The Love of His Life - Chapter Eleven

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Chapter Eleven

It was a sweet dream but a dream nonetheless.

Chloe stood in an open field. There wasn't an artificial light to be seen for miles around. Only the moon and the stars glittered above. Suddenly there was a burst of colorful light. It blossomed into a golden ball of glitter that reminded her strongly of the Daily Planet globe.

Strong, warm hands came to rest at her waist. She felt breath on her hair that smelled lightly of Martha Kent's apple pie. Soft lips pressed against the delicately sensitive skin of her neck, just below her earlobe. She felt light. Happy. Loved.

"I love you, Clark."

She turned around and looked into his green eyes. He smiled at her briefly before flying away.

Chloe awoke to see the square of sterile white that was the ceiling of her tiny cell rather than the a wide open sky glittering with thousands of stars and a moon to light the ground. A sob of loss escaped her. She should have told Clark those precious three words. Now she doubted she'd ever get the chance.

Self-pity, unwanted and sour, bubbled in Chloe's belly until it rose up her throat and threatened to choke her. She turned on her side. The front of her body, where she'd been shot, was sore. She'd not been given IV fluids to replenish the energy she'd expended to heal and she felt tired and weak. Whatever Lois had planned wouldn't work.

No one could escape the Facility. It was a fool's errand to try otherwise. Once the place had you true freedom was impossible. She didn't have to be, literally, inside the walls of the Facility to be captive to it. Even if, by some miracle, Lois managed to get her and Martha out of the place, she would be hunted forever.

If only I'd told him when I had the chance.

"Chloe?"

That was Martha Kent's voice. She tried to lift her head but couldn't.

"Can you hear me?"

Chloe wanted to respond but she had neither the energy nor the force of will to even whisper a reply.

"Lois will be back soon with something to eat. She's got a plan to get us out of here."

Silence fell. Chloe choked on a mirthless laugh of hopeless, impotent anger. They would never get out of the Facility. Lois would just herself, and possibly Martha, killed in the attempt and Chloe would never forgive herself for that either.

There was no way to tell how much time passed before the door to her cell squeaked open. Chloe's head throbbed and her body trembled from low glucose levels. She tasted orange juice and a few moments later the familiar pinching sting of a needle. Lois had brought in a drip that would give her a boost of energy faster than eating could.

"When this drip is empty we move," Lois whispered.

Chloe felt warm, soft fingers stroke the sweat dampened fringe away from her forehead. She reached for Lois's hand and squeezed it.

"Martha is the priority. You have to get her out."

"She's not my priority. You are."

Chloe shook her head. "Please, Lois. She's innocent in all this. She wouldn't be here if I hadn't gone to her farm. I should have left Smallville when Clark found me by the lake. I should have never even--"

"You can drive yourself crazy with coulda-shoulda-woulda, Chloe. Don't even bother. I mean…if you hadn't gone back to the farm you never would have met Clark. He wouldn't have fallen for you and you never would have known what true love is like."

"I'm getting his mother killed!"

"Listen, Sullivan," Lois said in her best it's-time-to-man-up voice. "You've got Lane blood in you. Even if we are deranged we're strong. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get ready to do what you need to get out of here. I need you focused when the time comes."

Chloe could feel the effects of the drip. Her headache was beginning to lessen and her trembling had stopped. She didn't feel quite so weak. She could even see clearly now and she looked up at Lois.

"You're going to kill him, aren't you?"

Lois nodded. She didn't need Chloe to clarify who 'him' was.

"He's one of the few people on earth who really is above the law, Chloe. I have no way to prove what he's done here. I have no way to bring him to justice through the system. And these freaks that he's beefed up? I don't think even Clark can handle them. Not thirty of them with those blue meteor rocks in their systems. He'd be slaughtered."

Chloe struggled to sit up. She put her knees to her chest and regarded her cousin.

"What are you planning?"

"I can't say. Your boyfriend is probably listening in on us right now and he'd try to stop me if he knew. Martha Kent doesn't seem to object to what I'm going to do, though. Maybe that'll be enough to keep him from turning me in to the police when the dust settles."

When the dust settles…

Knowing her cousin as well as she did Chloe imagined explosives were going to be involved.

Lois loved a big boom.

*****

Escape started smoothly but went south fast. They'd only made it down two corridors before running into the first guard.

"Miss Lane," the woman said. She looked at Chloe and Martha in confusion. They had on vests. Patients were never supposed to have on vests. "Why are the patients out of their rooms? Why are they wearing--"

Lois took her down with a right hook. It was quiet and bought them a few extra seconds.

Only a few.

The guards on duty were monitoring the cameras closely. After Chloe's escape none of them were willing to be caught sleeping on the job ever again. Their lives, not just their jobs, literally depended on alert efficiency.

They'd barely gotten ten steps before an alarm sounded. Red lights began flashing in the halls.

"Run!" Lois said.

Martha was glad she had years of hard labor behind her to make her strong. Otherwise she doubted she could have kept up with Lois and Chloe. She ran full tilt behind Lois, rushing through corridor after corridor until finally they hit a locked door.

"We're on lockdown," Lois said. She didn't bother with her keycard since it wouldn't work anyway while the building was on alert. "Get back, around the corner."

She took something that looked like a marble from one of the many pockets of her cargo pants and pressed a tiny button on it. She'd no sooner rounded the corner than a wall of fire gushed down the corridor where she'd been standing a second before. The smell of burning plaster and hot metal made Martha's eyes water and her throat felt scratchy.

"Come on!"

They were running again, moving through the hole in the corridor where the locked doors had stood as an unmovable obstacle a second before. Two dead guards lay, bloody and charred, ten feet from the blast zone.

"We're almost there."

"Is that right?"

The klaxons blared harshly in the corridor. The lights alternated between white and blood red as Sam Lane drew down on his daughter.

"Where do you think you're--"

Chloe suddenly fired from behind them, putting three rounds squarely into Sam Lane's center of mass, knocking him back into the four guards who'd come to back him up.

"I've always wanted to do that," Chloe panted.

"He's not dead. He's wearing a vest," Martha pointed out.

"I know. I should have shot the son of a bitch in the head," Chloe lamented.

Lois had her gun aimed at exactly that spot. "Go on," Lois told them. Chloe, get to the kitchen. You'll find help there."

Clark…

The idea of seeing him again, of being safely in his arms, made Chloe's heart thunder in her chest. He was literally feet away from her.

But she couldn't leave her cousin to face down Sam Lane and God only knows how many guards all by herself.

"I'll come back for you," Chloe promised.

"No. Just leave," Lois insisted. "I can take care of myself."

Martha took Chloe's arm and urged her on. "We don't have time to argue with her. Come on."

Chloe kissed Lois on the cheek and looked into her cousin's eyes. "You'd better make it out of here, Lois. I love you."

"You know I love you too. I don't have nine lives like you but I'm not easy to kill. Go on."

Chloe led Martha down two more corridors. She had to fire on two guards to get to the kitchen. She rushed to one of the two identical sets of doors in the room and found herself at a meat locker.

"The other one."

Martha pushed on the silver doors and found it opened onto a loading area.

And on her son, Clark. There were a pile of unconscious guards, all cuffed together, lying nearby. He smiled and pulled his mother from the kitchen, hugging her tightly. He looked in at Chloe and held a hand out to her. She didn't accept it.

"Where's Lois?"

"What's this stuff all over you, Son?" Martha asked, wiping at some of the greasy feeling goop that covered her son's skin.

"Protection from the meteor rocks. Why isn't Lois with you?"

"She's inside with her father. I'm going back for her."

Chloe leaned through the door and lightly kissed Clark on the lips, getting some of the greasy lotion onto her mouth.

"Clark…I know it's a bit soon but I want to say it just in case. I love you."

"I love you too."

His reply came without hesitation and Chloe didn't doubt his sincerity.

She took a deep breath in and grabbed the door handle. "Get Martha to safety."

Her cousin had saved her once. It was time to return the favor. Chloe slammed the door shut and ran full tilt back into the Facility.

*****

"I won't bother playing the family card," Sam Lane said, as he moved in on his daughter. "I assume this little coup is your attempt to get back at me for Ella."

"You assume right."

Lane smirked. "You always were soft."

"I wasn't so soft when I unloaded a gun into your precious Lucy's face."

His smile faded at once. He even seemed to pale a little but it was difficult to tell in the harsh flashing of the emergency lights.

"You didn't," he whispered.

It was Lois's turn to smirk. "Just like you did Mom."

"She was sleeping around on me! I was always faithful to her."

Lois was conscious not to let him back her into a corner. She was ready for him to spring at any second and she was going to be ready when he did.

"You were faithful all right. Faithful to insult her. Faithful to beat her when the mood took you. Faithful to belittle her to break her spirit. You didn't deserve a woman like my mother."

Sam struck without another word. Lois fell back and moved right. His fist slammed into the wall and cracked the plaster. He tried every move his aging body could still pull off but it was no good. Lois was young, and fast, and strong. She dodged his every move and landed a few good kicks and punches of her own.

"Take her down!" Lane shouted. He was winded. He was no longer the warrior he'd been in his youth. Lois looked at him with even more scorn and she hadn't thought that possible.

The nearby guards raised their guns but one by one they fell before they could take aim at Lois. She was happy, but not surprised, to see Chloe had returned. With the guards out of the way she now had a clear shot at Sam Lane.

Lois pulled the detonator from her jacket and armed the bomb. They had less than five minutes remaining on the timer.

"Let's go," Lois said. She leaned in to whisper to Chloe, "Let him go up with the building."

"After all I've done you can't shoot me," Lane taunted. "Neither of you bitches has what it takes to shoot me!"

"You've got less than five minutes to live, Sam. Make them count," Lois said. "Chloe, let's go."

She and Chloe backed off but they didn't get far before the wall directly ahead of them exploded open. Lois and Chloe thought, for one brief moment, that the bomb had gone off prematurely and they were milliseconds from fiery death, but the dust began to settle and a lone figure stepped forward.

"Alexandra," Chloe breathed.

She wasn't much to look at. She was diminutive in stature but her enhanced abilities made her inhumanly strong. She was one of only a handful of the freaks to survive Sam Lane's modifications.

"Kill Lois, capture Sullivan," Sam Lane ordered.

"Alex, don't listen to him," Lois said. "You don't want to…"

Alexandra had a blank stare that neither Chloe nor Lois had ever seen before. Her body wasn't the only thing Sam Lane had violated with his experiments -- her mind was not her own.

Chloe took up a position between Lois and Alexandra. "We've known each other for two years. You don't want to do this, Alex."

She grabbed Chloe by the neck and shoved her into the nearest wall so hard that stars began to swim before Chloe's eyes. Alex turned toward Lois and drew her fist back. At the same time Sam Lane drew his gun and took aim at Lois. One punch would kill Lois. One shot would kill her. Now, as Chloe helplessly watched, Lois was about to die.

"No!"

There was a loud pop from Lane's gun. Chloe expected to see Lois drop but there was a blur of blue and red. Suddenly Clark stood between Lois and Sam Lane. The bullet meant for his daughter struck Clark instead and fell uselessly to the floor. He reached around Lois and Alexandra's fist slammed into Clark's hand rather than Lois's face.

"What the hell…" Sam Lane said, looking at Clark Kent in amazement. "Lucy was right. You're some kind of meteor freak."

Clark looked back to Sam Lane. "I'm more than that."

"Kill him!" Sam Lane raged. Alexandra threw one punch after another at Clark. He bore them all before slamming a fist into her chest. She flew at least fifteen feet down the corridor before slamming to the floor. Chloe thought for sure Alexandra was down for the count.

Barely a few seconds passed before Alexandra jumped to her feet and ran at Clark. She was eerily silent as she attacked, putting enough force behind her blows to make Clark grunt. She was fighting with all she had.

"Clark, we have to get out of here," Lois said. "We don't have much time."

"Get him!" Sam Lane shouted.

At first Chloe thought he was urging Alexandra on in her attack but then she saw five more Facility 'patients' coming down the corridor to her left. One of the newcomers, a boy named Rick that Chloe had once been allowed to 'date', disappeared from the group and reappeared behind Clark, trying to kidney punch him. Clark's face contorted with pain.

He grabbed Alexandra by the neck and slung her around, straight into Rick. They both went flying back, bowling into the other freaks.

"You guys run," Clark said.

Chloe got to her feet and went to Clark's side. "No. I won't leave you."

"I can handle them, Chloe."

"This place is rigged to blow," Lois told him. "It's loaded with meteor rocks. You'd never survive it."

Clark looked at Lois in shock. "You're going to kill all these people?"

She pulled out the detonator. "Barely more than a minute left. We need to be away from here, Clark. You can take me to the cops later but right now--"

"I can't just run and leave these people to--"

He suddenly moaned and dropped to his knees. One of Sam Lane's freaks had shot some kind of bony shard from his inner wrist. It dripped some kind of green fluid.

"It went right through," Clark said, looking at the wound in his side.

Lois pulled another of the tiny marble-like explosive and hurled it at Rick. He caught it and looked at it in silent confusion.

"Get down!" Lois shouted.

She and Chloe threw themselves over Clark, trying to shield him, as the explosive set off. It knocked Rick back, leaving him blackened and wounded, but still alive.

"Help me with him," Chloe shouted.

She and Lois pulled Clark to his feet and tried to shuffle him through to the kitchen. They'd just gotten inside when the doors behind them flew open. Lois drew her gun and turned to aim, firing several shots at their pursuers.

"Get him out!"

"What about--"

"Go!"

Chloe used her meteor power to try to heal Clark. She saw the wound sealing shut but it still looked red and bruised, even as they stepped from the kitchen into the balmy July night.

"I'll get you to safety and then come back for Lois," Clark said. He could hear shots inside as he whisked Chloe from the grounds, over the fence, and dropped her a few miles down the road where his mother sat waiting for them to return.

"Where's Lois?" Martha asked.

"Go get her, Clark," Chloe begged.

Clark still moved incredibly fast but he seemed slower than usual to Chloe. Had too much of the green meteor rocks gotten into his system? What if he couldn't move fast enough to get back to the Facility, get Lois, and make it out before the place went up in flames?

She and Martha waited in tense silence. The night was so quiet Chloe could hear buzzing in her ears under the pounding of her own heart.

There was a blinding flash of light. The Facility disappeared in a brilliant blossom of angry orange fire. Clark appeared before them a few moments later, unharmed…and without Lois.

"Clark, where is she?" Chloe asked.

He shook his head. His clothes were singed and smelled of acrid smoke. "I'm sorry. I went back in but she wasn't in sight. I had to leave when the explosion started. I couldn't risk the meteor rocks inside the building."

Chloe felt as though something heavy crashed into her chest and stole her breath. Clark's strong arms were solid and comforting when her knees gave way. Martha stroked her back as she sobbed with grief.

Lois was the last family she had.

Now she was gone.

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