Double Down (Lois Lane) Read online

  “Readers are in for a treat. A spectacular prose start for DC Comics’ spectacular lady.” —Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW

  “It’s not a bird, it’s not a plane, it’s Lois Lane, boldly following clues wherever they lead, taking readers along for a thrilling ride.” —Chicago Tribune

  “Bond cleverly reimagines star reporter Lois Lane as a teenager today.… delightful.” —Booklist

  “Lois Lane is your new YA fiction hero.” —Yahoo! Movies

  “Step aside, Katniss: it’s time for a teenage journalist to take over.” —The Hollywood Reporter

  “So it’s basically Lois Lane in a Veronica Mars-esque plot, which sounds like all kinds of awesome.” —Entertainment Weekly

  “This project should appeal not only to YA readers, but fans of the heroine who may have felt neglected with 20 page comics lately.” —The Examiner

  “This is a story with a strong female protagonist. Lois is smart and gutsy… an enjoyable ride.” —VOYA

  “Gwenda Bond concocts an intelligent novel that moves faster than a speeding bullet… May this be the first of many more.” —Shelf Awareness

  “A perfect read for anyone who loves a good mystery, with some romance, and a tenacious lead character.” —SupermanSuperSite

  “Lois Lane: Fallout is an innovative and overdue revitalization of Lois Lane, and stands on its own as a stellar YA debut for the character.” —The Comics Journal

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Praise for Lois Lane: Fallout

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Back Cover

  CHAPTER 1

  “You lost?” the man asked. He had a zillion wrinkles, and he was wearing a hat that would suit an old-fashioned detective. He perched on a stool beside the stairs out of the subway station, ready to launch into a guitar solo. The guitar’s case lay open on the ground in front of him.

  I doubted he was going to rake in much cash. But this was his turf, not mine. I’d never been to Suicide Slum before.

  So I tossed a few dollars into the case. “I’m never lost,” I said, hoping it was true.

  The first twangs from his guitar followed me up the stairs to the street. I felt somewhat conspicuous even though I’d purposely dressed down today, pairing a blue T-shirt with a robot on the front with jeans and my comfiest boots, my long black hair scooped back in a loose ponytail. As soon as I stepped out into the light, I knew I wasn’t anywhere near the relatively posh digs my Army general dad’s salary got us. Okay, I knew that already—it had taken three different subway transfers and a good forty-five minutes to get here from school.

  Most of the buildings I passed looked abandoned. Boarded-up windows, layers of graffiti, padlocked doors. So I seemed to be in the right place.

  Then I spotted who I was looking for.

  Ahead at the corner, a slender boy my age slicked a roller of light gray paint across the broad surface of a wall that stretched high above him. He had a scaffold set up and some other supplies, a sketchpad and a selection of spray paint cans and brushes among them.

  “You must be the artiste,” I said in greeting, emphasizing the “eest” at the end.

  He glanced over his shoulder and finished up the swipe before lowering his arm. “I hope not. Because if I am, I sound terrible,” he said, and mock-shuddered.

  He set down the roller carefully on a drop cloth and stuck out his hand. Black hair hung to his jaw, his brown eyes taking in everything. He wore an old T-shirt and baggy jeans, both paint-splotched, and had the kind of open, welcoming expression that makes it impossible not to like someone.

  “I’m Dante Alvarez,” he said. “And you must be the journaliste.” He drew out the pronunciation of the word to mimic mine.

  I snorted. “You’re right. That does make us sound terrible.”

  My fellow Scoop staffers had guilted me into spending my Friday after school on this human interest story. Real, serious news about the strange and nefarious things I was certain must be happening all around us had eluded me for the two weeks since my first articles, and they’d presented a united front at our staff meeting the day before. Everyone else had done a story like this, of the regular old day-to-day variety, with no mind-control bullying or secret evil corporation angle. My new friends insisted it was my turn.

  Like it wasn’t hard enough keeping on Principal Butler’s good side at school and my dad’s at home, juggling homework with Scoop business, and also continually trying to figure out my relationship with SmallvilleGuy.

  Having friends was a new enough development that I was forced to say yes. But it was also Friday, and that meant I had a date… or what I thought of as one, anyway… with SmallvilleGuy later that evening. My cheeks warmed.

  Get it together, Lois. It isn’t a date.

  “Hello?” Dante said.

  “Sorry. I’m Lois Lane, here to write your story.” There was a short stool among Dante’s equipment, and I sat down on it to rummage in my messenger bag for my small notebook.

  When I looked up, pen at the ready, it was into the face of one amused artist. “It’s not my story,” he said. “It’s the story of how art can help revive a neighborhood that needs to be reminded it matters.”

  He waved his arm to encompass the environs around us. While the block I’d walked up had seen far better days, from this vantage at the corner there were visible signs of liveliness on the other streets. Neighborhood shops—rundown but open—dotted the next block, along with some apartment buildings, and there were plenty of adults and children out and about.

  “Is art enough?” I resisted mentioning the time I helped bust an art forger. “This is clearly a neglected area of the city. Not getting a lot of attention from City Hall.” I paused, struck by an idea. “Wait. Is the problem mainly neglect, or is there corruption causing the neglect?”

  “You make it sound like that would be a good thing,” he said.

  “Sorry, nose for news.” Oops. Maybe I was getting a little too desperate for a big story. “Tell me why you’re doing this.”

  I scribbled notes as he talked about his project. A nonprofit had awarded him funding to design and paint the first of a planned series of murals throughout this section of town, and he’d spend the coming week completing it. He was in a special art magnet program at our school, and he took those same three trains I’d taken today every morning to get there. Ideally, he said, there’d be a school with decent art classes closer to home, but his mom hadn’t been able to locate one.

  There wasn’t much mural yet to speak of other than a base layer the gray of rain clouds, but I’d passed so much graffiti on this street
alone I had to ask. “Do you worry about someone vandalizing your art?”

  “No, I don’t. Taggers here respect other people’s work.”

  “There is a lot of crime in this area, historically speaking.”

  “That’s controlled crime. I don’t think the Boss cares about murals.”

  That was an odd way to put it. “The Boss?”

  Dante looked right and left before he answered. But there was no one close to us, hadn’t been the entire time we were talking. “The one who controls the crime,” was all he said. I waited, but he didn’t elaborate.

  “Okay,” I said, underlining the word Boss in my notes, but moving on. “You still haven’t answered my first question. Is art enough?”

  “No,” he said, tilting his head to one side, considering the blank wall where his mural would go. “But it’s a start. There’s that waterfront project people are saying will help too, but…”

  “But what?” I prompted.

  He smiled. “Sometimes people need a reminder that they are connected to each other, to something greater than themselves. That there is beauty in the world, and if they look they’ll see it. That they can create it. That it’s possible to change things yourself.”

  “On that we agree. So, what’s the mural going to depict?”

  “I’m not exactly sure yet—waiting to be inspired.”

  “Here’s to inspiration showing up soon if you have to finish it up this week,” I said, then closed my notebook. “I think that’s all I need. Thanks.”

  I snuck a peek at my phone as I replaced the notebook in my bag. If I hurried, maybe I wouldn’t be late to virtually “see” SmallvilleGuy in the real-sim holoset videogame Worlds War Three after all. We’d been meeting there on Friday evenings for the last two weeks, a new tradition in addition to our weeknight chats.

  I really didn’t want to be late. And I really did want to know if I was the only one of us who thought of it as something more than our chats had been before, who thought that our relationship was changing. That it might be becoming a relationship. And yet, so far I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

  “What do you think that’s about? Is she lost?” Dante pointed across the street to a taxi.

  I did a double take when I saw the girl getting out of the car. She was clearly not a neighborhood local, and she was holding on to the door with a death grip, like she might tumble to the ground if she let go. With obvious effort, she released it and took a few steps toward an abandoned building. Then she stumbled.

  I recognized her. And I was already halfway across the street when she fell.

  I darted around the taxi and reached her just in time to slow her descent to the ground. She lay flat, collapsed on the sidewalk. Dante had followed me, and he lowered to a crouch at her side.

  An unhealthily red-faced taxi driver opened his door and shouted, “You haven’t paid me yet—” He broke off, frowning down at his passenger’s crumpled form and then at me.

  I held my finger up to him. For all I knew, he was considering harvesting his pay from her wallet and leaving her there. My kingdom for the taxi driver I trusted when I needed a ride somewhere. But I’d have to deal with the one in front of me.

  “Wait right where you are. We may need you to take us somewhere.” I put my hand to the neck of the girl’s prone form to check her pulse. She was down like a prize fighter after a knock-out punch.

  “Should I call nine-one-one?” Dante asked.

  “Ye—”

  But her eyes popped open then, big and blue, accentuated by picture-perfect makeup. “No, don’t call anyone,” she insisted. She blinked. “You’re Maddy’s friend,” she said to me. “Lois.”

  “And you’re Maddy’s sister.” Maddy—my new best friend and colleague at the Scoop—had a twin sister. But I realized that Maddy had never said her twin’s name in front of me, and I had never asked. That was awkward.

  Dante helped the girl into a seated position, earning a frown from her instead of a thank you.

  “I don’t have all day,” the cab driver said.

  “Or much of a civic spirit,” I said. “I’ll pay. You can keep the meter running.” I put my hand on Maddy’s sister’s arm. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

  With a wince, she lifted her nose in the air. “What do you mean? How can you not know my name?”

  Her tone was affronted, not hurt. What offended her wasn’t that Maddy hadn’t mentioned it, it was that I hadn’t heard of her otherwise. “I’m new here,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said, as if that explained it. Sort of. “I’m Melody.”

  Dante leaned close enough to me to say, probably without her hearing, “Queen of the school.”

  Aha. To her, I said, “Melody, I feel like we should get you to a doctor.”

  “No.” She began to struggle to her feet, and when she reached out for help, Dante supported her. “I need to go over there. It’s why I came here.” She gestured at the abandoned building.

  That was a command, like she was in charge, even here. Dante obeyed, with a shrug to me. I got out my wallet to give the grumbling cabbie some money, but as I passed it to him, I said, “But wait a sec, all right?”

  When I turned back, Melody had hooked her arm through Dante’s and wobbled the rest of the way to the building. Boards with a giant graffiti tag that looked like a B almost concealed the front entrance of the place, which might have been a decent office building at some point. The top glass of the door behind one plank was visible, with broken, sharp shards jutting out from the edge.

  Melody shook off Dante’s arm and tried to peer in past the boards and broken glass. She pressed her forehead against a piece of wood.

  “Watch out for splinters,” I said, crossing the sidewalk to them. Though what I wanted was an explanation of what she was doing here, not to be giving safety tips. What was she desperately looking for in a building that housed nothing?

  She angled her face toward me. Even after fainting, her makeup and hair were barely mussed. “It’s gone,” she breathed, her voice as shaky as her legs had been earlier. “Gone. What am I supposed to do now?”

  “What’s gone?” I asked.

  “The guy, the lab, all of it. It’s gone. What am I going to do?”

  My nose for news metaphorically twitched, catching the scent that had been eluding it. “There was a lab here? And you came back to it. Why?”

  “Because he said to. He said I should let him know if…” She trailed off and frowned.

  “If what, Melody? You can trust me.”

  “I don’t trust anyone.”

  Not even her sister? I raised my eyebrows at that. “Trust me.”

  “I would,” Dante said, “if I were you.” Nice of him, considering we just met.

  Melody still hesitated, but not for long. “He said to tell him if there were side effects. There haven’t been, not until now. But I don’t know what else it could be. And it’s gone. He’s gone.”

  “Side effects? Sounds like you need a doctor.” I looked at her, hard, and she returned the favor. We were sizing each other up.

  “No,” she said, voice thin and breathy again. “I need to find this particular doctor. Fast.”

  “What other leads do you have on where to look for this particular doctor?”

  She shook her head, eyes landing on the building.

  “This can’t be it,” I said.

  “It is.”

  And I thought she might collapse again, her shoulders dipping as one of her legs gave.

  Dante saw the same thing, and he stepped in to offer his arm again. She grabbed it. Which told me something important about Melody Simpson: she might not ask for help, but she clearly needed it. I made a decision on the spot.

  “Good thing I happened to be here. I’ll help you.”

  She blinked at me. When she d
idn’t respond, I added, “I’ll have to interview you, get more information, in order to track him down. Especially if you need to find him fast. So, you want my help or not?”

  It was a gamble to press, and if she said no, I’d have to try some other way to convince her. I was new to this friend stuff, but Maddy would want to know about this. She would want me to help her sister. Wouldn’t she?

  “Yes,” Melody said. “I need help. Badly enough to accept yours.”

  “I’m choosing not to take that as an insult.” Though it sounded like one. I asked Dante, “Can you help her into the taxi? We’ll go to the Scoop office.”

  “Wait a second,” Melody said, as if something awful had occurred to her. “What will people say if they see me?”

  “You look fine,” I said. “No one would have a clue you almost fainted.”

  “No,” she said, with a dismissive head shake. “What will they say if they see me with you guys?”

  She’s Maddy’s sister, I told myself. Be nice.

  “Probably something less awful than if they saw you collapsed on the sidewalk?”

  And we were back to sizing each other up.

  Dante ignored the tension and said, “I’ll stick with you guys, just in case.”

  I didn’t miss how Melody continued to lean on him. She needed the support. I gave him a subtle nod, and he eased her into the backseat, then asked, “Where are we headed?”

  I told the driver, “You’re taking us to the Daily Planet Building.”

  “Hold on. I’ll stash my stuff,” Dante said, jogging back across the street. He was truly a nice guy, tagging along with the supposed queen of the school and me. Despite her looks, it was tough to believe Melody was related to Maddy.

  I took out my phone and signed in to the custom-made hyper-secure messenger app SmallvilleGuy and I used. Then I tapped out a note.

  SkepticGirl1: I’m going to be a little late. Duty calls.

  SmallvilleGuy: Hurry if you can. I have something important to tell you.

  “Let’s not take the scenic route,” I told the cab driver.

  CHAPTER 2

  The scenic route must have been the only one, because it felt like it took forever and an age to get across town. But when I checked, a mere twenty minutes had passed. Still, by the time we reached the sleek mirrored column of the Daily Planet Building, topped by its giant globe, I was obsessing as much (okay, more) about what SmallvilleGuy might have to tell me as I was about Melody’s story.