The Day After

Chapter X

Clark Kent happily made his way into the newsroom, ready for another day at work. As usual, nobody paid attention to him as he cheerfully walked to his desk. He bumped into several people along the way and he apologized each time, like he always did. People seemed to look right through him, but he didn't care. He'd been out of his coma for two days and while he had yet to regain his full strength, he was alive and healthy and that was all that mattered. He'd had a good night's sleep, he'd finally flown to the sun, and he was ready to face the future with renewed spirits as a new man.

He walked to his desk, sat down, and fired up his computer. As he waited for it to finish loading, he wondered if he'd be able to write that article Perry asked for before the boss noticed him. Just as he started wondering if anyone would notice that he would be typing his article at super-speed, and if the keyboard would catch on fire from doing that, somebody sneaked up behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

He spun around in his chair and saw Jimmy Olsen, smiling at him. "Jimmy!" he said cheerfully. Jimmy was one of the few people in the newsroom who seemed to know or care that Clark Kent existed. He was glad that Jimmy liked him, but he hoped that the photographer wasn't going to offer him drinks at nine in the morning again.

"Mr. Kent! Good to see you! Feeling better?"

He remembered how ill he'd looked the day before. "I feel much better, thank you."

"Good to hear. Oh, the Chief was yelling for you earlier." He pointed at the Editor in Chief's office. "Lois is already with him. You'd better get in there before he blows a fuse!"

Well, so much for typing that article at super-speed. "Thanks..." he said half-heartedly as he put his computer on stand-by and made his way to Perry White's office, feeling like he was walking the last mile of his career as a reporter of a great metropolitan newspaper.

He was so worried about how to keep his job that he wasn't looking where he was going and ran face-first into the glass doors of the editor's office. Both Perry and Lois looked up at him, but they didn't seem surprised. They were probably used to him doing this on a regular basis. Finally, he got the door open after a few failed attempts, brushed himself off, straightened his tie, and stepped inside. "You called, Mr. White?" Don't show fear... He can smell fear.

"Yeah, Kent, come on in, sit down. Let's hear it."

He took a seat in front of the editor's desk. Lois was sitting next to him and he gave her a goofy smile and a wave. She waved back and he could tell she was trying to hide a smile. Then he remembered where he was and what was coming next. He could feel himself shrinking under the editor's gaze and he struggled not to let it show. "Uh, hear what?"

Perry glared at him, and Clark just looked down at his clasped hands and twiddled his thumbs. "Don't 'hear what' me! Yesterday morning, I asked you to write me an article about who was responsible for New Krypton. Well, let's hear your progress."

This is it, he thought miserably, the end of my career. "I, uh..." He looked to Lois for help, but she looked just as helpless as he did. "Well, I..." He waved a hand in the air, trying to come up with an answer, but he came up empty and dropped it. He mumbled under his breath, "I didn't start it." He cringed, bracing himself for the coming storm.

"Well, what the hell were you doing all day that was so important?!"

"I-I was... I was..." He'd spent the entire day teetering on the brink of death, that's what he was doing. He gave up on trying to defend himself and just accepted his fate. "N-Nothing."

"Oh, I see. Nothing. Well, while you were out there doing 'nothing', Lois tracked down Superman and got us an interview and the best damned article this newspaper has had in years." He held up the article, 'Justice for Superman', for Clark to see. "And you couldn't even go down to the coast and ask around? Get the word on the street? Anything?!"