The New Adventures of Superman

The rain in Metropolis always carries a hint of rust.

When I pulled the patrol car up beside a fire hydrant on Seventh Street, the wipers were sweeping across the windshield three times a second, smearing the neon glow into blurry pools of orange. Megan, in the passenger seat, was doodling me in the case log with a marker: a potbellied cop with the words “Justice may be late, but it never fails to show up” written across his forehead.

“Kobe, you didn’t sleep well again last night.” She suddenly capped the marker and poked my arm with its tip. “Those bags under your eyes are practically hanging down to your badge.”

I tugged my cap brim down to cover half my face. The radio was playing the Daily Planet’s evening news, and Clark’s voice came through the static, as steady as the fields of Missouri. He was reporting on a chemical plant leak in the south of the city. There was nothing unusual in his delivery, as if he were just an ordinary reporter who had returned from the scene, not Superman, who had melted through three high-pressure water pipes with his heat vision three hours earlier.