Again?
Lena let out a deep breath. She was finally done with her day. A horrible day might she add. She closed her laptop. As much as she wanted to leave it here for the weekend, she simply couldn’t. She had four meetings on Monday alone. Three of them weren’t as important as she said they were. Those were just meetings with different board members who thought they could handle L-Corp better than herself. Those three would be easy to handle, exhausting, but easy.
The fourth one though… it was more of a presentation so to speak. She had to convince seven different investors to support her on a project that would help thousands of alien refugees. The only problem is that it wouldn’t be profitable enough for them. She had to convince them with the publicity of the action. That was her only point. She would worry about that on the weekend though, not now.
So she took her Valentino bag and her black coat and walked to the elevator. It stopped on the second floor to let some bulky-looking man in a bad tailored suit walk in. Everything would have been fine if it wasn’t 2a.m. She didn’t know any employees that stayed at the office until well past midnight except her security detail. And she knew every security guard personally. She had to. Even the new recruits were presented to her and she decided if they were indeed cut out to do the job. So no, this man was not working here and they were well past the visitor’s hours.
Lena tried to discretely grab the taser she kept in her purse for situations just like this one. Unfortunately Jerry (she thought he looked like a Jerry. Some insecure guy who hid behind his muscles), Jerry must have seen this, because one moment she was fine and the next she felt a debilitating pain to the back of her neck. After that, everything went black.
___
The incessant throbbing in her head was probably what woke her up. Lena kept her eyes closed. She was lying on cold concrete. Ugh, her kidnappers didn’t even have the decency to put up a mattress. Whatever.
She knew she had to open her eyes. She owed it to herself to at least try to escape, or find out where she was kept. So she did. Lena opened her eyes, slowly, as to adapt to the very low, but surprisingly still blinding light.
She got up to her knees as slowly as possible, as to not make her vision blur any more than it already was. She crawled to the nearest wall and leaned her back against it. She closed her eyes and rested her head for a close second, hoping it would make the throbbing go away. It didn’t.
When she opened her eyes again, she took in the room in which she was being held. All the walls were made of concrete, except for one. That one was just bars, thick metal (probably Nth metal by the looks of it) going from the ceiling to the floor and a door, also out of the same metal. The whole room was basked in this sterile white light that Lena came to loathe.
She let out a sigh. Who would want to kidnap her? She almost laughed. Except half of the entire world population? Her brother and her mother were obviously on top of the list. There were also two board members she didn’t completely trust, but whom she couldn’t get rid of because they were major shareholders. Naturally. Then of course came all the people Lex hurt during his feud with Superman and who wanted revenge. They couldn’t get their hands on Lex, so they would settle for her instead. Great. There was also th…
Her train of thoughts was interrupted as she heard loud footsteps outside her cell. She turned her head only to see Jerry walking towards her. Fantastic.
“You’re coming with me Luthor.” He emphasized that last word and spit it out with as much disdain as possible. It didn’t faze Lena even a bit. She was used to hate. He’d have to try harder to intimidate her next time. Be a little more original maybe, think outside the box.
“I don’t think so.” She abruptly stood up, ignoring the throbbing in her head and her blurry vision, and tried to punch Jerry. Tried really was the key word though.
Lena had thrown a punch, thinking that it was pretty decent considering her condition, to the guy’s throat. She had underestimated him big time. It was Kara’s fault anyway; she made everything look so easy. Well, Jerry, the guy she underestimated, grabbed her fist mid course like it was nothing and twisted it. Rather violently she had to say. She had to restrain herself from screaming out in pain at the very rude action. He continued by turning her around, her back facing him. He proceeded then by kicking her in the back of her knees, forcing her down.
“Now, now, Miss Luthor we don’t want to do that.” Lena could practically hear the smug grin on his face. She just growled in response.
“Good, I didn’t think so either.” He pushed her back up on her feet and dragged her to another room.
There was a single chair in the middle. Soon enough she was tied to it. Both of her hands were bound together in the back of the chair. Her legs and feet, those were still free. Amateurs, she thought.
“Are you going to tell me who’s behind this? You surely aren’t the mastermind of this whole… operation by the looks of it.”
Lena saw how he clenched his jaw and the sense of pride she felt at the sight warmed her chest.
“I could be mistaken of course, which I highly doubt. I am a pretty good judge of character. You seem more like the minion type. The kind of guy that follows orders blindly without second-guessing, because why would you? Boss said you did good. So now you feel proud. You feel a sense of accomplishment. The rest doesn’t matter, because you got the affirmation you oh so desperately needed.” She was pushing her luck. That she knew but she couldn’t find it in her to stop. “Tell me, did boss give you a pat on the head for kidnapping me?”
She had seen him ball his fist and sure enough that fist landed on her stomach. It cut her breath for a moment. She dubbed over and spit on his shoes. Sure she was worsening things for herself, but this idiot had to know that she wasn’t afraid of him.
Thankfully someone walked in and interrupted their bickering.
“Tommaso Ricci. I would say I’m surprised but I’m not really. The whole thing was handled very sloppily. Honestly I was expecting better from an ex board member. But what can I say? People disappoint me every day. Today it’s you.”
Ricci’s eyes darkened for a second, the he started yelling.
“You ruined my reputation! I lost my family because of you!”
"You did that to yourself! You stole confidential information! What did you think was going to happen? You can be glad you’re not in jail right now.”
She didn’t want to deal with that now.
“What do you want from me? Money?”
“I want to destroy your world just like you destroyed mine.”
He snapped his fingers twice and the whole room was basked in a fluorescent green color. All of a sudden she was terrified. Not for herself, but for a special someone.
“What are you doing?” She tried to sound confident, but the small tremble in her voice betrayed her fear.
“Exactly what I said I would.”
With that the door opened and the sight that came with it chilled Lena to the bone. Kara. Kara was unconscious, in her civilian clothes, a trail of blood flowing from her temple. Her two arms had been thrown around the necks of two Jerry-looking men, who were dragging her in the room.
They stopped in front of Lena and dropped Kara. She flinched as she heard Kara’s head drop to the floor with a violent thud.
Lena fell silent for a few seconds, startled, before thrashing frantically, almost madly against her bonds. Trying, desperately trying to get closer to Kara.
She hadn’t even realized that Tommaso and his minions had left.
She was alone.
She was alone with Kara, in a Kryptonite exposed room.