The Death and Life of Superman (42 page)

“Jus’ relax, Gabby.” Scrapper grinned wickedly at his little pal. “You got an idea ya wanna share wit’ us?”

Gabby nodded eagerly.

“Well, why din’t ya say so?” Scrapper grabbed the end of the tape and gave a quick yank.

“Yeow! Geez, Scrapper, what’re ya tryin’ to do, take my lips off with that stuff?!”

“The way those things flap? Never happen. Now, if ya got an idea, spit it out—before I change my mind!” Scrapper playfully tossed the roll of tape from one hand to the other.

“Okay, okay!” Gabby gingerly pursed his lips. “The way I see it, maybe we can’t get Superman out on our own, but we can get the word to someone on the outside.”

“I believe our talkative little chum may have something there. After all, the Guardian did promise us some free time in Metropolis, and he seemed exceedingly eager to placate us after we discovered the contents of Laboratory Seven.”

“Now yer talkin’! We get an afternoon in the city, an’ the world finds out about what happened to Superman.” Scrapper clapped Gabby across the back. “Yer finally startin’ to use that bony head fer somethin’ besides a hat rack!”

“I don’t know.” Flip looked skeptical. “Who’s gonna believe us? After all, we’re just kids! And besides, you know that the Guardian will be watching us like a hawk when we get to the city
—if
we get to go!”

“Aw, Guardian-shmardian! There’s just one o’ him an’ five o’ us! I can get by him—it’ll be a piece o’ cake!”

“Scrapper’s assessment is perhaps overly confident, but we do have the advantage of numbers. As for your point, Flip, there is no need for us to physically approach an outside contact. We have but to prepare the proper presentation and enlist the services of a bonded courier, or barring that, a postal service employee.”

Tommy rubbed his chin. “It could work. But we’ll have to make sure we get enough evidence to be convincing.”

“Shucks, that’ll be easy, fellers.” Gabby started rummaging through the old footlocker at the end of his bunk. “I got a camera and plenty of film. We can take pictures and draw diagrams and everything.”

“That’s good, Gabby, but we’ll also have to find somebody outside the Project who we can trust with the info—somebody who’d want to do right by Superman.”

“That ain’t a problem, Tommy.”

“You have an idea, Scrap?”

“Are you kiddin’? Gents, I got the answer right under my hat!” And with that, Scrapper doffed his cap and pulled out a battered newspaper article clipped from the pages of the
Daily Planet.

17

Lex Luthor Stood Stripped
to the waist, his upper torso coated with a thin sheen of sweat, as three athletic young women wearing karate
gis
bowed toward him. He paused for a moment before returning the bow, reducing the act of respect to a mere formality. The women departed, and Luthor grabbed up a towel.

Luthor scowled as he dried off. He had taken up karate months ago, as a way of keeping his fine new body trim, but lately he found less and less satisfaction in his workouts. Neither the exercises, the kata, nor even the actual fighting brought him any pleasure.
There’s no challenge anymore,
he thought,
no challenge in anything with Superman gone.

For years, Superman had been Luthor’s obsession, his one true rival in power. He had reveled in the Man of Steel’s inability to bring him down and had come to look upon their competition as a game to be savored. But now the game was over, and while the industrialist had not lost, neither had he truly won.

Someone else killed him.
Luthor threw the towel across the room.
And another crew of bastards stole his body!

“Lex, is something wrong?” Supergirl pushed open the door of the little gym. “You look so angry!”

“Do I?” Luthor forced a smile. “Well, I’m just a bit peeved is all. Not a very good workout today, my timing was off. I was just about to hit the showers. Care to join me?”

“Lex!” Supergirl blushed and looked back toward the door. “Ms. Lane is waiting outside. I know you hate to be disturbed here, but she insists on speaking with you right away.”

“Does she now? Well, then, love, show her right in.”

Supergirl flashed him her wonderful smile, and Luthor felt the sharper edge of his irritation pass.
Things could be worse. Superman may be dead, but Supergirl most definitely
isn’t.

He shrugged into a dressing robe as the reporter entered the gym. “G’day, Lois. How good to see you again. Has there been any word on Kent?”

“I’m afraid not.” Lois briefly—but tightly, Lex noted—closed her eyes. “Thank you for asking. No, I’m here because I want you to read an article of mine before it goes to press.”

Luthor raised an eyebrow. “A grand gesture to be sure, Lois. But why? If it involves LexCorp—”

Lois shook her head. “Once you read it, I think you’ll understand.” She glanced at Supergirl as she handed Luthor a file folder. “You both should read it.”

Lois stepped back a pace or two, watching unobtrusively as the two most powerful people in Metropolis read her story together. She tried her best not to notice as Supergirl snuggled an arm around Luthor’s waist.

Luthor skimmed over the pages, his face starting to turn a fiery red. Supergirl’s fair skin did not flush, but her entire body seemed to tense.

At the back of the folder, Luthor came to a series of photographs, and he went bone white. Even his lips turned pale. “This—this is an outrage. The Cadmus Project has stolen Superman’s body?!”

“Then you’ve heard of Cadmus?”

Luthor could tell Supergirl was about to say something, so he squeezed her hand tight, giving her their private look. She nodded her understanding, and he answered for them both. “I’m afraid we have, Lois. It seems to be some manner of clandestine federal agency, involved in all manner of mysterious goings-on. That Guardian fellow is mixed up with them somehow.”

Luthor looked again at the series of photos. Though a bit amateurish in composition, they clearly showed Superman’s body on an examination table. In some shots, the Cadmus insignia could be seen on the lab coats of surgically masked doctors and technicians. “Where did you get these?”

Lois shrugged her shoulders. “They arrived in a package from an anonymous source, along with a long letter. I would probably have discounted the whole thing if not for the pictures—and the response I got from the police.”

“The police? What did they have to say?”

“It’s what they
didn’t
say that bothers me, Lex. I went directly to Maggie Sawyer over at the Special Crimes Unit and told her I’d gotten a tip that someone had tried to steal Superman’s body. She stonewalled me, Lex. And from her reaction, I could tell she knew something. The information I received . . .” Lois shook her head. “I know it reads like science fiction, but I believe it, Lex. These federal spooks want to cut Superman up for cloning.”

“A frightening thought, indeed.” Lex carefully closed the folder but did not hand it back. “Does anyone else know?”

“No, not even my editor. Once I put the story together, I realized that if we ran it, the government would just deny everything and hide Superman’s body somewhere else. That’s why I came to you—to both of you.” Lois looked from Luthor to Supergirl. “You’re the only ones I know with enough power to ensure that Superman gets the treatment he deserves.”

“I’m glad you came to me with this, Lois. I promise you that we’ll get Superman back where he belongs and put Cadmus in its place for good!”

“You have our word on that, Lois.” There was a determination in Supergirl’s voice that Luthor found vaguely disquieting.

Luthor tapped the folder against his hand. “Do you mind if I hang on to this? We’ll need the information in here to nail down the exact location of this ‘Lab Seven.’ ”

“You can keep it, Lex. I have copies . . . of everything.” Lois paused to make sure he understood. “Because if you
can’t
do anything about this—I will.”

At about two-thirty in the afternoon, Jonathan Kent had gone upstairs to take a nap. He hadn’t meant to enter Clark’s old room, but for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to walk past the door without looking inside.

It was dark in the room. The shades had been drawn to keep the sun from fading the spartan furnishings. Without clearly remembering how he’d gotten there, Jonathan sat down on the end of the bed. The memory of his son was very strong here.

In the shadows of the room, Jonathan could see Clark sitting there in the old armchair by the bed.
What a fine young man he’s grown up to be.
“What’s the matter, Clark? What’s wrong?”

Clark slumped back into the chair. “I saw the plane fall, Pa. I saw it fall and I just leapt into the sky and saved it. And then, the mob arrived. They were like animals . . . clawing and screaming at me. Everybody had something they wanted me to do, Pa.
Everybody!
People wanted me to heal them. They wanted me to heal their children, their parents. They wanted the impossible and they all wanted it right away.”

Clark raised his eyes to his father. “It felt wonderful to rescue the astronauts and that reporter. It felt . . . I can’t begin to tell you how great it felt to carry a plane—a
plane,
Pa!—in my bare hands, and fly it to a safe landing.”

He leaned forward, resting his big arms on his knees. “I know I have to use my powers to help people. I
want
to! But that was my first public appearance, and now they’re going to be looking for me.” Clark shook his head. “They wanted a piece of me, Pa. They all wanted a piece of me. And I . . . I don’t know how to deal with that.”

Jonathan felt tears coming to his eyes. “I think I do, son.” He reached out to pat Clark on the shoulder, but his son was no longer there.

“Jonathan?” Martha walked into the room. “Who are you talking to? What are you doing, sitting in Clark’s room here in the dark?”

“I had the idea, Martha.” Jonathan just sat there, staring at the empty chair. “The costume . . . the dual identity. I loved him. I thought I was helping, but I wasn’t. It’s all my fault, Martha. I keep telling myself that I just didn’t know how things would turn out, but that doesn’t help.”

Martha knelt in front of her husband and took his face in her hands. “Jonathan, dear, no! It’s no more your fault than it was Lois’s. You
know
that.”

Jonathan said not a word. In desperation, Martha sat down beside him on the bed and put her arms around his shoulders. “Knowing isn’t the same as feeling, but it’s where we’ve got to start. It wasn’t your fault, Jon. You
do
know that, don’t you, honey?”

When he still didn’t respond, Martha tightened her grip and leaned her head against his. “Jon, please. Say something.”

Slowly, Jonathan reached up and stroked her hair. “I didn’t know, Martha. I had such hopes . . .”

Ten thousand feet above Mount Curtiss, Supergirl turned invisible and dove Earthward at a quarter of the speed of sound. Following the information supplied by Lois Lane, she braked sharply over the ruins of the Habitat tree city and sped into a camouflaged cave access at the base of the mountain. She flew on, unchallenged as she rocketed past three security checkpoints and into the central corridors of the Cadmus Project. The psychokinetic shields that rendered Supergirl invisible to the naked eye also made it impossible to detect her by radar or infrared sensors. The only noticeable sign of her passing was the inexplicable wind that rushed through the Project, ruffling hair and sending papers flying.

It wasn’t until Supergirl reached Lab Seven that she truly made her presence known. Still invisible, she sank her hands into the six-inch-thick stainless steel doors of the secured laboratory and ripped them out of the wall. Within the lab, a surprised technician suddenly found himself grabbed up by his collar and thrown into a wall storage locker.

As bells and Klaxons began sounding all over the complex, Paul Westfield stormed into the Project’s security command center. “What the hell is going on here? The alarms are going crazy!”

“I’m well aware of that.” The Guardian acknowledged the administrator’s presence with little more than a cursory glance. “There’s been a major security breach, and we’re in the process of tracking it down right now.”

“What do you mean, ‘tracking it down’? If there’s been a break-in, which of the sentry posts detected it?”

“None of them.” The Guardian leaned over the security master console and began zapping through a rapid succession of security camera images. “Apparently, some person or persons unknown have managed to enter the Project without being seen and are tearing up the central lab core.”

“What?!” Westfield was aghast. “How is that possible?”

“It isn’t, or at least it shouldn’t be, but—my God!” The Guardian’s finger froze on the touchpad as the security monitor showed Lab Seven—or rather, what was left of it. Virtually every piece of equipment in the lab had been torn apart. The only thing left untouched was a single storage locker; a plaintive knocking could be heard coming from within it. Most disturbing of all was the wreckage of the cold storage unit that had, until moments before, held the body of Superman. It was completely shattered, as if it had been battered apart with hammers. And Superman’s body was missing!