
——
Not too long later, Clark touched down lightly in a grassy field dotted with trees a few miles outside of Blüdhaven, his Kryptonian clothes phasing into human clothes as he put on a baseball cap and face mask before donning a pair of sunglasses (one more ‘oh fuck off’ application of his powers was that ice breath meant that his glasses didn’t fog up with a mask). He glanced over his shoulder at the fence he had just landed behind. On the chain length every 50 feet or so, was a sign reading, “KEEP OUT Native Plant Restoration in progress. Courtesy of Blüdhaven Conservation Department.” The entire area was dotted with little pink shin-height flags to further illustrate this point, though it looked about as biodiverse as an overgrown golf course. Clark scowled under the mask. Yeah, sure, Blüdhaven Conservation Department. The criminally-underfunded Conservation Department for the city whose major industries were regularly caught dumping horrific chemicals into their harbor to the point where no one could swim 11 miles north or south of the city. That Conservation Department definitely had the money to cordon off 2000 acres for native plant restoration and totally wasn’t using this top-secret federal area as a hand-wave to shut the activists up. Okay, Clark, one fight at a time. He didn’t have to go too far in, at least. He first fixed his eyes on the ground, blinking X-Ray vision on and focusing. He could definitely make out a massive artificial structure starting about 18 feet below the surface of the ground, but it was completely opaque. Lead—blocking out radiation, then? He was hating the aspect of Lois being here more and more. He closed his eyes and set his hand on the ground. He was getting better at vibrating. He didn’t think he’d ever have the combination of speed and control to vibrate fast enough to move through solid objects like Jimmy had described what seemed like forever ago, but he was figuring out some uses for it. This, he knew, would be a bit ambitious. With a judicious application of super strength and speed, he closed his eyes and vibrated his palm against the ground with a short, flat, pressing motion.
Vumvumvumvumvumvumvumvumvum
He pushed his super-hearing beyond the sound of the vibrations, trying to find what they were bouncing off of, below. The initial lead-lined ceilings of the shallowest parts, of the structure, yes, he knew about that already. Press a little harder, push the vibrations out a little further… An entrance chamber about 3 kilometers northwest—okay. Deeper, now. A diagonal, industrial elevator shaft. Massive steel doors with electrical systems. Too much lead all around to have much of an idea of what might happen if he just started ripping through it right now. And it was hard not to snag himself on the thought of just ripping through it. Whether Cadmus was an organization that had very little problem kidnapping and torturing people or not, it was still one operating under the auspices of the government, and Clark couldn’t really say he liked the idea of making Superman an enemy of the state.
But for Lois… Clark winced at the memory of his own steel pillory and the red sun lamps, of the electroshocks. If they were able to hurt him that much even with his invulnerability… how far were they willing to go with her? He suppressed a shudder, stopped the vibration of his palm, and just tried to listen for Lois’s heartbeat again.
Ba-thump. Ba-thump.
Relief flooded through Clark at hearing Lois’s heartbeat, then his attention flared up at the sound of her voice.
“Mnh…” a quiet moan, then a soft, wincing, “Ow…”
You are a calm and rational journalist. You’re going to stay calm and you’re not going to rip through a black ops site looking for your girlfriend just because you heard her say ‘ow,’ thought Clark, staring blankly into space, still listening. There was a rattle of metal on metal. Handcuffs.
“What the…?” Lois murmured.
“I apologize for the current accommodations, Miss Lane,” another voice spoke, male, “I’m told you can be quite the slippery one.”
“Who… Who’re you? Why’m I here…?” Lois’s voice was hazy, probably from the drugs from earlier.
“You can call me Agent Faraday. I’m a friend of your father’s.”
A prickle went through Clark. Faraday. That name was in the binder as well.
“Pretty sure friends don’t kidnap friends’ kids…” Lois replied.
“Your father went AWOL shortly after Thanksgiving. Would you know anything about that?”
“I want a lawyer.”
“I think you know we’re well past that point, but cooperate with us, Miss Lane, and I promise you, we’ll get you out of here.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“Oh?”
“If you know me, then you know there’s no way in hell I’d stay quiet after being kidnapped by the government, and you guys probably can’t afford that. So I’m looking at… what, a lobotomy? Or a different black ops site?”
“All right let me rephrase that: Cooperate with us and I’ll do my best to make sure things don’t get worse for you. And I promise you, Miss Lane, they can get much, much worse.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“When was the last time you saw your father?”
“I’m not telling you—Wait, my father?”
“Sam Lane, yes.”
“…not Superman.”
“Are you willing to disclose information about Superman?”
“Only that he’s going to find me and I’m not going to say what he’s going to do with you because we established that we don’t threaten people and I respect the boundaries he’s setting. But I’m assuming you’ve been watching him awhile, so you have some idea of his capabilities and I can tell you he is NOT a fan of detaining people without due process. He’s a bit of a—nnh— boy scout like that.”
Clark blinked. But what was that wincing sound Lois just made?
“Headache?” Faraday guessed.
“Well, you DID drug me…” Lois said sullenly.
“You’ve also been under these red omega lamps a lot longer than me,” said Faraday.
“Red Omega—?” Clark perked up to the words as Lois repeated them.
“They’re ultimately harmless to humans, aside from the migraines you’re probably experiencing right now. But they’re going to make things a lot harder for your friend to tear through here.”
“Who says I’m not going to get out on my own?”
Faraday chuckled. “You’re Lane’s daughter, all right. But you getting out is dependent on knowing Cadmus clearance codes. Did Daddy Dearest ever tell you those?”
“Uncuff me and find out,” Lois said grimly.
“The answer is ‘No’—Lane definitely taught you enough to be a pain in the ass, but not enough to court martial himself and put you on a watchlist,” Faraday snorted, “Though it seems you two managed to do that on your own. Come on, kid—I know he had to have given you some contingency plans that might tell us what his next steps are. This doesn’t have to be hard. We know you two were barely talking.”
“Sounds like someone’s desperate—ngah!”
Lois’s breath went wincing-tense and Clark’s entire body tensed where he knelt.
“Trust me when I say you don’t want to see me desperate, Miss Lane,” Faraday’s voice was dark and growling over the sound of Lois whimpering in pain, “A writer needs her hands, doesn’t she?”
“Wait—” Lois’s voice was thick, “Don’t—”
A finger snapping, a shriek from Lois that she was trying to smother into moans. Clark gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut, and felt himself break a sweat. His fingers sank into the earth as he tried to push back against the instinct to tear his way into Command D in that moment. It’s lead-lined and full of those red lamps, you’ll be lost, powerless, and captured before you find her. Don’t be stupid. You need those clearance codes, his hands tore up from the earth as he struggled to get his breathing under control, And you know who has them.
“You have two hours to reconsider your position,” said Faraday, his voice underscored by Lois’s whimpering, shuddering breaths, “And for your sake, I hope you do.”
Clark pushed up from the earth and took off in less than a heartbeat.