Once he had finished talking to the police, Clark lifted off from where he had been hovering to talk to them. Hovering had felt less taxing than standing would have been, the fight taking out more than he had expected from him. The pain in his side made it hard to breathe, and the blows to his back made standing painful, all of which were completely new sensations to the Man of Steel. He could hear Lois accuse him of male pride in not wanting to appear weak, but the truth was that he didn't want to encourage whomever was sending these men after him, and seeing The Superman weakened would only serve to do so.

Unfortunately, the attack had happened after night had fallen, so to heal faster he'd need to reach above the horizon to get to the sun. But for now he was barely making up to the top of the nearest skyscraper, where he landed to rest for a minute. Breathing was continuing to be painful, and Clark began to worry that he'd somehow suffered a cracked rib. Walking slowly, he finally leaned against one of the industrial air conditioners to regain his strength for a minute, he nearly wrecked the aluminum and steel contraption when the voice spoke out from just above him.

"You're not looking healthy, Superman."

Turning and stepping backwards, the pain from his injured back radiating up and down his back, he stared at the strange looking man hunched on the air conditioner. The matte black cowl and cape obscured all but the man's jaw from view while also seemingly swallowing all the light it made contact with. His eyes peeking from inside their holes, the whites burning in contrast to the darkness surrounding them. Two piked points emanated from the cowl, as if to replicate ears, and all in all Clark was sure most people would find the appearance intimidating.

But most people didn't have X-Ray vision.

"You're not in Gotham, Mr. Wayne."

The man in front of him didn't react, either assuming he'd be recognized by the Clark, or that he refused to acknowledge being caught.

"No, I'm not, Mr. Kent."

The two men stared at each other for several seconds, as a light drizzle began to fall. Clark watched as the water rolled off the cape of the man crouched in front of him, unsure of what to make of him, and the pain wanting to make this encounter end. The pain was making focusing difficult, and Clark could feel the edges of his vision getting fuzzy.

"However," the young billionaire continued, "neither are several inmates from our insane asylum, Arkham. Your friend, Luthor, had them transferred to his research lab a week ago."

The pain made Clark's reaction worse than he might have normally. "Luthor is no friend of mine. And I don't know what you expect me to know ... "

Clark stumbled, taking aloft just an inch to get off his feet.

"I don't know what you think I might know about ...that... "

Clark squinted his eyes as the masked man seemed to be pulled away from him, not realizing the sensation was instead him falling backwards to the roof of the building below.

As his vision blacked out, the last sight he had was the young billionaire standing over him.

"Clark, call me when you get this." Lois went to disconnect the call, then added "And yes this is the fifth call, but if you'd called me back I wouldn't have had to have called five times." Stabbing the red button on her screen, Lois flipped the phone onto the couch. She had never been this person, worried so much about someone outside of her family, and even then, hard to imagine she'd be this nervous over her Father or Lucy, since they'd just mock her for acting out like this.

But Clark was different, in more ways than just laser beams shooting from his eyes. She had found herself feeling something more than just amazement at his abilities, she found herself falling for the man himself, the care he had for everyone around him.

To watch him be beaten like that had been heartbreaking.

To see that he'd never set foot back on the ground was worse, because she knew that he never floated that long if he didn't need to, even when it was just the two of them.

Lois had been an investigative reporter for a very long time, going back to her work in high school (in between detentions), she knew that the best way to find a lead is to spot the abnormality in a situation. Superman floating after a fight like the one he'd had meant that he was hurt.

It seemed hard for her to fathom the idea of Superman hurt, but worse, it hurt to think of Clark Kent hurt like that.

She picked up the discarded phone, staring at it as if that would make it ring. Dropping her hand, she rolled her eyes at herself, the situation, and in frustration. The phone in her hand vibrated, and she whipped it up, only to see a news alert about a celebrity marriage in trouble. Cursing the device, the vapid news industry - which she did without any sense of irony, she was, of course, a hard news reporter after all - and pretty much everything else in the world that was not Superman, when her lights and appliances began to flicker before going dark.

Suddenly she was alone in a dark apartment, and then she heard a noise, she stood, turning towards the noise in her kitchen. It was pitch black in the apartment save for whatever light came in through the the balcony windows that went from floor to ceiling. Again she circled her head, trying to see something in the darkness while clicking her non-functioning phone and cursing it's lack of light production.

Lois started as she suddenly saw a figure on her balcony. Somehow her balcony door now slid open (she swore it had been locked), and the dark figure walked in.

"He's injured, help me get him to the couch." The dark figure said.

Lois spotted Clark's face in the reflection of the city lights outside, and ran forward to help move his surprisingly heavy body to the couch. Running her hand along his face, she felt a sudden relief that he was alive. A mild rain had started outside, so he was lightly damp but far from soaked, causing his jet black hair to fall onto his face, ruining his usually perfect hairline.

The dark figure that had brought him in stepped back after he had deposited Clark on the couch. Lois turned to him in the dark of the apartment, his body a mere outline against the lights of the city beyond the windows of the balcony. Lois waited for her vision to adjust, taking the man in as she sat down on the edge of the couch, a protective hand resting over the 'S' of Clarks crest.

"How did you know to bring him here?" Lois asked. The dark figure merely tilted his head and stared at her for a moment before dropping a thumb drive on her coffee table.

"Luthor has moved from Arkham Asylum to his research lab here. Luthor has been stockpiling a radioactive crystal for months."

Lois blinked at the non sequitur, before regaining her wits.

"We knew about the green crystals, and that he was working to gather them." Lois's hand clutched the edges of the crest as she spoke, the memory of watching Clark in pain that day coming back as a painful second punch after tonight's events. "We think he's behind the super strength attackers as well, but we don't know to what end."

The dark figure's eyes moved from Lois to Clark behind her.

"To his end." He said.

Lois paused, a shiver running through her spine as the implications of what the figure had said sunk in. She turned to look at Clark's face, her hand again running through his hair, the reality of something capable of killing him seeming so real as he lay still on the couch.

"You still didn't say how you knew to ..." the room was empty when she turned back, and seconds later the lights and tv flickered back to life.

Standing up, Lois looked around her apartment, her eyes landing on the thumb drive. Sighing, she retrieved her laptop and a comforter from her bedroom. Placing the laptop on her coffee table, she laid the comforter over Clarks body and then sat down on the floor in front of him, her laptop open and reading glasses on.

Across town, Mercy arrived at the small sub-laboratory of LexCorp that seemed to be little more than a two story office building, buried in the middle of the outskirts of Metropolis, north of the docks and the industrial district that was more graveyard to days gone by than actual industry. Pulling her sleek sports car around back, she stepped out in her immaculate white pants and Louboutans, which contrasted with the dark black of the cheap black asphalt. Holding the plastic container with the swabs she had taken from the attack, she stepped up the stairs, her even and measured gait reported by the harsh click of her heels on the metal. The guard opened the door for her, and she made her way to the last research room at the end of the short hall.

The research room itself was fairly large, taking up much of the first floor. On one end were several computer stations linked to a server at the end of the shared counter. In the center of the room were various chemical equipment units, none of which she had any idea about.

However, standing with several men in lab coats, was one man who did.

Lex Luthor was a genius, in many fields. His father had been poor, and Alex had hated growing up that way. After his father died, Lex had taken the paltry insurance money and started his own tech company. Investors were at first squeamish to join in while police continued to investigate his fathers death, but as the money flowed in, their reluctance ebbed away.

As Lex grew older and richer, his interests widened, and at this point in his forties he had a working knowledge of most subjects, but had truly found that his initial skills in technology worked equally well in biochemistry, sometimes to the bane of his laboratory directors who expected to be collaborators but were treated as mere lab rats themselves.

Such was the case as now, Mercy observed, as the men around Lex stared daggers into him. He was still trying to solve the problem of the short life span of his own super men, and the frustration Lex felt was also felt by his lab rats.

Mercy's heel clicks continued in a perfect gait up to her boss, his imposing figure nearly dwarfing her own as she handed over her prize.

Lex took the small plastic container, the swabs within red with the blood of Superman. Meeting her eyes, Lex grinned at her offering.

Lois awoke to the feeling of the early morning sun blasting into her apartment, her neck sore from having fallen asleep against the couch at some point in the night. Standing and closing her laptop, she placed the device on top of her new pile of notes and leads. Stretching and rolling her stiff shoulders, she ambled into the kitchen, starting coffee and going to the bathroom.

Lois emerged a few minutes later, toothbrush in mouth to open up the blinds further for her slumbering guest. As she brushed she pondered if she should do more to help him, but realized there was little she could do more than what she had done.

Returning to the bathroom to deposit her toothbrush, she padded into the kitchen to get her coffee and nearly spilled it all over herself as she saw Clark standing at the windows of the balcony, his eyes closed seeming to soak in the sunlight.

Stepping back into the kitchen, she grabbed a second cup of coffee and brought them both over to Clark, pausing to absorb his sense of serenity as he stood at the windows. Finally he seemed to realize she was standing there, and smiled at her as he took the proffered cup of coffee.

"Thank you, Lois." He begins to sip the coffee when he pauses, looking at Lois. "How did I get here?"

Lois stops, looks at Clark, then at her coffee. "Ummm... I was hoping you could explain that to me." Lois steps away, slipping onto the couch, tucking a leg under herself. "I was trying to contact you, and then the lights go out, and some guy just appears right there holding you. So you tell me how you got here, I guess."

Clark paused, almost without thought holding his side as he remembered parts of the previous night. "He found me after the market, I had left to get to the sun but I was too hurt to get up that high." Clark laughs softly, "He actually snuck up on me, that hasn't happened since I was a little kid." Turning his back to the window, he looked at Lois intently and asked, "Did he say anything?"

"Not much," Lois said, shaking her head and leaning over to the coffee table to grab the thumb drive. "But he did give me this. He's been tracking LexCorp's purchase of the green crystal from the warehouse. And a transfer of patients from an asylum in Gotham to a research lab in Metropolis. I spent a few hours starting to make notes to follow up on, but still, if we can link the crystal to these attacks, we might be able to find a way to get Perry to really let us look at LexCorp." Lois paused, looking at her notes. "I don't suppose you know who he was?"

Clark thought about it for a second. "Search Gotham vigilante."

Lois opened her laptop, her keyboard clicking as she ran the search. Pulling on her glasses, she read through the results. "The ... Bat - Man?" Looking up at Clark with a questioning look, she smirked. "Really? The Batman?"

"Says the woman who named me 'Superman'?"

"...and let you crash on her couch?"

"...and makes a great cup of coffee?" Clark added, puppy dog face mismatching with the suit he was still wearing. Lois's look made him look down, then back up. "Yeah, let me go get some clothes, and then we can go over this information."

The waitress came up to Bruce almost nervously, and he almost laughed at the changes in his life. A few months ago he was in Tibet eating rice and meditating, now he was eating breakfast in a Metropolis hotel too good for stars, and everyone called the young man 'sir'. Still, he understood that to do what he wanted, sacrifices had to be made.

"Mr. Wayne, this message was left for you. He didn't leave a name, though."

Bruce nodded, thanking her as he took the card with a hand written note. Opening the card, he had to laugh as he realized who left the note.

"Thanks for the lift, and the information. We should meet again. I'll find you this time."