Author: Bally
Title: Bad Day at Black Creek
Genre: Action/Adventure/Thriller
Rating: Unsure of rating but there is a bit of violence in the final chapter.
Summary: Filling in the blanks from the season 8 premiere 'Odyssey' to detail how Lois went from dressing as a French maid in the Luthor mansion, to how she bumped into Clark at Black Creek while searching for Chloe. There are 3 chapters which I'll post individually, and again comments and critiques are most welcome.
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Chapter 1 - Investigation.
How does Chloe manage to get herself into these situations every year? Everyone always tells me I manage to find trouble but that’s much truer of Chloe than it is of me. Trouble always finds me instead.
Lois looked at the mess in the living room of her Talon apartment. Turning the place over had failed to result in finding the one item she knew would help her investigation into Chloe’s ‘arrest’ and subsequent disappearance. Actually, she reckoned she could do the job without it but the risks were too great. There was no chance she’d attempt to look at the data at work, not while the person she was investigating also owned the Daily Planet. No, it would have to be here and it really had to be now.
It hadn’t taken much work for Lois to learn that her cousin had not been arrested by the authorities, and instead was in the custody (if not worse) of some shadowy organisation that almost certainly had links to Lex Luthor. The trouble was that she had had almost nothing to go on until an impromptu undercover operation to break into Lex’s safe at the Luthor mansion. He hadn’t been seen for weeks now and he was not the only one. Lois cringed at the thought of the French maid’s outfit she’d chosen as a disguise, though she knew that any member of the opposite sex would no doubt have been appreciative of the way it highlighted her curves. Indeed, the acting COO of LuthorCorp seemed to be more than a little interested herself. Or was it an intimidation tactic?
Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Where had Chloe hidden the USB gizmo that Ollie had given her? Lois - despite her inquisitive nature - tended to avoid nosing around the personal property of those she cared about but desperate times called for desperate measures. She needed to hook up the flash drive she’d “borrowed” via said gizmo so that she could override any security and mask the fact that the flash drive had been accessed. While no computer wiz, she’d understood what Chloe had said the device could do, and it had definitely come in handy when Lois was investigating a couple of shady business deals in Metropolis a few months ago. You can never be too careful in these situations. Chloe had let slip that Ollie had given her the device as a favour, but that little titbit was of no importance to Lois. It was a means to an end and it wasn’t as though Ollie owed Lois an explanation. She went into Chloe’s bedroom and stood there looking around.
Come on Chlo, where are you hiding it? I’d hate to have to turn your room upside down too but what choice do I have? If I could just ask you, all of this would be a moot point, right?
Lois went to the closet and quickly sifted through Chloe’s clothes, which were kept very neat and organised. Lois chuckled as she thought about the tornado aftermath that was her own closet, and then as her hand glided across what appeared to be a black negligee, she thought about how Clark would become all awkward and embarrassed at the merest sight of lacy things.
Clark! As much as he was capable of annoying her, he would have been of immense help right now. The two of them seemed to be pretty successful when investigating things even if they weren’t actually working together, and she thought they dovetailed pretty well as a team when required. They’d even manage to find Chloe once before, and on another occasion had taken her to hospital when her life was on the line. Despite the banter and bickering, there really was a friendship behind it all. Neither would admit to being close though. Clark had seemed content to settle for life on the farm with Lana but that little idyll had two major drawbacks.
Firstly, Lois felt that Clark had more to offer the wider world and a stint working in the bowels of the Daily Planet might have opened his eyes a little more to the possibilities that lay out there. It was in his nature to want to help everybody, and working for the newspaper and helping to highlight the many examples of people taking advantage of others was a good way for him to do that. It got him away from the farm and his tendency to sit and brood.
Secondly, Lana had decided to leave Clark after her miraculous recovery from a coma. Lois recalled walking in on Clark after he’d watched Lana’s “Dear John” DVD and she’d never seen him more heartbroken and truly devastated than he was right then. Her heart went out to him and she thought nothing of lending him a shoulder to cry on - after all, he’d done the same when she and Ollie had ended things for good. Clark had left to take care of matters unknown soon afterwards and hadn’t been seen or heard from since. Lois didn’t find herself worrying about him though because past experience had taught her that he had frequent spells of amnesia and/or going missing but he always came round in the end.
Lois, quit stalling girl. Chop chop!
She turned to the shelf at the top of the closet and was about to dismiss a further search when she noticed a music box. She, Chloe and Lucy had all been given music boxes one Christmas when they were kids. The boxes were identical but they each played a different tune. Lois picked up the box and opened it. Sure enough, Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ started playing. Lois rattled the box gently and felt there was something beneath the little dancing ballerina. A brief rummage and…Aha! Success! Lois lifted out the silver and green (what else!) gizmo and said a silent prayer to the ceiling. She put the box back on the shelf and shut the closet door, exiting the bedroom and leaving it looking exactly as it was before.
Now we’re getting somewhere!
She looked at the mess in the lounge and thought it was something that can be sorted out later, but first things first. Powering up her laptop, she inserted the gizmo into the USB port and waited for her computer to acknowledge it. Thankfully, it didn’t require any additional technical sleight of hand and was good to go. She plugged in the flash drive into the USB slot on the gizmo, noting that she’d taken the last one, labelled S-Z. Until now she hadn’t thought as to why she’d picked that one, but now she had a hunch that information about Chloe might well be on it.
There were details about facilities under the Project 33.1 banner holding ‘inmates’ all over the country - a place just outside San Diego, one about 50 miles south of Chicago, another one a short drive from Cape Canaveral oddly enough, and one called Black Creek in Montana. Lois flipped through files containing records of the ‘inmates’ and noted that they all seemed to be meteor infected. That usually meant they were bad news, often homicidal in fact, yet somehow they were being kept in these facilities. Perhaps they were being neutralised, or they were being collected to do somebody’s bidding. She was sure they were being experimented on in some way because that was Lex’s modus operandi, as his Project Ares demonstrated. These projects had claimed the lives of too many people, not least Lois’ old army brat friend Wes Keenan. That sent a chill down Lois’ back as she recalled what Lex’s scientists had done to Wes and indicated just how far Lex was prepared to go to have the power he so obviously craved.
The names seemed to be listed in reverse alphabetical order and Lois soon came across an inmate named Wilson Turner - a serial killer with the ability to read peoples’ minds if the records were to be believed. He was listed as ‘released’ and she wondered why somebody who was an obvious danger to the public was not in the hands of the US penitentiary system, and was seemingly free to remain at large and oblivious to the authorities. It had Lex written all over it. Lois committed the details to memory as it was definitely something that needed following up on.
Skimming more files, Lois’ breath caught in the back of her throat when she came across the name Chloe Sullivan. Aside from stumbling upon her possible whereabouts (yay!), why was Chloe being held by Project 33.1? Was she a meteor freak? Was it because she had detailed knowledge about meteor freaks? Had she stumbled upon Project 33.1 while working at the Daily Planet? Was that the reason she was fired (Lex did own the paper after all)? There was nothing to explain why she was being held as maybe the records needed updating, but it did say that she was an inmate at the Black Creek facility in Montana. At least it was a lead.
Lois had been frowning whilst reading Chloe’s file but once she saw the location was Black Creek in Montana, her frown slowly turned into a smirk and her eyes lit up. Her father was currently stationed at Malstrom Air Force Base in Montana, overseeing a joint training exercise between the US Army and Air Force. It was a routine posting but even routine postings tied him up for at least 2 weeks, sometimes a month or more. She’d spoken to him only three days ago and he’d asked Lois to come to the base for the weekend as a means to catch up.
That really meant he was ordering her presence and he wanted to know what was going on in her life, and why she’d maintained only very irregular contact with her sister Lucy (who’d also been ordered to travel but had cried off claiming more urgent matters needing her attention that weekend). Lois didn’t really want to meet the General and face another dressing down, but an opportunity had presented itself to get to Montana and investigate Black Creek. She could even get there via military transport with just one phone call to the General.
OK, now I’ve figured out the ‘who’ and the ‘where’, it’s now about the ‘how’. The ‘why’ can wait until Chloe is safely away from Lex’s clutches.
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Title: Bad Day at Black Creek
Genre: Action/Adventure/Thriller
Rating: Unsure of rating but there is a bit of violence in the final chapter.
Summary: Filling in the blanks from the season 8 premiere 'Odyssey' to detail how Lois went from dressing as a French maid in the Luthor mansion, to how she bumped into Clark at Black Creek while searching for Chloe. There are 3 chapters which I'll post individually, and again comments and critiques are most welcome.
---
Chapter 1 - Investigation.
How does Chloe manage to get herself into these situations every year? Everyone always tells me I manage to find trouble but that’s much truer of Chloe than it is of me. Trouble always finds me instead.
Lois looked at the mess in the living room of her Talon apartment. Turning the place over had failed to result in finding the one item she knew would help her investigation into Chloe’s ‘arrest’ and subsequent disappearance. Actually, she reckoned she could do the job without it but the risks were too great. There was no chance she’d attempt to look at the data at work, not while the person she was investigating also owned the Daily Planet. No, it would have to be here and it really had to be now.
It hadn’t taken much work for Lois to learn that her cousin had not been arrested by the authorities, and instead was in the custody (if not worse) of some shadowy organisation that almost certainly had links to Lex Luthor. The trouble was that she had had almost nothing to go on until an impromptu undercover operation to break into Lex’s safe at the Luthor mansion. He hadn’t been seen for weeks now and he was not the only one. Lois cringed at the thought of the French maid’s outfit she’d chosen as a disguise, though she knew that any member of the opposite sex would no doubt have been appreciative of the way it highlighted her curves. Indeed, the acting COO of LuthorCorp seemed to be more than a little interested herself. Or was it an intimidation tactic?
Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Where had Chloe hidden the USB gizmo that Ollie had given her? Lois - despite her inquisitive nature - tended to avoid nosing around the personal property of those she cared about but desperate times called for desperate measures. She needed to hook up the flash drive she’d “borrowed” via said gizmo so that she could override any security and mask the fact that the flash drive had been accessed. While no computer wiz, she’d understood what Chloe had said the device could do, and it had definitely come in handy when Lois was investigating a couple of shady business deals in Metropolis a few months ago. You can never be too careful in these situations. Chloe had let slip that Ollie had given her the device as a favour, but that little titbit was of no importance to Lois. It was a means to an end and it wasn’t as though Ollie owed Lois an explanation. She went into Chloe’s bedroom and stood there looking around.
Come on Chlo, where are you hiding it? I’d hate to have to turn your room upside down too but what choice do I have? If I could just ask you, all of this would be a moot point, right?
Lois went to the closet and quickly sifted through Chloe’s clothes, which were kept very neat and organised. Lois chuckled as she thought about the tornado aftermath that was her own closet, and then as her hand glided across what appeared to be a black negligee, she thought about how Clark would become all awkward and embarrassed at the merest sight of lacy things.
Clark! As much as he was capable of annoying her, he would have been of immense help right now. The two of them seemed to be pretty successful when investigating things even if they weren’t actually working together, and she thought they dovetailed pretty well as a team when required. They’d even manage to find Chloe once before, and on another occasion had taken her to hospital when her life was on the line. Despite the banter and bickering, there really was a friendship behind it all. Neither would admit to being close though. Clark had seemed content to settle for life on the farm with Lana but that little idyll had two major drawbacks.
Firstly, Lois felt that Clark had more to offer the wider world and a stint working in the bowels of the Daily Planet might have opened his eyes a little more to the possibilities that lay out there. It was in his nature to want to help everybody, and working for the newspaper and helping to highlight the many examples of people taking advantage of others was a good way for him to do that. It got him away from the farm and his tendency to sit and brood.
Secondly, Lana had decided to leave Clark after her miraculous recovery from a coma. Lois recalled walking in on Clark after he’d watched Lana’s “Dear John” DVD and she’d never seen him more heartbroken and truly devastated than he was right then. Her heart went out to him and she thought nothing of lending him a shoulder to cry on - after all, he’d done the same when she and Ollie had ended things for good. Clark had left to take care of matters unknown soon afterwards and hadn’t been seen or heard from since. Lois didn’t find herself worrying about him though because past experience had taught her that he had frequent spells of amnesia and/or going missing but he always came round in the end.
Lois, quit stalling girl. Chop chop!
She turned to the shelf at the top of the closet and was about to dismiss a further search when she noticed a music box. She, Chloe and Lucy had all been given music boxes one Christmas when they were kids. The boxes were identical but they each played a different tune. Lois picked up the box and opened it. Sure enough, Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ started playing. Lois rattled the box gently and felt there was something beneath the little dancing ballerina. A brief rummage and…Aha! Success! Lois lifted out the silver and green (what else!) gizmo and said a silent prayer to the ceiling. She put the box back on the shelf and shut the closet door, exiting the bedroom and leaving it looking exactly as it was before.
Now we’re getting somewhere!
She looked at the mess in the lounge and thought it was something that can be sorted out later, but first things first. Powering up her laptop, she inserted the gizmo into the USB port and waited for her computer to acknowledge it. Thankfully, it didn’t require any additional technical sleight of hand and was good to go. She plugged in the flash drive into the USB slot on the gizmo, noting that she’d taken the last one, labelled S-Z. Until now she hadn’t thought as to why she’d picked that one, but now she had a hunch that information about Chloe might well be on it.
There were details about facilities under the Project 33.1 banner holding ‘inmates’ all over the country - a place just outside San Diego, one about 50 miles south of Chicago, another one a short drive from Cape Canaveral oddly enough, and one called Black Creek in Montana. Lois flipped through files containing records of the ‘inmates’ and noted that they all seemed to be meteor infected. That usually meant they were bad news, often homicidal in fact, yet somehow they were being kept in these facilities. Perhaps they were being neutralised, or they were being collected to do somebody’s bidding. She was sure they were being experimented on in some way because that was Lex’s modus operandi, as his Project Ares demonstrated. These projects had claimed the lives of too many people, not least Lois’ old army brat friend Wes Keenan. That sent a chill down Lois’ back as she recalled what Lex’s scientists had done to Wes and indicated just how far Lex was prepared to go to have the power he so obviously craved.
The names seemed to be listed in reverse alphabetical order and Lois soon came across an inmate named Wilson Turner - a serial killer with the ability to read peoples’ minds if the records were to be believed. He was listed as ‘released’ and she wondered why somebody who was an obvious danger to the public was not in the hands of the US penitentiary system, and was seemingly free to remain at large and oblivious to the authorities. It had Lex written all over it. Lois committed the details to memory as it was definitely something that needed following up on.
Skimming more files, Lois’ breath caught in the back of her throat when she came across the name Chloe Sullivan. Aside from stumbling upon her possible whereabouts (yay!), why was Chloe being held by Project 33.1? Was she a meteor freak? Was it because she had detailed knowledge about meteor freaks? Had she stumbled upon Project 33.1 while working at the Daily Planet? Was that the reason she was fired (Lex did own the paper after all)? There was nothing to explain why she was being held as maybe the records needed updating, but it did say that she was an inmate at the Black Creek facility in Montana. At least it was a lead.
Lois had been frowning whilst reading Chloe’s file but once she saw the location was Black Creek in Montana, her frown slowly turned into a smirk and her eyes lit up. Her father was currently stationed at Malstrom Air Force Base in Montana, overseeing a joint training exercise between the US Army and Air Force. It was a routine posting but even routine postings tied him up for at least 2 weeks, sometimes a month or more. She’d spoken to him only three days ago and he’d asked Lois to come to the base for the weekend as a means to catch up.
That really meant he was ordering her presence and he wanted to know what was going on in her life, and why she’d maintained only very irregular contact with her sister Lucy (who’d also been ordered to travel but had cried off claiming more urgent matters needing her attention that weekend). Lois didn’t really want to meet the General and face another dressing down, but an opportunity had presented itself to get to Montana and investigate Black Creek. She could even get there via military transport with just one phone call to the General.
OK, now I’ve figured out the ‘who’ and the ‘where’, it’s now about the ‘how’. The ‘why’ can wait until Chloe is safely away from Lex’s clutches.
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