Super: Origins Read Free

at the paint and bucket disapprovingly over her silver-rimmed glasses. She looked to be about thirty and had dressed very professionally that day in a navy suit jacket and skirt with a simple white blouse, her long brown hair caught up neatly in a twist on the back of her head. Lex thought the woman must be Clara, since the way she looked matched what Lex had expected after hearing Clara’s voice on the phone.
    After a moment, she glanced up at Lex and smiled, although it looked a little strained. “You must be Ms. McKilliam. I’ll have to ask you to excuse the mess.”
    Lex looked down at her hand, which had started to bleed freely around the grit stuck in it, and her shoes. “Ms. Pingham. Nice to meet you. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to do the same.”
    Clara looked at her a little more closely, probably noticing the flash of red and the uneven white stripe across Lex’s black shoes, and then looked at the location of the bucket, right in front of the door. “Ms. McKilliam, please accept my apologies for this situation,” Clara said, then turned to her right. Lex watched as Clara’s professional façade fell away and she began barking at another woman who was nearing the door.
    “Casey, Ms. McKilliam is here for an interview. You are one of the ones who have been complaining that we need new people on this team, and this is how you welcome them? She could have been killed!”
    Casey gazed at Lex for a moment, as if considering what Clara had said. “No,” Casey eventually answered, “She moved too fast for me to catch her with something like that. I didn’t even do it on purpose. Relax, would you?”
    Lex now had a moment to look at Casey as she stepped the rest of the way up to the door. She held a man in the air by the back of his shirt, and as Lex watched, Casey put him out the door, landing him on his feet but roughly enough that he stumbled. He turned and looked at her as if he wanted to yell, or at least say something sarcastic, but Casey gave the man a hard stare and he just shouldered his tools and left instead.
    Probably one of the reasons he had done so was Casey’s stature. Lex estimated the woman to be around seven feet tall with the physical build and obvious strength of a bodybuilder. It hadn't escaped Lex that Casey had carried the man to the door with little effort, as if she’d been holding a newspaper, not even breathing heavily. The next thing that Lex noticed, after getting over some of her surprise about the incident with the workman, was that Casey was dressed in workout gear—bike shorts with a long t-shirt and a pair of sneakers. Her blonde hair was back in a simple braid that ran halfway down her back, and her dark blue eyes appeared frank and direct.
    Casey sighed as she looked back at Lex. “Look, I really am sorry. I had no idea you were down there because we don’t get many visitors here. Anyway, Clara,” Casey said, turning back to the other woman, “this is actually all my fault. Be sure to blame it on me when you talk to Sauer.” Rolling her eyes, Casey added, “It’s not like you wouldn’t anyway.” She began to turn to go back inside, but then glanced back at Lex. “Oh, and good luck, I guess.”
    Lex was unsure of what to make of that last comment and so just replied, “Uh, thanks.” Stepping around the paint as well as she could, she made her way to the front door.
    “There’s a first aid kit in the kitchen,” Casey’s disembodied voice said from somewhere inside. Clara glared in the general direction it had come from and then turned to Lex.
    “Let’s get you cleaned up a bit before we go in to Mr. Sauer,” she said.
    Lex nodded and followed her in and to the left, the door automatically creaking shut behind them along its track. Turning her head to briefly scan her surroundings, Lex noted an open area to the right with couches and tables, just past two sets of staircases. It had wide picture windows with a view past some tired-looking docking to