The Love of His Life - Chapter Ten

 

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Chapter Ten

The uninterrupted darkness outside of the vehicle windows made Martha Kent feel as though she were traveling through starless space. It was a heavy kind of darkness with an inky quality that slimed its way down her throat and into her lungs. Breathing became difficult. Her heart began to thud.

I'm having a panic attack.

"Martha, it'll be okay," Chloe said. She'd held Martha's hand since leaving the farm almost six hours ago. Now her thumb rested lightly against Martha's wrist and Chloe could feel the pulse jumping there. The poor woman was more afraid of what was coming than she was.

It was the unknown that scared Martha. She didn't know what to expect. Chloe had lived -- and been tortured -- at the Facility for years. Martha had heard of the place but had never actually been there. She'd not been aware of the terrors that the so-called patients within the walls of that place were put through.

"He won't have a reason to hurt you," Chloe assured her.

"Au contraire, Mademoiselle," General Lane said from the front passenger seat. Shriver drove, glancing several times in the mirror at Martha. Chloe didn't like his interest in her.

"What do you mean?" Chloe asked.

"Did you really think I'd just keep Martha to myself? I need to figure out what makes her tick so I can add her special ability to the project. She'll be studied once I'm absolutely certain that what happened at her farm wasn't a fluke."

Chloe's grip on Martha's hand tightened. She thought she'd given her uncle a reason to keep Martha safe. Now she realized she'd only succeeded in taking Martha to hell with her. "I'm so sorry, Martha."

"Shh. I'm a tough woman. I can take whatever he throws at me."

Shriver licked his lips and Martha saw it. She shrank away from the gleam in his eyes. He made her feel dirty, contaminated, with just a look.

*****

The lights of the Facility's grounds sparkled into view making Martha finally feel grounded, though no less afraid. The outline of the place wasn't completely unfamiliar to her. The Gotham Facility for the Criminally Insane had made the news on occasion. Sometimes for programs that supposedly enabled its patients to rehabilitate, other times for notorious breakouts. Regardless of why it made the news the same tired photograph of the place was always recycled for the papers.

In picture the place looked institutional and prison-like. In person it loomed tall and sterile with an oddly Gothic feel to its modern architecture. It sent a chill through Martha. This place wasn't used for healing but for hurting. Lives were destroyed within these walls and no one knew it was happening.

They drove through the barb wire-topped gates. Chloe remembered her escape with vivid clarity and she knew, beyond a doubt, that Lois must have helped her. This place was a prison she couldn't have escaped from on luck alone. She'd expected to return much sooner than now, or at least die in her bid for freedom. Instead she'd returned and brought an innocent woman with her.

A million ideas flew through Chloe's mind. She should fight, get the gun from Shriver or Lane, gun them down or hold them at gunpoint so Martha could take the truck. She could crash through the gates and at least get far enough away that her son could pick her up. Then Chloe wouldn't have to worry she'd led an innocent woman into a life of pain and misery.

Then her conscience could be at least a little clearer.

They stepped from the truck. As soon as they did Sam Lane put the cold steel of a Glock to Martha's temple.

"Thinking about making another escape attempt? Go right ahead," he said, as though he were a mind reader who'd perused through her thoughts. "Hell, I'll let you leave right now and keep this woman. I'll give her to Shriver. I think we both know what he's got on his mind when it comes to the lovely Martha Kent."

Shriver smirked and lit a cigarette.

"Cigarette instead of a cigar, Shriver?" Chloe chided. "I'd have thought you liked something bigger and longer in your mouth. Or is that all you have room for with my uncles dick already firmly planeted--"

Shriver threw the cigarette down and moved toward Chloe. "What the fuck are you insinuating--"

"Enough!" Sam Lane shouted. "Get inside. Make a stupid move, Chloe, I'll blow out your knees. It won't kill you but it'll hurt like hell."

Martha and Chloe were herded inside. They didn't go through the front. Instead they were led through the loading dock, which was a stone's throw from the laundry room that Chloe had first escaped from.

The Facility was as cold as Chloe remembered it. It still smelled strongly of disinfectant. That scent got stronger after they stepped into the elevator after it was vacated by two scientists in white lab coats that were stippled with blood.

The elevator only went to the fourth floor. Sam Lane swiped his ID badge through a card reader and a panel slid open. Each button was labeled SL for sublevel. The buttons went from SL1 down to SL6.

"Hmmm…" Lane made a show of considering. "What shall be your punishment, Chloe? You've been a bad girl. You can't just get away with wasting my time and resources for three months with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Why don't you explain to Mrs. Kent here what these labs are?"

Martha looked pale and sweaty. Chloe was afraid the stress of the situation would be too much for her, despite her earlier declaration of bravery. However it would be unwise to refuse her uncle. She'd learned that lesson a long time ago.

"SL1 is for Lab 1. They work with gasses. SL2 is for Lab 2, poisons. SL3 is Lab 3, drowning and water torture. SL4 is Lab 4, cutting and shooting. SL5 is Lab 5, electrocution and other methods of torture using shock. SL6 is mind control."

Sam Lane turned to Martha but motioned at Chloe with his gun. "You know, we still haven't managed to break her mentally. I thought we were making progress in that area but her escape has proved me wrong. It's frustrating but in ways I'm proud. After all, she's my niece. It's nice to see the Lane blood in this girl has made her strong."

"You're so sick and you don't even see it. You deserve to be locked up in this place, not her," Martha insisted.

She suddenly jumped. Chloe saw that Shriver was fondling Martha's behind.

"Don't touch her…yet," Sam said.

Chloe pulled Martha away from Shriver. "Don't let him do anything to her. He's your dog; shorten his leash for God's sake!"

"As long as you cooperate nothing untoward will befall Mrs. Kent. Her safety, in every way, is your responsibility now, Chloe."

"I'll do whatever you want."

"Then she'll be safe from Shriver's advances. And Shriver -- if I find out you've crossed the line with Martha Kent, I'll personally cut your dick off and stuff it down your throat. Understood?"

The smirk faded from Shriver's face. He looked resentful and angry but he nodded. "Understood."

Lane punched the SL4 button. "Cutting and shooting. More gore is more fun, I always thought."

*****

Lois swiped a duplicate of her sister's key card through the reader and entered her sister's bedroom. The room, like her sisters mind, was a wreck. Clothes, books, and papers were strewn everywhere as though a tornado had blown through. In fact, Lois wished some air had moved through the room. It smelled stale with a hint of dirty socks and sex. 

For the past two years Lois had been adding codes to the detonator that she hid in her sister's closet floor. Should the thing ever be discovered she wanted it to point to Lucy so she could take the fall. There was only one level Lois had left to rig up -- SL6. Her father had forbade her to ever go that far. In fact, for the two instances in which she'd navigated the duct work through the lower levels to plant the explosives, Lois hadn't gotten past SL4.

She slipped the device, a modified iPod Touch, into her pocket and headed out of Lucy's room. She stopped and looked back at the room. There were no family pictures on the walls or the desk save for a photograph of their father in uniform when he first entered the military as a young man. Even then his eyes were so cold. What had her mother thought she'd seen in them that would make such a warm, caring woman fall for a man like Sam Lane?

Lois switched off the bedroom light. Her sister's room was dark. Like the abyss where her soul had once been -- if it had ever existed at all. When Lois shut the door, she closed that part of her life for good. She would find a way to forget Lucy and the terrible betrayal that had cost their mother her life. When her father was gone, she would forget him and all the evil he'd done to her family, and to the many people who'd been tortured, literally to death, at his command.

Life moved on regardless of what evils mortals did. Lois intended to move with it.

If she survived.

*****

The vent was hot as hell despite the cool air that blew against her sweaty skin. Lois blinked sweat out of her eyes and panted as she came to SL6. She would put the remainder of the explosives at the core of the level, enter the codes on the detonator she'd rigged, and then head out to round up the equipment that used the blue meteor rocks.

The vests, modified with blue meteor rocks, when not in use, were stored in a locker on SL1, along with the eyes for netting buildings and houses, and most of the drugs used in their tests. Clark had said he couldn't see through lead. He also said it protected him from the effects of the rocks. She grabbed a few bottles of sunscreen and added liquified lead to the mixture. After that she headed back outside to the rear of the building where the staff parked their cars. Company cars were also parked there. Clark hid in the shadows by the edge near the gate.



"Here," Lois said, handing him the cream.



"What's this?"



"Cream with liquified lead mixed in. Spread it over every inch of your body. It'll offer you protection from the blue meteor rocks."



"If it doesn't work?" he asked, taking his shirt off.



"You probably won't have to come into the Facility at all. If you do, then pray this works."



Clark halted as he undressed. "Uh...Lois?"



"Yeah?"



"I'm undressing."



"I see that."



"Lois--"



"I'm going, I'm going. " She smiled somewhat naughtily before heading back to the Facility.



Her cousin was one lucky girl indeed.

*****

Lois was coated in sweat when she lowered herself into the corridor outside her room. She quickly changed clothes and hid a few weapons under the bulk of her sweatshirt. She made sure the manual backup detonator was green lit before looking at her reflection in the mirror.

She was about to kill more than a hundred people, her father included, at literally the push of a button.

He's not my father. He lost that privilege years ago.

Clark Kent was going to be really angry with her for lying to him about her plans. She'd said she was going to set the freaks loose to overwhelm her father while she grabbed Chloe and Martha. That was true. The other part of the plan was much darker than that. The other part of the plan meant for her to get them out and then lock every door in the Facility before blowing the place to dust.

Once again Lois shut the light on a room that was part of a past she was turning her back on for good. Still, if something went wrong and she couldn't use the remote detonator, she would see this room again just long enough to flip the switch on the manual detonator. In that case she would die with her father and everyone else.

*****

The elevator doors opened on a long hallway that had been painted gray. It was a depressing place that stank of disinfectant and gunpowder. There were evenly spaced doors on either side. Martha counted twenty on either side.

The hall ended at a T section. There were more doors. Chloe was led to the left while Martha was taken into the door directly in front of her. It opened onto a small gallery of ten cushioned seats. There was a wet bar in the front row, under a gray sheet of glass.

Sam Lane shoved Martha into a chair in the center of the first row.

"Care for a drink, Mrs. Kent? We have gin, bourbon, scotch, even bottled water if you prefer."

"Nothing."

 "Come now. You're sweating like a stuck pig. You're losing a lot of water. Have something to drink."

"Alcohol dries you out and I'm not drinking your damned water," Martha insisted.

Lane shrugged. "Suit yourself."

"What is this room?"

"Observation gallery. I think you already knew that, though, didn't you?"

"I thought as much."

Lane poured himself a drink, scotch by the smell of it, and came to sit behind Martha. A few seconds later the curtains pulled apart to reveal a laboratory. Computers were lined along the walls. A single steel table was in the center of the room. Chloe was being strapped to it at that moment. She looked at Martha.

"She can see us?" Martha asked.

"Oh yes."

Martha stood to go to the glass but Sam Lane's hand gripped her shoulder and held her to the seat. "Stay where you are, Mrs. Kent. Sit back. Relax. Enjoy the show. It's really quite amazing."

"How can watching an innocent girl getting tortured be an enjoyable show, especially when she's family?"

"You're about to see something few people will ever witness in their lifetime," he said, as though that justified torturing his niece.

A thousand objections flew through Martha's mind. None of them made their way to her lips. It was a waste of time to try to talk any kind of sense into him.

The metal table Chloe had been strapped to tilted until she was nearly vertical. The door to the laboratory opened and Shriver walked in. He stood waiting, his muscled arms crossed, watching with a dead stare as Chloe was hooked up to the machines. They came alive, registering her heartbeat, oxygen levels, brainwaves, blood pressure, and other vital signs. Chloe was panting now. She couldn't keep the fear at bay. Her small fists clenched in preparation for the agony that was to come.

One of the three scientists in the room put a needle in Chloe's arm after fastening a tourniquet. He nodded at Shriver.

"Shooting or knife, General?" Shriver asked.

"Shooting. Be careful, Shriver. Don't get anywhere near her heart."

Shriver nodded. "Right."

He took aim at Chloe and fired three rounds. Her belly blossomed into a bloody, gory mess as the bullets hit home. She made the ugliest sound of pain Martha had ever heard. She never could have imagined a human being could make such sounds as the tortured moans that Chloe made now.

Martha lunged at the glass partition and slapped at the glass. "Chloe!"

Shriver smiled and winked at Martha. Chloe, pale as the white coats on the scientists who took part in her torture, gave a few last, strangled gasps, before becoming still. She sagged against her restraints as every single monitor flat lined.

"Chloe…"

The door to the lab opened again. This time Lois came in. She stood beside Shriver and put her hands in her pockets.

"Lois, what are you doing here?" Sam Lane asked.

"I came to watch the action, what else?" Lois replied. Martha sensed a lie in Lois and wondered what was really going on.

"She telling the truth?" Lane asked.

Martha nodded. "She's angry."

She regretted speaking at once.

"You can feel people's emotions too?"

"No. I'm just good at reading body language."

Lane snorted. "You better hope it's more than that or you're dead. Where's your sister?"

Lois shrugged. "No clue."

Lane came to stand beside Martha. "True or false?"

"True," Martha lied.

Sam Lane took Martha by the arm and pulled her around to face him. His grip was as tight as an iron vice.

"Don't fuck with me, Martha Kent. I'm good at sniffing out lies too and I have the feeling you're covering something up."

"You're paranoid, General. I promised you I would cooperate and that's exactly what I'm doing."

She pulled free. Lane let her. He looked directly at Lois. "Where's Lucy?"

"I told you I don't know. I figured she came back with you guys."

"She wouldn't miss this for anything. I gave this project to her. She wouldn't drop the ball like this unless something was wrong."

"You think the Kent boy took her?" Lois asked. "I mean, he may have seen you take his mother and Chloe and retaliated."

"He wouldn't hurt her even if he did," Martha said. Lois was still lying. She knew exactly what had happened to Lucy but Martha would be damned if she outted the girl. Right now Lois Lane was the only friend she had inside the Facility.

"Where was she when you last saw her?"

"Sleeping. I had first watch," Lois said, remembering Shriver's call and the lie she'd told him as she stood over her sister's dead body.

"Shriver, take a team and find out what the hell has happened to Lucy. Lois, come here. Mrs. Kent, sit the fuck down."

In the lab directly before them, every machine Chloe was hooked up to came to life. Seconds later she gasped and struggled to sit up against her restraints. Lane clapped Martha hard on the back.

"Told you it was amazing."

*****

For fifteen straight minutes, possibly more, Sam Lane questioned Lois as though she was an enemy combatant. Judging by how easily she lied to him she was accustomed to this sort of thing from her father.He repeated questions in slightly different ways to try to trick Lois up in a lie. She didn't fall for it.

"How many fucking times do I have to say it, Dad? I told her you guys were coming. She told me to come back to the Facility so I did."

"Then why weren't you here when we arrived?"

"I stopped for a nap on the side of the road. I stopped to eat, use the bathroom. I wasn't in a hurry to get back and play second fiddle to that crazy little bitch."

Lane snorted. "Don't talk about family like that."

"Don't play the family card with me. Not considering what you do to Chloe. What you did to Mom."

Sam's eyes flashed. "I forbade you to ever speak of that woman again!"

"Fuck you. She was my mother. I'm not going to pretend you didn't murder her and dump her like she was trash!"

Sam rushed Lois. She darted back and brought a gun up, aiming it straight at his face. He stopped and glared, panting like he'd run a marathon.

My God, this family is broken…

"You've hit me for the last time, General," Lois said.

"Where is Lucy?"

"I don't know and that's the last time I'm going to answer that question."

They faced one another for a long time. Martha saw Chloe watching from the table. She looked as though she didn't have a drop of blood in her.

Lois's hand was steady as she aimed the gun at her father.She didn't tremble

"If I find out you did something to your sister I'll kill you."

"I'm sure you would, you sick bastard," Martha said.

Sam whirled on Martha, hitting her hard across the face. She fell back against the glass and tasted blood. Pain bloomed in her face and a thousand dots of light played across her vision.

"Keep your fucking mouth shut! You will speak when spoken to, understand?"

Martha tried to nod. She wasn't sure if she succeeded. She heard indistinct voices and then felt small but strong hands lift her to her feet. Lois's face swam before her vision.

"Are you all right, Martha?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Come on. I'll patch you up."

"Put her in the empty cell next to Chloe's," Sam Lane said. "I want to keep them close together. After that, you come back here and see to it that Chloe's locked away. If I don't find out what happened to Lucy by six a.m. you're dead."

Lois said nothing. Martha leaned heavily against her as she was led from the room. Blood poured from her face and she felt as though her knees would give away any second.

"Where is Lucy?" Martha asked thickly. She had a lot of blood running down the back of her throat. It was thick, coppery but with a strangely sweet tinge, and it was more than she could easily swallow. She gagged a few times and managed to hock up a mouthful to spit out. That made it easier to breathe. Martha forced herself to ignore the throbbing pain kicking up in her head and the nausea that tickled her stomach.

"She's dead," Lois replied. "I'll get you patched up. Try to pull yourself together, Martha. This is going to be over once and for all in a couple of hours."

Martha didn't know what Lois had planned but she would bet her farm that Sam Lane wasn't going to live through it.

She was surprised to realize that she was okay with that.


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