Superman: Dawnbreaker (DC Icons #4)(48)

“No, I’m friends with Dr. Wesley,” Bryan pleaded. “He knows we’re here.”

Clark turned discreetly to size up the large conference room. He tried the door, but it was locked. The sign above read RESTRICTED—PROJECT DAWN.

Lex was staring at it, too.

The man marched right up to Bryan and looked at his badge before shoving him against the wall. “You don’t have clearance, asshole. If I were you, I’d be looking for a way out. The men who are coming aren’t fully trained yet. Mistakes have been known to happen.”

Clark’s ears tingled as he closed his eyes briefly and focused on the sounds all around him. A glass beaker tapping against a table. Water streaming out of a sink. Classical music. Several people speaking quietly in Spanish. A chorus of clinking chains pulled tight. And then Clark heard what he was listening for.

Footfalls in the distance.

Three people, at least.

“We need to go,” Clark barked at Bryan and Lex, taking charge. “Follow me.”

The blond man stepped in front of Clark, who went to shove him aside. But the man hardly budged. He was even stronger than he looked.

The man grinned and made a move to grab Clark’s arms, but Clark ripped out of his grasp and slugged him in the stomach.

The man doubled over.

“Whoa!” Bryan said, looking on in awe.

“We need to go!” Clark growled. “Now!”

Just then, three men dressed all in brown came racing down the hall toward them. All had shaved heads, and their eyes were abnormally dilated. Two looked Mexican, and one was black. Clark flashed back to the knife-wielding man downtown. The one who’d come after his ex-football teammates. He froze, trying to understand the connection, but there was no time.

The blond man shouted up to Clark, “You’re screwed now!” He barked into his radio. “I repeat, code red. Lock down all exits!”

The men in brown were only fifteen yards away now and closing fast. Clark grabbed Bryan and Lex by their arms and all but dragged them down the hall the other way, moving quickly as the trio in brown pursued. Clark’s powers came to him easily now. His X-ray vision allowed him to see through walls, into the rooms ahead. He led them along the labyrinth of hallways, and he was able to determine, based on sound alone, that a second group of men was now after them. The men were coming from the opposite direction, trying to pin them down.

Clark spotted a closed door near the end of one hall. He hurried ahead of Bryan and Lex and tried the doorknob, but it was locked. Before they caught up to him, he quickly snapped off the doorknob and chucked it away. “In here!” he shouted, and the three of them ducked inside the dark room and closed the door.

“Shit!” Bryan said under his breath. “Shit, shit, shit!”

“What?” Lex asked.

“I just messed up my foot.”

“Jesus, Bry,” Lex said. “What’d you do?”

“I don’t know. I turned it over coming in here.”

“Quiet,” Clark said when he heard the men coming.

The three of them breathed as quietly as they could, listening to the men run right up to the door, then past it. After a long stretch of silence, Clark used his phone to illuminate the room. They were in some kind of large computer center. Fifteen desktop computers were lined up on a long table, all their screens showing the same screensaver: the Wesco logo. Clark couldn’t make sense of it. Wesley had a tiny, run-down office downtown. Yet he seemed to also own this secret facility full of expensive-looking equipment.

And then there was Corey. How did he figure in?

“Clark,” Bryan said between frantic breaths, “what am I gonna do? I can’t put any weight on my foot.”

Clark checked his phone. No signal. But Lana had texted back: On my way!

“They’re just trying to spook us.” The normally cocky Lex looked genuinely scared, his typical grin nowhere to be found. “No one’s actually going to hurt anyone, right? Clark?”

“No one is going to hurt us,” Clark said.

“Either way,” Bryan said, pulling out his phone, “I’m calling the cops. I don’t even care if Corey finds out I was here.” He stared at his phone for a few seconds, then slammed it against the tile floor. “Shit. No service.”

“Me either,” Lex said.

When they turned to Clark, he shook his head. “No service for me either.”

While Bryan and Lex began arguing about whose idea it had been to enter the restricted area, Clark told them he’d be right back.

“Wait!” Bryan called to him. “We should stick together!”

But Clark was already out the door. He crouched in the hall, listening intently for footfalls or voices. He heard only footsteps now, and they weren’t close. Straining to make use of his X-ray vision, his eyes buzzing, he felt like he was rising toward the high ceiling. His stomach sank. Then his vision suddenly punched through the wall directly in front of him.

Another dark room.

He went through the far wall in there, too. And now he was seeing the hall they’d been in when the blond man had approached them. He saw two men in brown walking past the restricted area. He paused on the sign above the door again: RESTRICTED—PROJECT DAWN.

What did it mean?

When Clark tried to see through the Project Dawn wall, his sight grew fuzzy, and then he lost his X-ray vision altogether.