Lois Goes Quietly

Through the door, a hallway. Lois Lane blinked, eyes hot. She staggered, grabbing her midsection as her stomach churned. Losing her balance for a moment, she pressed one shoulder against the wall. **** herself to breathe...slowly, calmly. It looked like an old office space, all beige carpet and pale green walls, the paint cracked and flaking. The doors were closed, except for the office at the end...and Lois could see a desk there, a phone on the desk, and a laptop.

The spell passed, though Lois tasted something metallic in the back of her throat. The reporter **** herself to step forward, leaning against the wall. It wasn't pain, exactly, but a kind of nausea that Lois Lane hadn't felt since she'd caught a stomach flu and food poisoning at the same time. Her gut lurched, skin felt too tight, body hot. Only a dozen steps down the corridor and her white cotton shirt was soaked with sweat, and the black thong was sliding up the crack of her ass.

Lois had just reached the doorway when she realized she was not alone.

There were four of them. The reporter took in the pale green skin, the odd pink glowing circles on their foreheads. Their scalps had been shaved clean...and they were dressed in tight-fitting purple outfits with metal accents at breast and crotch. They moved in odd synchronicity, each step in time...but that wasn't the oddest thing about them.

She recognized them.

Diana Reynolds, Mara de la Cruz, Tonya Wong, and Jenny Dunlap. The four missing women Lois had come here looking for. Even with their odd garb, shaved heads and green skin, Lois recognized the four young women from their social media profiles.

"Lois Lane," Diana Reynolds said, the tallest and youngest of the four, only nineteen years old. "You will come with us."

There was an odd resonance in her voice, a kind of clipped speech and electronic reverb that Lois associated with text-to-speech programs. Diana's eyes were, Lois now saw, blank as pale white glass, the irises completely concealed. There were strange distensions to the skin of the woman's face, too, as though something beneath stretched it unnaturally, threatening to burst out. Lois Lane shivered a little, and it wasn't just from her illness gnawing at her guts.

Something happened to these women, Lois knew. She glanced at the office, the phone. The reporter briefly considered barrelling past these women, barricading the door, calling for help...but then they might escape. Curiosity got the best of her at last.

"Lay on, MacDuff," Lois said with a weak smile. "I don't suppose we could stop at a bathroom on the way?"

"Negative," the drones all said in unison, and a shiver went down the report's spine...because for just a moment, she thought she'd heard the word echo in the back of her own head.