Triple Threat (Lois Lane) Page 5

  “Smart move.” He paced, noticing our chairs were still semi-gathered. “Am I breaking up a staff meeting?” Without waiting for a response, he said, “Perfect timing. Huddle back in.”

  Devin stopped typing and wheeled back over to us. Perry kept pacing. “I’m down here because I have an assignment. Actually, this is great. I can have the newsroom send those calls down to your phones. This will be good training. You can learn how to weed out the best information when there’s a flood of cockamamie reports coming in.” He shook his head. “Yes, that’s it. This will be excellent training.”

  The others looked to me. I was the closest thing we had to a Perry whisperer. Which wasn’t very close at all.

  I had a sneaking suspicion that we were about to be cursed, not rewarded.

  “Um, Mr. White?” I interrupted his pacing.

  He pivoted and trained a dead stare on me.

  “I mean, Perry.”

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh,” he said, flapping a hand around. “Right. We’ve been getting inundated with calls about ‘strange sightings’ around the city. All afternoon. Fast people in silver shoes or some nonsense like that. Loonies claiming to see silver-winged boys or girls lifting cars and then taking off. It’s madness, of course. There’s no truth to any of it, obviously. The photos people are sending in must be some kind of optical illusion or pranks. Costumes, maybe. The police have a statement saying they’re investigating it as a public disturbance—no harm’s been done yet. But someone has to run it down and explain it anyway. And that someone is all of you.”

  “You’re sure there’s nothing to it?” I asked, bracing for an explosive response.

  “People get hurt when they believe in things that are phony. There’s a danger to it. So run it down,” Perry said neutrally. “But I don’t want the Planet turning into the Weekly Weird News or that irresponsible parasite Loose Lips. Bring me the real truth, not a bunch of crazy rumors about bat boys or flying people.”

  “Will do,” I said without looking at the others.

  Not that I thought for a second he wanted the real truth on this one.

  CHAPTER 5

  After Perry left, the four of us exchanged wary looks. Devin and Maddy got to work without further comment. James looked to me. “What should I do?”

  “You want to be in charge of the deluge of calls when they start coming?” I asked. “You could try to get a location for each sighting.”

  Devin gave every appearance of having become oblivious to the world around him, typing fast. But he turned his head and said, “Good thinking—then I can plot them on a city map.”

  “On the plus side, at least you don’t have to worry about dress shopping for the time being,” I said.

  “Point,” James said.

  I made my way over to my desk. We obviously couldn’t do the assignment Perry had given us—not exactly—but we couldn’t exactly not do it either.

  I pulled out my laptop, logged on to the Planet’s wi-fi network, and started searching for a list of other high schools in the greater Metropolis area. Each one would have a dedicated open thread on Loose Lips. Neither Perry nor our parent company were fans of the Metropolis-based site and its approach to “news gathering,” i.e., a free-for-all of unsourced allegations with the most salacious highlighted on its homepage. But people used it. Lots of people. Gossipy people. And that’s what I needed.

  I searched the school threads out so I could write my posts.

  Five minutes later on the dot—apparently just enough time for Perry to get upstairs and give his command to the reception desks in news—our phones started to ring. They were old-school desk lines and quickly became as loud as an orchestra in the middle of a very annoying symphony.

  I heard James answer, “Daily Planet…” He raised his voice to be heard over the noise. “Slow down, ma’am. Now… what can we do for you?”

  Maddy called over to him. “Let me finish sending this message to Dante, and I can help out.”

  “This one look familiar to you guys?” Devin asked.

  He had paused on one mug shot with two snapshots scanned beside it in the missing teens database. We all gathered and squinted, the obnoxious bringggg-ing echoing around us. The boy in the shots had a slight resemblance to the speedy guy, but it wasn’t him.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Yeah, me neither on closer look,” he said, and clicked to advance to the next entry.

  When I got back to my desk, I picked up my screaming phone handset, said “Call back” into it, then left the receiver off the hook. Devin picked his up and did the same, sans the command I’d given. The symphony quieted to a semi- manageable chorus of rings, in between which Maddy and James talked to the callers.

  I made my first post on a thread for a high school halfway across town, on the edge of Suicide Slum. My Loose Lips account wasn’t the same name I used on Strange Skies; it was one I used elsewhere online.

  Posted by GirlFriday1 at 4:15 p.m.: The grapevine is buzzing with reports of teenagers committing incredible acts all over town while wearing silver costumes or accessories. Do you know anything about this? Have any teenagers at your school suddenly developed gifts you can’t explain? Have any gone missing? PM me with a solid tip and I’ll be in touch.

  I added the message to each school thread on the boards, then hesitated. This intersected with Strange Skies in a way that made it a no-brainer to post there too. Just in case. I’d have to be more specific about the location, so I massaged it a bit to make it sound like I was just interested from afar. I hadn’t posted on the site in ages.

  Posted by SkepticGirl1 at 4:22 p.m.: The Metropolis grapevine is buzzing with reports of weird teenagers with silver armor of some kind committing incredible acts all over the city. Anyone heard about this? Anything to share?

  It was vague enough that I thought it safe to risk hitting the post button.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket.

  SmallvilleGuy: I have some info for you. You want it now?

  I hesitated. James and Maddy were both talking to people on the phone and scribbling notes.

  SkepticGirl1: I’ll probably head home in a half an hour. Meet you in the game in 45 mins?

  SmallvilleGuy: Sure. Question first—did you see that speedy guy again?

  I frowned. My whole idea to leave early was in hope that he might try to tackle me again. I would figure out what was going on here.

  SkepticGirl1: Yeah, and there are more of them. I’ll tell you all about it. Why?

  SmallvilleGuy: I had a feeling—the Loose Lips home page has a few eyewitness reports that sounded familiar. Maybe you should take a cab home?

  SkepticGirl1: I’m not afraid of them.

  SmallvilleGuy: So you’ve figured out what their deal is? There’s no threat?

  “Lois?” Maddy asked, holding a phone receiver to her shoulder. “Did you just growl?”

  “Of course not,” I said. It must have just slipped out. I messaged SmallvilleGuy back.

  SkepticGirl1: I’ll summon Taxi Jack. Again.

  SmallvilleGuy: Thank you. <3

  I’d also risk running out of allowance money early this month, but oh well. Trying to outsmart Donovan and track him down qualified as a special occasion.

  *

  I arrived home at the same time as Mom, and I could tell from her slacks and tucked-in shirt that she’d come from campus. She tried the door first and found it locked, then fished out her key.

  “Did you have class tonight?” I asked. “I thought it was only Tuesday and Friday nights.”

  “And office hours today and Wednesdays. I share a closet-sized space with three other professors,” Mom said. She paused before she opened the door. “One of them is a total bore—talking to him reminds me of your f
ace whenever Principal Butler comes up.”

  “Condolences,” I said.

  She laughed and let us inside.

  “But you’re liking it?” I asked, curious. She’d been so excited and nervous, and secretly I’d been afraid the actual experience of being at the front of the classroom would disappoint. Or that the students would prove to be obnoxious cretins.

  “I love it. It’s nice to feel useful. To somebody besides you guys, I mean. Not that that’s not nice too,” she said. “I don’t have any regrets about waiting to do this.”

  I touched her arm. “Mom, I know exactly what you mean. I’m not offended. It’s awesome. Would it be weird if I came to watch you teach sometime?”

  “Yes,” she said. Then, “But you could sit in the back.”

  “Deal.” I started for the stairs.

  “Dinner in half an hour,” she said, tossing down her bag and heading for the kitchen. “Tell your sister.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  When I got to the landing, Lucy’s door was open, a rarity. She wasn’t wearing her holoset and hanging out with her unicorn friends, either. Instead she had a tablet on her lap. She must’ve borrowed it from Mom.

  I tapped on the doorframe. “Dinner’ll be ready in a little while.”

  “Okay,” she said. She hesitated a moment, then waved me in.

  I wasn’t going to have much time left to talk to SmallvilleGuy at this rate, but Lucy was my sister. And sister time was important. I stepped in and shut the door behind me.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  She held up her tablet, and I could tell whatever she was showing me was some kind of mock-up of cockpit controls.

  “You know how you said I’d find what I’m meant to do?” she asked.

  I nodded. “You have plenty of time.”

  “Well, I don’t need it. I think I’m supposed to be a pilot.” She was practically wiggling. “The planes the other night were so cool. This game simulates some of the flying.”

  I sat down beside her, squinting at the console graphic. It was nice to see her excited too, but I worried. “Was this Dad’s idea?”

  She laid the tablet face down. “No. It was mine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  That earned an outright scowl. “The airplanes were amazing. I talked to a guy about what flying is like and… it sounds like the best thing in the world. I want to learn how to do that.”

  “Then why stop with Earth? I think you should consider being an astronaut.”

  She stared at me for a moment, and then a smile bloomed on her face. “Oh my god. Space,” she said. “The training’s the same, I bet, at least at first. I’d still get to learn to fly planes.”

  She picked up the tablet and started scrolling around on it again, pulling up a search page. I stood and she didn’t even notice.

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “Best big sister ever.”

  “Sorry, thanks, Lois,” Lucy said. She still didn’t look up.

  I grinned as I left her room. It was weird but in the most wonderful way to be part of a household of ladies who were following their dreams. Or at least figuring their dreams out.

  My new dream was catching whoever had taken that picture of me, whoever had sent those armored mean girls and guys after my friends.

  And me.

  Donovan, you’re going down, and so is whoever you’re working with.

  I locked the door to my room behind me and retrieved the holoset from my desk. The bedroom fell away as I sat down and switched it on, the game landscape surging to life in its place. I’d entered Worlds War Three right beside our turret, under a bright pink and purple sky.

  SmallvilleGuy took my arm as soon as my avatar entered the scene. “I saw your post on Strange Skies,” he said as I looked up into his concerned face. “You weren’t worried? I thought you didn’t trust TheInventor.”

  He wasn’t wrong about that. I couldn’t quite meet his eyes, not while I was spying on someone he considered a friend. “I kept it as non-specific as I could.”

  “You mentioned Metropolis,” he said.

  “Your handle has your hometown in it,” I said. “So there. Lots of people live in both these places. It’ll be fine.”

  Although there weren’t that many people in Smallville, there were enough I couldn’t track him down with the information I had. Not without serious effort, anyway, and I would never have intruded that way without permission. And, I realized, I didn’t need to anymore. He was going to tell me. In person, before I knew it.

  By silent agreement, we entered our turret, where we had more privacy. “I guess that’s fair enough,” he said. “I still don’t feel like we have anything to fear from TheInventor. But I trust your judgment.”

  Were those the most romantic words ever uttered? No, but they were good ones to hear.

  “That makes one of us,” I said, only half meaning it. For the most part, I did trust my own judgment. But I was more than capable of screwing up. Just, sometimes, I forgot about that in my quest to move forward.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. The shadows inside the turret fell over us, hiding his expression.

  “I kept something back from my friends. I’m not sure I should’ve.”

  I filled him in on our encounters with the shiny, powered teens, how they’d herded us to school. Unlike with my fellow Scoopers, I told him everything that had been in the folder. He froze when I mentioned the, um, surveillance photo of me on the street.

  “I don’t like this at all,” he said. “You should tell the others. You’re obviously in danger, if whoever’s doing this is fixated on you like this.”

  “But so are they,” I said. “These guys didn’t just target me. And if I tell Maddy, James, and Devin, they’ll worry about me and it’ll distract them. We need to chase our leads. Don’t you agree that it’s best if we can wrap this up quickly?”

  “I don’t agree that you should risk your safety,” he said. “But I also know that you are smart and can handle whatever comes at you.”

  Maybe those were the most romantic words that had ever been uttered.

  “I hope so,” I said, offering him my hands. He took them in his and we practically floated to our little ledge with the bench. We both sat down.

  “I just have this gut feeling it has to be Donovan,” I said. “He’s involved. Who else could do this kind of advanced science without making it easier to run down? Who would come after me? But Maddy disagrees. She says it’s not him, because these silvered types seem to like whoever did this to them. Or at least not be creeped out by the person. That’s not Donovan’s M.O.”

  “He sounds awful, so it’s hard to argue with that.” SmallvilleGuy shrugged. “I don’t see any way to be certain at this point. Do you want to hear where Typhon comes from?”

  “You say the sweetest things. Enlighten me.” I was glad for the subject change.

  “More mythology,” he said.

  “I mentioned the logo, didn’t I? It’s the same as Ismenios’s almost. More mythology could point to Donovan.”

  “Or could point elsewhere, but it’s worth noting,” he said. “Typhon and Echidna were an infamous couple in Greek mythology—they were parents to a number of monsters. The Hydra was one of their offspring,” he said, ticking it off on his finger, “along with Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guards Hades, a dragon, the Chimera—”

  “I get it. A lot of monsters. Who knew I’d have to become a mythology expert to go after bad guys?”

  “A lot, yes. And the fiercest ones. Typhon was a giant monster thing himself and nearly impossible to defeat in battle. He eventually got taken down by Zeus, working with the warrior Cadmus and another god.”

  “I’ll remind you here that Donovan’s company name is Ismenios, the enemy of Cadmus.”

  “I’ll give you that does see
m like a clue,” he said. “Echidna was half beautiful woman, half snake-serpent, and she outlived Typhon. She was eventually killed too.”

  “Funny,” I said, rolling my eyes. “That they’d use Typhon as a name for something, like Echidna wasn’t the mother of the monsters. Like she didn’t outlive him. That has Donovan written all over it.”

  SmallvilleGuy didn’t say anything. I studied his light green profile.

  “What?” I prodded. “Your silence is speaking volumes.”

  He hesitated. Then he asked, “You should gather the facts before you make up your mind, shouldn’t you?”

  I nearly growled again, but only because he was right. “You and Perry,” I said, “will be the death of my sanity.”

  “I hope not,” he said, smiling at me and reaching out to take my hand.

  “Anyway, thanks for the mythological intel. We’re trying to find out who the people who approached us are first,” I said. “We figure someone has to miss them. But what I’m really looking forward to is hunting down the monster who’s playing with us.”

  With me, I thought, but didn’t say.

  “Playing with the whole city, sounds like,” SmallvilleGuy said. “I don’t like that these guys are being seen out and about. Even if they’re not doing anything harmful except being seen.”

  “Neither does Perry. He assigned us to find out the truth of these sightings. If he even believes they’re happening.”

  But something in SmallvilleGuy’s words stuck with me like an echo—the whole city part. “You know who I bet is still in the loop on anything happening to the whole city. Boss Moxie.”

  He snorted. “Too bad you put him in prison.”

  “Maybe not,” I said.

  “Lois, what are you thinking?” he asked.

  “I’m thinking about checking in on visitor protocols at Stryker Island. What better source of intel than a crime kingpin who has nothing to do but gossip?” I asked.

  “You said you’d be careful.”

  “No, I didn’t.” I grinned at him. “I said that I’d do my best.”