Superman: Dawnbreaker (DC Icons #4)(40)

The guy who’d wielded the brick cursed through his teeth, but when Clark spun around, he took a step back.

“Go home,” Clark told him. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I’m done messing around, kid,” the man answered. He pulled a small switchblade from his waistband and leveled it at Clark’s chest.

Clark sucked in a massive amount of air, then focused on the knife in the guy’s hand. This time he blew out a stream of ice-cold breath on purpose, as powerfully as he could.

The blast of frosty air that emerged from Clark’s lips shocked everyone. It enveloped the knife-wielding man’s hand, and he let out a high-pitched squeal and dropped the weapon. Completely frozen, it hit the pavement, where it broke into several small pieces as they all watched.

The man held up his frostbitten hand in horror. He screamed again, more desperately this time, before passing out. The other men turned to stare at Clark, shock etched onto their drunken faces.

Clark was in shock, too.

“Who are you?” one of the men said in awe.

“I’m nobody,” Clark told him. And the minute he said it, he knew it was true. He had given himself fully to protecting this man who was in trouble. And in doing so, he had shed himself. He had become someone new. Someone without fear.

Three of the four conscious men turned in a drunken panic and scattered in different directions. The fourth picked up his unconscious friend and dragged him away from the scene.

Clark pulled in several deep breaths, trying to calm himself, before hurrying over to help the victim to his feet. “Come on,” he said. “We gotta get you to the hospital.”

“No, I can’t go,” the man said with a thick accent, made thicker by his bloodied mouth. “For me, it’s not safe.” He shook out of Clark’s grasp and tried to reach into his pocket for his phone. But his hands were shaking so badly that he couldn’t do it.

“See?” said Clark. “You need help.”

The man turned painfully to look at Clark. “They will take me from my family.” He began stumbling down the alley, occasionally using the wall as support.

Just before the man rounded the corner, Clark saw a smallish woman emerge from the back door of the bar. She was sobbing. “Moises!” she called out into the night. “Moises, wait!”

“You know the guy who got jumped?” Clark asked her.

She nodded. “He told them not to bother me! That’s it!”

Clark pointed in the direction of the man who had fled. “Go to him. Make sure he gets help.” He watched her hurry after the man.

Once they were both out of sight, Clark knelt and studied the bloodstained pavement. He didn’t feel like he’d just saved a person’s life. He felt dark and cold and alone. A cloak of sadness seemed to descend upon him, even though he knew he’d done the right thing.

Maybe true heroism, he thought, didn’t actually feel heroic.

Maybe it felt lost.

I’m nobody, he repeated to himself.

Clark touched the back of his head where the brick had hit him, trying to process everything that had just happened. But it was all a blur to him now. And he knew he couldn’t talk to anyone about it, either. Not his parents. Or Lana. Or Bryan. Or Gloria. He felt more isolated than ever before. He didn’t know where to go or what to do, and as the stars shone on him from above, he stared down at the bloody concrete, and then through it, into the dark earth below.

A loud semi drove past the alley, and Clark was still kneeling there.

A faraway dog began howling into the night, and Clark was still kneeling there.





The next day was a blur for Clark.

As he sat in his classes, his mind kept drifting back to the fight behind the bar. He replayed it, over and over. Every word that was said. The blatant racism. The drunken threats. The bloodied victim staggering away, claiming he couldn’t go to the hospital because they’d take him from his family.

Clark didn’t understand why, but he felt a connection with the Mexican victim. Maybe because he believed those men would try to do the same to him if they knew his secret.

And then there was Clark’s freak discovery of his freezing breath—yet another power he didn’t know how to control. He cringed when he thought about the guy’s frozen, blackened hand. His bloodcurdling cries of pain. The way his skull had bounced off the concrete after he fainted. Clark had meant only to chill the man’s hand enough to make him drop the knife. But he’d gone too far.

He was so stuck in his own head that he avoided all conversation. Even with Lana. When he saw her in the hall after third period, he quickly spun around and went the other way before she could spot him. And he still hadn’t answered the two texts she’d sent during lunch. She wanted to discuss everything happening in Smallville, but there was only one question on Clark’s mind at the moment: Had he done the right thing in the alley behind the bar?

At the time, he would have answered yes. A man was in serious trouble, and Clark had come to his aid.

But now he wasn’t so sure. By the time the skirmish was over, not only was the victim seriously injured, but so was the man with the frozen hand.

Clark had once heard that the first rule of being a doctor is to do no harm. He wasn’t a doctor, of course, but by that same logic, his initial rescue missions had been disasters. He’d harmed just about everyone.