Incognito

[phoenixnz]

Title: Incognito
Author: phoenixnz
Rating: PG (for now)
Genre: Romantic suspense, novel adaptation
Pairing: Clark/Lois

Summary: Lois Lane disappeared three years ago. Now she's back determined to get those responsible for destroying her life.

a/n: This is based on my own original work, so those who have read the novel will be familiar with the plot. However, I am not copying the text word-for-word. It is mostly the plot that I am adapting to fit Smallville. Much of the characters' backgrounds will remain the same. However, Clark and Lois have never met when this story begins. The novel is under my pen name. If you want to know more, please PM me.

a/n2: There may be some scenes which will have a higher rating. If that happens, I will post in the other forum.

Prologue

The Talon had once been a movie theatre but a few years earlier it had been transformed into a coffee shop popular with the local high school crowd.

Smallville had changed in the ten years the café had been open. While Luthorcorp, now renamed to LexCorp, still remained the town’s biggest employer, most of the younger members of the population had chosen to move away. They’d gone seeking their fortunes in Metropolis, a huge city approximately an hour away by car, or further afield.

There were those who worked in the city but chose to commute from the town. Lois Lane was one of those people. Her apartment, which she had once shared with her cousin Chloe, was above the coffee shop. It wasn’t ideal, given that the Talon often had late night events like Karaoke, but the rent was cheap. Far cheaper than in the city.

It was a sweltering hot evening in late June as she left her car and hunted for the keys to the back entrance to the shop. Lois was exhausted. It was the end of a very long day and an even longer week where nothing had gone right. She had come very close to being fired by her boss over some insignificant story she had been reluctant to pursue.

Feeling inexplicably uneasy, Lois looked around. The street was deserted. Since it was the main street, the buildings consisted of mostly retail. There were a couple of apartments above other stores but as far as she knew they were vacant. Yet she couldn’t help feeling that she was being watched.

She decided to hustle and dug harder in her purse for the keys, quickly finding the right one and inserting it in the lock. She hurried up the stairs and through the silent store to the stairs to her apartment, unlocking the door and closing it behind her with a sigh of relief.

She debated whether to have a bath or a shower to get rid of the aches from a long day of sitting down in front of her computer. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her it had been a good few hours since she’d had something to eat. She looked toward the bathroom, longing for a hot shower or a long soak in the tub, but hunger won out.

The kitchen was small, but big enough for an icebox where Lois kept all her frozen meals. She had never been the best cook and often resorted to the packaged meals, figuring it was better than nothing. She grabbed a package of lasagne and took out the tray, stabbing the cellophane with a knife before sticking it in the microwave.

She headed to the bedroom, just off the living area, kicking off her shoes and pulling her long, chocolate brown hair out of its knot. As she did so, there was a loud beeping coming from the area of the kitchen. Puzzled, she started to head back to the kitchen to investigate when suddenly the microwave exploded in a shower of shrapnel.

Lois barely had time to shield herself as the entire building shook and became engulfed in a huge fireball. Before she knew what was happening, she was down in the alley, staring in dismay at the destruction. She looked around, that feeling of uneasiness coming back to her, but saw nothing.

There was nothing for her to do but walk away.

The sun had barely risen when a limousine pulled up a short distance away from the remains of the Talon. A tall man with dark hair got out and stepped onto the pavement. He turned and looked toward the car. A slightly shorter man with a bald head emerged from the limousine. They both stared at the charred ruin.

“What do you think, Clark?” the bald man asked.

Clark Kent shrugged. “Could have been anything, Lex. We won’t know until we get the report from the fire marshal, I guess.”

Lex nodded toward a man in uniform. “Why don’t you go talk to him?”

The fire marshal approached Clark. “Mr Kent.”

“Mr Luthor wondered what your findings were.”

Jay Wise sighed. “Well, we won’t know until we do a thorough investigation but it looks like an electrical fault which ignited the gas line. Anybody in there would have been dead in moments.”

“Was there?”

“We don’t know,” the man said, sighing again. He pulled out a notebook. “The apartment was tenanted, through a rental agency, I believe.”

Clark nodded. “Mr Luthor contracted an agency to manage the rental after his ex-wife left the Talon’s ownership in his hands. Who was the tenant?”

“Her name was Lois Lane. She’s …”

“A reporter at the Metropolis Inquisitor,” Clark finished. “Yeah, Lex has had a few run-ins with her, I believe.”

Wise looked up, hearing his name called. He excused himself and went to talk to the fireman. Clark watched the two men for a moment before turning back to Lex.

“Lane was renting the apartment.”

Lex nodded. “It’s beginning to look more and more like this was not an accident, wouldn’t you agree, Clark?”

Clark watched as his boss and friend walked away, getting back in the limo. He looked once again at the destruction. Wise returned to him.

“I can tell you that no one was in the building when it blew, but the police found Lois Lane’s car in the alley. It was also damaged in the explosion.”

“But she wasn’t inside?” Clark asked.

“No.”

“All right.” He handed a business card to the man. “Send me everything you have as soon your investigation is complete.”

“Yes, sir.”

Clark turned to join Lex in the limo. He looked around but apart from the usual rubber-neckers, he couldn’t see anyone unusual.

A few hours later in his office at LexCorp Plaza, he put down the phone. Lois Lane did not turn up for work that day and none of his contacts knew where she was. She had vanished without trace.

[theo67]

What an intriguing start to this new story! The characters are already so different, I can't wait for the next chapter.

[phoenixnz]

What an intriguing start to this new story! The characters are already so different, I can't wait for the next chapter.

Thank you. I'll still try to keep them reasonably in character but this will be a little darker in the beginning.

[phoenixnz]

a/n: I rarely refer to Lois by name in these early chapters unless it's in flashback. There's a reason for it.

Chapter One

Three years later

She stood on the pavement, watching the two men talking quietly in the Sushi Bar. She wore sunglasses, which was perfectly normal for a bright summer’s day, but these were dark enough that anyone passing by wouldn’t be able to see her eyes. She had learned long ago that the eyes were the window to the soul and she wondered if she took the glasses off whether people would be able to see the burning hatred in them.

Had she had the benefit of heat vision, she could easily have burned down the restaurant, and its patrons.

The two men inside looked just like any normal businessmen. One was quite tall with hair as black as ebony. She supposed he could be termed handsome, with his chiselled good looks and piercing blue eyes. He had a build most men would envy. Broad, muscular chest and abs so flat and well-defined she could probably bounce a quarter off them.

He was dressed casually today, wearing black jeans and a sky-blue shirt that brought out the colour in his eyes. She liked that shirt. She’d been watching the two men for a good part of the last couple of months and knew practically every shirt in the man’s wardrobe. Sure, he had a rather peculiar fetish for plaid on his rare days off from his job, but even that just served to make him endearing.

Careful, she told herself silently. Let’s not go falling for the man. Remember who he works for.

The man’s companion turned around, speaking to the server. He seemed to be putting on the charm as the server smiled at him, looking flattered at whatever he said. She narrowed her eyes as she studied the bald man. He was a few inches shorter than the other man and probably a good few years older. Yet the pair behaved as if they were good friends, laughing and joking with each other.

The bald man was dressed in a long t-shirt and wool pants which she gathered were fairly expensive. God forbid the man everbe seen in something that cost less than what would have once been her monthly pay cheque.

The two men started to get up from their chairs, having finished their meals, and headed toward the door. She turned and stepped back, sitting down at a table for a local café. She continued watching, pretending to peruse the café menu as the two men left the restaurant and walked along the street toward her. The bald man was taking a set of keys from his pocket. He pressed a button on a remote and she could hear a chirping sound from a car nearby as the locks and alarm deactivated.

She snorted to herself. It was typical of the man’s pretentiousness that he would be driving the latest Porsche. The two men continued to talk as they got in.

As the car drove away, she shifted her gaze from the street to the spinning globe on a tall building which appeared to dominate the landscape. She sighed at what once could have been.

Her rise to the top of the Daily Planet’s editorial team had been almost meteoric. Thanks to her hard work and dedication, she had become the newspaper’s leading investigative journalist in just four short years. It had helped that she had grown up an army brat and wasn’t afraid to take risks to get what she needed. She knew how to mix with the best and the worst society had to offer, from the homeless bums to the highest-ranking general.

Then along came a guy named Michael Davis. He had been sent to prison for a crime he claimed he didn’t commit. She had been following the story from the moment he’d been arrested, attending his court appearances and talking to his attorney. Davis had contacted her, begging for her help to clear his name.

When she did talk to him, he’d told her that he was sure he had been framed by someone who worked for Lex Luthor. That Lex himself had ordered it.

A week later, Davis was killed in prison.

She’d begun digging and found that what Davis had told her was the tip of the iceberg. Lex Luthor had inherited his company from his father, who had died in prison years earlier, supposedly from liver disease. It seemed the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. Lex had turned out to be just as evil and manipulative as his father. Maybe even more so.

Davis had left a breadcrumb. He had left a package with a family friend in case anything happened to him. The package had contained files on people who had been taken from a mental institution on the edge of Metropolis, called Belle Reve. These were people who had claimed to have certain abilities.

The more she dug, the worse it had looked. Lex had been involved in experimenting on humans, trying to create the ultimate super soldier.

Eventually, she had become so obsessed with chasing the story that her boss had become concerned she was neglecting all her other stories.

“Listen, Perry, I’m on to something here,” she said. “Trust me.”

“I trust you, Lane. But you need to drop this.”

“There’s no way I’m dropping this. I know I’ve got something on Luthor. I’ve got a hunch, Chief.”

“I can’t go along with this,” the editor replied, pushing back his sandy blond hair. He groaned tiredly, showing all of his fifty-something years. “Not on a hunch. If Luthor figures out what you’re up to …”

“Perry, I didn’t get my Pulitzer for baking brownies.”

She should have listened to her boss, she decided, thinking back to what happened less than two months later. Luthor had found out she was investigating him and had sued the Daily Planet. To save face, the publisher had ordered her fired.

To top it off, rumours had spread like wildfire that she was an alcoholic and a drug addict, which was completely untrue. She lost everything. Her own family had turned their backs on her. All except her cousin, Chloe.

Desperate, and almost out of money, Lois had been forced to consider working as a waitress, a job she had taken through college. Until the editor of the Metropolis Inquisitor had offered her an entry-level position as a reporter. She would have to start at the very bottom. The editor was a lech and a snake, but Lois had been desperate enough to take the job.

She had spent two months at the newspaper. She had hated every minute of those weeks, doing her best to avoid being sexually harassed by an editor who she realised had only hired her for the eye candy. She knew she was the office joke and her rage against the man responsible grew exponentially.

Enough that she promised herself she would take him down. Lex Luthor would pay for what he did to her. As well as anyone allied with him.

[phoenixnz]

Chapter Two

“Clark, what the hell do I pay you for?”

Clark Kent looked up with a frown. “What are you talking about, Lex?” he asked.

His boss waved a sheaf of papers at him. “These accounts. The numbers aren’t adding up.”

He took the statements and perused them. Lex had pulled the bank statements from every month for the past three years and highlighted one particular line. One hundred and fifty times. Every week, without fail, there had been a transfer to a company named Phoenix Inc of twenty thousand dollars.

“Lex, I told you about this weeks ago and I said I would handle it.”

“Three years this has been going on, Clark. Three goddamn years!”

“I’ve had our tech guys onto it and they’ve been trying to trace the payments. Even block them. Whoever is behind it knows exactly what they’re doing.”

The older man still didn’t seem placated.

“There is something odd going on in my company, Clark. I hired you to fix it.”

“No. Actually, you didn’t hire me in the beginning. I started out in the mail room, remember?”

His friend sighed and shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t like people to think I just gave you an executive-level position because you’re my friend.”

They’d been friends for close to fifteen years, ever since Clark had pulled the bald man out of the river when his car had crashed through the guardrail of Loeb Bridge. Lex had been naturally curious to know how he’d managed to get out unscathed, or with barely a concussion. Clark had done his best to hide the fact that Lex’s car had actually hit him first. Only the fact that he wasn’t actually human had saved him.

Through the years, their friendship had had its ups and downs. Lex’s almost insatiable curiosity and his need to know the truth about Clark had caused a number of arguments. They’d even stopped being friends for a while, until the death of Clark’s father had mended the rift. Lex had been the one to offer the olive branch.

Clark had grown up on a farm in Smallville. He’d been adopted by Martha and Jonathan Kent when he was a toddler. It wasn’t until the accident that had almost killed Lex that he had learned the truth about his adoption. His parents had found him shortly after his lifepod had crashed in Miller’s Field.

Through his high school years, the farm had been plagued with financial problems. Clark had watched his father working himself to the bone, trying to keep the farm running almost single-handedly. Although he had often claimed he was healthy as a horse, the stress of always being on the edge of financial ruin had caused Jonathan to have a heart attack in Clark’s third year of high school.

His father had managed to survive that attack, only to go back to work on the farm, against doctor’s orders. He had a massive heart attack and died shortly before Clark’s twenty-first birthday.

Clark had chosen against advice to drop out of college one year shy of graduation, opting to work on the farm. He’d tried to keep it running by himself, but super speed and super strength could not make up for his lack of knowledge and he soon found that he had bitten off more than he could chew. Most of the land was now leased by other local farmers. It was enough for Martha to buy a small house in Metropolis and provide a small income, but it wasn’t enough to support both of them. Knowing he couldn’t afford to resume his studies, Clark had begun looking around for a job.

Sadly, with his lack of qualifications, the best he could do was get a job washing dishes. He’d approached Lex, asking him for help in finding employment. His friend had made an appointment for him with LexCorp’s HR department and human resources had placed him in the mail room.

Clark had soon made himself indispensable to his friend, using his skills when he discovered a threat to Lex’s life. He had dealt with the threat before anything had happened.

A week after the incident, his boss in the mail room told him to report to Lex’s office. The man didn’t know that he and Lex were friends and spent much of their spare time together, going to football games, or playing pool in the games room of Lex’s penthouse.

“I need to finish making my rounds,” he said, indicating the mail cart.

“Forget that,” the man replied. “Get up there, or you’re fired!”

Clark obeyed, making his way up to the 55^th floor of the building. Lex often complained about the fact that LexCorp Tower, which was once named Luthor Plaza, was not the tallest building in the world, or even in North America. Surely, he would often say, the third richest man in America should have if not the tallest, at least the third tallest building in the country.

He chose to have his own office five floors below the former office of his father, as if he was afraid it was haunted. Clark wondered if that meant Lex somehow felt guilty about his father’s death. The man had died in prison after being convicted for the murders of his parents.

Clark reported to Lex’s executive assistant. In the days before political correctness went crazy, executive assistants had once been termed secretaries. Lionel Luthor, never one to follow the conventions of the day, had been almost insulting in his continued use of the term.

The assistant looked at him. “Yes?”

“Clark Kent. L … uh, Mr Luthor wanted to see me.”

She sent him a derisive look, but glanced at her monitor. Clark didn’t know what was on there, but guessed there was a note somewhere about him.

“Go in, Mr Kent,” she said, her expression showing obvious surprise that her boss would demand to see some lowly peon.

Clark entered the office. Lex was working on a laptop but smiled and closed the lid.

“Close the door, Mr Kent,” he said, making it sound like a command. It was clearly for the benefit of the assistant.

Once the door was closed, the bald man dropped the cool demeanour and smiled.

“I heard a little rumour there was somebody threatening to kill me,” he said.

“Uh, Lex …”

His friend waved his hand. “I owe you, Clark. And I thought I should return the favour. I had a talk with my head of security about you. It just so happens they have an opening that would suit you.”

“Lex, you don’t have to …”

“Clark, this is not me making special concessions for you. They really do have an opening. You’re wasted in that mail room with your skills.”

His friend warned him that it was not an easy job. He would be starting at the bottom in the security office, but in a few months, depending on how well he did, he could move up in the ranks. Eventually he could even find himself on Lex’s personal security team.

It had taken five years, but he had not only become Lex’s chief bodyguard, he was now Lex’s personal assistant.

Clark sighed as he took the papers from Lex.

“I’ll go talk to the tech guys again,” he said.

“Just handle it,” Lex said curtly.

Clark nodded, watching as the billionaire CEO left the office. He glanced at the door, listening, then glanced up at the small black bubble in the ceiling, indicating the security camera. Having worked in the security office, he was very familiar with the systems. He turned to his computer and pressed a few keys, accessing the security system. He had a program specially installed on his computer which would allow him to play video surveillance in a loop.

As soon as he was sure the loop was playing, he opened the drawer and reached under for a small transmitting device. He placed the device on his ear.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“Five minutes,” was the response.

Clark returned the security system to normal and stood up, picking up the papers. He left the office, ensuring no one was about before using super speed. He made his way up the stairs to the roof, taking off and flying to a building with a glass-domed roof.

A tall man with dark hair stood studying various monitors. He didn’t look around as Clark entered through the main doors.

“What’s going on?”

Clark handed him the papers. “Phoenix Inc.”

“What about it?”

“Bruce, please tell me you’ve managed to track the company.”

“I can’t. But that’s because Phoenix Inc doesn’t exist. There is no office listed anywhere in the world. It looks to me like it’s a dummy corporation.”

“Lex knows. He knows that this company, whoever it is, has embezzled three million dollars from his accounts in the last three years.”

“You told him you’d handle it, right?”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell him. I can’t just go and tell him it doesn’t exist.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Clark. I tracked the funds to an account in the Caymans and from there it vanished. Whoever is behind it knows what they’re doing.”

“So, are they targeting Lex?”

“Sure looks like it.”

Clark sighed. “Now what?”

“You keep doing your job and I’ll do mine. This is what we’ve been working for all this time, Clark.”

“I didn’t think it would take this long.”

“I’ve heard of agents being undercover for a lot longer. You know Lex covers his tracks. We need proof before we can get an indictment. That’s what we need you for. You were the only one close enough that Lex would actually trust you.”

They’d approached him a year before his father died. They’d needed someone on the inside of Lex’s company. Someone who could feed them information on Lex’s illegal activities. He had refused then, wanting to protect his parents. When his father died, they’d approached him again.

“The Justice League needs you,” Bruce Wayne had told him.

“The Justice League?”

“It’s what we’re calling it,” his friend, Oliver Queen had told him.

The Justice League. An agency of people with a range of abilities, investigating people like Lex who abused their power. Lex was the biggest, hence they needed someone with the ability to go up against him. As much as Oliver Queen was rich and powerful enough to fight him, Bruce had suggested Clark would be in the ideal position to be their inside man.

“I have to get back,” Clark said. “I’m going with Lex to the opening of the Atlantis tonight.”

“Well, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Bruce replied. “And don’t worry about Phoenix Inc, all right? Just tell Lex you’re investigating, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

Clark rolled his eyes at the cliché. “Yeah, thanks.”

[DJ Doena]

Interesting angle. Please continue.

[phoenixnz]

Interesting angle. Please continue.

Thanks Karsten. I thought it would be interesting to take elements from Smallville and adapt my original work to fit, so it's an interesting exercise.

[phoenixnz]

Chapter Three

The grand re-opening of the Atlantis nightclub was by invitation only but she had managed to get herself invited as she had helped the new owner with publicity. She had seen the invitation list and knew Lex and his bodyguard/executive assistant were going to be there as well.

She dressed carefully in what had once been loosely termed a ‘little black dress’. It came to just above her knees. Not short enough to be indecent and not too long that anyone there couldn’t get a glimpse of long, shapely legs. She was hardly skinny, but she prided herself on her athletic body.

She applied make-up skilfully, using eyeliner, mascara and eyeshadow to make her eyes pop, then used a matte powder to contour her face. The idea was to make it appear a little thinner than it had been three years ago, but not so thin that the effect would look almost macabre. She had watched dozens of tutorials on YouTube on how to use make-up to her advantage.

Once her make-up was done, she experimented with different hairstyles. When she had been working at the Planet, she had had dark honey-coloured hair with blonde highlights. She’d worn it mostly with the length down her back, the sides pinned up for neatness. After everything had blown apart and she’d found it necessary to disappear off the radar for a while, she had cut her hair very short, going for a white blonde look. It hadn’t exactly suited her skin tone, but it had created a very sharp contrast to her looks. Even her own father would have had trouble picking her out of a crowd.

When she’d returned to the city, she had dyed her hair red and had extensions put in by a professional hairdresser. Her actual hair was just a little below her shoulders and had started to follow the natural curl. The extensions gave her another three or four inches so it was down to the middle of her back.

She held up the length, wondering if she should put it up in some kind of knot or leave it down. She decided to go with something that was a combination of both.

The opening party was already in full swing when she arrived. The owner greeted her with a smile and a kiss on each cheek. He was a fairly average-looking man except for his blonde hair and intense blue eyes. He claimed to have some Scandinavian ancestry which accounted for the fairness, she supposed. He was tall – well over six feet, and often tried to use that height to impress or intimidate people. She wasn’t someone who was easily impressed by such things.

She didn’t really like Morgan Edge, Junior. The man was a poser and had a reputation with women that was hardly flattering. He appeared to think he was God’s gift, but she had at least managed to deter his wandering hands by telling him if he was her gift, she’d return it toot suite. He’d laughed it off as a joke but she had been deadly serious. Had he tried to take things further, she would have used all the martial arts she’d learned as a child to beat the message into him.

Rumour had it that his father, Morgan Edge, Senior, had owned the club years ago. It had been implied in the newspapers that senior had been involved in organised crime in the city and that the club was a front for such activity. There was also some connection to the late Lionel Luthor. She recalled that many years ago, Lionel had been convicted for the murders of his parents and Edge had helped him commit the deed.

Junior was more than likely just as involved, but she was fairly sure the kingpin nowadays was someone much higher up the food chain.

Morgan handed her a glass of champagne and waved his hand.

“Have fun,” he said. “Mingle.”

She glanced at the crowd. There had to be at least two hundred people in the club. Given that the club had a fairly large dancefloor, she expected it would fit close to five hundred, but considering this was a by-invitation-only event she decided the number was just about bang-on.

She didn’t see her quarry in the crowd, but that didn’t mean anything. Given the throng of people, he could be anywhere. Or more than likely he hadn’t arrived yet.

She decided to join the dancers. The music was a little too loud and she found the discordant sound of the bass distracting. She didn’t consider herself an expert on music, although she had once sung in a school choir. Unfortunately for her, she never had the chance to join another one as her father had been transferred to another army base a month before the end of the school year and the new school didn’t have a music teacher, let alone a choir.

She had always been a fan of rock rather than pop music. Groups like Whitesnake and Def Leppard were a huge part of her childhood. She had once gone to a Whitesnake concert and bought a t-shirt. She had worn it for two weeks before her father had insisted she take it off to be laundered. The base laundry had practically ruined the shirt and she’d turned it into a cushion instead.

An old boyfriend had claimed she had no taste when it came to music. At least, she thought, I had enough taste to know when I hear good music. This was not, she thought, as the song came to an end with what sounded like a dozen electric guitars screeching to the finish.

A man a few years younger than her asked her to dance to the next song. He had red hair and, as was normal for most redheads, a mass of freckles on his face. This song, while it still had a little too much bass, at least seemed to have a decent rhythm to it. She let her body absorb the music and began to slowly move to the beat.

Her dance partner was no more skilled at dancing than he was in the art of conversation. He flailed his arms, his feet moving to a rhythm that appeared to be all his own invention, reminding her of a fish flopping on the sand, gasping for air. Or an octopus. She was not the best of dancers herself, having only taken a year of dancing lessons before her mother died. Once the matriarch of her family was gone, there was no one to temper her father and remind him that his daughters were children and not new recruits forced to obey commands they didn’t understand.

She managed to escape the clutches of the young man she had quickly nicknamed Mr Squiddly to get another glass of champagne. As she sipped the wine, a tall man came to stand next to her. She turned around to watch the dancers on the floor, pretending not to notice the man.

“I was starting to think you needed rescuing,” he said.

She turned to look at him and found herself gazing into piercing blue eyes. The same eyes she’d seen in dozens of photographs she’d taken personally.

“Oh, I think I do pretty well by myself,” she replied.

He nodded, his gaze sweeping over her body. She could tell from his expression that he liked what he saw.

“Yeah, you look like someone who can take good care of herself.”

She snorted in derision. “Is that supposed to be a line?”

“I don’t know. Is it?”

He smirked at her as if he was so sure of himself that he figured she would just instantly fall into his arms. She had to admit he was rather good-looking with black, wavy hair and chiselled features.

“Well, I’m going to dance.”

The man caught her hand and held her back for just a second.

“Dance with me,” he said. “I can’t promise I’ll be as good as that guy, but …”

She snorted again. “Oh, please. Anything else would be a vast improvement.”

He smiled crookedly, showing pointed fangs. It was a slight imperfection in an otherwise perfect face.

“I hope your feet have insurance,” he joked, taking her hand and leading her back out to the dance floor.

The song was, fortunately, a slow one. He held her close, but not too close, with a hand at her waist and the other clasping her right hand a little out to the side.

“By the way. My name’s Clark.”

“Joanne,” she replied. She’d decided to use her middle name instead of her real name. It was easier. She was less likely to slip up.

“Doesn’t suit you,” he said with a smile.

“Oh? What would?”

“You know, I have no idea. I just look at you and you don’t look like a Joanne to me.”

“What does a Joanne look like?” she asked, amused in spite of herself.

“Well, certainly not someone who is the loveliest woman in the room tonight.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” she returned. “Anyway, did you know that in Hebrew, it means ‘God is gracious’?”

He shook his head. “No, I didn’t know that. I still stand by what I said. I’m not saying you’re not gracious, or graceful, or whatever the hell that means, but it still doesn’t suit you.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

[phoenixnz]

Chapter Four

Clark had never considered himself the partying type. The only reason he was at the opening, or re-opening of the Atlantis was that Lex had asked him to go. Not as his executive assistant, not even as his employee, but as his friend. Given that there was going to be plenty of security at the event, the other man didn’t so much as need a bodyguard as someone to fend off the next prospective Mrs Luthor.

Lex had been married three times. The first time, he had left Smallville, where he was managing Luthorcorp Plant No. 3, otherwise known as the Smallville Fertiliser Plant, to stay in Metropolis for a month. He’d been forced to leave the mansion for a short period as it had been damaged in a tornado early that summer. Clark had been at a school dance with his then-girlfriend when the twister had struck.

While he was staying in the city, he’d attended a social event and run into a woman named Desiree Atkins. She’d claimed she was there to ‘rescue’ Lex from the dreariness of his life as his father’s pawn. It turned out that she had been infected by the meteors which had struck when Lex was nine. The same meteors that had covered the arrival of the lifepod containing Clark as a toddler.

Lex’s second marriage had been to a woman named Helen Bryce. She was a doctor at Smallville Medical Center. He had fallen hard for the pretty doctor, unaware at the time that she had been employed by Lionel to spy on him. Helen had eventually decided that the money Lionel was paying her wasn’t enough and she wanted it all. She had tried to kill Lex as they were flying away to their honeymoon by drugging him and paying the pilot to abandon ship before the plane plunged into the Pacific. Lex had often said he had some kind of guardian angel watching over him as he had managed to survive the ensuing crash and was stranded on an island for three months.

His third marriage was to a girl Clark had gone to high school with. Clark had had a crush on Lana Lang right from first grade, but the young brunette had never seemed to notice. Pretty and popular, most thought she was a bit vapid, continuing to cash in on the fame of being on the cover of Time Magazine when it published an article on the deadly meteor shower. Her other claim to fame was the fact that she had lost both her parents when a meteor had crashed to Earth, crushing their car and Lewis and Laura Lang along with it.

To her credit, Lana had changed people’s perceptions of her their freshman year at Smallville High. She had quit cheerleading and presented a proposal to Lex to revamp the old movie theatre, the Talon, into a coffee shop. A space above had also been extensively refurbished as an apartment which could be rented out.

Lex was quite taken with the young woman, although it was a good few years before they’d actually started dating. The marriage had lasted barely long enough for her to give birth to their son, Alexander Junior. Alex was in his father’s custody, although Lex spent little time with him.
Clark had no idea where Lana was.

When Lex had told him he had to accompany him to the re-opening, Clark had tried to beg off. He knew the Atlantis, having spent a good chunk of the summer he was sixteen as a runaway in Metropolis. Lex knew about that summer. Not all the gory details, but enough. Just as he knew Clark had certain abilities.

He’d told Lex just enough of the truth to make it sound plausible. His friend didn’t know everything but what he did know had been sufficient to make him stop asking questions. He knew nothing of Krypton, or of Clark’s alien heritage. He’d told Lex that he’d been caught in the meteor shower and had been wandering in Miller’s Field after it had happened with no memory of who he was or how he had got there. Bruce had even managed to provide fake documents which proved that his birth parents had died in the catastrophe.

Lex had once asked him if he was interested in discovering how he managed to get his abilities, but Clark had declined, saying it was too much a reminder that he wasn’t ‘normal’. He played up the years of loneliness and the fear of being taken away from his parents should someone discover just how different he was.

It was something the bald man knew very well. Having been subjected to years of cruelty by Lionel, Lex had admitted to feeling much the same thing.

“I guess that’s why we’re such good friends, then,” Clark had once told him.

Clark sighed, looking around the club. He sipped his glass of champagne.

“You could at least try to enjoy yourself,” Lex admonished him.

“I thought you brought me here to be your bodyguard,” Clark returned.

The bald man shook his head and smirked. “Junior’s taken care of that.” He sighed. “Look, I get it. But it’s been, what, five years? I heard she’s dating Queen, now.”

Clark nodded. The last time he’d seen his ex-girlfriend, it had been at a charity function. He’d been there in an official capacity. She had glared daggers at him once she’d seen he was accompanying his boss, then turned to her date. A man as tall as Clark with blond spiked hair.
Oliver Queen. He had been a classmate of Lex’s at Excelsior Academy. The way Lex had described it, the other man had been a bully and an ass. The two men’s enmity hadn’t changed in the intervening years. In fact, it had worsened now that their respective companies were business rivals.

Yet, while Lex wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty and use every piece of information he could lay his hands on to get his way, Queen’s reputation was as an honest businessman.

Clark had met Oliver some years earlier. The older man had been investigating clients of a subsidiary company of LexCorp who had suddenly acquired items which were known treasures, stolen from museums and art galleries all over the world. Clark had misinterpreted Oliver’s motives and demanded answers.

Oliver had been the one to approach him for the operation.

“Clark, she’s moved on. You should too.”

“I date,” Clark told Lex in a half-hearted protest.

“You have dinner with them. How many have you actually gone to bed with?”

Clark hadn’t gone to bed with anyone since his ex. He just didn’t need the complication. Unlike Lex, who didn’t see anything wrong with one-night stands. Even after one of those one-night stands had turned murderous.

“Well, we can’t all be you, Lex.”

“Ouch!” The other man was quiet for a few moments. He turned once again to study the crowd. “Oh god! Look at that guy. Is he dancing or trying to catch fish.”

Clark followed his friend’s gaze. The guy he indicated was all over the place. The woman he was dancing with looked embarrassed.

He studied the woman. She was pretty with dark red tresses. She was wearing a black dress which hugged her curves, enhancing her stunning figure.

“Ah, I see some interest. Why don’t you go talk to her? It’ll give her a chance to get away from Doc Ock there.”

“You and your comics,” Clark returned, amused. Lex just smirked at him and pushed him in the woman’s direction.

She had moved to the bar and was now drinking a glass of champagne.

“I was starting to think you needed rescuing,” he said as he moved to lean on the bar beside her.

She turned to look at him. Even with the make-up, she had the most amazing hazel eyes. She smiled.

“Oh, I think I do pretty well by myself.”

He swept his gaze over her and smiled back. Maybe he didn’t believe in attraction, but she was definitely someone he wanted to get to know better.

He had no idea what he said to her next, but she appeared to like whatever it was, agreeing to dance with him. Thankfully, the next song was a slow one. He chose to act the gentleman and dance with her in a more formal fashion, rather than holding her too close.

He decided now would be a good time to introduce himself. When she told him her name he wondered why the name just didn’t sound right.

As he continued to talk with her, he had the strangest sensation that he knew her from somewhere. Maybe it was the way she spoke. The tone, or the language. Or maybe it was the way she carried herself. He just felt … something.

[phoenixnz]

Chapter Five

She hadn’t expected him to be such good company. Once she’d had enough of dancing, Clark had supplied her with more champagne and sat her down on one of the couches, a little way off the dance floor.

They’d tried talking while they were dancing, but the loud music and the crowd made it difficult. He’d been saying something to her that she couldn’t catch.

She gestured toward her ear and traced a circle around it.

“I can’t hear you,” she said.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her closer.

“I was just saying, I could use another drink.”

She followed him to the other side of the club, where it was quieter. A woman in a black shirt and short skirt approached him. Clark spoke inaudibly to her and she nodded, turning away.

“How do you …” she began.

“The trick is to talk under the din, not over it,” Clark said.

“Oh.” She’d spent some of her teen years in various nightclubs and she’d forgotten that trick.

“You never learned that trick?” he asked.

“I did, actually,” she told him, a little defensively. “It’s just been a few years.”

“A few? You were trawling nightclubs as a kid?” he asked, cocking his eyebrow.

“Cute,” she returned. “I’m older than I look. But yes, I did spend a few summers around nightclubs.”

“Let me guess. Rebelling against your dad?”

She grinned. “Something like that. My dad could be kind of over-protective.”

“I’m not surprised,” Clark returned with an appreciative look. “With your looks, it would be like bees to honey.”

She was flattered. How could she not be? She’d had such compliments before, but with Clark it seemed sincere.

Careful, she told herself. Remember who he is.

They talked for a while, mostly about trivial matters. She deliberately sipped her champagne, making sure it would last. In the old days, she would have been able to drink even her father’s colleagues under the table, but nowadays she was more cautious. She noticed Clark wasn’t pacing himself and wondered if she could use that to her advantage.

“So, how do you know Morgan?” he asked.

“Oh, just through a friend of a friend,” she told him. “I helped him publicise the re-opening.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. She had known quite a few people in the so-called ‘underworld’. Part of being a good journalist was having contacts from, to use a cliché, all walks of life. Some of those she’d known were considered errand boys for the local criminal element. She had quickly learned that as long as she didn’t spill the beans on who her sources were, they would give her as much information as she could handle.

When she’d returned to Metropolis more than two months earlier, she had tracked one of her old sources down. Bobby Bigmouth hadn’t recognised her until she’d held up a bag containing all his favourite foods. Something only someone reasonably close to him would know.

Bobby was one of those people who somehow managed to get information on everything going on, especially with one of the local gangs. She had never questioned this mysterious ability, especially when he had been proven right on so many occasions.

She had known he worked in a local deli. Given his love of food, it was no surprise. Bobby Bigmouth, so named because he tended to be always chewing on something, was a tall man in his forties. He was skinny as a rail, something he put down to a freak metabolism.

He wasn’t working at the deli the day she dropped in, so she left a note, telling him to meet her at a particular location and she would be waiting with his favourite food. Bobby was not big on ‘health food’. She’d once heard a rumour that a rival reporter had brought him a salad shake and he’d refused to speak to her.

She waited at the location in the SUV she’d bought. She didn’t like the big cars. While she wasn’t exactly short, she still found them too roomy. She’d always liked sporty-type vehicles. Yet knowing she needed to avoid discovery, she had gone for something the complete opposite of her taste.

He was right on time. He’d always been a fairly punctual kind of source. Something else that had been in his favour. She’d often told her sources she had deadlines and didn’t like to be kept waiting.

He looked at her as he got in the passenger side of the SUV. He peered at her curiously and she held her breath for a moment, wondering if he recognised her.

“How about you tell me your name so I know I’m not wastin’ my time,” he said. She shook her head and he sighed. “So? What’d ya bring me?”

She held up a brown paper bag and handed it to him. He opened up the top and looked at the contents.

“Pastrami on Rye? And Chocolate Tortes?”

He again looked at her, studying her curiously. She took off the glasses she’d been wearing and turned her head. He was dumbstruck for a moment, his eyes widening.

“Jeez … I heard you had vanished off the face of the Earth!”

“Not quite,” she said coolly. “Tell me what you know.”

“What do you need?” he asked, taking out his sandwich and biting into it, making appreciative noises as he did so.

“Luthor. I need in,” she told him. “Can you help me or not?”

Eventually, he told her he could put her in touch with the son of the former boss of Intergang. Morgan Edge Jnr was supposedly going legit and re-opening his father’s old club. Bobby had also mentioned that Lex Luthor was the club’s main investor.

She had wondered if that meant Lex was taking over Intergang but was yet to find any proof.

She knew if she was going to get what she needed, she had to get on the inside. The one thing she had learned long ago was that networking was everything. The only way in was through someone else.

Lex Luthor was out. It wasn’t just that she hated the man. She loathed him. She knew she wouldn’t be able to hold back her revulsion.

Clark, on the other hand, was something of a dark horse. She knew he grew up on a farm, but very little else. She had learned that the farm had been on the brink of bankruptcy when Clark began working for LexCorp, as it had been renamed after Lionel Luthor passed away. He’d somehow managed to rise through the ranks, so to speak, to become Lex’s trusted assistant/bodyguard.

It was not the most brilliant of plans, she acknowledged. In the past, she would have donned some kind of disguise and tried to bluff her way into the Metropolis corporate offices. Considering the way Luthor had destroyed her career, she knew a disguise wouldn’t work this time.

Luthor was well-known for quoting from such philosophical texts as Machiavelli’s The Prince, or Sun Tzu’s Art of War, so she had figured the way to fight fire with fire was to learn everything she could about the man’s thought processes. If such texts were his major influences growing up, then it was natural to assume he had learned the art of manipulation from them.

She hoped her strategy would also work on Clark.

She continued to sip from her glass of champagne. She was onto her second since they’d sat down while he was onto his fourth.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said.

“Nothing to tell, really,” she replied. “I spent a couple of years in Europe and decided it was time I came home.”

“What were you doing in Europe?”

“Oh, I worked for a fashion magazine. I figured it was a great way to see the publicity machine in action.”

“So, that helped you get the job here?” he asked. She’d already told him she had handled publicity for the opening.

She waved her hand casually. “Oh, no, I just did this as a favour.”

Lex approached their table. “Clark, I’m heading out.”

Clark started to rise, but the bald man stopped him. “No, stay and enjoy the rest of your evening.”

“Oh, uh, Lex, this is Joanne. She helped Morgan with the opening.”

He looked her up and down, practically leering at her. She fought back a shudder of disgust.
“Joanne? Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” she said. She turned back to Clark as the other man walked off. “So, your turn.”

Clark grinned. “What do you want to know?” he asked.

“Everything.”

“Well, that narrows it down,” he replied with a hint of sarcasm. She rolled her eyes and laughed.

“Not afraid, are you?” she said with a sly grin. “Not hiding any skeletons in closets or anything?”

He responded with a laugh of his own. “I can see you’re going to be a handful.”

[Sykobee]

Okay, no surprise, but I'm not only caught up but am hooked. Line and sinker. Liking the twists and changes. Although Lex as a dad is not a comfy notion at all. Also, the idea of Lex being in on any version of Clarks secret and still being an evil S. O. B is worrisome. Leaves little room for the possibility of there ever being a Supes. . . Well I will be waiting for the next chapter. Off to Phoenixland I go.

[phoenixnz]

Okay, no surprise, but I'm not only caught up but am hooked. Line and sinker. Liking the twists and changes. Although Lex as a dad is not a comfy notion at all. Also, the idea of Lex being in on any version of Clarks secret and still being an evil S. O. B is worrisome. Leaves little room for the possibility of there ever being a Supes. . . Well I will be waiting for the next chapter. Off to Phoenixland I go.

All I will say is there is no Superman in the story. I liked the idea of creating a Justice League that is like a government agency, exposing crooks like Lex. The one thing I figured when I was writing Phoenix was that a lie is more believable if there is an element of truth to it, so that's why Lex knows about Clark's abilities, but not everything. Lex is not a good father, but then he's not a good person either.

[phoenixnz]

Chapter Six

Clark studied Joanne. He’d noticed she was pacing herself with the champagne, although she appeared to be taking note of the fact that he had already drunk more than her. It didn’t matter, since he couldn’t actually get drunk.

He hadn’t really known for sure whether alcohol could affect him until Lex had suggested a drinking game. Always the cautious one, Clark had refused to touch a drop of alcohol before he was of legal age, although he didn’t really know when his real birthday was. That was the trouble with being sent rocketing through space in his infancy. Not even his birth father could give him any indication of when the Earth equivalent date of his birthday was. So he continued to use the date chosen by his parents for his birth certificate when they’d adopted him.

He’d been feeling depressed on his twenty-first birthday. It had only been a few weeks since Jonathan’s death and he was still trying to come to terms with it.

“You know what you need,” Lex said. Clark had been invited over to the mansion for a quiet dinner with his friend. His mother had not been feeling well, another casualty of the fallout since his father’s death, and he’d told her not to worry about celebrating his birthday.

He looked at Lex. The other man was twenty-seven, although he would be twenty-eight in September. Clark remembered that Lex had only just turned twenty-one when they’d met seven years earlier.

He did not consider his friend to be conventionally good-looking. Lex had been bald since the age of nine, the result of exposure to the meteors. Clark had heard a lot of women in Smallville talk about the Luthor scion as if he was the best thing since sliced bread. ‘Sexy’ was the word he’d heard bandied about. He’d once asked his girlfriend what women saw in Lex, but she’d only shrugged and suggested perhaps they were attracted to his money. Even in Smallville, ‘Middletown USA’, a small minority were just as shallow as the rest of America.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like Lex. As a fourteen-year-old, he’d been overwhelmed by the man’s apparent maturity. As he’d got to know the other man, he’d begun to realise that the bald man was just as insecure; maybe even more so. Despite the pressures placed on him by his father, being forced to run a business he knew nothing about, around others, he was arrogant, walking around with a swagger that tended to make him more enemies than friends. Clark, however, saw another side of Lex. A side where he liked to act like the kid he never got to be, even when he was one.
It was that side of him that had convinced Clark the other man had needed a friend.

“What do I need, Lex?” he asked.

“You need a pick-me-up. Maybe we should go into the city, check out some of the clubs.”

Clark shook his head. “No, I don’t feel like partying.”

“Why not? You’re legal now.”

“I’m not in the mood.”

“Okay,” Lex shrugged. “Your loss.” He sat back in his chair, drinking from the blue bottle of mineral water. He had the water specially imported from Europe. Clark had once asked him why, when he could have got local.

“Because I can,” his friend had replied with a smirk.

Clark studied his friend as the other man sipped from the bottle, looking contemplative.

“Okay, I have an idea. I’ll put on a movie. You choose. We’ll grab ourselves a few drinks and play a drinking game.”

He had tried to get out of it, but Lex was determined to cheer him up. So they’d watched a movie Clark had chosen and Lex had come up with the rule that every time a character used a cliché, they had to drink a shot.

By the time the movie was over, Lex was plastered, but Clark was completely sober.

He finished his glass of champagne and leaned forward.

“So, you want to know everything, huh?”

“Yes, I do. Like how does someone like you get to be Lex Luthor’s personal bodyguard?”

“You know, sometimes I even ask myself that question.”

He told her about growing up in Smallville, his friendship with Lex and how the loss of his father had led to working for the young billionaire. She appeared intrigued by his life on the farm and sympathetic to what had happened to Jonathan.

“I’m sorry. I lost my mom when I was very young, so I know how it feels.”

She couldn’t possibly, he thought. Their experiences were obviously very different. Losing Jonathan had been gut-wrenching. He’d gone over it again and again in his mind, wondering if there was something he could have done to have prevented it. He’d even considered going to his birth father and asking him to bring Jonathan back, but his mother, Martha, had told him it wouldn’t help. Even his girlfriend had told him it wouldn’t change anything.

“Even with all my abilities, all those things I can do, I couldn’t save him,” he’d told his girlfriend that night.

“You can’t change the past, Clark. I know that better than anyone.”

Joanne continued to ask him questions, making him feel as if he was at an interview. She asked questions that, to him, appeared to have been carefully thought out and worded in such a way that they would get him to talk about himself. Every time he would try to steer the conversation back to her, she would skilfully evade his questioning and turn it back around to him.

It reminded him a lot of his ex. She had always had an innate curiosity which did tend to land her in trouble more often than not. She’d always had ambitions of becoming a reporter for the biggest newspaper in the country, but had never quite made it.

The conversation inevitably got around to his ex.

“So what happened between you and your ex?” Joanne asked.

“How do you know she’s my ex?” he replied.

“Because you’re here with me instead of being with her.”

He nodded. Okay, so she’d caught him on that one.

They’d met in eighth grade. He’d been asked to show a new student around the junior high. Chloe and her father had moved to Smallville as he’d just taken a job at the Luthorcorp plant as a manager.

In high school, Chloe had fought for the position of Editor of the Smallville Torch. Despite the principal’s misgivings, she had won him over not only with her promises to turn the Smallville High newspaper into a decent publication, but also with her passion. She had been volunteering for school newspapers since third grade and had even done some freelancing with a city paper. Not quite the Daily Planet but still enough for the principal to notice.

It was thanks to a young boy who appeared to have telepathic abilities that Clark realised Chloe had had a crush on him. When she had been kidnapped, he’d begun to realise that perhaps her crush was not totally one-sided. He’d asked her to the Spring Formal and she’d accepted.

She’d been upset when he’d disappeared to help Lana Lang when the brunette was caught up in a tornado. A couple of days later, as they were searching the area for his father, who had also been caught up in the storm, Chloe had pulled him aside.

“You know, I've been thinking. It's funny how a natural disaster puts your life in perspective, but I think that it might be better if we just stayed really good friends. Anything other than that just gets too complicated.”

He’d been going to just agree with her but something had stopped him. Maybe it was the way she avoided his gaze, or the slight hitch in her voice. He knew if he made the wrong decision, he could possibly lose her forever.

“No,” he said. “I’m not going to let you walk away and pretend like the dance never happened. I know it looked bad, me disappearing like that, and I can’t tell you exactly what happened. I can only ask you to give this another chance.”

She’d appeared almost taken aback, but he’d been relieved when she had agreed to it. She’d left Smallville a week later to work at her summer internship at the Daily Planet. He’d gone to the city every weekend that summer to take her out.

They’d talked about getting engaged not long after they’d graduated high school, but it had never really seemed to work out. Chloe had gone off to college at Met U while Clark had enrolled at Kansas A&M. With his father’s declining health, he’d dropped out. Something Chloe hadn’t agreed with.

The final straw in their relationship had been his taking a job with LexCorp.

“I can’t believe you!” she’d spat angrily. “How can you go and work for that … that …”

“It’s not like there’s a whole lot of choice. Chloe, I’m sorry you don’t like this, but this was my decision.”

She’d continued to live in Smallville, but once he’d started moving up the ranks in LexCorp, she had refused to see him.

He looked at Joanne. “I guess we just realised that we have different interests.”

She nodded. “People drift apart. It happens.”

[phoenixnz]

Chapter Seven

She had slept late. That was a given, considering she had been at Atlantis until about three in the morning. The club would be open until five on normal nights, but since this had been the grand re-opening bash, Junior had decided to end the party at around one. He’d come over to the table where she’d been talking with Clark and told them he was closing up but they were welcome to stay and have coffee.

She had been more than a little surprised at Clark’s manner. Despite her feelings about the man he worked for, she had found him easygoing and almost gentle. She had liked talking to him.

They’d spent a couple of hours over coffees talking about a variety of subjects from movies to music. She’d teased Clark when she found out he liked romantic comedies.

“You don’t like them?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’ve never been a chick flick kind of girl. Give me a good action movie any day.”

“They’re not all bad,” he replied with a sheepish look. “My mom loved anything with Meg Ryan. You’ve Got Mail, When Harry Met Sally.”

“Ugh. Cliched.”

“So, let me guess. You prefer Stallone, Schwarzenegger …”

“They’re all right, I guess. I wasn’t a fan of Terminator. Too many plot-holes, for one.”

Clark shrugged. “I guess that’s true. So what kind of music do you like? I noticed you’re not exactly a fan of the stuff they play here.”

“Too much bass,” she said. She’d spent a lot of time in clubs when she’d been rebelling against her father and had often marvelled at the fact that her hearing had remained relatively intact. “I hate to say it, because I’d sound too much like my dad, but most of it is just noise. There isn’t actually any rhythm.”

“I kind of have to agree with you on that. I have to admit, when I saw you dancing with that guy, I did wonder why you didn’t just walk away.”

She’d done her best to hide her embarrassment at the guy’s bad dancing. She had figured that it would attract attention to them. She had just hoped that it was the right kind of attention.

“You mean, Mr Squiddly?” she asked with a laugh. Clark cocked an eyebrow at her, then chuckled.

“Lex called him Doc Ock. You know, from the Spiderman comics?” he added as she frowned at him. “He has these mechanical tentacles.”

“I don’t read comics. I’m guessing he’s a fan.”

“He grew up reading Warrior Angel comics.”

“I don’t know that one,” she lied. She had been forced to cover a comic convention once and had come across a story about a stolen rare Warrior Angel comic.

She’d never been a fan of the medium. Her father had often complained about the waste of money. Even as a highly-decorated officer in the army, his monthly salary hadn’t been that great. There was also the fact that they’d moved every eighteen months or so and packing was always a chore.

Clark had offered her a ride home after they’d left the club, but she had declined. As much as she had liked talking to him, she wanted to take it slow. The one thing she had learned about getting what she wanted out of people, it was to take things slowly until she had time to gauge their reactions. Clark appeared to be a cautious kind of man. Whether that had something to do with having been raised on a farm in a small community, she had no idea.

When she had returned to Metropolis, she had found herself an apartment a couple of blocks from LexCorp Plaza. The Plaza was across the street from the Daily Planet. If she was looking out her east-side window, she could just see the spinning globe on top of the building. It hurt, being so close to the scene of the crime, so-to-speak. She also ran the risk of running into one of her old colleagues, who might recognise her. She hoped not. Most people tended not to see what was right in front of their faces and she thought she had made enough changes in her hair and make-up that they wouldn’t know it was her without looking closer.

She rolled over and glanced at the clock on her phone. The sun was pouring in, filtered only slightly by the net curtains across the window. She hadn’t pulled the drapes when she’d gone to bed and the sun was shining brightly, leaving long shadows across the cream cover on her bed.

Yawning, she reached for her phone and swiped the screen with a finger. There was a message. One of her contacts needed to talk to her.

She sent him a reply, telling him she would meet him at a café downtown, giving herself an hour to get up and get ready.

She stretched lazily, thinking once again about her evening. She hadn’t gone with high expectations. From what she’d learned studying the man, Clark Kent was not easily swayed by a pretty face. He’d gone out on a few dates but every date had ended with a kiss on the cheek. He didn’t go out with the same girl twice unless she seemed to pique his interest.

She had managed to get over the first hurdle. He was definitely interested. The question was, would she be able to hold that interest?

She was under no illusions about herself. She’d grown up thinking she wasn’t what her father had expected. When her mother died, he had treated her almost as if she was one of his soldiers instead of a daughter. She had often wondered as she grew older if he really had wanted a boy instead of a girl.

As she went to the bathroom to brush her teeth and take a shower, she stared at her reflection in the mirror. As a young girl, she’d preferred short hair and boyish looks, thinking that that would make her father see her. Once she’d begun to realise that it didn’t matter what she did or how she dressed, she had grown her hair long. She’d started smoking, mostly because he’d been dead set against it, but had quickly begun to hate the smell of smoke on her clothes. Fortunately she hadn’t damaged her skin, which was still soft and smooth.

Her father had never praised her. Not even when she made good grades in school. Yet her sister, Lucy, had been sent to a boarding school where she had achieved straight-As in almost every subject. Of course, there had always been that one subject her father had criticised.

She’d been ten when she’d developed a crush on a boy in her class. She had overheard what he’d said when he’d found out.

“Her?” he’d said with a snort. “She’s ugly. Why would I be interested in her?”

In tears, she had gone to her father’s office on base. She’d sat in the outer office, a tissue in one hand. The corporal who sat at the desk had taken pity on her and gave her a small bag of M&Ms while she waited for her father.

She’d sat there for an hour. It was only when the corporal began packing up to go off duty for the day that her father came out. He didn’t say a word in greeting and strode out the office door. She ran to catch up with him and followed him as he went to carry out an inspection.

“Am I pretty, Daddy?” she asked when she could finally catch her breath.

He never even responded, except with a grunt. He’d never asked her what she was doing there and it had felt like she didn’t even exist.

Her high school years had been just as difficult. She’d skipped most of her classes and didn’t graduate with the rest of her class. Her father had almost sent her to Smallville High but at the last minute had decided to send her to Metropolis High instead. She had boarded in the city with a friend of her father’s, a retired colonel who had been even stricter than the General.

She had been forced to knuckle down and focus on her studies. Lois had even been banned from attending any school social events so she could concentrate on getting her credits. Feeling even more alone than ever, unable to even talk to her cousin in Smallville, she decided to do her utmost to earn as many credits as she could in the first semester so she could get mid-year admission to college.

The work paid off and she was able to re-enrol. Her initial acceptance to Met U having been revoked due to her lack of credits, she had to go to Kansas State instead. She took a part-time job in a coffee shop and spent all her time studying. When she finished her freshman year with almost straight-As, she went to her father.

It was as if someone had switched on a lightbulb and he had seen her in a new light. She had been surprised to see that he was not only impressed with what she had managed to achieve but was also proud.

It had marked a change in their relationship. Suddenly the general saw his daughter as an adult who could be trusted to make hard decisions. They’d finally sat down and had a long talk. It was the first time she had also begun to understand exactly why her father had behaved the way he did. He just hadn’t been able to handle losing the love of his life. Dealing with two grieving daughters as well had been something he couldn’t cope with.

Despite that, she had shied away from relationships. She’d focused on her career instead of dating, making her colleagues think she was either a snob or just not that interesting.

She had gone out on dates, but usually it had been one date and that was it. As if she was somehow the ‘kiss of death’ when it came to relationships.

Yet she couldn’t help thinking about Clark as she put on her make-up. He clearly hadn’t dated a lot either.

She wondered what his reaction would be if she told him she already knew who he was. At least sort of. Chloe had mentioned him a few times, especially when she’d been complaining about something her boyfriend had done. She hadn’t known much about his background or how her cousin had met him.

Luckily for her, she thought, they’d never actually met. She’d been too busy to meet her cousin, who had never quite achieved her dream of working at the Daily Planet.

She’d been sharing an apartment with a roommate in Metropolis for a while until her roommate had announced she was getting married and Lois would have to find some place else to live. She’d looked in the real estate section of the paper, but the rentals had been very slim pickings. Even though she was getting a reasonable salary, the apartments she wanted were too expensive and the ones she could afford were dumps.

Chloe had offered to let her share the apartment above the coffee shop in Smallville. By then, Chloe and Clark had broken up. Over his job with Lex Luthor, or so she’d heard. Chloe had admitted that it had been happening for a while anyway. She had loved Clark, but had never been quite sure if it was a lifetime love.

She swallowed a lump in her throat, pushing away the sudden feeling of grief over her cousin. After the explosion at the Talon, she had walked away, even knowing that her cousin would worry about her. Chloe had moved away about six months before the explosion, taking a job in Star City. She hadn’t talked to her in three years and wasn’t even sure if her cousin knew she was still alive.

Shaking off the emotion, she finished dressing and left the apartment. She walked along the street, acutely aware of the admiring looks she received from men passing by. She ignored them.

The café was not full when she arrived. She spotted her quarry sitting in the corner, a mug in front of him. The man looked up and acknowledged her presence with a slight nod. She went up to the counter and ordered a coffee before moving to sit down at the table.

“What’s up?” she asked.

She studied the man. Stuart Campbell was slightly built and not much taller than her. When she had first met him, she had laughed silently at his baby-face. Even now, a little over four years since they’d met, he still looked younger than his age, which was about three years younger than her.

She’d met him through Bobby. She’d asked her friend to find someone who could help her hack into a few computer systems. He’d told her about a young prodigy who had graduated M.I.T and worked for LexCorp but also did hacking in his spare time. How Bobby had found him, she didn’t know and didn’t ask.

Stuart regarded her silently, waiting until her coffee was placed in front of her before he leaned back in his chair, trying to make it look like this was a casual conversation between friends.

“Well?” she asked.

“Phoenix Inc,” he said quietly.

“What about it?”

“I think someone’s onto us. I’ve thrown up firewall after firewall, but they manage to break through. It’s only a matter of time before they track me down.”

She frowned. “Do you think it’s Lex?”

“I don’t know. That’s the worst part. They’re trying to block the money transfers. I’ve been bouncing off different servers each time, but …”

She bit her lip. “We’ve got no choice then.”

She ordered him to stop the transfers, then withdraw everything from the overseas account and close it. If they couldn’t figure out where the money had gone, it would at least stall them.

She’d known it would happen sooner or later. Stuart was good, but he wasn’t infallible.

“So, what next then?” he asked.

She sipped her coffee and sat back. “You keep hacking into the system. Get as many of those files as you can.” She knew it wouldn’t be easy. Despite having worked for LexCorp three years ago, Stuart didn’t know where all the files were kept. He could only break in for short periods before the company’s security system would detect him and shut him out.

Maybe Clark would know, she thought.

[Sykobee]

Up to speed again. Hmm, the intrigue and questions that are sprouting. Also very hard to wrap my head around Chloe as Clark's ex. I don't ship Chlark or Kaloe. Ever. I'm here for the Clois! That said, can't wait for more. Really interested in how each of them will take to the others' hidden agenda. . .