Superman: Dawnbreaker (DC Icons #4)(50)

It was a series of texts from Lana:

Here. Next to Lex’s car. Where are you?

Everything okay????

TALK TO ME, CLARK!

Clark looked at Lex. “Lana’s parked by your car. Can you go over there and come back to get us?”

“Yeah, wait here.”

“And, Lex, tell Lana to cover her license plate somehow,” Clark added. “I’m sure there are cameras everywhere. They’ll know who we are, but I don’t want them finding out about her.”

“I got it,” Lex said, and he hurried off to retrieve his car.

“Of course this would happen,” Bryan said, pointing at his right foot, covered only by a white ankle sock now.

“It’s not your fault,” Clark said, trying to console his friend. “I’m the one who wanted to come here.”

Bryan shook his head. “No, I don’t want to do that anymore.” He looked right at Clark, glassy-eyed.

“Do what?”

“Pretend.”

“Bryan, it’s okay, though,” Clark said. “We got out. We’re good.” Clark looked up the fire escape. No one coming. He scanned the street. All clear.

Bryan gazed at the night sky. “You know why I like flying, Clark?”

“Why?” Clark asked, surprised by the non sequitur.

“The world actually makes sense at ten thousand feet.”

Clark glanced at the sky, trying to think of something supportive to say.

“When you’re flying,” Bryan went on, “you look down at your city or your town, and you see how small everything looks. And you realize maybe your problems are small, too. And all the important people, like my dad—they’re small, too, you know? And it sort of puts everything into perspective.” Bryan looked at Clark with a pained smile. “Because the world is a really, really big place. And it existed for billions of years before we came along. And it may exist a billion more after we’re gone. And up there…you get that.”

Clark nodded as he listened, but the truth was, he found Bryan’s words a little unsettling.

“The problem is,” Bryan added, “a plane can only hold so much fuel. Eventually you have to land.”

Just then Clark heard the familiar sound of Lana’s car coming down the road. “See?” Clark said.

Bryan didn’t say anything.

Lana’s front license plate was covered with a sweatshirt. She pulled right up to them and reached across the car to throw open the passenger-side door, shouting, “Get in!”

Clark helped Bryan into the back seat, then jumped into the front. “Where’s Lex?”

Lana shrugged. “He made me promise we’d keep him in the loop from now on. Then he peeled out.” Lana pulled away from the weed-covered sidewalk a little less dramatically. Glancing back at Bryan, she added, “I think I’m your ride home now.”

Bryan nodded, staring out the window.

Clark looked back as they continued down the street. No one was following them. “We’re not going to the police this time,” he said to Lana.

“Nope. No police.” She glanced at Clark as she drove. “You guys okay?”

He nodded. “I think so.” He motioned toward Bryan in the back, but Lana didn’t notice.

“Good,” she said. “Now tell me what happened in there. I’m assuming we’ve zeroed in on our guy. But I want to know everything.”





Bryan wasn’t at school the next day. And when Clark texted him during his lunch period, to check in, Bryan’s side of the conversation was clipped and dismissive. So after school Clark set off toward the downtown Body Reserve gym, where he knew Bryan had been working out.

“Thought I might find you here,” Clark said as he walked into the mostly empty gym. His friend was stacking forty-five-pound plates onto the ends of a barbell, and it looked like he had a black eye. “Whoa, what happened to you?”

Bryan brushed the question aside. “It’s nothing.”

Now that Clark was closer, he saw how nasty the bruising was around Bryan’s half-closed left eye. “What are you talking about, Bryan? Who did that to you?”

Bryan paused to look at Clark. “It’s no big deal. I fell when me and Corey were wrestling around. What are you doing here, anyway?”

Clark watched Bryan lie on the bench and line his hands up on the bar. In addition to the black eye, he had a brace on his ankle. As Bryan did his set, Clark thought back to his cryptic comments right before Lana had picked them up outside the Wesco research lab. He’d sensed it at the time, that something had broken inside his friend’s psyche, but seeing Bryan now…It was even worse than he’d thought.

Complicating things even more, Bryan was tossing around a tremendous amount of weight like it was nothing. He had only been on his workout kick for a short time. How was this possible?

“Listen,” Clark said, after Bryan had set the bar back on the rack, “maybe you don’t want to talk about your eye right now, but we have to talk about what happened at the lab. This is important for all of Smallville.”

Bryan sat up and stared at the plaque-covered wall in front of him. “Going out there was a mistake,” he said, wiping his brow with his gym towel. He sighed. “Listen, I don’t mean to sound rude, but…I’m kind of busy. Can we do this another time?”