Smallville and all of its related elements are copyright © 2001 - 2007 Tollin-Robbins

Productions, WB Television and DC Comics. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Part ONE: the mistake

Q1

She had wondered, vaguely, if this was why Clark had refused to touch her. The attraction that
she’d had for Lex had faded into a dull sort of disgust, and had spent the last weeks
desperately concocting excuse after excuse for not touching him. Last night, Lex had uttered
the very same words that she had said to Clark, long ago.

“Lana, we haven’t been together since…” he had said.

“Since the baby,” she had whispered.

“You don’t think that’s a bit strange?”

She shook her head, brought herself back to the present. She was staring at the panel in Lex’s
office, behind which the surveillance files for the Luthor mansion were held. Her entire body
was visibly quivering, and she pulled the blanket tighter around her. She reached out with a
shaking hand and opened the panel, and hoped desperately that Lex had lied to her; that he’d
continued to watch her sleep, change and inspect chisels in her bedroom without her consent.

When Lex had reached out to her last night, when he had rested his lips softly on hers, she had
felt her stomach churn. It wasn’t quite repugnance that she felt, but it was something close.
She remembered how much she had loved Clark, and how she had convinced herself that it
was his secret that kept them apart. She had told herself that she could feel how much he
wanted her, in every touch, in every glance, but maybe… maybe he was just repulsed by her.

She could feel Lex’s hand on her face, and how its pale companion had run down her neck and
caressed her breast through her nightgown. “Lex,” she had whispered, “not tonight, please.”

His lips, so eager, so willing, had kissed across her collarbone and Lana had wanted, more than
anything, just to go to sleep. And then, as a flicker of arousal passed through her, an image,
completely unsolicited, had traversed her mind.

Clark.

She had pushed him away then, not willing to let her husband touch her when she was
thinking of another man. Now, staring at the blank screens that had appeared from behind the
panel, she felt another cramp bloom from between her legs. The pain was exponentially larger
than the cramps the night before had been, with Lex sleeping next to her. She rushed to the
nearby bathroom, her blanket falling and tripping her up.

When she had vomited the contents of her stomach into the backroom, she continued to dry
heave for several minutes. She wanted to start sobbing, to let herself curl up into her mother’s
warm, safe arms.

Wandering back to her bedroom, she pulled her cell phone from the tangle of clothes on the
floor. Trembling, she dialed Chloe’s number.

“Hey!” Chloe answered, enthusiastically. Lana jumped at the sound, as if she hadn’t expected
an answer.

“Chloe,” she said, her voice low, rasping. “How quickly can you get over here?”

“Lana?” Chloe’s voice sounded worried. “What’s wrong?”

“I need your help getting through some of Lex’s security. Can you do it?”
“Lana, are you okay?” Chloe switched the phone from one ear to another, and turned to the
other person in the room, shrugging dramatically. Clark could hear Lana’s voice on the other
side of the conversation, and her reply, so empty sounding, so hopeless, terrified him.

“No.”

“I can be there in five minutes,” Chloe said. She looked imploringly at Clark, who nodded.

Lana hung up the phone and slumped to the floor. She stared at her hands, tracing, with her
eyes, every line in her palm. She let time disappear, and tried, as hard as she could, to force
the images from last night from her mind.

She could still feel his hands, how they had stopped gently patrolling her skin and had become
violent, invasive. For now, the only part of him that haunted her was his hands. Letting herself
remember anything past the hands was too painful.

Her eyes fell shut and her hands clenched; she let out a desperate sob and brought her fists to
her face, covering her eyes with her curled fingers and resting her nose between her wrists.
She pushed herself to her feet and stumbled across the room. She made it to her dresser,
where, through the oval mirror, her own dark eyes stared back at her, a somber reminder of
what she’d become.

Mechanically, she pushed her makeup and perfume from the table. Her smell filled the room
like a mist, and penetrated her already pounding head. She put one knee on the table and
used its leverage to pull the mirror from its hinges. With a barely contained shriek of rage, she
threw the mirror onto the ground.

When Chloe pushed open the door of her room minutes later, that was how she found her,
panting, standing barefoot in the middle of the shattered mirror, her arms wrapped tightly
around herself as if her skinny arms could protect her. Lana could barely take her eyes off the
broken glass and how every part of herself stared back up at her through those shards.

“Get him out of here,” she said, her voice much deeper than normal. Chloe looked over at
Clark, who was standing just out of sight behind the door. It had been Clark who had run her
all the way from Metropolis, and she had assured him that his presence wouldn’t be adverse.

Clark came out from around the door, and his eyes opened wide when he took in the scene;
Lana’s bloody feet, her swollen eyes, how she clung to herself. “Lana,” he said, moving
forward, wanting, no doubt, to take her in his arms.

“Get him out!” she yelled, suddenly. He jumped back, as if she had struck him. He watched
her, for a moment longer, distressed by how her shoulders heaved; frightened by the hollow
look in her eyes.

He left the room.

“Give me a call when you need to leave,” he muttered to Chloe.

Imagining any man’s arms around her right now was terrifying to her; even if they were Clark’s
arms. Fighting back tears, she let herself remember how warm he had always been.

“Lana,” Chloe said softly, approaching her carefully through the glass. “What happened?”

Lana’s eyes snapped up from where they had been fixed, and she seemed to have gained
some sort of control over herself. “I need your help,” she said stoically. Without pause, she
walked through the glass and out of the bedroom, leaving a trail of bloody foot prints. When
she reached the door, where Chloe was standing, she stumbled, and when Chloe reached out
to catch her she flinched away, letting herself fall onto the floor.

“Don’t touch me,” she whispered. “I’m sorry… just… please don’t.”
Chloe’s eyes widened, but she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Its okay, Lana, just let me know
what you need me to do.”

On the way back to Lex’s office, Lana lent down and picked up the blanket that she had
dropped, and wrapped it tightly around her shoulders.

“I need,” Lana whispered, “I need, I think, to go to the police.”

Chloe’s breath caught in her throat. “What did he do to you, Lana?” she asked firmly.

Lana turned toward her and, for the first time since Chloe had arrived, their eyes met. Lana’s
eyes were large, frightened. Her brow furrowed slightly and she looked back down at her
hands. “He hurt me,” she said, sounding shocked. “God…” she muttered. When she looked
back up at Chloe, she looked disgusted.

“I just need the tapes,” she said. “Can you get past Lex’s security? He caught me snooping
before and encrypted it or something. I just need the tapes for my room, for last night. Then…
then I can go to the police or to the hospital…”

Chloe wanted to be able to bring Lana close, to hold the frightened child that looked up at her,
but Lana had been adamant about not being touched. She wondered how Lex had hurt her;
asides from the bloodied up feet and the haunted look in her eyes, she looked unscathed.

Of course, she thought, there were some places that weren’t visible on the mostly clothed girl.

“Lana,” she said softly. “Let me call Clark. He can take you to the hospital, and I can get the
tapes and bring them by. If you’re hurt… I mean, you should at least get your feet looked at.”

A small hand moved forward and grabbed tightly onto Chloe’s arm. “No matter what,” Lana
said firmly, “Clark doesn’t hear about any of this. Promise me that you won’t tell him.”

So Chloe sat herself down in front of the panel, and within minutes had cracked through the
security. The screens flickered to life, revealing several different rooms in the Luthor mansion.
Chloe brought up an index, and opened the files with “Bedroom” labels. A few different rooms
opened up, but they were all live feed, meaning that they were all currently empty.

Lana’s room, though, was easily picked out from the lineup—the tousled sheets on the bed and
the broken glass on the floor were obvious enough indicators.

She turned around to check on Lana, who was sitting on the floor, curled up against the side of
Lex’s desk. “Do you have it?” she asked.

“Yes,” Chloe replied. Lana pushed herself to her feet.

“You can save it to a disk or something?” she asked.

“Yes,” Chloe repeated.

“Just go back,” Lana muttered. “Find where it begins.”

It? Chloe wondered. She realized, suddenly, how nervous she was. She was starting to
suspect that what had happened was worse than simple domestic violence, and wasn’t sure
that she wanted to see her friend in a position like that.

But she knew that nothing short of hard evidence would be able to convict a Luthor of
anything, so, for her friend, she scrolled backward.

When she realized what she was seeing, she instinctively covered her eyes, the same way that
she had when she was a child and was watching a scary movie. The sounds though, they
could still be heard, and they were worse… so much worse.
“Lex, please,” they heard Lana whimper. “Please get off of me…”

Chloe scrolled further back, and Lana’s words were angry at this point, she was yelling, and
Lex was responding to her in a horribly apathetic way.

“You’re my wife,” he muttered, only just loud enough for the camera to pick up. “Why won’t
you touch me?”

From behind her, Lana let out a sob. “Please, Lex, no…” she whispered, as if she had forgotten
where, and when, she was. Chloe scrolled much further forward this time, to when the room
was empty and safe, and saved the entirety of the rest of the tape onto a USB key.

When she turned around, it was to see Lana struggling to her feet. She was shaking violently
and was pale, too pale, like she hadn’t eaten for days. Chloe picked the blanket up off the
ground and wrapped it around her. With a sob of resignation, Lana let Chloe hold her close,
and together, they stumbled out of the room.

Q2

“He raped her, didn’t he?”

Chloe turned away from the window. Clark stood, just behind her, looking past her. She
suspected that he was looking through the blinds that gave Lana her shred of privacy. Chloe
felt sick when she considered what Lana had been through. They’d gone to the hospital;
they’d spoken to the police; and then Lana had been violated all over again by the doctor’s
probing tests.

The rape kit had come back positive for semen and blood.

Wincing, Chloe tried to pretend like she hadn’t heard the question. “Sorry for not calling you,”
she said, falsely upbeat. “We took advantage of one of the many Luthor drivers.”

Clark grabbed her arm. She looked up at him, pulled close, their faces almost touching. “Did
he hurt her?”

She pushed him away, knowing that this was a pathetic act of rebellion; knowing that she
couldn’t have moved away from him unless he’d decided she could. “Lana wants you to stay
out of this.”

“How can I?” Clark hissed. “I heard it happen.”

Chloe froze.

“There’s something wrong, Chloe,” he’d said. He’d run his hands through his hair, rocked back
and forth on his feet. “It’s all over now… Chloe, I don’t know what to do…”

“I thought,” she muttered, “I thought you were talking about the Zoner.”

“Please,” Clark said, dropping his voice to a whisper, “please, ask her if I can see her.”

Sighing loudly, Chloe turned toward the door. “At least tell me you dealt with that Zoner.”

Clark, looking confused, answered slowly. “Yeah; it’s done.”

Lying just inside the room, Lana pretended to sleep. She’d caught parts of the conversation;
she felt ashamed and slightly nauseous when she heard Clark’s opening question. “He raped
her, didn’t he?” as if he’d been expecting this; as if the idea that Lex might be a decent human
being had never crossed his mind.
After that, most of the conversation had been carried out in frantic, indistinguishable whispers.
Chloe had entered the room. “It’s okay,” Lana said, trying to sound strong; like nothing had
changed. “He can come in.”

As soon as she saw him, every ounce of resolve melted away. She remembered her wedding
day; how she’d wanted, so badly, to leave with him. She thought of what she’d seen in the
wine cellar—his words, so painfully spoken, “Giving up Lana’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had
to do...”

He just stood there, in the doorway, not even noticing that Chloe was trying to squirm past
him. His eyes were fixed on her, taking in her swollen eyes and pale lips. They hadn’t spoken
since the wedding day. Lana wanted to ask him to hold her; to wrap his warm arms around her
and hear him whisper that everything was going to be alright.

“Clark,” she said. She knew that she sounded shocked, and she was; she was shocked that
she still had these feelings for him, that he’d shown up to comfort her after what she’d done to
him… she was shocked that he hadn’t saved her.

“What are you doing in here, Lana?” he asked, his voice softly accusatory.

When she heard the quiet anger in his voice, as if it was her fault that her husband had put her
in here, she almost broke down. The skin around her eyes was puffy from her neurotic
rubbing, and she was hoping that, because of it, he wouldn’t notice the tears welling in her
eyes.

Her lips twitched, stretching across her face into a taut frown. Her eye brows bunched
together, but she pushed the sobs back down her throat, and let some words, sounding trite
for the pain they should have portrayed, slip out instead.

“I lost the baby.”

He moved forward then, taking the seat next to her bed, and reached out to her. She took his
hand, but as she did images shot through her mind; hands moving haltingly down her back,
fingers digging into the soft flesh of her thigh, the nails biting into her leg. With a gasp, she
pulled her hand back.

“It’s okay,” Clark said, seeing the terror in her eyes. “I won’t touch you.”

She stared straight ahead, as if she couldn’t see anymore. Her eyes cleared of tears and her
face became distant.

“You’re allowed to cry, Lana,” he said softly. She shook her head vigorously, refusing to take
her eyes off the white wall of the hospital room.

“Lana,” he said, moving closer to the bed, but keeping his hands clasped tightly on his lap,
“you cried on your wedding day.” Lana let out a little gasp, but pressed her lips together, her
jaw moving slightly, betraying that she was chewing on the inside of her cheek. “I heard you,
through the door before we talked.”

His voice got louder now, and he stood up, knocking the chair over. “You thought your love
would be enough to change him, but it wasn’t.”

Calming himself, he let the next words come out at a normal volume. “You say the word, Lana,
and I’ll make sure he pays.”

Finally, he kneeled next to her bed and said, sounding defeated, “Just tell me what you want
me to do.”

Lana’s eyes flickered shut and she let herself be taken away to those days where every atom
seemed to be quivering at just the right speed; where every breath was just perfect. Clark had
held her on that day—the one before he disappeared to Metropolis—they had sat in the sun
together, with the horse grazing at their feet, and his arms around her had fit exactly.

She remembered the other time she had been overwhelmed by happiness—Clark standing in
his front hall, his clothes burnt and tattered, his face charred and tragic; and again, he had
lifted her up out of her mundane existence and given her a reason to love.

Her eyes still closed, she pictured the night sky; stars shimmering at her. Her mouth opened,
only a little, but it was enough.

“Hold me.”

And when Clark climbed into bed next to her and let her snuggle her face into his chest, she
felt like this was where she was supposed to be. Her brief moments of happiness with Clark,
the ones so powerful that they fueled a doomed relationship for months, always preceded or
followed terrible, devastating events. That he held her now, when her sense of worth and self
respect had been so viciously ripped from her, seemed somehow fitting.

Clark had sat through the trial, and he knew, though his knowledge of law was limited, that it
wasn’t going well. Lex Luthor could afford the best lawyers in the country, and Lana, without
Lex’s vast assets to back her, had nothing. She’d moved into the Talon with Lois temporarily,
had refused to speak to Clark since that day at the hospital, and was looking so painfully thin
that Clark could see all of her bones without the aid of his x-ray vision.

The tape had been removed from evidence by Lex’s lawyers saying that since the chain of
custody started with the victim; it could have easily been tampered with. Take away the audio,
and all you’re left with is a couple having consensual, albeit slightly rough, sex. The original
computer files had been strangely corrupt—the sound was missing in all tapes.

And the semen found by the rape kit? It was just as easily explained by the tape of the
consensual sex—not rape. It was Lex’s word against hers, and Lana, clearly near hysteria, was
not responding to the cross examination with any sort of dignity. Clark’s visit to the hospital
was taken into question, as well as her reminiscent feelings for him, and she was accused of
looking for an easy out from the marriage.

Clark knew that Lex couldn’t be allowed to walk after this. The defiance that Lana had shown
by going to the authorities would not go unpunished, regardless of if their marriage survived
the trails. In the case of Luthor v. People, the people were going to lose.

For Clark, making that decision, the choice to act instead of sitting idle while a rapist walked
free, was almost as hard as it was to gather the resolve to actually do something.

He had briefly considered slipping on a red Kryptonite ring, to give him a little more courage.
In the end, though, he had walked up to the Councilor representing Lana’s case without the aid
of the rock.

“Councilor,” he said, holding out his hand. “Clark Kent.” She shook his hand, but gave him a
perturbed look, like she’d rather be elsewhere. He lowered his voice, tried to make himself
sound sophisticated for the attractive lawyer. “I understand you’re handing the Luthor v.
People case?”

“I am,” she replied, “but I’m not able to discuss details of the case with—”

“I’m a witness,” he interrupted. “I heard it all.”

Her brow furrowed, and she looked momentarily angry. “Why didn’t you come forward
earlier?” she asked.
“You had the tape,” he replied, “so I didn’t think that you’d need me.” He looked across the
empty courtroom; all the spectators had funneled out the front door. “Is there somewhere
more private that we can talk?”

“Yeah,” she said, “I can take you down to the station.”

“So why, exactly, didn’t you come to the police before?” the detective asked. He had a hard
face, but it looked like he was a good person. Just a concerned one who was willing to tear
anyone apart who got in the way of justice.

“It seemed like you had a solid case,” Clark said. He was terrified, but he pushed that terror
deep down, to the place where he stored his hysterical rage so that he could function. Without
this inner jail house of emotions, he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from destroying
Lex himself. “But I guess that the lawyers that the Luthors can afford are of a somewhat
higher standard than the court appointed ones.”

“This is not the fault of our lawyers,” the man yelled. He slammed his hands on the table that
separated him and stood up. “That you withheld information pertaining to a criminal
investigation is in itself a criminal offense.”

“So I’m going to talk,” Clark said calmly. This was a lie, he mused. He certainly wasn’t going
to talk—not until he had certain measures in place that would assure his security. Being
watched through a two sided mirror while being interrogated by a restraint impaired cop was
not his idea of security.

“Tell me exactly what you heard,” the man said, sitting down.

“I need some guarantees,” Clark said. “I need to know that my family and I are going to be
safe if I testify.”

The cop sighed. “We’ll do our best to ensure your safety during the proceedings,” he said.

“I’m going to need a little more than that,” Clark replied. “I’m afraid I’m a special case.”

“Of course,” the cop said. “I understand. Your mother is the Kansas state Senator; she’s quite
the target.”

Clark shook his head. He didn’t know how high up in the hierarchy of justice he’d need to go
to get the protection he’d need. They’d need to be able to verify that what he was saying was
possible, so they’d need scientists and resources and confidentiality agreements… no, talking
to this detective was not going to be enough.

“You don’t understand,” Clark said. “I think I’ll need to talk to a Judge about my testimony.”

The detective was quick to anger, again. He marched around to Clark’s side of the table.
“You’ll talk to me, now, or I’ll have you arrested and thrown in jail for obstruction of justice,” he
yelled, and he lunged at Clark, clearly meaning to pin the boy against the wall, or otherwise
manhandle him. When he came into contact with Clark, he crumpled as if he’d been hit by a
truck.

Clark looked down at him, and rose from his chair. “That’s what I’m saying,” he said, slowly, as
if he were speaking to a child. “Your jails aren’t going to be able to hold me.”

Q3

The judge stared at him.

“Let me hear your story one more time, please, Mr. Kent,” she said, slowly.
Clark sighed. “I realize that it sounds completely impossible,” he said. “But I can prove it.”

“Which part?” she asked. “What you heard or how you heard it?”

“The second bit,” Clark said, sheepishly. He was very intimidated by the powerful woman
sitting in front of him. That he was standing here at all was difficult to believe—after the
detective had bounced harmlessly off of his chest, him and four other police officers had tried
very hard to drag him to jail. Clark had simply stood, steadfast, and insisted that he speak
with a judge.

“Tell me again, then,” she said.

“Lana was sleeping,” he started. “I think, at least. Her heart beat was very slow. That’s why I
noticed when it sped up all of a sudden; I thought she was in trouble. I… listened harder. I
could hear her and Lex talking, he was saying all these things, asking why she was being
distant. I thought that this meant she was fine, so I was about to leave them alone, but then
Lex started yelling.

“He must have pushed her up against something,” he continued. “There was a crash, and she
cried out. She asked him to stop.

“He asked her why she wouldn’t touch him. She started yelling, telling him to get off her; she
sounded angry. Soon though, she sounded scared, and shocked, and she just kept asking him
to stop, to get off her…”

“Why didn’t you put an end to it?” the judge asked. “If you were close enough to hear the
conversation, you must have been close enough to intervene.”

Clark dropped his eyes to the floor. Up until this point, he was just an eavesdropping, law-
avoiding boy. He opened his mouth, wishing he didn’t have to do this, but knowing that he had
to: for Lana, for the life of that unborn child; for the women that Lex might rape in the future.

“I couldn’t get to them on time,” Clark said slowly. “I was in Germany. By the time I got back,
it was morning, and Lex was long gone.”

The judge leaned forward onto her desk. “You have some sort of surveillance set up in their
room?” she asked. “The detectives found nothing like that on the scene; it’s undetectable and
transmits cross-ocean? It must be good.”

When Clark raised his eyes again, the judge was surprised to see that he looked petrified. She
was used to people being frightened by her presence, but generally it was restricted to a
tremble of a hand, a trip of a tongue; never this. She’d never seen such blatant terror.

“No,” he said, leveling his chin and pressing his lips together before continuing. “I just have
very good hearing.”

Though she was already convinced by the fear rolling off this boy that he thought he was
speaking the truth, she didn’t see how that could be possible. Slowly, she said, “You’ll forgive
me if I find that hard to believe.”

“Of course,” Clark said, “I’ll be willing to submit myself to a doctor for examination, as long as
you can ensure that all findings will be kept confidential.” That he didn’t vomit a little at
voicing the suggestion was tribute to his super-human gag reflex. His whole life, research had
been his monster under the bed; men in white coats wanting to take him away from his
parents; the only menace with teeth sharp enough to hurt him. He could barely understand
why he was doing his—could he still love Lana so much that he’d put his livelihood on the line
for her?

He knew though, that he was doing it because it was right. He had never hesitated before
saving someone’s life, even if doing so meant revealing who he really was. This was no
different; and he didn’t owe Lana anything. He couldn’t make this about her, couldn’t tell
himself that he was expecting something in return, because that would make all of this wrong.

“So you’re telling me,” the judge said, “that with your own ears you heard the two of them
fighting—and you’re in Germany. You take the next flight back home to see if she’s okay?”

Clearing his throat, Clark corrected her. “No, I actually, uhm, swam back.”

“You swam.”

Clark held his hands up in self defense. “Okay, some tangible proof, right?” he asked. He
concentrated his hearing—it had been getting so sharp lately that it had been frightening him
the distances and precisions that he could hear. Honing in on the conversation across the hall
was no trouble—there was a trial in progress.

“In the courtroom,” Clark said slowly, “they’re questioning the defendant. It’s a murder case;
they’re asking him about the murder weapon… it’s a length of rope that was found in the trunk
of his car. He raped her… the used condoms were found with her blood and his semen with
the rope. He’s insisting that he doesn’t know how they got there—”

Eyes wide, the judge remembered having discussed the case with the presiding judge. Over
drinks, the man had told her about the defendant—either he was the best actor that had ever
seen the inside of a court room, or he was being framed by one hell of a clever perpetrator.

“Your story is going to be difficult to corroborate without sufficient evidence, Mr. Kent,” she
said, still not fully convinced. There are ways that a boy with a pretty smile could find his way
into the adjacent courtroom to get that information. The real question is—why?

“If a scientist, someone of some sort of standing, went on the stand and told the jury that I
could have heard what I heard, would I be able to testify?”

The judge paused, pursing her lips and contemplating the strange town that she lived in.
Since Judge Ross had left, and she’d been called to Metropolis to take her position, she’d seen
things in court that were inexplicable. People with abilities—a convict who could control glass,
and a boy who could control magnetic fields—that she’d been forced to deem criminally insane
because there was no other plausible explanation. This boy though, he wasn’t hurting anyone,
quite the opposite in fact. So she made a bound of faith and indulged him.

“If what you’re telling me is true, what you heard, you could be the star witness this case
needs to sway the jury. If you’re going to get on that stand and testify that you heard a
woman’s heart quicken from across the ocean…” the judge smiled slyly, and for the first time
in a while, she let the smile reach her eyes, hoping to reassure the nervous boy. Her last words
though, did little to sooth his nerves.

“You’re going to have to prove it.”

“It’s too risky.”

Clark looked up from his breakfast. His brows drew together in a frown and he muttered, “I
know,” between bites of egg.

“You’re not saving anyone, Clark,” Martha Kent insisted. “What happened to Lana is horrible,
but it’s over now. There’s nothing you can do to change that.”

Burying himself in his food, he managed to ignore her for a full minute before he could
physically feel her stare on the top of his head. Slowly, he raised his head, and sighed. “No, I
can’t change it,” he said, speaking up, “but I can prevent it from happening again. Lex has
been going downhill for a while now, and the next time he’s standing in that courtroom it’s
going to be for murder. Lex’s crimes keep escalating and he’s not the type of person who will
let the justice system get the better of him. If I can help put him away now, I think it’s for the
better.”

“You’ve spent your entire life hiding who you are,” Martha said, sitting down next to her son.
“How can you just give you secret away like this?”

“I’ve taken precautions,” Clark assured her. “The judge is going to chose scientists that she
trusts, ones that have been expert witnesses for sensitive cases before. They’re not going to
know my name, or where I came from, and the lab is going to be far away from here. I’ll
probably only be there for a few weeks.”

Putting his fork down, he placed his hand on top of his mother’s. “They’ve dealt with meteor
infected people before, and as far as they know, I’m no different than any one of them.” He
grinned reassuringly at her. “I’ll come back to you, I promise.”

He quickly finished eating, and walked over to the barn, figuring that he should fit as many
chores in as he could before he had to head to Metropolis in a few hours. He started tossing
hay down from the loft, but paused for a moment when he heard a squeak.

“Hello?” he called. To his surprise, Lana peered around from under the staircase.

“Clark,” she said, as if she were shocked to see him there.

“I thought your Clark-watching days were over,” he said, throwing another bale of hay to the
ground, purposely missing Lana by only a small amount.

Sliding her hand onto the railing, she pulled herself up the first step as though it were taller
than normal. She moved slowly up the rest of the stairs.

“I just wanted to thank you,” she said, “for everything.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, wondering if she could possibly know about
his impending testimony.

She shook her head, and then lifted her chin and met his eyes. “For being there for me; for
being so understanding.”

“Lana…” he started.

“I know, Clark, how much I hurt you,” she interrupted. “I know that you need some sort of an
explanation for what I did to you—”

“You mean how you coerced me into thinking that you’d leave your fiancé at the altar? How
you kissed me and told me that nothing mattered; that you weren’t going to marry Lex? I
haven’t been understanding, Lana, because that’s something that I will never understand.” He
threw a final bale of hay down, and then moved past Lana.

She followed him down the stairs, and reached for his arm. He spun towards her before she
could touch him, and looked down at her as if he didn’t recognize her.

“Lana,” he said, his voice quieter now, less angry. “I will always care for you. I will always do
everything in my power to protect you. We’ve hurt each other, and I think we’ve reached a
point that we can’t recover from.”

“Clark,” she said, moving forward. She lunged forward, and managed to grab his wrist this
time. She held on as tight as she could, her small fingers throbbing slightly. She knew that if
he wanted, he could be out of her grasp and halfway across the world before she could form
another word.

“When you broke up with me,” she said, trying to catch his eyes, “I didn’t understand. I hated
you for not being able to open up to me.” She shook his arm desperately, wishing that he’d
look over at her, or at least somehow acknowledge her presence. “Now, though, I understand
what it’s like to have a secret. You have to believe me when I say that I did this to protect
you.”

He stifled a bitter laugh, and she knew what he was thinking—nothing could penetrate his iron
skin; what could Clark Kent possibly need protecting from?

“No,” he said, finally turning to look at her, “I don’t have to believe you.” The pulled his arm
gently from her hand and picked up the hay, and started to robotically load it onto the tractor.

“The final part of the trial’s been postponed,” Lana said, conversationally, “due to the need to
prepare a new witness. It’s been put off by a month… what kind of witness takes a month to
question?”

Clark stopped moving. “I don’t know, Lana,” he said firmly. He looked at his watch—if he left
now, he’d be hours early. If he stayed, he’d have to think of some other excuse to get Lana to
leave. Seeing her after the rape had been painful for him—it had been a shock to see her in
such a state. The horror of knowing what she’d been through had eclipsed the memory of the
wedding.

Her standing here, in his barn, looking deathly pale and thin, with this aura of sorrow around
her so thick that he could smell it—all he could remember was that she’d chosen Lex over him.
She’d chosen this depraved life.

“I have to go,” he said sharply. He threw the last bale of hay at the tractor; it overshot slightly
and instead of landing quietly on the tractor, flew overtop of it and punched a hole in the barn
wall. Lana’s eyes widened, and she turned to look at Clark, but he was gone.

Q4

“How are you holding up, Mrs. Kent?” Chloe asked. Martha looked over at the kitchen door,
and smiled when she saw Chloe standing there.

“Chloe,” she said affectionately. “I haven’t seen you for a while.”

“I’ve been running interference,” she admitted. “Lana’s starting to wonder about Clark’s
disappearing act.”

Martha frowned, her lined face betraying how often she adorned that expression these days.
“What did you tell her?”

“I likened the situation to the red-Kryptonite party date he took a few years ago. She’s not
exactly a stranger to Clark’s personality fluctuations and on-and-off impulse control.”

Sighing, Martha sat down at the table. “I can’t imagine how difficult this must be for Clark. His
whole life, he’s been terrified of scientists.”

Chloe shook her head, and lowered her bag to the floor. “I can’t imagine either. Clark was
never exactly open about his feelings—the part of him that I got, I only got by accident. I don’t
understand why he’s doing this.”

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Martha said.

Chloe thought about the conversation that she’d had with Lois over the phone earlier that day
—Lana had been having nightmares. Lana was obsessing over Clark; spent most of her days
looking through newspapers from all over Kansas for mention of him, or skimming police
reports and stumbling through the internet. Chloe had told Lois that she’d drop by later that
day and try to reason with Lana.
The detour to the Kent farm had been completely impromptu, and she was glad that she’d
done it.

“I miss him,” she said. “I mean, I was expecting him to leave—he finished off the last Zoner
before this whole mess started. He was going to go train in the Fortress though, and that has a
whole different ring of ‘right’ than subjecting himself to his worst nightmare for his ex-flame.”

Martha smiled sadly. “Stay for some tea, Chloe?” she asked.

“I can never say no to a dose of caffeine,” Chloe replied. She sat down at the table, and
Martha got up to put the kettle on. Switching the topic, Chloe brought up her job at the Daily
Planet. They joked lightly about the press and Martha’s position as Senator. Chloe brought up
the impending election—Martha was running for US Senator—and did an imitation of a frantic
reporter.

They didn’t bring up Clark, Lana or Lex for the rest of the time they spent together. They stuck
to trivial subjects, and stayed away from the heart wrenching ones.

“I know,” Lana whispered. “Clark, I know your secret.”

Chloe raised her eyebrows at Lois. “She’s been sitting there for a while,” Lois muttered. “She
has that scrapbook there, and she’s just been staring at it. She won’t eat, or drink, Chloe… I
don’t know what to do.”

“Go,” Chloe replied. “Go have a break from Lana sitting. I’ll give you a call if… when I get her,
erm, lucid again.”

Her brow pinched in worry, Lois nodded. “Yeah, okay,” she agreed, and grabbed her jacket.
When she was out of the room, Chloe locked the door and kneeled down next to Lana. The
place on the carpet around where Lana was currently sitting was padded down, as though
she’d shifted slightly in position since she’d originally sat down.

“Lana,” Chloe said, and reached out to touch her shoulder. Lana let out a gasp of surprise and
jerked away from Chloe’s touch. She turned her head and made eye contact—Chloe took this
as a ‘go’ signal, and started to pull the scrapbook away from her. Lana let it be pulled from her
hands.

“I…” Lana said, sounding shocked. “Chloe, I know Clark’s secret. I know, and he left me
anyway. There were no more secrets… no more lies, and he still left. Where has he gone?
Why did he leave me?”

Cautiously, Chloe asked, “Clark’s secret?”

“You knew,” she declared. “You knew and you never told me.”

“Lana,” Chloe said, “you know I could never betray Clark’s confidence.”

Lana laughed. “He’s one of them,” she hissed. “You said it—nothing can hurt him. Nothing
but me… and I did hurt him. I married Lex to protect him, and now Clark’s gone.”

Chloe felt her stomach constrict. “He’s one of them?” she asked.

Nodding, Lana elaborated, “An alien.” Her eyebrows furrowed, as though she was confused by
the words. “The others, they killed everyone. They shot fire from their eyes and bounced
bullets off their skin, just like Clark.”

Lana lifted herself onto the couch and wrapped her arms around herself. When she closed her
eyes, she could still feel Lex forcing her legs open; she could feel the despair of knowing that
her child was dead. When she thought of all the people she’d lost—Clark’s disappearance
made it that much worse. Every death weighed on her and she recited names in her head:
mom, dad, Whitney, Adam, Jason, Clark, her baby… that she’d lost the husband she’d thought
she’d known and then lost the puppy-eyed boy that she’d thought would always be there for
her—it tore her apart.

“Chloe?” she asked. Chloe was staring at her, eyes wide and frightened. “It’s okay; I’ll tell
Clark it wasn’t your fault. I tricked you—the wine cellar. I locked you in and watched when
Clark saved you. I had to know; I wanted to leave Lex.”

Chloe continued to stare at Lana, her mouth pinched into an almost-frown, her eyes round and
unblinking.

“Chloe?” Lana said again. “Clark was the witness, wasn’t he? They’re doing awful things to
him, aren’t they?”

“You seem better,” Chloe said. “You’re, uhm, lucid, at least. A little bit delusional—”

“I’m not,” Lana said, pushing up from the couch. “When I saw the aliens and the spaceship,
Lex told me I was crazy. I will not have someone doubting my sanity again.”

“Lana,” Chloe said quietly, “you’ve spent the last two days clutching a scrapbook and refusing
to eat or speak.” She didn’t know what to do: confirming any of Lana’s disturbingly accurate
accusations would be a betrayal to Clark. The only other alternative was lying to Lana, which
didn’t leave her feeling very clean. So instead, she did something that she hadn’t felt the need
to do for a long time.

She picked up her bag, and made a run from the room.

Lois didn’t have very many friends in Smallville. Out of them, one was current AWOL, one was
acting fairly insane, and the other was trying to bring the aforementioned back to reality. As a
result, she found herself companionless in a small town. There were no shops open this late;
the only theatre had been converted into a coffee shop, and both dancing and loud music
seem to have been outlawed.

It wasn’t surprising, then, that she found herself driving up to the Kent farm. She’d become
close with Martha Kent, and had lived with the Kent family for a while. She knew that Martha
could use the conversation—her recently deceased husband and runaway son were neither
making for good company.

When she got there, she found the house deserted. Not wanting to return to crazy-Lana before
she had to, she reached into her purse and pulled out the house key that she had been
awarded for good behaviour during her stint under the Kent roof.

The house seemed cold—considering that three of the four bodies that usually occupied the
quant cottage-like home were dead, missing or moved, this was hardly a shock. She opened
the fridge, and found it mostly empty. She supposed that Martha wasn’t doing much cooking—
with no mouths to feed and an unusually stressful job, it was expected.

She moved to the living room and to the couch where Clark had slept for the time that she had
lived there. Hesitantly, she stretched herself out on it, marveling at how uncomfortable it was.
The sacrifices that Clark made—he really was a saint. She rolled onto her stomach and inhaled
the smell of musk and teenage boy.

Sitting up, Lois was suddenly disgusted with herself. She never let herself become this
sentimental; it wasn’t as though she hadn’t seen families fall apart before. Her mother had
died, and her father had estranged himself from his daughters. Chloe’s mother had gone
missing, and her father had lost his job. Lana’s parents had both died, and her aunt had left
her for a new hubby.
The Kents were such a genuinely kind family. They were loyal and welcoming in a way that no
family had ever been to her—not even her own.

Her mouth twitched, and she tried to convince herself that she wasn’t fighting off tears.

She stood up from the couch and walked up the stairs. She found herself in the room that she
had stayed in. It was Clark’s room, of course, and he had taken it over again. She
remembered all the posters; could even imagine them with her eyes closed, having spent a lot
of time lying in that bed, not able to sleep.

This room smelled like Clark, and, as loath as she was to admit it, she missed him.

Stupid farm boy; dumb Smallville; trust a boy like him to make her heart ache. She felt as
though she’d lost her best friend, her brother.

She hoped that Chloe was lying about his spontaneous vacation. It seemed very unlike Clark
to leave Lana and his mother when they needed him so badly.

But most of all, she was hurt that he’d left her and Chloe to pick up the pieces.

Q5

“Call your next witness, Councilor,” the judge said firmly.

The lawyer stood. “The People call Clark Kent to the stand.”

A confused look crossed over Lex’s face. He turned around in his seat, seeking his wife’s
reaction; she didn’t look surprised. She’d known, Lex realized, or at least suspected.

Lex wondered what Clark could possibly have to say.

When Clark saw the look on Lex’s face, he knew, immediately, that he’d made a mistake. He
had requested that he be questioned with only the jury present, but the Judge had informed
him that the best she could do was keep the media out.

He saw his mother, sitting next to Lana, who clasped Chloe’s hand in her own. He wondered
how much she knew about him, what she suspected. Her face, though, was resolute and it
was seeing her face that convinced him that what he was doing was right, even if it was a
mistake.

“We will hear Mr. Kent’s testimony,” the judge said. “The cross will refrain from asking
questions pertaining to the how of his testimony. We will be hearing from an expert witness
who will verify the authenticity of Mr. Kent’s claims.”

The lawyer—the pretty blonde one that Clark had spoken to a month ago—approached him.

“Please describe for the jury,” she said, “exactly what you heard on the night in question.”

Clark steeled himself for the reply. He had rehearsed his response so many times over the
month that he’d been away—he had tried his best to combine the right amount of indifference
with a touch of real feeling: for the jury’s sake.

He stared straight ahead, not wanting to catch Lana’s eye.

“Lex Luthor,” he began, “the defendant, was speaking with the victim. He was asking her why
she’d been distant; he wanted to know the real reason that she hadn’t wanted to go on a
honeymoon with him. She said that flying off into a foreign country wouldn’t have been good
for the baby. He asked if there was another reason that she’d given up a week in paradise.”
He paused, remembering that the lawyer had coached him to be as specific as possible. “It
sounded as though they’d had this argument before.”
The lawyer nodded slowly. “Go on,” she said in a comforting tone.

“The defendant said that they hadn’t been together since the victim had discovered that she
was pregnant,” Clark said, stumbling over the formal labels. “That they hadn’t had sex,” he
clarified, turning to the jury.

“The defendant started to get very… vocal,” Clark continued. “He started yelling at her. I
heard… I heard a loud crash, so maybe he threw something, or he might have slammed her up
against something—”

“Objection,” the defense lawyer said. “Calls for speculation.”

“Sustained,” the judge said reluctantly. “Stick to the facts, Mr. Kent,” she said.

“Could it have been,” the blonde lawyer said, “that Lana had been the one performing the
violent act?”

Clark shook his head. “She screamed, she sounded scared and surprised,” Clark explained.
“Her heart beat sped up,” he added, reluctantly.

“What happened next?” the lawyer asked.

“The defendant was yelling,” Clark said. “He kept asking the victim why she wouldn’t touch
him anymore. The victim,” Clark paused, and let his eyes seek out Lana’s, just for a moment.
He returned his gaze to the lawyer and continued, “she started to cry. There was more noise,
crashing, and the victim kept asking the defendant to stop.”

“She actually said that word?” the lawyer asked.

Clark nodded. “She was crying, but she was still very coherent. She used his name. She
said,” Clark closed his eyes, remembering her terrified sobs. He knew that this was the part of
his testimony that needed emotion—he had to convince the jury that he’d heard what he had
heard. “She said, ‘stop, Lex,’ and ‘Lex, get off of me,’ and ‘Lex, you’re hurting me,’ and ‘oh,
God, no,’” He let his emotions overwhelm him momentarily, and he turned on the jury with
teary eyes. “She said,” he continued in a quiet voice, “‘Think about the baby.’”

“Objection!” the defense lawyer yelled.

“On what grounds?” the judge asked, sounding surprised.

“On the grounds of being, er, redundant,” he stuttered.

“Overruled,” the judge said.

“On the grounds of making your client sound like a monster,” the blonde lawyer suggested.

“Overruled,” the judge repeated, sounding exasperated.

The lawyer turned back to Clark. “You are absolutely certain, without possibility for doubt, that
Lana Lang was not, on the night in question, engaging in consensual sexual relations?”

Clark fixed Lex with a glare that might have, if he’d had the guts, set Lex on fire. When he
answered the question, his once word carried such conviction that he knew that he had the
jury eating out of his hand.

“Yes,” he said.

“Your witness,” the lawyer said.

The defense lawyer stood and, looking down at his notes, asked, “Where were you when you
heard this?”

“Objection,” the blonde lawyer said. She hadn’t even reached her seat yet.

“Overruled,” the judge said.

“He’s asking how,” the lawyer pointed out.

“Get where you’re going, Councilor,” the judge said to the defense lawyer. “You’re treading on
thin ice.”

“How are we,” the defense lawyer asked, “supposed to take the word of a peeping Tom who is
obviously still in love with his ex-girlfriend, the victim?”

Clark drew back, unsure of which part of the question to answer first. “I wasn’t spying on her,”
he said finally. “The victim is a little bit… accident prone. I was just keeping an eye on her.”

“Or an ear, as it appears,” the lawyer quipped. “You just sat back and listened to this
exchange, with no thoughts of intervening?”

“I had every thought of intervening. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get there in time,” Clark
replied.

The lawyer looked confused and frustrated. Clark knew that he wanted to ask how it was
possible that Clark was close enough to hear the exchange, but wasn’t close enough to jump in
and save the girl. Clark also noted, to his pleasure that the lawyer’s confusion was throwing
off his delivery of the cross-interrogation. He really had no idea what to ask.

He decided, then, to attack something that he understood.

“I think that he jury would have cause to doubt the authenticity of your testimony,” he said,
“considering your relationships with both the defendant and the victim. Lana Lang was your
childhood sweetheart, who married your best friend, Lex Luthor.”

Clark stared at the lawyer. He leaned towards the mic and said, “Was there a question?” he
asked coldly.

“When Lana Luthor was on the stand,” the lawyer said, “she admitted that she still had
feelings for you. Could this not be an easy way out of a bad marriage and a chance to get
revenge on the man who stole your girl?”

The lawyer for the People, who had coached him on responding to the cross-interrogation, had
told him that there were many versions of the truth. She had told him that it was possible to
not tell the truth, without lying. He had not, of course, framed Lex for the rape of his wife. He
did, certainly, still have feelings for Lana. He wanted nothing more than to see Lex in jail. But
saying those things, in those words, might show him in an untrustworthy light, and he needed
the jury to trust him.

“I broke up with Lana over a year ago,” he said slowly. “And though I definitely felt betrayed at
first that Lana had hooked up so soon after our breakup, and even though I did feel like Lex,
perhaps, should have honoured the friendship he claimed to have with me and not jump into
the sack with my ex-girlfriend mere weeks after we’d broken up, I bore no ill will towards them.
I suppose that love isn’t something that you can control.”

That Lex didn’t squirm guiltily in his seat when Clark said this was a testament to how far gone
he was from the Lex that Clark had known. Of course, he reasoned, the friend that he’d known
wouldn’t have raped his wife.

“There was an incident during the engagement party of Lex and Lana Luthor,” the lawyer said,
and Clark’s stomach sank. He’d known that this was going to be brought up.
“You broke into the Luthor residence and created a scene, assaulted Lex Luthor, the defendant,
and then kidnapped Lana Luthor. I would think that breaking and entering, destruction of
property, assault and kidnap would communicate that you did, indeed, bear ill will towards
them.”

Clark dropped his gaze to his hands for a moment. When he looked up, Lana’s eyes were fixed
on him; Lex’s eyes were grinning; his mother’s looked worried.

“That night changed a lot for me,” Clark said. “Before then, I did, I think, hate Lex and Lana for
what they were doing. They both knew, unequivocally, what their relationship would do to me.
I believed that Lana was not actually in love with Lex, and that she’d only embarked on this
relationship with him to hurt me. I thought what she was doing was a mistake, and that I could
somehow save her from it. I went to that party, that night, to convince her to leave him.”

He looked at his hands, again. They were twined neatly in his lap, much the way a couple
would hold hands, each finger interlocked. He squeezed his hands together, slowly, and
slightly painfully, taking out his feelings on the only thing in that courtroom that wouldn’t break
on him.

“I looked at both of them differently after that night,” he continued. He shrugged his
shoulders. “I’m not sure if what I did was kidnapping, since she didn’t actually protest much to
coming with me, not after the first few seconds, certainly not once we were out Luthor’s
earshot. Once we got back to my barn we yelled at each other, and then Lex showed up. He
held a gun to my face as I asked Lana to tell me that she didn’t still love me.”

Clark took a deep breath. “She couldn’t say it,” he said. The lawyer looked like Clark had just
thrown him a very tasty bone. Clark ignored his apparent elation and continued.

“Lana didn’t love Lex,” he said. “She knew it, and Lex knew it, but she forged a relationship
with him, slept with him, and agreed to marry him. I’m not saying that she did this to get back
at me, or something petty like that, in fact, now, since that night, I feel the opposite. Lana
needed to feel as though she was trusted. She thought that Lex was honest with her, and she
desperately needed that. She was willing to feign love, offer him her mind and body, for that
feeling.

“He got her pregnant,” Clark continued. “She agreed to marry him. Everything she was doing
was for the wrong reason, and I couldn’t respect that. I can’t love a person that I can’t respect.
I’m not doing this so that I can jump back into Lana’s arms. I’m testifying because Lex
deserves to be behind bars for what he did to her.”

Clark met Lex’s eyes. He could sense Lana’s tearful stare, but didn’t look. “Incidentally,” Clark
said in an offhand voice, “Lex, you’re a billionaire. Could you not have afforded a seventy cent
condom?”

“Mr. Kent,” the judge said sternly. “You will address only the jury, the Council, or myself,
understood?”

Nodding seriously, Clark couldn’t help but be pleased by how pissed off Lex looked. He turned
back to the lawyer.

“Does that answer your question?”

Q6

Clark closed his eyes and sunk into his mother’s arms. He’d missed her immensely while he’d
been away, and knew from the desperate way she was holding him, that she’d missed him too.

“Was it terrible?” Martha whispered.

“It was okay, mom,” he said, pulling back. He was surprised to see that a tear ran down her
face, pooling in the corner of her mouth. “They were very polite. Very… impressed. They
didn’t pry, or ask too many questions, they did only what the judge told them they could do.”

“What did they do?” she asked, curious and worried.

Clark put his bag down on the kitchen floor. He’d gone straight from the labs to the court
room, and only now had finally been allowed to go home. A pie sat on the window sill.

“They just tested my speed and hearing,” he said. “I didn’t tell them about anything else; not
the strength or heat vision or x-ray vision.”

“And they don’t know who you are?” she asked.

“They know my name,” he said. “They don’t know much else, though. I told them that I didn’t
know the origin of my powers.”

“Those things that you said,” Martha said, hesitantly, “about Lana. Were they true?”

Clark squinted at his mother, contemplating how he should answer the question. He’d always
been honest with his mother, had always confided in her, but something about the way he was
thinking now made him feel… cruel.

“Lana has been through a lot,” he said, finally. “She lost her parents, she’s been kidnapped,
threatened, stalked, and had her heart broken on many occasions. What I did to her… our
relationship was just another low point in Lana’s already very dismal life. What she deserved
was happiness. What she deserved was… some sort of relief from the trend that her life has
been following.” He paused and reached for the pie. Just holding it reminded him that he was,
indeed, home again.

“But,” Clark continued, looking back up at his mother, “she made the wrong choice.”

Martha took the pie from him and started to cut it. She pulled a plate down and stopped
suddenly, taking in a deep breath, as though poised with the words almost out of her mouth.

“If what you are trying to say,” she said slowly, “is that Lana deserved—”

“No,” Clark interrupted, his voice firm. “She didn’t deserve what Lex did to her—no one
deserves something like that. But what I’m saying is that I don’t love her any more.” He
stopped there, as though shocked that such a sentiment had passed through his lips. “I just
mean,” he continued, his voice quiet, defeated, “that she said that she loved him when she
didn’t. She married him for reasons that I can never understand, but certainly not for love.
That isn’t the Lana Lang that I fell in love with.”

He took the pie from his mother and placed it in front of him, as though unable to eat.

“The Lana I fell in love with was this sweet innocent girl. She was honest, she laughed easily,
she had this wide, hopeful look in her eyes. She changed so slowly that I didn’t even notice it,
until suddenly,” he looked up at his mother and blinked heavily—a tear ran down his face.

“Suddenly she wasn’t.”

Clark stared out at the stars. They shone bright in the background of his thoughts; they served
as a backdrop as he relived the trial.

He heard his words, felt his lips moving, and saw Lana. She held Chloe’s hand as though it
were her only anchor keeping her from falling into the deep, starry abyss that surrounded his
mental image of the members of the court.
She looked broken.

Lana had wanted, more than anything else in the world, to be able to trust someone, and to
have them trust her. She was forever bitter towards Clark for not letting her have that, and,
perhaps for that reason, had thrown herself so completely into her relationship with Lex.

This may have been why his betrayal had hit her so hard. She’d wanted to trust Lex; believed
that she could.

“Lana didn’t love Lex. She knew it, and Lex knew it… he’d said that day. He remembered, a
night a while ago, when he’d been infected with red Kryptonite, what he’d said to Lana
—“You’re just a trophy to him. And he’s nothing but your consolation prize.”

On that night, he’d wanted her back. He’d asked her to leave Lex for him. He’d vowed that
Lana wouldn’t marry Lex.

He couldn’t help but wonder if, maybe, all of this had been his fault.

“Clark?”

Looking away from his window, he saw that Chloe had managed to make it up his driveway
and into his barn without him hearing her.

“Chloe,” he said, and moved towards her, wrapping his arms around her in a comforting,
familiar hug.

“You didn’t miss me,” she said, sounding slightly squished. “Did you?”

He placed her delicately back on the floor and smiled shyly. He leaned forward smoothly and
kissed her cheek. “I did,” he said, grinning his one hundred watt grin.

She beamed back at him.

“The lab,” she said, “everything… it was okay?”

Clark sighed. “I don’t think that something like that could ever be okay,” he said, sounding
depressed. “But they did their best to make it okay. I appreciated that.”

She looked at him for a moment, before cocking her head in that knowing, Chloe way. “What
aren’t you telling me?” she asked.

Clark looked guiltily down at his hands. “Clark,” Chloe said sternly. “Clark, look at me.”

“I’m leaving, Chlo,” he said softly. “Soon.”

“For the fortress?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Is it Lana?” she asked. “It’s hard to see her like this, I know, but you don’t need to go running
off to the Arctic to get away from her.”

“Chloe,” he said, meeting her eyes. “I’m scared.”

Chloe’s stomach plummeted at those words. She had never before imagined that Clark Kent
could ever be scared. Clark Kent was her rock, her savior—the source of her courage. She
watched his lips moving as he continued.

“Something happened in that place… something I haven’t told anyone about, but it… it really
scared me. I think that staying, it could be putting everyone in danger.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” she said quickly, putting her hands firmly on his shoulders and forcing him
onto the couch. She perched on the table in front of him and gave him a concerned look. “Tell
me,” she demanded.

“One of the scientists,” Clark said, pressing his lips together nervously for a moment before
continuing, “was from Smallville.”

“He knew you?” Chloe asked.

“No, no, he moved to Metropolis soon after the first meteor shower. He didn’t know that I was
from Smallville. But… he knew a lot about Smallville—he had studied all of the other people
who had been affected by the meteor rocks, and was very enthused to think that he might
have found another person affected by ‘exo-solar radiation’.” He fiddled nervously with a
loose thread from the couch.

“He brought in some Kryptonite,” he said slowly. Chloe gasped and recoiled slightly, fully
anticipating the implications of such an action. “I didn’t even know until he was holding it right
in front of me, asking me if I’d ever seen anything like it before. He knew about what the
radiation could do to people, better than anyone, and kept it in a lead box most of the time.”

“So they know,” Chloe breathed.

Clark shrugged, trying to make small of his announcement. “They were very understanding
about it,” he said, sheepishly attempting to smile. “They put it away and never talked about it
again. They’re all sworn to secrecy, of course, but it’s scary to think what could happen if…”

His eyes wide, he looked up at Chloe, wishing that there were some words that she could offer
him that might bring some comfort.

“If that information got into the wrong hands,” he finished.

The one word that she said, quiet and tentative though it may have been, did nothing to
soothe his nerves.

“Lex.”

Lex reached through the bars of his cell, taking the book from the man on the other side. He
watched as he wheeled the cart away, and then sat on his bed. He curled up, gripping the
jagged piece of metal that had come in the last book in one hand, and using his other to open
the new book.

He was pleased to see a thick wad of paper folded inside the pages of the book. Slowly, his
grin spread across his face. Clark Kent was the title of the first page.

Spreading the pages over his bed, he poured over them for most of the night.

The next morning he moved swiftly to the pay phone at the far side of the field. With his
jagged piece of metal slid up the sleeve of his uniform, the other inmates backed away swiftly.

He dialed the phone using his free hand and held the mouth piece slightly away from his face.
“Dr. Williams,” he said.

“Mr. Luthor,” the voice responded. “You received the package, I assume?”

“I always suspected,” Lex said, “that there was something different about Clark Kent. Tell me
more.”
“We tested his hearing and speed,” Dr. Williams replied, “in order to confirm his allegations
that he was in Germany on the night, and could have heard what he said he heard, and could
have made it back in time. His capabilities were… extraordinary.”

“He has superhuman hearing,” Lex said, the wonder apparent in his voice. “And travels faster
than the speed of sound?”

“Closer to the speed of light,” the doctor corrected. “The speed of sound is 343 meters per
second; the speed of light is about three hundred million meters per second. At our closest
estimate, he was moving around—”

“Eight million meters per second,” Lex breathed, remembering the number from the sheets
he’d near memorized the night before. “Amazing.”

“What truly is amazing,” the doctor said, “is that, I believe, he was holding back.”

“What do you mean?” Lex asked.

“Clark Kent is a modest boy, and a paranoid one,” Dr. Williams said. “He only gave us exactly
what we needed, nothing more. I think that he may have other… capabilities.”

“Strength,” Lex suggested, remembering when Clark had been hypnotized and had thrown him
easily across the room.

“Perhaps even more,” the doctor said. “I have no way of knowing without further research.
That is, I’m assuming, what you were looking for when you requested my assistance?”

“Yes,” Lex hissed. An animated woman’s voice warned that he had a minute left on his time.

“The caves,” Lex said. “The Kawachee caves—I have reason to believe that the wall paintings
are about him. You told me that he has a weakness—”

“The meteor rocks,” the doctor replied, sensing Lex’s urgency.

“He goes to the cave all the time,” Lex said. “It will be a good place to catch him without
others around. If that fails, he is often alone in the loft at the Kent farm, but that is tricky
because his mother—”

“We’ll get him, Mr. Luthor,” the doctor said firmly. “For the amount of money you’re paying
me, I’ll get him personally.”

Clark walked away from the farm. He looked back and saw his mother and Chloe, standing on
the porch of the house, and, for them, remained at normal speed.

He waved; he listened and heard his mother’s hiccoughing sob. She had her arm wrapped
around Chloe, and he could hear Chloe’s comforting words. They waved feebly back.

Looking down the road, he saw Lois’s car pulling into the driveway. With a last, furtive glance
at his family, he reset his bag on his shoulder and took off.

Less than a minute later, he stood in the Kawachee caves. He glanced at the paintings,
feeling, as he usually did, that they were some sort of rough sketch of how his life was
supposed to play out.

Suddenly he knew that something was wrong. His head snapped around and he watched as a
green blur sped towards him. He crumpled before the rock even touched him. His knees drew
up to his chin; he forced his eyes open and tried to look at his assailants. A man, dressed in
full combat gear, was looking confusedly at the rock.
“Didn’t even hit him,” he grunted. There were more men around him and they rushed forward,
binding his hands and legs. The Kryptonite was brought closer to him, and its effects
amplified; Clark’s vision began to cloud with the intensity of the pain. His head throbbed
faintly and his stomach twisted. He turned his chin up, looking at the people surrounding him.
A familiar face came into view.

“Dr. Williams?” he groaned.

“Sorry, Clark,” the doctor said, taking the rock from the other man and kneeling next to him.
“You’re a good boy,” he said, his voice quiet and soothing, “and a fascinating specimen.
Unfortunately, you are also a tremendous money-making opportunity. It’s a sorry testament to
humanity that the last characteristic overwhelms the first.”

Raising the hand with the Kryptonite in it, he brought his arm down in one, solid swoop.

As the rock sped towards him, the world suddenly faded to grey… and then sharply fell into
black.

Clark’s eyes shot open.

It took him a moment to focus his eyes, and when he did, he did not know where he was, or
how he’d gotten there. He suspected that he knew why he’d been betrayed, and perhaps even
what they’d do to him while he was here. However, there was one thing that he knew, without
any measure of doubt.

He’d made a mistake.

Part TWO: the consequences

Q7

Everything was so white and tremendously bright that he let his eyes fall shut again for a
moment. When he did, he felt the ground around him tilting, and the world spun around him.
This was the worst Kryptonite hangover he’d ever experienced. He could feel his body
trembling. Cold, metal restraints held his wrists and ankles to some sort of cushion-less table
or perhaps to the floor.

He opened his eyes again.

The dizziness overcame him, and he leaned over to the side, wondering if he was going to
vomit. He’d never so much as had heartburn before, and the notion was rather frightening.
His body convulsed, and, without realizing it, he tore his restraints.

Suddenly voices came from everywhere.

“Those were solid titanium,” someone said. Clark jerked his head towards the noise; the room
rotated sporadically around him, leaving him helpless to determine where it had come from.

“Looks like Luthor’s hunch about the strength was dead on,” a different voice said. Clark sat
back upright and drew his knees up to his chest, knowing that he must have torn the metal at
his ankles as well. He couldn’t care right now, though. His return to consciousness had been
abrupt and so painful. It felt like he’d been kept in touch with the Kryptonite for hours.

His healing powers were kicking in, though, and he let his legs lower, coming to a rest on either
side of some sort of table. Straddling the table as he was, he was able to gain some sense of
stability, and he opened his eyes once more, forcing himself to visually absorb his
surroundings.

The room he was in was painted a solid white colour—it was so completely homogeneous that
he couldn’t tell where the floors ended and the walls started. There was a door, however,
hovering just out of reach. Pushing up on his unsteady legs, Clark remembered how the
sunlight felt on his face. The thought seemed to imbue him with psychological strength and he
pressed forward.

The nausea had nearly disappeared and the room stabilized; it had toppled like a sock in a
washing machine, and suddenly the tumble cycle was over.

Without thinking, he wrapped his fingers deep into the sides of the door and pulled it loose. He
stumbled slightly as he tossed it aside; as he righted himself, he heard a voice again.

It was merely a gasp—but it was a gasp that had come from nowhere; a gasp that had
materialized like a ghost, and revealed everything.

He was being watched.

Squinting at the wall, he saw through it, through the foot of solid concrete that surrounded it,
and into another room. It was as white as the one he was in, but it housed two people:
scientists, tightly gripping clipboards in their white-knuckled hands.

His hands shook in anger. He wanted to hurt these people that had captured him. He wanted
to see his own fear in the eyes of the people who had captured him. He was not a rodent, to
be experimented on for the good of humanity. He wanted to show them that he was more
human than they—kidnapping torturers that they were—could ever be.

But more than anything, he wanted to go home.

So he ran.

Before either of the scientists could even blink, he was out of the lab and running through corn
fields. He reached out and could hear his mother’s voice.

A moment later, he collapsed, shivering and curled into the most protective position he knew,
in the middle of Kansas, and knowing that there was only one place he wished he could be: at
his mother’s side.

He felt this horrid lurching feeling in his stomach when and lay there, choking, until he passed
out.

When he woke up again, he felt frustration bubble in his throat. He was back in that room—or
a room, at least, white and inhuman as the other. He remembered running through cornfields,
feeling his strength growing as the sun beamed down on him; knowing that soon he’d be home
and he could take his mother somewhere far away, where they would both be safe.

And then pain had shot through him, as though there was Kryptonite everywhere, and he’d
fallen, convulsing like a sheet in the wind, until vomit had risen in his throat and he’d been left
with darkness again.

That darkness contrasted boldly with the white of the room he was in, and, more and more, he
realized that he’d have preferred being unconscious to being back in this room.

This room represented everything he’d been afraid of the last time he’d been in a lab. It was
cold and impersonal; it reeked of that cold and impersonal art called science. He was bound,
like some sort of animal ready for autopsy, to the same stiff reclined chair.
He had no idea how he’d gotten back here or why had he collapsed while running, free of
Kryptonite and in full view of the sun.

A door opened from behind him. He waited uncomfortably, and tugged at his retrains. To his
surprise, they held. He strained to look at them, and found that they were glowing a faded
green, and leaving red rub marks on his wrists.

The man that came into view was not Dr. Williams. He was a younger guy, with white-blonde
hair and sharp angles in his face. His wide blue eyes looked cruel and cold. Clark craned his
neck as he came closer, pulling against the Krypto- cuffs, trying to get a better look at him.

“My name is Sean,” the stranger said. He smiled a wide smile at Clark, and Clark couldn’t help
but think that it looked rather taunting. He realized, as he settled himself back onto the cold
table that there seemed to be something protruding from the table. A moment later though,
he couldn’t feel it anymore and he turned his head slightly to look at the man.

“Why am I being held here?” Clark asked tersely, fully expecting not to get an answer.

“You’re an amazing research opportunity,” Sean replied, looking at the clipboard he held.
“Unlike any human that has ever existed in recorded history.”

Clark didn’t reply. These people did not know that he was not even technically human, and he
was not planning on letting them find out.

“We’ve seen people affected by the meteor rocks,” Sean continued. “We’ve studied them
many times. However, none of them are quite as… unique as you. None of them can move as
fast, or have anything even approaching your sensory capabilities. As well,” he paused, and
pulled a small box from his jacket pocket. “None of them react the same way to the meteor
rocks.” He opened the box then, revealing a pea-sized piece of Kryptonite.

Clark cringed away from it.

“How did you get me back here?” Clark asked.

Sean smiled that condescending smile.

“Okay, princess,” he said softly, a hint of a lisp creeping into his voice, “I’ll make you a little
deal. I’ll talk now… if you promise to talk later.”

Clark said nothing.

Sean took his silence for assent.

“Does your back hurt, a bit?” he asked. “Your healing capabilities are amazing, so I imagine it
doesn’t at all.”

“What are you talking about?” Clark growled, just barely stopping himself from pulling at the
restraints and throwing himself at the doctor. He felt like an animal, strapped to a table and
ready for autopsy, and didn’t want any of these men to forget that he was—before he was a
lab rat or a specimen—a person.

“The first few scalpels we used just broke,” Sean continued. “Even with you passed out and
clearly weakened by the meteor, the scalpels and needles would shatter before piercing your
skin. We ended up melting down some of the rocks and making shiny green knives to cut you
open with.”

Clark’s stomach twisted in horror. His ears rang as the image of green knives flashing over his
vulnerable body crashed into his mind.

The question that he wanted to ask burned in his mouth—what have you done to me?
“The contraption that we put into you is quite simple really,” he continued. “It is a lead box
with a sliding door placed inside another box, and situated in your back, just below your spine,
between your kidneys. There are two threads—only about two molecules thick—of the melted
meteor rock holding the box in place by linking under your ribs.” His smile turned almost
kindly when he saw the look of terror on Clark’s face.

He held up a small remote. It had only two buttons and a dial on it. “If a situation were to arise
that you need to be pacified,” he said, “such as with the incident earlier today, I simply press
the button.” Clark flinched, expecting him to press the button as he said the words, but
nothing happened.

“It’s okay,” Sean said. “I think that we can get along. It’s your turn now, though.”

Clark looked at him expectantly, not sure of what he was supposed to say.

“Tell me everything you know about yourself.”

Lana rolled over in her bed, wrapping her arms tighter around herself, and rubbing her hands
up and down her arms. She had enough blankets piled on top of her that she could barely
breathe, but she still felt so cold.

She closed her eyes and thought of the last time she’d seen him. It had been the day of the
trial and she’d sat, clutching Chloe’s hand, and watching him. Even if she couldn’t be close to
him, even if she couldn’t tell him how grateful she was that he was risking everything to
protect her, she could still watch his lips move as he spoke.

The actual words that he said—that they were as painful as losing the baby was her first hint
that she had a problem.

Clark didn’t love her. She’d resigned herself to his fact long ago, when he’d broken up with
her, and then slowly, while telling herself she loved Lex, she’d let herself love Clark again. She
had let herself believe that Clark still loved her.

She sat up in her bed and looked around the apartment. She’d rented the small bachelor
apartment in Metropolis soon after the trial had ended and she’d realized that she’d far
overstayed her welcome in the room over the Talon. The apartment didn’t have a bathtub, so
when she needed a good soak she would throw a plastic place mat over the drain and let the
hot water fill the few inches that the porcelain surrounding the drain would allow. She would
curl up, then, letting the shower run until it was scalding, and then let it continue to fall down,
burning her skin, while the water in the bottom slowly drained.

Often, her olive skin would be a deep shade of red before she could convince herself to move
again. It seemed to be the only way she could stay warm—the only way she could wash away
the feeling of Lex’s hands on her hips.

Tonight, though, she didn’t head for the shower. She was barely affording rent as it was, and
an extra large hydro bill wasn’t going to help matters. What she had, though, was an
alternative. It had the added advantage of numbing all higher order brain function and leaving
her with a pleasant haze of unknowingness.

She poured herself a shot of vodka.

Lois had brought her out drinking the day after the trial. That night, Lois had demonstrated
her tank-like ability to hold her alcohol, and Lana had displayed to the noisy party, her
inexperience. She had ended up throwing up all over the home-owner’s leather couches and
into the knocked over the sub-woofer in their ten thousand dollar sound system.

But the hour or so before that… she had felt wonderful.

She took a second shot—downing it without changing her stoic expression. After her third shot
she felt the warm feeling settle in her stomach and put the lid back on the vodka bottle and
slid it into the freezer.

Ten minutes later, she was asleep beneath her mountain of blankets, curled into a tight ball,
with her hands placed protectively between her thighs.

Q8

Clark stared into the apathetic blue eyes of the scientist. He looked inquiring, but curiously
blank, as though perhaps the information he wanted might satisfy some sort of hunger for
knowledge, but it wasn’t imperative. It was entirely possible, though, that the strangely empty
expression was the result of the man’s need to distance himself from his work—to remove the
emotions from holding an apparently human specimen hostage against his will.

“Tell me everything,” he repeated. Clark clenched his jaw.

“How can you live with yourself?” Clark asked, finally, nearly whispering the words.

“How can you?” Sean asked in return. Confused, Clark looked at him imploringly, daring him to
elaborate.

“You have, within you, the scientific equivalent of the coming of Christ,” he hissed. “Near
instantaneous healing, the cure for cancer,” he continued, brandishing his clipboard at Clark.
“When you consider your abilities, don’t think of you, the angst-filled, misguided, lonely
teenager. Think about the lives you could save. The blind could see, the deaf could hear, the
old could be young again.”

“I just…” Clark said, looking away from the man’s sharp eyes, “I just want to live my own life.”

“Your life isn’t yours any longer.”

They were silent for a minute, the both of them contemplating that statement. It was medieval
in its implications—that Clark might somehow be property, be some sort of slave to this
evasive master called science.

Clark let himself harden, then. No matter what good the research might be able to do, this was
still his body. He could do good in this world, and knew that he would, if only he’d been
allowed to reach the Fortress and complete his training. He was no use to anyone now, this
stumbling boy who pieced together his abilities with the help of his mortal parents. He needed
to be taught—he needed to know.

“You’re not going to be able to keep me here,” he whispered, looking directly into Sean’s eyes
and telling himself that he believed it. He flushed from his mind the memory of only hours
ago, when he had run through Kansas cornfields and felt so entirely free… he made himself
forget that he was back here now, despite his attempt at escape.

He had been disoriented. He hadn’t planned. He’d been naïve and believed that running
could be an answer.

“We will,” the scientist said, without hesitation. “We need to know everything. You
underestimate the nature of the human spirit. What we need, we get, no matter what the
cost.”

“That’s the nature of arrogance,” Clark said. “I choose to believe that human nature is nobler
than that.”

“Tell me everything you know about yourself. Tell me everything that makes you different from
everyone else. This,” he said, pausing and glancing at his remote, “is the last time I ask
nicely.”
“Let me go,” Clark suggested. “I can tell you everything over coffee. I know this great place in
Sma—”

A scream tore from his throat, penetrating his sentence and throwing it roughly aside. The
pain was so intensely personal that it seemed to be inside of him, and all around him, forcing
itself into his body through every pore.

This time, he did not pass out.

His eyes opened wide, he saw nothing but white shapes that pulsated with his heart; his body
throbbed with the strength of knives at every point.

This, he thought, was Kryptonite as it had never before been.

The pain did not stop suddenly, as he thought it would. Even after what was causing the
pain… the box in his back… had ceased, his body continued to convulse, the pain still pertinent
and real—the serious effects of a Kryptonite hangover.

He realized, a minute later, when he could differentiate between his body parts again—a finger
was a finger and a nose was a nose—he had bitten through his lip. Once the effects of the
Kryptonite had faded further, the wound healed up, leaving only it itchy feeling of caked blood.

The headache lingered a little bit longer. When he finally opened his eyes, he saw those light
blue eyes. He closed his own again.

“Tell me,” Sean whispered. Clark could feel that he’d lowered his head so that he was close to
Clark’s ear. When he spoke next, his breath was hot on Clark’s neck. “Tell me what else you
can do.”

The contact, even something as small as another person’s air touching his skin, reminded him
how lonely he’d been. He imagined himself at home, in the field, under the large oak tree… he
remembered that day when they’d been happy—his arms wrapped around Lana, and his head
lowered to her neck. He wished that he’d tried harder to keep that moment alive.

The pain vanished.

“Go to hell,” Clark hissed.

The pain returned a moment later, but this time Clark did not scream. The hurt ate at him
from the inside, scorching his vulnerable organs and tissues; it ripped at him in ways he had
never thought possible. But he did not scream.

He wouldn’t allow them that satisfaction.

It was a dark night in Metropolis. Buried so far beneath sky scrapers and the looming Daily
Planet globe, the moon and stars were made obsolete. In this part of town, the only light
seemed to come from the buildings that flaunted scantily dressed dancers and flushed,
laughing faces.

Lana hesitantly approached the back of the line. The people ahead of her stood in pairs, or
small groups, talking and giggling, comparing cleavage and fake ids. She had barely stood
there for five minutes before a soft, accented voice called to her.

“You don’t have to stand in line, hun,” he said, his deep German voice strangely comforting.
She looked up to see a very tall man, perhaps a teenager, looming near the curb. He held an
official looking clipboard and had cheek bones that made her knees quake a little. His hair
swept upward, and his grin kind, and charming, Lana couldn’t help but leave the line to talk to
him.
“Are you a bouncer?” Lana asked, shyness creeping into her voice. He shook his head.

“I organize the parties,” he explained. His white dress shirt was unbuttoned enough to reveal
his chest—more than impressive enough to merit bouncer status. “So I can let in anyone I
want.” His blue eyes wide, he bowed his head generously towards her. “And,” he continued, “I
want you.” Gently, he put his hand into the small of her back and guided her forward, to the
front of the line. The actual bouncers, about eight feet tall and lurking in dark jackets, nodded
to the boy next to her.

“My name is Viktor,” he said, pulling a business card out of his pocket. “If you ever need into a
party, you just call me.”

“I’m Lana,” Lana replied. She realized that perhaps she should have lied; she didn’t even know
this guy, he could be some sort of pervert trying to lure her away from the safety of… she
glanced around her, at the strangers and alleyways. There was no need to lure her, she
thought. She was already far from safety.

Taking her hand, he kissed her fingers. “Lana,” he whispered. “But I’d never forget a face like
that.”

Slowly, Clark lifted a hand to his head. He could feel each finger shaking as it moved further
from the surface he was lying on. He was surprised to find that he wasn’t bound, or even lying
on the same stiff table he had been forced onto earlier. Instead, he was in a small room,
painted a soothing yellow, with only a small bed with blue covers in one corner, and a toilet
and sink in the other.

After looking around from his lying down position, he decided that escape would require that
he stand. He braced himself on his still-shaking arms and pushed himself upright.

Immediately, the pale colours in the room around him blurred together. He felt his stomach
lurch and his abs tightened apprehensively. He did not, as he suspected he might, throw up.
After several minutes of painful dry heaves, he felt his body starting to heal itself. There was
no sun nearby to rejuvenate him, nor even any food to give him strength, but his body was
still, as it had always been, super.

He noticed that the bed and makeshift bathroom were not actually up against the walls of the
room. They were all at least a metre from the walls, making the room look a little bit too large,
as though the decorators had gotten there first and the builders had been given separate blue
prints.

Tentatively, he rose from the ground. He reached out, as though expecting a hand to appear
to stabilize him, but he was still alone. He closed his eyes for a moment as the world spun
again, and then forced them open and moved towards the walls.

Surely, he thought, this time they would know how to stop him. They wouldn’t give him two
free chances at escape. The first time, he thought, doubtless they were trying out their new
device, testing how far he would go when uninhibited. They knew that he had held back in the
studies for the trial. He had known that they knew, and had respected them for not pressing
the matter.

From where he was standing now, he had nothing but loathing from them.

Maybe later, he contemplated, he might be able to look back and decide that these scientists
were truly doing what they thought was best for humanity. Perhaps he’d think that they were
not selfish egotistical maniacs who would lock up a fellow sentient being for their own agenda.
But now, he couldn’t see it any other way.
He was a metre from the wall now, at the point where the furniture sat on that invisible
boundary. Drawing forth all of his strength, he pulled back his arms and brought them
crashing towards the wall.

It was as though someone had electrocuted his spine. The pain shot into all parts of his body
and he crumbled to the floor. Desperately, he crawled back into the middle of the room and
slowly, gradually, excruciatingly, the pain died down. As he panted he sat up and looked at the
wall, hoping that what he had done had made some sort of a difference.

One fist had reached the wall, it seemed. He hadn’t even felt the impact. It had left a hole, an
inch deep, in the plaster and had revealed what was underneath.

Lead.

They didn’t know about his x-ray vision, he mused, glaring at the wall, attempting to force his
vision through it. That could mean only one thing.

On the other side of the wall, there must be Kryptonite.

It was almost morning when Chloe left for Smallville. By the time she’d arrived, more than an
hour and three coffees later, it was light out. She had been planning on visiting Lois, and then
having tea with Mrs. Kent, before she headed back to the Daily Planet to get some work done.
However, as she drove along the cornfield lined highway that drew a straight line from
Metropolis to the center of the small town, she found herself thinking of another person that
she should visit.

Clark had left for the Fortress of Solitude nearly a week before. He had made it clear that there
would be no way of contacting him whilst he was training, but the caves that he frequented
and had fought so hard to protect had always held a sort of connection to him.

She drove her car as close as she could to the wilderness that surrounded the caves, and then
exited the car, ensuring it was locked before pressing onward.

In many ways, the caves were as they always had been—dank, secretive and dark. But today,
it did not hold its usual comforting air, rather, it seemed as though it had been violated.

Foreign scruff marks littered the cave floor, scarring the dusty, rigid earth. She did not know
the caves that well, but there was a gouge taken out of one of the symbols that she was sure
had not been there before.

Internally, Chloe shrugged. Perhaps some high school kids had gotten drunk and hosted a
party here, away from prying parental eyes. She had started moving towards the wall behind
which Clark’s concealed room hid, when something caught her eye.

It was the key. It shone in the weak light of the caves; nearly completely covered in dirt, it
would have been invisible to any but the most observant of eyes. Crouching, Chloe picked up
the key. Its smooth surface felt slightly warm in her hand.

She rotated on the balls of her feet, turning to look towards the room that should have
transported Clark safely to the Fortress. She couldn’t see the wall from where she was sitting
—it was behind a sharp turn in the cave; even with Clark’s super strength, there was no way he
could throw such a curve ball. Nor could she figure out why he’d want to. The room was
sealed, so even with the key Chloe wouldn’t be able to use the key to visit him.

Standing up, she moved around the caves more purposefully now, looking for any other
evidence that might be able to better explain what had transpired here.
Maybe, she thought, Clark was safe in the Fortress, taking the crash course on being
Kryptonian from the computer that pretended to be his father. It was entirely possible though,
she continued to muse, based on her finding the key here, that he wasn’t.

And that possibility was enough. Abandoning any plans for further visiting, Chloe stumbled
through the undergrowth back to her car and headed back to Metropolis, where she’d be better
equipped, at the Daily Planet, to get to the bottom of this.

Q9

Lex Luthor was not entirely ready to become part of society’s outcasts, wanted and unwanted
by all the wrong people, stalked by the police and exiled from the general populace.

It was for this reason that he waited patiently in the prison, biding his time by tormenting the
other inmates and using his substantial outside influence to get anything he wanted.

It was that same influence that convinced him that he wouldn’t be long for this prison. He had
an appeal approaching, and he was certain that the defense’s star witness wouldn’t be rushing
in to save the day.

Today, however, his mind had been stuck on the thought of Lana. He was more human than
anyone had lately suspected, and he’d been so entirely wracked with guilt over the thought of
what he’d done to Lana that he’d forced her image out of his mind. There was nothing he
could do about it now, he thought. There was no way to fix this.

Today was different.

Today was a miniscule break in the monotony of prison life. It was a sliver of light through the
clouds. It was the day of his divorce.

Lex had wondered why it had taken Lana so long to make this appointment. Based on the look
of disgust in her eyes when she had looked at him that last time in the courtroom, she should
have wanted to be completely free of him as soon as humanly possibly. Perhaps even sooner,
Lex thought, thinking of her very inhuman friend.

Sitting in the visiting room, Lex ran his hand over his shiny scalp, smoothing hair that he
hadn’t had for ages. He knew that he looked terrible—pale and skeletal, with dark bruises
under his eyes from a lack of sleep. He knew also that Lana would look astonishing—she
always did.

It was for this reason that he was so shocked when Lana sauntered into the room, flanked by
divorce attorneys and looking more bullied than he did.

He remembered how terrible she’d looked after her breakup with Clark. He was pleased, and a
little remorseful to note that she looked worse now. At least he knew that he had made a mark
on her life. More than precious Clark had. He’d hurt her worse than precious Clark had.

“You didn’t sign a prenuptial,” she said, obviously disregarding any need for pleasantries. “My
lawyers had advised me to go after everything. Based purely on the amount of trauma I’ve
suffered as a result of this marriage, I’m fairly certain that I can secure a large financial sum. I
don’t want your mansion. I’d never go near it again.”

She placed a folder in front of him.

“Lana,” Lex said, his voice deeper than normal. “Can’t we talk—”

“I don’t think so, Lex,” Lana snapped. She stood to leave.

“Lana,” Lex said, desperately. “I love you.”

Her eyes flashed in anger. “Don’t you dare say those words to me,” she hissed. “You aren’t
capable of love.”

“How can you say that?” he asked, his voice low, trembling. “I trusted you with everything. I
gave you more than I ever gave anyone else—”

Lana’s hands were shaking. She forced the papers into her lawyer’s hands, and the both of
them backed away from the couple. “Lex,” she said softly. Her jaw was set rigidly but her eyes
contrasted this stiff determination. Tears lay barely out of sight behind her bottom lid, and her
eyes spoke strongly of vulnerability and suffering.

“Lex,” she said again, and she sounded hurt, devastated. “You raped me. You held me down
and forced yourself onto me. You listened to me sob and beg, and plead with you and you, you
sick bastard,” a strangled sob interrupted her. A tear fell and pooled at the side of her nose.
“You raped me and you got off on it.” She pushed the table, hard, and it scraped across the
floor, pinning Lex against his chair, his handcuffed hands trapped in his lap.

“But Lex,” she continued, sounding calm again, “you aren’t just a rapist.” She looked away
from him, as though trying to gather her emotions, get control of herself. “You’re a murderer,”
she said finally, looking back at him.

“I carried our baby inside of me,” she said softly. She was beyond upset now, she looked
nearly hysterical, as though the dam that was holding the waterfall of emotions back were
about to break. “This baby,” she continued, “you said that you loved. You made a nursery for
her, researched schools, you planned our life together with her, and then, in one violent,
disgusting act, all of it was gone.”

She stopped talking suddenly, and looked down at her shaking hands. “You killed her,” she
whispered.

Lex shut his eyes, slowly. Lana’s words, all of them, brought the reality of the situation rushing
back to him. He’d fought his entire life against the darkness that he’d known was inside of
him, told himself that if he surrounded himself with wonderful people, that they would help
him. But those people, his mother, Lana, Clark: they all ended up getting hurt.

“Her?” he asked, finally.

“They checked the gender of the fetus,” she said, her voice sounding emotionless, “when I
miscarried. It was a girl.”

“A girl,” Lex whispered.

“I thought I could trust you, Lex,” Lana continued, in that strained, apathetic voice. “You lied
to me more than anyone I’ve ever known.”

“What about Clark?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

At the sound of Clark’s name, a strange calm came over Lana. It was disturbing to watch—her
shoulders straightened, her expression became less pinched. Lex could have sworn that she
almost smiled.

“I care for Clark more than I could ever care for you,” she said.

And then she was gone. Lex was more than seething—he was livid. It seemed that Clark’s
most recent save, his largest sacrifice, had secured him again a place in Lana’s heart. She had
fallen in love with him anew, erasing completely from her mind all the terrible ordeals she had
suffered on Clark’s whim.

Later that night, just after dinner and before they were to return to their cells for the night, Lex
made a quick phone call.
“Doctor,” he said, breathing heavily into the phone. “Make his stay with us as painful as
possible. Just keep him alive—I want a chance with him before it’s done.”

Clark’s scream shattered the tender silence of the laboratory, echoing distantly through
hallways and through the lonely stairwells of the facility. The next cry was audible outside the
building, scattering the crows that had been resting in a nearby cornfield. Almost a mile away,
a young girl looked up from the plate that had been placed in front of her on the worn wooden
table.

“Mama?” she asked hesitantly, squirming around in her chair so that she could see her mother,
working vehemently at their small stove.

“It’s just the wind, darling,” she assured her daughter. She wasn’t entirely sure, though.

“We don’t have enough information,” Sean said, “to go ahead and give you anesthetic. For all
we know, you could blow up like a balloon and die. You don’t have any drug allergies, do you?”

The green scalpel made the third cut, the surgeon’s hand trembling slightly in response to his
patient’s obvious pain. The boy arched his back in a vain attempt to escape the pain that the
knife caused him. The surgeon watched as Sean brought a large green rock closer to the boy’s
head: it seemed to subdue the patient slightly, make him less able to struggle through the
restraints, but he would not have guessed that it eased the boy’s pain.

As he finished his cut, which completed the pattern on the boy’s chest, he leaned in to draw
back the skin, using the scalpel to slice the sinewy tissue holding skin to muscle. The first cut
had started high on the patient’s chest, finishing inches above his belly button. The next two
had sliced horizontally across the top and bottom of the first, as though he were performing
open heart surgery. He had never performed a bypass or valve replacement surgery on any
specimen so obviously healthy, in fact, this boy looked nearly perfect.

He found immediately that he was unable to draw the skin away from the muscle underneath.
The head scientist working the case laughed, his pale blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “You
need help?” he asked. Turning around, he smiled charmingly into the camera.

“Though the incisions were made with ease,” he said, as though addressing an audience,
“using the meteor rock scalpel, the surgeon is unable to tear back the skin flap.”

Upon hearing Sean’s words, Clark began his struggle anew. Despite the throbbing in his head,
despite the blood he could feel oozing from his wrists from the Kryptonite-coated restraints, he
needed to escape. These people were going to open him up, to look at him from the inside,
document all of his organs. The pain in his head began to ebb, and he turned as much as he
could to stare at Sean. The slender man was moving gracefully towards his torso, and placed
the Kryptonite on his stomach.

He hated to think what its proximity to his crotch would do to his sperm count.

His thoughts were ripped suddenly away from future prospects of children as the pain
restarted. He pulled himself upward so that he was staring down his chest and saw, to his
horror, that the surgeon was now removing his skin with ease.

The tissue beneath his skin was shockingly red. Clark let out a single, desperate sob, wishing
furtively that he was somewhere else, and that his insides were being kept on the inside. That
he was lying here, more naked and revealed than he had ever been, seemed incredulous,
unreal.

He screamed a second time, and could taste blood in his mouth. His throat raw, his teeth pink
with blood, he threw his head back, staring hopelessly at the white wall of the room. The first
word that he had uttered in hours finally tore from his mouth.
“Noo,” he yelled, the word prolonging and primitively voicing the terror and his abhorrence for
what was being done to him.

“We are now opening the chest cavity,” the surgeon said, nervously addressing the camera,
“by means of cracking open the ribs.”

The sound of his chest being cracked open; the sudden feeling that he was, in his entirely,
completely exposed to the world; and the sudden sensation that he was being spilled all over
the room, caused him, finally, to lose consciousness.

“Babe,” a voice said. Slowly, Lana opened her eyes. Her mouth felt dry and her brain was
surely swelling, based on the amount of pain in her head. There was no doubt about it—this
was the worst hangover she’d ever had.

The room she was in was bright, and the light bit at her headache; she forced her eyes to
remain open so that she could observe her surroundings.

She was in a large bachelor apartment. It was surprisingly well furnished, a large convection
stove and stainless steel fridge visible in the kitchen, and set of leather couches near a flat
screen television. It was very classy, albeit colourless.

She looked next, and hesitantly, at the person in bed next to her.

It was Viktor. His strong jaw and angelic features were no less striking in the morning, and he
seemed barely awake, lying across her torso, with his head snuggled between her bare breasts
and his arms holding her tightly.

This wasn’t the way she would have expected a one-night stand to end up. She had always
assumed that it would be similar to the way it had been portrayed in movies: the man, far less
attractive in daylight, would be up early, throwing clothes her way and ushering her out the
door of his messy apartment. Viktor, however, was even more gorgeous with the sun falling
across his face, and was obviously perfectly happy for her to stick around.

She thought about the night before, when he had guided her gently towards the door of the
club, and then whispered softly into her ear in that tremendously sexy German accent, “Don’t
find yourself another boy too quickly, love. I’ll be inside in an hour.”

And though she had gone directly to the bar and let several boys buy her drinks, and despite
the fact that she had danced with other boys, craving their touch, she had always faced away
from them, and found someone new when she was bored.

When finally Viktor’s hand had snaked around to her stomach from behind, he didn’t
immediately begin to grind as the other boys did. He had spun her around, pressing his face
close to hers, and had taken her hand. That he kissed the hand before drawing her close
struck a chord deep inside of her.

Something about his simple charm, or perhaps his almond-shaped green eyes, reminded her of
feelings that had long past. It might have also contributed that the vodka in her stomach was
tingling warmly in places other than her belly, but it was definitely his eyes that cemented her
decision.

He wasn’t quite as tall as Clark, but taller than Lex, so the kiss didn’t strain her neck nearly as
badly as it would have with Clark. She loved that she still needed to stretch upward to reach
his lips.

A few drinks later, and they were flying down the empty, nighttime streets in his car (one
impressive for a boy so young) towards Viktor’s apartment. She didn’t think about how
scandalous this was, or the dangers of going home with someone she’d never met before. She
never made the decision to stay the night, or to give herself to him to completely.
She just needed, so badly, to be touched. She needed to want to be touched, to not feel
nauseous when a man’s fingers ran over her breasts and down her stomach. She needed to
feel love, no matter how drunkenly induced.

So she stayed.

Chloe had not slept that night. Of course, with the help of caffeine, she often spent sleepless
nights at the Daily Planet, working tirelessly in a vain attempt to get herself noticed in the
grand world of journalism. The night before, though, she had felt especially exhausted.
Though she had helped Clark, in the past, with research, she had never helped Clark in this
way—she was now sneaking through the forbidden recesses of the world web, looking for
information on Clark’s supposed kidnapping.

Because there was no other explanation for what had happened; Clark needed the key to get
to the fortress. She gripped the key in her hand, now, as always, wondering in its ability to
remain cold despite her sweating palm. She could not figure out why Clark might have used
the key and then tossed it outside of the room. He would not have risked someone else finding
it.

The first possibility that leapt into her mind, at the very beginning of the night, was that one of
the scientists that he had worked with before the trial had betrayed him. They both knew that
humans were so easily corruptible; the thirst for wealth, whether of money or knowledge,
would drive people to monstrous actions.

It had taken her nearly two hours to break through the defenses of the government. She
considered this quite the feat—upon commencement of that quest, she would not have been
surprised if it had been impossible.

Lex Luthor’s case was even more well-secured than any of the other trials. The part of the trial
pertaining to Clark had another half-hour’s worth of encoding to break through. Finally,
though, she had the names of the scientists that had treated Clark at the laboratory.

There were seven of them. The file only listed their names and credentials, and once Chloe
had copied this information, she got herself off of that website. Though she had disabled her
cookies long before she ever even started hacking into government websites on a regular
basis, she knew that they might have more sophisticated ways of tracking people, and she’d
be no good to Clark if she was locked up for a federal offence.

Q10

It had been the pain and shock of having his chest cavity opened that had forced him out of
consciousness and into the realm of dreams. Though short lived, the brief loss of
consciousness terrified him; but the epigrammatic vision that visited him was strangely
comforting.

For a moment, his entire mind was filled with a blinding, white light. Suddenly, two faces
persevered through the light, and they were the sad, smiling faces of his parents.

He couldn’t tell at first exactly who they were. The woman, her eyes tragic and loving, looked
neither like Martha nor Lara, but her motherly adoration for him, and her empathy for his plight
were obvious. As the figures became clearer, he could tell precisely who they were.

His biological parents stood before him, and, for the first time since he had regained his
memory of leaving Krypton, he gain a sense of love from them stronger than anything he had
ever before experienced.

“They’re a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be,” a voice, otherworldly and wise, said. Clark
could feel his body convulsing, though whether these sensations were of the real world, or part
of his dream, he did not know. His heart pounded; it was a strong, defiant action, as though by
living, he might show his captors that he was worthy of freedom.

“They only lack the light…” the voice continued. The faces had faded from Clark’s view, and
suddenly he was left in darkness again. He could feel cool hands touching him, searching
inside of him for that something that made him different, as though there would be a glowing
light inside of him that would indicate that magic something.

“They only…” Clark’s head was still thrown back, and it was causing breathing to be difficult;
though his breathing was also being hindered by the cold air running over his exposed lungs.
The sensation of his neck being stretched backward, of his conscious mind trying its best to
get as far away from the pain as possible, struck him as almost a means of escape.

“They only lack the light…” Jor-El repeated.

Clark knew that he was close, now: it was that feeling of being almost awake, of being almost
in control. His fingers tingled, and they drew into a fist, clasping tightly through the restraints.
His muscles, weakened from the Kryptonite, tensed despite themselves.

“…to guide them.”

Clark’s eyes snapped open. He found that he was staring into the face of the scientist called
Sean, who was hovering over his head. Clark’s expression contorted, the entirety of the hate
that he already felt for this man making Clark’s face ugly and almost inhuman. His father’s
words began to permeate this hatred and Clark realized that he was here, on Earth, for a
reason.

Though it felt as though there was an infinitely heavy weight pressing down on him, he jerked
his hips upward, twisting them to one side, so that the green rock resting on his pelvis fell to
the ground. The surgeon leapt back, letting out a gasp of surprise, and dropped his scalpel.

Clark could sense Sean moving across the room, going, not for the misplaced meteor rock, but
for the door. Clark’s strength, with the Kryptonite a little further away, now, began to grow.
His heart still beat for an audience, but he knew that the wounds were healing.

With a roar of frustration, Clark thrashed against the restraints. Though his first attempt was
entirely futile, he heard the metal holding him down crack against his second attack. It was
only this evidence of weakening that gave him enough strength to try one more time.

The restraints shattered. Exhaling sharply in relief, he knew himself off the table, wanting to
get as far as possible from the Kryptonite still on the ground with the surgeon.

He pulled himself along the ground, shocked by the amount of blood that was on the ground,
on his hands, on his legs. He wondered if all of this blood had come from the wound on his
chest; another terrifying thought crashed through his mind: he had no idea what they had
done to him after he had lost consciousness.

As his strength continued to grow, he pulled himself into a sitting position and finally allowed
himself to look down at his torso.

The incision had been extended to his belly-button, exposing organs and twisted intestines and
so, so much blood. He watched as the skin began to knit itself together again, so unbelievably
relieved that he did not look up when someone entered the room.

It was Sean. Clark pushed himself to his feet, telling himself that he needed only one more
minute. He needed only one more minute, and then he could run.

But there was something held in Sean’s hand that brought a rush of terror: it was a small
remote control.
Reaching around to his back, Clark felt the lump where the box of lead sat just above his spine.
He inhaled sharply and began to claw at the box, despite the awkward positioning, trying
desperately to get it out from under his skin.

He could feel blood on his fingers.

“Honey,” Sean said. He looked flustered and a little bit frightened, his blond hair tousled as
though he’d run his fingers nervously through the gel. “You won’t get far.”

With all of his strength, Clark threw himself at Sean, wanting to throw aside his morals and
appreciation for life and tear Sean’s eyes from his sockets. His feet were barely off the ground
when the consuming pain hit him. It wasn’t Kryptonite resting near him; it was inside of him,
tearing his veins and burning his lungs.

Spots clouded his vision. Sean came into view presently and smiled gently with his blue eyes.

“Don’t blame this on me, darling,” his slightly feminine voice cooed. “When you think of why
you’re here, think about the person that you sacrificed yourself for. You kept your secret your
entire life, hun. Why did you give it away?”

He felt hands clasping his arms and drawing him up, despite the pain. Two large men held him
upright and dragged him down a long, white hall. They dropped him, unceremoniously in his
room, and Clark waited, forcing his face to remain blank, until the pain subsided.

It was only later that night, after he’d pulled himself into bed and was rubbing the tips of his
fingers over the scar left on his chest, that the reality of Sean’s words sunk into him.

He had sacrificed his freedom and wellbeing for Lana. He had loved that young, innocent Lana
Lang with every fibre of his self, and it had been that feeling that had taken over the day that
he had gone to her lawyer. Gone had been his instincts for survival and silent were his father’s
words in his mind—protect yourself, protect your secret. That day, he had forgotten that he
was an alien, and one of the greatest mysteries to ever daunt a human scientist.

He hoped that she was safer, at least, from his sacrifice. He wondered what Lana was doing
now.

Lana held her breath.

There was a head on her chest. The slight dizziness that had blurred her senses when she had
first awoken had fallen away, like the veil covering the world was suddenly gone. The
tremendousness of the situation hit her.

There was a head on her chest. His features, almost angelic, had left a soft, red impression on
her skin; his hair, still gelled upward, was brushing her nipples as she breathed. Air from his
nose tickled her stomach; his fingers, gripping her back, suddenly seemed hostile.

His second hand had moved around to the front of her hip, caressing the bone that jutted
above her thigh. He was clearly being gentle, obviously very comfortable the way he was
sleeping, and there was nothing in his expression or demeanor that suggested aggression.

But suddenly it was all Lana could feel.

Every place that they touched suddenly screamed at Lana. Take her, she could practically
hear them yell. Take her by force.

She wasn’t safe here. His hair was brushing over her sensitive nipple faster and faster; the
quicker it brushed back and forth, the more she hyperventilated, wishing she were safe at
home; wishing she were safe in the arms of someone else.
His face jumped, unbidden into her mind. Their features were similar; their eyes were the
same almond shape and nearly identical ethereal colours. Their lips curled the same way
when they smiled, but Viktor’s nose was sharply angular. Likewise, Viktor’s jaw was stronger, it
had less potential to be soft; it was that jaw that struck her then.

Surely someone with such a demanding jaw line did not have the capability of loving her, of
protecting her.

She realized then: had that been what she had been looking for? Had she been looking for
love from this one night stand?

Roughly, she pushed Viktor’s head off of her. Her hands shook as she gathered her clothes,
throwing them on as soon as she found them, her socks, her pants, so that she was left holding
her pink thong and one sock awkwardly in her hand. She stuffed them in her pocket and
turned to leave.

“Hey,” a voice said. He was smiling, as though happy to see her, but looked confused. “Don’t
I get a ‘good morning’?”

He rose from the bed gracefully and moved towards her, obviously not uncomfortable by his
very blatant nudity. Lana stood stiffly as he placed his hand in the small of her back and pulled
her into a kiss.

It only lasted for about a second; the moment that he touched her, he was no longer a
strangely attractive German boy, he was something else. His lips became Lex’s, trying to force
a kiss out of her that night, his probing tongue compelling her lips to open at the same time
that he pushed a hand between her legs—

“Stop,” she said.

He did. Lana was surprised at how hurt he looked, but she broke eye contact and turned back
to the door.

“Will you call me?” he asked, the disappointment in his voice making his accent more
pronounced. He reached out and softly touched the pocket that he had placed his card in.

Without turning back, Lana whispered, “I don’t know.”

Q11

Clark waited.

It was what he had spent the bulk of his day doing; he would watch the walls, he would watch
the floor, he would watch his bed. He sometimes would strip his shirt off and look at the scar
that ran thick down his chest.

He had assumed, after that first wretched surgery, that the scar would heal. Normally, even
wounds caused by Kryptonite would disappear as soon as he was away from the influence of
the rock. That this surgical scar was still angrily prominent scared him almost as much as the
idea that his heart had just been beating for the world to see.

Clark stood up, his fingers still placed delicately on the raised pink line on his chest, and took
four steps across the room.

When he turned around he realized something. He had noticed, of course, as soon as he had
returned to the room, that the hole in the wall he had created earlier on was gone. He had not
scrutinized the bed during his lengthy stay in the room because, for the most part, he had
been lying in it.

Now though, he realized that the bed was further from the wall than it had been. With a furtive
glance at the ceiling, as though checking for prying eyes, he moved tentatively towards a wall.
The pain hit him at full force and he grunted as he hit the ground. Slowly he opened his eyes
and looked longingly at the wall.

It was almost half a foot further away than it had been. Reaching out with an arm, he couldn’t
even nearly touch it. The pain began to paint spots on his vision and he pushed on the floor,
rolling himself over and away from the invisible hurtful boundary.

Once he was free of the affects of the Kryptonite in his back (he imagined a tiny lead box
sliding closed) he sat on his heels and wondered, not for the first time, what time it was.

Sitting alone in this room, it was nearly impossible to tell. Based purely on the amount of time
that seemed to have gone by, he could have been sitting in here for days or weeks, perhaps
even as long as a month. It was only the intermittent hunger pangs that convinced him
otherwise.

Based on his metabolic rate, he guessed that he’d been sitting here for about twelve hours.
That meant that he’d been gone from the world for two days.

That it had been such a short time was incredulous to him. When he tried to remember his life
before; its movements seemed so subtle; he almost sobbed in envy. Then, he could feel the
wind; he could see shadows shifting and a voice always echoed in the distance. He hadn’t
realized that with every breath, he took the chance that none of it would ever move again.

And now, it didn’t.

Now, there was silence so absolute it was painful. The air stagnated and he could smell the
trace amounts of mould in the room. It was enough, sometimes, to make him gag.

He looked up at the ceiling and imagined he could see the sky. Closing his eyes, he saw a
dark, clear, starry night and heard crickets and far away, the noise and bustle of nighttime
Metropolis.

A voice, closer than the others, whispered; it was Lana. She had walked up the stairs of his loft
and come up behind him, wrapping her arms around his stomach, holding him close.

It was her presence that forced him out of this wistful fantasy. He had given up so much for
her.

His father… his childhood dream of having someone he could love and trust… and ultimately,
his freedom.

His eyes snapped open.

It was still dark. Closing his eyes, he tried one more time. It was still dark. He held his hands
in front of his face and saw nothing. Squinting at the blank space, he switched to X-ray vision
and saw the bones of his hands among a sea of emptiness.

That this place had taken away his light as well terrified him. More than that, it brought to
surface the enormity of the situation.

Though it seemed impossible to plan an escape when there are no windows and no doors, and
no one went in or out, it was all somehow different now. It began to feel truly hopeless now
that his vision was reduced to shapes and shades of almost black. He realized how alone he
really was, and it wasn’t long before he started to scream, praying that somehow, someone
might hear him and open up that invisible trapdoor, letting light and fresh air floor the room.

Soon, though, his calls for help faded into shrieks of despair, and just before he fell asleep, the
pain of hunger and anguish wracking his body, he accepted that salvation was not coming.

Q
“There are several subtle differences to his physiology,” Dr. Williams muttered, looking over
the pictures. The video of the operation played silently off to one side, and on the other side,
Sean stood, his arched eyebrows blond eyebrows nearly invisible in the bright light.

“The surgeon took biopsy samples of his tissue,” Sean said brightly, gesturing to a row of test
tubes. “He doesn’t have cancer.” He sounded amused.

“Look at this, though,” Dr. Williams said. “His organs are all slightly larger than they should be.
It wouldn’t even be noticeable unless you were looking for it. The added weight from these
organs would put too much strain on any human skeletal system. We should get an orthopedic
specialist in to look at his bones.”

“Doctor,” Sean said, sounding hesitant for the first time. “I don’t think it’s such a good idea to
bring in so many people. The surgeon alone—”

“Sean,” the doctor laughed. “Did you really think that the two of us were going to study this
being without help? A nice bonding activity for father and son, perhaps?” He scoffed again,
and flipped the folder shut.

“I’ve already called someone else in,” he said, looking up at Sean, who had an affronted look
on his face. “Her name is Dr. Nineva Kowalski. She’s that Polish doctor I told you about. She’s
a molecular biologist. Since we’ve been having trouble determining what exactly it is that
makes Clark Kent so special using macrobiology, it’s time to look a little closer.”

Dr. Williams looked back at his pictures. “What are you peering over my shoulder for?” he
asked sharply. “Don’t pretend as though you understand any of this. I don’t care what your
Ph. D says. You’re not a real doctor.”

“Psychology is a science, sir,” Sean said.

“Then use it to tell me something useful,” the doctor snapped. Shrugging, as though he didn’t
much care what the other man thought, Sean moved across the large room to another set of
televisions. They showed a teenage boy pacing a small, yellow room.

Putting a large pair of headphones over his ears, Sean used a mouse to scroll backwards
through the film. He watched the blank screen for a long while, listening intently to the boy’s—
the subject’s—begging, his sobs. He listened to the promises, the bargains, the anger, and
finally, after hours of staring at the blank screen, he stood up.

The room was empty now. His father had left.

Moving aside the pictures of the creature’s entrails, Sean sat himself on the chair that the
doctor had previously occupied. He pulled out the notebook that he had been writing his
observations in.

The subject, he wrote, was raised as a human, and perhaps even believes that it is human. He
pushed away from the desk and rolled back over to the TV screen. He switched on two of the
other televisions and unplugged the headphone, so that the noise, loud and crisp, filled the
room.

Each screen divided into four, each quadrant showed a room, all of them painted that same,
soft yellow, but inside the rooms were different people; all of them boys, all of them in their
early twenties.

Sean scrolled backward, so that every screen turned black, and more than five voices called
out of the darkness of their room.

As Sean listened, each voice hit him alone, and he separated the words of each boy from the
others. That these boys were normal, that their own terrifying experience on the operating
table had only confirmed that fact, was what made them useful. Clark Kent was not normal,
and exactly what made him not normal was the mystery they were trying to unfold.

Still listening, he rolled back to the desk and continued writing.

However, he has harbored a long time fear that he will be dehumanized. This is evident in his
reaction from last night. Unlike the other subjects, he displayed an almost premature despair
that betrayed that he knows, or at least suspects, that we will not let him go, and that it may
be impossible to escape.

Pulling his notebook onto his lap, he rolled across the floor again, and turned the screens off.
Bending his arm and slouching awkwardly to write on his lap, he finished the note.

The subject, despite his tremendously human outer appearance, is not a mutant or deviant of
the species. The subject is not human, at all.

Chloe took her hands off the keyboard for a moment and placed her thumb and finger of each
hand on her eyelids. She held her eyes open manually as she contemplated the security on
the website.

With an uncharacteristic burst of frustration, she stifled a scream of rage and knocked her
empty mug of coffee onto the floor, where a pile of empty Styrofoam cups were littered. It was
only now, when she was so close, that she had resorted to making her own caffeine.

Every scientist had checked out. They all held legitimate jobs, had viable references, and paid
their taxes. Most of them had families. All of them had connections.

These links to high powered people seemed savory enough. Dr. Child had been friends with
the judge who had tried Clark’s case when they were in undergraduate school. Dr. Bowles had
done charity cancer research that the judge’s family had funded. There hadn’t been any sort
of indication to be found that would suggest that any of them would do anything to harm Clark,
even in the name of science.

Chloe’s next desperate attempt at finding a dark past had her looking through driver’s license
records on their distant relatives when she noticed something.

There was a man, Sean Williams, whose driver’s license had been revoked due to mental
incapacitation. Pursing her lips, Chloe highlighted the name, and put it into a search engine,
more because she was curious than anything. After all, people had mentally ill offspring all the
time, but it was her own experience with supposedly insane relatives that made her want to
examine it further.

Behind a mentally ill mother was a scandal. Could there be one lurking behind this son, as
well?

She breathed heavily through her nose when she saw what came up. Her immediate
impression was how remarkable this boy’s résumé was. He had graduated in the top of his
class with a Bachelor’s degree in psychological science, and then with a Masters in Freudian
Psychology. He had written several papers and a book on Neo-Freudian theory; had speculated
openly and to tumultuous appraise on Freud’s many theories and had, when he started
studying for his doctorate, openly declared his allegiance with such Existential philosophers as
Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.

It had been after the completion of his doctorate that he began to get a little… funny. Chloe
was able to find, quite easily, documents of his behavior, because he was featured in the
media several times. His father, Dr. Williams Sr. had been quite famous in the medical
community because he had discovered several new antibiotics, and had also pioneered a wide
spectrum vaccine for the flu. His son, however, received much more negative publicity.
After studying Existentialism and the Humanistic approach to psychology, Sean Williams had
become very public about his views. He was no longer content to have papers published in
medical journals, or to write books that rarely sold. He wanted the whole world to know what
he believed.

Everyone, he was quoted as saying, is striving to become a person. A true human, a fully
functioning person, transcends all others. Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, he said, these
were self-actualized people. Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Scweitzer, these people were real. The
rest of us, those people who sink into their shit-hole of life and forget to live, they aren’t
people. Those living without hope, the ones expecting to die, wanting it, even, they don’t
count.

People have been encultured, he said, and it’s stifling their creativity. Chloe watched a video
of him speaking at a conference, and was shocked at his passion; he would grab his hair and
say, your spontaneity is inhibited. Your childlike awe is gone. You aren’t human, none of you.
You are all lower beings, wading in your own filth, you damnable creatures.

Without that sparkle in your eye, he said, you’re all dead, just taking up space and breathing
our air.

He suggested mass genocide, a review stated incredulously. He declared most of the world
unfit and unworthy.

It was then that his father, widely respected, stepped in.

Sean was put into an institute. Sean stayed there for years. His father visited him every other
Friday, and Chloe watched their recorded sessions.

Neither man talked. Dr. Williams would sit across from his disgraced son for one hour.

Wordlessly, he would leave.

Chloe read the psychiatrist’s notes on Sean. He was a model patient, knew the system from
the inside, and said just the right things in order to ensure a speedy release.

Three years and seven months after he was incarcerated, Sean was released. He disappeared
from the world.

There were no more records of his whereabouts. He never bought a car or got a job. He didn’t
withdraw money from his chequing account. He didn’t apply for a credit card.

As Clark had done, he had disappeared. And though Clark was a relatively uneducated farm
boy alien and Sean was a lunatic Ph. D., they did have one thing, one person, in common.

Dr. Williams.

Q12

He was there, again, and he watched her.

Lana wasn’t sure what she had been expecting; she had dressed up pretty, downed an
impressive pre-drink with Lois, and then headed to the club.

The large sign announced that the club, the Metro, was open all night—ladies free ‘til twelve.

The lineup was short. It was one thirty already; people were trickling out of the club, rather
than in. Viktor stood there, though, as though he’d known she’d come, and he offered her his
hand.

The world swam slightly around his face and, without hesitation she took it, grasping Lois’s
small hand tightly in her other.
Like a grownup version of a pretend train they weaved their way through the club. Viktor
turned and moved slowly backwards, the crowd parting for him; he kissed his way up Lana’s
arm and drew her close. Lois, the ever reddening caboose, broke off from their metaphorical
train and left them alone.

“I missed you,” he whispered into her ear, letting his hand wrap around her so that she
couldn’t run as she’d done before. From where his lip hovered, she could feel his breath and
now it felt warm. Now, with reality dulled that little bit, it felt welcoming. She tilted her chin
up and lied into his ear, about as far away from her as Clark’s would be.

“I missed you, too,” she muttered.

And then she let him kiss her. He trailed his lips behind her ear, softly caressing her neck as
his other hand moved to the small of her back, pulling her closer so that she could feel his
pelvis swaying to the heavy beat.

He spun her suddenly and placed his hands on her hips, still forceful, still pushing against her.

Closing her eyes, Lana immersed herself in the music. Her hands snaked up her body,
hesitating on his fingers, much softer than she would have expected, and then past her head
and back, feeling the sharp angles of his face; lingering on his cheek bones. Finally, she
twined her fingers in his hair and pulled his head down to her neck.

Viktor breathed in Lana’s scent and found himself imagining the last time he’d seen her, her
clothes thrown on, one foot out the door. Her head tilted backward and her lips found his,
powerful, demanding. His hands split, then, departing from her hips and traveling to more
erogenous areas of her body.

With one large hand on the crotch of her jeans, and the other resting just below the wire of her
bra, he forced her even closer. He felt, rather than heard, the gasp escape her lips, and
wondered if she’d let him keep her this time.

If, after a spectacular drunken night, she’d stay for breakfast.

It was the next morning, when he woke up to an empty bed and found that his flighty
houseguest had forgotten her stockings that he realized just how terrified of him she must be.

The reason for her terror; her inability to let him touch her, Viktor knew all too well.

“How is she?” a breathless voice asked, the static and wind coming across louder on his cell
phone than the words.

“She’s alive, Mr. Luthor,” Viktor said, his accent heavy. “But she still resists contact when she’s
sober. She doesn’t respond to my calls. She was gone before I even woke up this morning.”

“Get to her when she’s sober, Viktor,” the voice responded. “I want answers, or your next pay
cheque is going to get lost in the mail.”

“Yes, sir,” the German responded. He closed his cell and sighed, looking morosely around his
large apartment. It was clean and simple, not because he was a tidy guy, but because he’d
only just moved in.

Slowly, he pulled his boxers back on and got out of bed. He scowled at his cell phone for a
minute longer before dialing Lana’s number.

“He’s not human,” Dr. Williams slowly. “What is he, then? A wholly mammoth?”
Sean dropped a textbook onto the table in front of his father. “He’s a non-being,” he said
shortly.

“Not this crap, again,” sighed Dr. Williams. “I thought they chug-a-lugged all that garbage out
of your head in the facility I had you in.”

“Hardly,” he scoffed. “I just came to realize that my work can be better done when the world
learns to trust and respect me again.”

“So, you’re planning on killing every person who hasn’t actualized? Unhappy people can just
go ahead and snuff it? Suicide for the depressed should be promoted?” Dr. Williams asked,
portraying clearly how ridiculous he thought the idea was. “All this psychology mumbo-
jumbo…”

“You’re just uneducated,” Sean cried, picking up the textbook and slamming it down onto the
table again.

Dr. Williams raised his eyebrows. He, who had saved an average of 700 people from dying of
the flu each year, and countless others from having to suffer from such symptoms as fever,
sore throat and muscle pains—he who had succeeded in discovering and multiplying a low
grade poison that people of all ages like to have pumped into them at the slightest hint of
cough, puss or pustules—he, who had created the antibiotic that could relieve thousands of
woman from having to experience a burning sensation when they pee—he was uneducated?

“Ha,” he said, dryly.

“His overt sense of hopelessness will be impossible for him to overcome,” Sean stated. “He
cannot become fully functioning. It’s better than we euthanize him.”

“Have you ever considered that the reason he has all these powers—the strength, the keen
senses, the healing capabilities—is because he is, in fact, fully functioning?” Dr. Williams
asked, sarcastically.

Sean appraised his father for a moment.

“He may have transcended us?” he asked slowly. “You think that he has been rewarded and is
a higher being?”

“It sure beats the hell out of being a non-being,” Dr. Williams muttered. “Go slam your fingers
in a door, or something. Appreciate life and work towards fully owning your existence. Just
stop acting like a loon.”

Sean turned and left the room, leaving the textbook for his father to read. He returned to his
monitor and turned it on, placing the headphones over his ears. The boy was pacing.

Clark moved the short distance between the bed and the toilet. After briefly appraising the
shiny, knee high bowl, he turned and marched back to the bed. The night before, when his
situation had seemed to helpless, had, upon morning, given him a new strength.

He would get through this. He had to.

He would escape. He would escape for his mother, for Chloe, for… for Lana, even. He would
escape… for the world. There was so much he had not yet done; he could have helped so
many people, and would, he would, if he was given the chance.

The next time they brought him out of this room, he decided, he would do it. He would tear
into his back and break loose the killer box hooked into his ribs. He would ignore the pain, he
would dismiss the terror of such self-mutilation and then he’d run.
Without the box they’d have no way of stopping him.

And though he wanted, just a little, to punish the people who’d done this to him, he wouldn’t.
He’d just run, and put as much distance between him and this wretched place.

Then, he’d train. He’d become as strong as he could so that he could protect the rest of the
world from people like these.

“It’s amazing,” the woman said, peering through the microscope again. “I’ve never seen
anything like it.”

“What can you tell us about this creature?” Dr. Williams asked.

“Its DNA is different from human DNA,” she said, without looking up from the lens. “Human
DNA is double stranded, and the two strands are held together by hydrogen bonds, which are
quite strong. This DNA is double stranded, but it’s not held together by hydrogen bonds; they
seem to be purely ionic bonds.”

Sean entered the room, then, and both of the room’s occupants looked up.

“Sean,” Dr. Williams said jovially. “This is Dr. Nineva Kowalski. She’s the molecular biologist I
told you about.”

The woman, tall and awkward looking, with a long archaic nose and wide, brown eyes, offered
him her thin-fingered hand. After firmly shaking his rather weak hand, she returned to the
microscope.

“Ionic bonds are what hold metal together,” Dr. Williams stated. “Are all the bonds in his body
the same?”

She looked into another microscope, pausing for a minute before nodding. “He really quite
literally is,” she said slowly, “a man of steel.”

Q13

Lex Luthor was shocked to learn that he wouldn’t have to wait until the appeal to have a shot
at freedom. He hadn’t even been in jail a week before an unfamiliar face showed up across the
plastic barrier, with the phone pressed to his ear.

“You’ve been acquitted on all charges,” he said stiffly.

“Sorry?” Lex asked, confused. He looked keenly at the man, waiting for him to repeat himself,
but he realized that the phone had slipped from his hands after he’d heard those first,
unexpected words.

The piece of paper was lid under the barrier between them, and Lex stared at finely typed
words and a million signatures. Holding the phone to his face again, he repeated, “Acquitted?”

“Acquitted?” Lana exclaimed, slamming the paper down in front of Lois. Lois glared up at her
and took a swig of her coffee.

“Are you just getting in now?” Lois asked, sliding a large pair of sunglasses back up her nose.

“Acquitted,” Lana repeated.

“Son of a bitch is getting out of jail?” Lois asked, her eyes focusing slowly on the paper in front
of her. The front page featured a picture of Lex overlaid with a smaller picture of Lana, looking
scandalized. Lois looked up to a nearly identical expression on the real Lana’s face.
“Are you pissed?” Lois asked.

Lana stared at the photo in the paper. Lex’s bald head looked dull in newsprint, but his eyes
glittered despite the paltry sheen of the photo.

“Are you scared?” Lois asked.

The terrified thought, He’s going to kill me, leapt into Lana’s mind.

“Where’s Chloe?” Lana asked.

Chloe had been on a Luthor’s list before. She had faked her own death to flee his clutches,
aided, however, by her own erstwhile husband. What will I have to do, Lana thought,
desperately, to escape him?

She would need someone’s help, as well, someone more powerful than Lex, someone more
trustworthy than Lionel, someone like—

“Clark?” Chloe asked, squinting at the computer screen. She’d stopped sleeping, forgotten
about eating: she was so close.

She was looking at some sort of video feed at this point. Printouts and screenshots littered the
desk around her, and she knocked them hastily aside, grasping frantically for a blank piece of
paper. She winced and recoiled at the sound of a scream, but forced her eyes to remain open.
A bare chest was featured on the screen, zoomed in close so that the face and legs of this
torso were completely out of view.

There were hands, though, holding delicately a shining green scalpel, and they were moving in
now, to lengthen the incision.

Before they made contact, though, a voice, pompous and high pitched said, “We don’t have
enough information to go ahead and give you anesthetic…”

Chloe’s hand hovered over the paper, hoping that someone would say something useful:
something that would betray their location, or the name of the people in the room. She
suspected… she wasn’t sure, but she suspected, based on the greenness of the knife, based
on how she’d found the site—

“Though the incisions were made with ease using the meteor rock scalpel…” a voice said,
speaking over the background screams; the voice, nasal and irritating, confirmed what Chloe
had suspected.

The chest that was being opened up—

That chest belonged to Clark.

“Clark,” Chloe whispered, tears welling in her eyes, “what have they done to you?”

Those same words were repeated, differently though; with a touch of amusement and even a
hint of… jealousy.

“I always knew,” Lex said, gazing at the tethered creature in front of him, “that you were
different.”

Lex walked around the table where Clark lay, held down with meteor rock shackles, the skin
below his eyes grey; bruised.

“You never trusted me,” Lex muttered, a trace of sadness, of regret, creeping into his voice.

Clark raised his chin, as though determined to, despite his waning strength and awkward
horizontal position, look Lex in the eye.
“You put me here,” Clark said. He didn’t sound angry. The disappointment in his voice,
however, hit Lex like a super-powered punch.

“I knew,” Lex continued, “I always knew,” he repeated, “that there was something not quite
human about you.”

“I could say the same, Lex,” Clark replied. “After what you did to Lana,” he said, his voice
strong, “I would say that there wasn’t anything human left.”

“You lied to me,” Lex hissed, and, before he could stop himself, he lashed out, landing his fist
just below where the dull scar on Clark’s chest ended. Despite Clark’s weakened state, the
blow hurt Lex much more than it did Clark.

Lex doubled up, clutching his hand to his chest. When he straightened, the look on Clark’s
face was so venomous that he wished he’d avoided eye contact. Clenching his jaw, Lex forced
himself not to blink.

He was staring at Clark, his first true friend, the boy that he’d trusted, and longed to become
close to. This boy, with whom he’s created this unnatural friendship; Lex had always been so
fixated with him, how he’d always do the right thing; how he always merited forgiveness.

But the way that Clark was looking at him now, he wondered how he’d ever seen anything
else.

Clark hated him.

And finally, he spoke. “I protected you,” Clark whispered. “There were so many times… you
have no idea…”

Lex froze; he wished then, that things could have been different.

“That day on the bridge,” Clark continued, his voice quiet; cold, “changed my life. Suddenly, I
wasn’t just a kid anymore, Lex. You should have crushed my body between your expensive car
and the cement of that guard rail and sent a dead body to the bottom of the river. You should
have sent two dead bodies to the bottom of the river, that day.”

Clark strained against the shackles, then, as though he longed to leap at Lex and shake some
sort of understanding into him.

“I took bullets for you, Lex,” he said, yelling suddenly. “And not only the kind that don’t hurt
me.” Clark thought of the time that he’d stopped that kid from killing Lex, and the kid had
realized Clark’s weakness. Thought of the time, long ago, when Lex had shot him so many
times and Clark had taken each painful blow; not wanting to risk hurting his hypnotized friend.
Clark appraised the confused look on Lex’s face. “Did you think,” Clark asked, quiet again,
“that you’re the first one to use the meteor rocks against me?”

Realization dawned suddenly, and Lex exclaimed, “The silver rock, it affected you, too.”

Clark said nothing.

“I’ve had people combing Smallville,” he said softly. “They found other colours.”

Clark didn’t reply, but he half hoped that they’d whip out a red rock around him. With lowered
inhibitions he might have the strength to tear into his back and rip out the lead box; he might
not hesitate to pull harder as his ribs broke and his own blood welled around his fingers.

“Doesn’t this weigh on your mind?” Clark asked softly, allowing his disgust to seep into his
voice. “That I befriended you; that I loved you like the brother I’d always wanted, that I hero-
worshiped you, and you put me into this place? You took away my freedom; my dignity, when
all I wanted from you was… some semblance of your true self?”
Lex slipped from the edge of guilt that he’d been teetering on and fell into the darkness of
anger and the simple one-sidedness of hate. “All you wanted was me?” Lex asked. His voiced
grew into a roar and he yelled, “This is me, Clark. I am not the good person you hoped I could
be. I was raised in a household of despair; my mother was driven to madness by the pure
immorality of my father. I took the blame for her crimes and unwittingly stumbled into a life
where my father despised me and my mother despised herself. After her death—”

“Stop,” Clark interrupted, his voice raised, but not filled with the anger that Lex had, “making
excuses.” His incredulity was betrayed not only in his voice, but in the slight, amazed smile
that had formed on his lips. “What did I ever do to you?” he asked, quiet again.

“You lied to me,” Lex repeated, still loud, still angry; still self-righteous. “Look at what you’re
capable of and you never told me: your supposed best friend.”

“Thanks to you, Lex,” Clark said, anger finally growing in his hoarse voice, “I’m capable of little
other than being a lab rat.” He strained forward, the Kryptonite in his restraints cutting his
wrists. “Don’t you think this is why, Lex? Don’t you think I’ve been terrified, my entire life,
that I’d end up someone’s research material? Do you have any idea what its like to have to
hide your true self—do you believe that I didn’t want, every day, to be able to tell you, to be
able to tell anyone, everything?”

The anger died, suddenly, and it left a deadened, hopeless shell of a boy, resting slack against
the shackles holding him in a vulnerable, horizontal position.

“You disgust me,” he said, finally, sounding weary; sounding used.

Shaking, Lex turned away from the sight of Clark Kent, a boy once so vicariously alive and
strong, who was now staring, with his suddenly tear filled eyes, at the cold, white ceiling.

When he reached the door, he turned back.

A tear fell down Clark’s face and settled in his ear.

Q14

It was as though watching that video, witnessing the terrifying cruelty that was being inflicted
on her best friend, had lit some sort of metaphorical fire under Chloe. Her fingers blurred on
the keyboard, and she had a brainwave of almost supernatural proportions. As she bypassed
the security on this heavily protected website, she wondered, not the first time, if it wasn’t her
pure brilliance that fueled her hacking ability.

She had been part of Lex Luthor’s laboratory once.

And she had confirmed that Clark was, indeed, in Lex Luthor’s laboratory. She was close,
closer than she’d ever been, to discovering the location of the laboratory. The information files
were online, and she’d been working on getting through the same firewall for nearly two hours.

But she was close.

It was for that reason that she ignored the ringing telephone on her desk and her violently
vibrating cell in her pocket. So Lana finally gave up calling and loaded her car with some self
defense tools. In a fit of sudden paranoia, she paid a noisy customer at the Talon to turn her
car on for her.

She drove, much over the speed limit, along back roads until she arrived at the Daily Planet,
where she suspected Chloe was probably hard at work. Lana hadn’t spoken much to Chloe
since Clark had disappeared. She knew that Chloe knew more than she was letting on about
where Clark had disappeared to, and was angry that Chloe was, not for the first time, covering
for Clark.
Now, though, she needed help. She truly believed that Lex’s first order of business, now that
he was out of prison, would be to find a way to make her pay. Because of her, he’d been
dethroned, humiliated, and left alone.

Little did she suspect that Lex’s obsessive energy had shifted back to his first, more intense
fascination. Clark was a mystery that Lex could never fully explain, and Lana’s appeal, her
unsolvable aspect, was that she could love someone like Lex.

Since she had confirmed his worst fears, that she had, all along, loved Clark, his attention—
now more bitter, less wondering and mostly hate filled—was turned back to Clark. Clark, the
enigma. Clark, that powerful, modest, selfless creature.

“Far most abundant,” Lex said, matter-of-factly to the boy, who had been returned to his flat-
out position on the operating table after another hopeless night in his cell, “was the green
meteor rock. We’ve found that it has mutating properties on most humans, but haven’t before
witnessed the effect it has on you.”

Lex fingered that dangerous remote in his lap, running his palm over the button that could
cause Clark indescribable pain, and then over the one that would make it stop. The effect of
the green rock was epitomized inside of the test subject; with this in his hand, Lex was all
powerful. This button simplified Clark to the extreme: Clark on; Clark off.

Because of this, Lex had the sudden compulsion to level with Clark. To speak to him as they
used to, eye to eye; he knew that he held, in his hand, the failsafe, that could switch Clark from
super-powered-whatever to writhing-screaming-nothing. He reached towards Clark, who
flinched away from him, and undid the shackles.

Clark sat up. At this angle, Lex could see what damage had really been done to his ex-best
friend. The boy was pale, and thinner than Lex had ever seen him. His face, usually so pink
and quick to smile, was hardened and distant, as though his feelings were buried deep
beneath this visage; as though apathy were his only remaining defense.

Sean entered the room then, holding two boxes made of impenetrable lead.

“We did manage to find a few other varieties,” Lex continued, holding out his hands. Sean
placed in each the new box. Lex peered curiously at the labels.

“The silver, which you’ve previously been affected by, was curiously absent,” he said. “But we
found something else.”

He opened the box swiftly, as though the element of surprise were crucial, and pushed it onto
Clark’s chest, knocking him back onto the table.

Lex expected him to scream. Lex expected him to writhe.

Clark threw his head back and gripped Lex’s hand tightly, holding the rock to his chest; Lex,
nervous now, was unable to get away, and his other hand, wrapped around the remote,
somehow wouldn’t move to press the button. His curiosity was so much stronger than his
trepidation.

When Clark leaned forward again, and slowly looked at Lex, he was shocked to note that
Clark’s eyes, usually so honest and clear, were suddenly red. Just for a moment, they shone
the same colour as the rock pressed to Clark’s chest.

“You’ll like this one, Lex,” Clark said softly. “I know I do.”

And the boy’s voice was so unlike Clark’s that a question, a stupid question, escaped Lex’s lips.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“That’s different,” Clark said, all traces of despair gone from his voice. “Usually the question
that you ask is, what are you?” He smiled, but it wasn’t the trademark Clark Kent grin. It was
a wide, cocky grimace. “I’m Clark Kent,” he said, as though speaking to a stupid child. “I’m
just Clark Kent, a little different. And it’s not like you haven’t met this Clark before. I came to
your engagement party, remember? I made off with your girl.” He wrinkled his nose and his
eyes curved into twin mischievous smiles. “And made out with her.”

Lex’s mouth opened slowly as he made the connection. He took a breath, about to speak,
about to ask his next probing question, but Clark, with the red Kryptonite still pressed to his
chest and Lex’s face so close to his, spoke first.

“I’m sure you hated getting my seconds,” he said. “I broke Lana’s heart and you scooped up
the pieces and pretended that it was what you had desired all along. She wanted me,” he
paused, and chuckled, “you wanted me,” he added. “You two made a hell of a pair. Acting as
though you both hated me, while secretly wishing that you could duke it out with her, just fight
over me; both of you refusing to accept that you’d been rejected.” Clark closed his eyes for a
second. These words felt better than anything he could have imagined right now. They felt
better than freedom; they felt better than the sun. The red rock held to his chest and his nails
digging into the back of Lex’s hand, it was better than sex.

“Pale, lanky,” Clark continued, his voice quiet, “you’re nothing but a boy afraid to grow up
because he knows he would be nothing but a disappointment; an abomination. So, you blame
your failures on the weakness of others and rely on your money and creepy charm to lure girls
into marriage after disastrous marriage.”

That Clark was talking like this was shocking to Lex, but he steeled himself; they were only
words, and no matter how they stung, he would not show it. He was Lex Luthor, and he would
not break.

“Does it make you feel like less of a man,” Clark hissed, “to know that the only way to fuck
your wife was to rape her?”

Lex froze.

“The meteor shower left you bald and impotent,” Clark continued. “You faked a pregnancy to
trap Lana in a loveless marriage; you lied to her, and lied to her about lying to her, so that you
could pretend to be better than me. At least—”

Lex wrenched his hand away, and the rock fell to the ground. The vivid red dulled into a dark
maroon. Clark was silent for a moment.

“At least,” he continued, his voice quiet and defeated once more, “at least I never told her that
I was honest.”

“How did you know?” Lex asked. He was livid, practically blinded with the anger, jealousy and
self-loathing that he felt at the moment. Everything that had been thrown at him slid past him
and the one part that stuck was Clark’s last accusation.

The forged pregnancy.

“I overheard your father talking about his suspicions. I didn’t believe it, and didn’t want to
mention it to Lana without first confirming it. I planned to, but then,” Clark pushed himself up
off the table and looked hard at Lex for a moment. “Then, you raped her and she lost the
baby. She thought, I mean, that she lost the baby. So I didn’t know. Now I do.”

With shaking hands, Lex picked up the fallen rock. Clark sounded normal again; like an animal
forced back into captivity, his eyes looked blank, hopeless. Lex turned to Sean. “Did you get
all that?” he asked. “The shifted demeanor, the… hatred?”

Lex had never felt like this before; he had never felt as though someone had gotten the best of
him. He turned back to Clark, and let his anger bubble forth.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he yelled. This time, he knew better than to hit
Clark; instead, he attacked the equipment in the sparse room. With a scream of frustration, he
tore the heart monitor from the floor and threw it, so that Sean had to scuttle out of the way.
The red rock, secured now in its lead box, was also heaved Sean’s way, and it bounced off his
chest, knocking him backward, so that the box landed, closed and harmless, on the floor near
Clark’s head.

He picked up the controller that could cause Clark so much pain, and spun a dial near the top
that Clark had hitherto not noticed. Lex’s rage, his need to destroy expensive equipment when
he was angry, was not scary for Clark. This was.

Lex pressed the green button.

Expecting crippling pain, Clark tensed himself, but instead a warm bloom of hurt started at his
chest, near where the Kryptonite was located and spread slowly to every tingling extremity. He
shifted uncomfortably, not used to this lesser degree of pain, wondering if he’d lose
consciousness, or if Lex would just leave him like this.

“Stand up,” Lex said. His chest heaved as he reached forward and undid Clark’s remaining
restraints. Shaking slightly from the nauseating ache in his body, Clark pushed himself up. He
was hurting too much to try to run right now. He could just barely keep himself from
collapsing.

It was then that Lex let loose on him. He packed into every punch nearly six years of jealousy,
years of a friendship gone to shit, years of wanting everything that Clark had. He hated that
what Clark had said, even while under the influence of the red meteor rock, had affected him
like this. But Clark’s parents had never really loved him, and Clark had never really seen him
as a friend, and Lana had always wanted Clark.

He punched Clark’s face, his detest of that beautiful smile, his love of that smile, the sole
reason he couldn’t feel the pain of Clark’s teeth smashing against his fist. He didn’t notice that
his own blood mixed with Clark’s as he crumpled Clark with a blow to the stomach.

Lex fell to the ground beside Clark and twined his fingers in that long, brown hair. It didn’t
need to be said that he wanted that hair more than almost anything.

Their faces close together, Clark spat blood at him.

“I don’t need to be dosed to know,” Clark said, panting, “that you’re less of a man if you need
to have your ex-best friend captured by military men, locked up and tortured for weeks, but
then still needs to have seven armed guards standing by before you even try to beat me
down.” He laughed, and blood spattered on Lex’s face.

“Not to mention the fact that the meteor rock has me crippled and helpless.”

Lex pushed his head away and took solace in the wince that Clark’s face twisted into when his
head hit the floor.

“Stand up,” Lex said again.

Clark pushed himself to his feet and stood, wavering and defiant, to face Lex. Gesturing with
his head, Lex indicated that Clark should remount the table where he had been fixed.

Once his legs were attached to the table again, Clark felt the soft flow of poisonous radiation
die out. Almost immediately, the wounds on his face began to heal, but, like the surgical
wounds on his chest, they only closed. His hands crept to his face and he felt that there were
still scars, weaving angrily down from his left eye and straight back from his lip, like a cruel
smile.

He stared at Lex. Silently, Lex stared back.

Finally, Lex spoke.

“We’re more alike than you know,” he said. Clark didn’t reply.

“Together,” Lex said, “we’ve managed to destroy the spirit of one Lana Lang.”

“That was you,” Clark said, the effort of speaking physically painful. Voice quiet, defeated, as
though he’d already said this line, he said, “You raped her.”

“She came to me broken,” Lex said. “You broke her heart, Clark. Do you think that she would
have given herself to someone like me otherwise? You knew what I was capable of. I might
have been the car that hit her, but you pushed her in front of me.”

“She’s depressed, now?” Clark asked, forcing tears back and reminding himself of what he’d
sacrificed for her, how he was trapped here, alone and helpless, because of her. He didn’t care
about Lana. She was just another flawed human, and though she seemed innocent, she had
hurt him as badly as he’d hurt her.

Lex, Clark and Lana seemed to be three points of an ominous tower, each part beating at the
other points, until the entire structure would be ready to collapse.

“She’s a whore,” Lex hissed. “She gets drunk every night, and she goes to clubs, and she
fucks whatever pretty boy strikes her fancy.”

Clark froze.

“You’re lying,” Clark said stonily.

“No,” Lex replied, a trace of sadness entering into his voice. “So we’re partners, you and I.”

It was that, the flicker of regret in Lex’s eyes, that convinced Clark that he wasn’t lying. His
stomach twisted as he imagined it—Lana grinding up against some faceless boy, her heavily
painted face smiling seductively and long fingered hands tracing their way around Lana’s
scantly dressed body…

Lex watched Clark’s face. His expression, usually such an accurate indicator of what was going
on behind those green eyes, remained passive. His eyes were somewhere else, though.
Perhaps imagining Lana’s betrayal, perhaps pretending he was with her, and could protect her.

He opened, slowly, the second lead box. There was no change in Clark’s face; if he felt the
effects, he wasn’t letting Lex know. The rock had the same chemical makeup of the other
rocks, the only difference was that, instead of glittering emerald green, or venomous red, it
was a threatening, deadly black.

Lex lifted from the box, and, in one swift motion, pressed it to Clark’s chest.

Clark’s eyes bulged.

Lex hoped he was in pain.

Part THREE: the aftermath

Q15

It had been so long since he had seen the sun. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back,
taking in the glorious heat of the yellow star. He thought of the images that he had of his
home planet, the dully burning red sun, the scarlet reflection in the ice. Though he hadn’t ever
been there, he still thought of it as home. He was different than everyone here; he still
thought of this world as alien.

Turning around, he took in the sight of the facility he had been kept in for the past month. The
fire still burned, and he could hear someone still alive inside: their shrieks were painfully
pungent in his ears. He knew that he could run across the world and still hear those screams.
Something inside him was disturbed at the thought.

He strained his neck, looking, as best he could, down his shoulder blade. There was a mass of
blood and a tangle of healing tissue where the wretched box had resided. He could feel the
tender itch of scars all over him fading, leaving one, prominent one in their wakes, which
glowed dully red; its sharp twists and angles burning into his chest, before disappearing also.

Since he had been awakened, years ago, inside of Kal-el, the last son of Krypton, he had
watched, dormant, silenced by the black Kryptonite and his dominant persona. Now though,
that persona was weak, and cowered behind this stronger, more apathetic mask. The warped
scar, now absent, that had claimed his chest was a reminder of this. He was not the outsider
that had been raised by humans. He was the son of Jor-El and the last remaining descendant
of his planet.

He searched through Clark Kent’s memories, and looking for some sort of hint of what he
should be doing. He knew of Earth’s customs and history, and knew also that there were
certain things that he, as a powerful and beautiful being, would have that most of the rest of
humanity craved.

Money and sex, he thought, nodding to himself.

There was something else, though: power. Humans were a flawed race, but they could be
capable of so much, if they had a cause to unite them. Or, perhaps, he mused, someone to
unite them. It had been Jor-El’s plan from the start—even before he had discovered his
planet’s demise was forthcoming.

But his most recent memories, the ones laced with pain and regret, with hatred and self-
loathing, didn’t allow him to pursue this valiant goal. Humans were more than just flawed.
They had a basic evil that he had never before imagined.

He remembered being forced onto an operating table and the horror of knowing that he was
being opened up like some sort of roast, and that his chest, his beating, breathing organs, all
pulsating to a terrified beat, were some morbid display of deviation.

He felt violated. These people, these humans, had desecrated his body.

Distractedly, he peeled off the hospital scrubs that he had worn for the better part of his stay
in the laboratory. The last time he had been in control he had worn this type of clothing also,
and he thought fondly of the human who had helped him. She talked a lot. She had smiled
rarely, but it had been a charming smile.

He searched through Clark Kent’s memories one more time before pressing them into the back
of his mind. He did not need them any more. Other knowledge, about his abilities on this
planet, about the history and lore of his own planet, came to the forefront of his mind. A city,
the last remnant of Clark Kent’s thoughts, flashed into his head.

Metropolis.

Looking back at the burning building one more time, he grinned to himself, and looking along
the skyline of the alien planet, started to run.

Chloe checked her cell phone voice mail as she sped down a deserted highway towards Lex
Luthor’s newest secret laboratory. It was then that she realized, though she was still too
preoccupied with Clark’s capture to really think about it, that Lana was nearly hysterical with
terror over Lex’s release.

Lana thought that somehow, Chloe could help her.

But Chloe had someone else that she needed to help. Clark had been kidnapped and
experimented on; his secret had been ousted in the most horrifying way possible. Chloe may
not have been as quick to the rescue as Clark with his superpowers could have been, but she
was trying, and hoping, desperately, that she wasn’t too late.

Every time, Chloe mused, no matter what, she’d choose to help Clark.

The security surrounding the facility was suspiciously absent. When she reached the gate, she
left her car, gazed curiously into the empty security stand, where a camera taped the tip of her
car. She sat down at the desk and scrolled backward through the film. There were strange
blank periods, where, she hypothesized, Lex Luthor probably requested that he not be caught
on camera. Lex Luthor would never want to be associated with a place like this.

But other people came and went, joking with the security guard as though they were going to
a desk job, instead of a facility that housed and tortured freaks.

She took the tape and put it into her purse.

She walked from this point, to the large, looming warehouse ahead. Smoke was unfurling in
giant looms from one end of the building. When she craned her neck, it looked as though
there might be a fire still burning barely out of sight. Pulling out the blue print she had printed
off, she noted that this was the wing she had been heading for.

It was a large place, but it didn’t take her long to figure out how to get in. As she approached
the entrance, though, she was taken aback when she realized that the door had been torn free
of its hinges, and tossed aside, leaving twisted metal in the door frame.

She looked closely at the wreck, but had no idea if someone had forced their way in, or out.

The halls were quiet. The walls were very white. Her breathing echoed softly.

The smell of smoke tickled her nostrils. She finally came upon another door that had been
forcefully opened.

She gasped as she entered the room. There was a white operating table that was knocked
aside, and the floor around it was littered with large blood droplets. There was a long, stringy
blood spatter on the opposite wall.

It was that room. She knew it for sure, now, as she inspected the table a little closer; it was
the room that had been in the video, the one where Clark had been strapped down, and the
scientists, if that’s what they were, had been operating on his chest. She shuddered.

She needed to find him.

So she moved on, counting the seconds it took to walk all the way along the string of blood
that had danced across the wall, and moving reluctantly through the doorway. She was back in
the hall.

As she walked through the hall, the occasionally came across more blood; either splattered
violently on the wall, or left carelessly on the floor. She wondered if it was Clark’s; she
wondered if he was still alive, if he was weakened, if he was hurting; briefly, though she hated
herself for it, she wondered if he cried out Lana’s name when he was alone at night.

He was Clark, her mind exclaimed. He would get through anything.

Her hands were shaking as she found another door. This one was just barely open, and the
lights inside were on. The smell of smoke was stronger here, but she didn’t feel as though she
had found the fire. She reached for the door, and then stopped.

Clark wouldn’t be hidden here, with the door open, and the lights so cheerily bright. This room
felt bad. She shouldn’t waste time, she told herself. Clark could be dying somewhere. Clark
could be hurt.

She moved on.

The smell of smoke was thicker in this part of the hall. She coughed and tried to identify the
smell in the smoke: was it bacon? The next door was blackened around the edges; there was a
thick lock hanging open, it was dark with soot until the point where the metal had clicked out
of the base of the lock: it had been closed while the fire had been burning strong.

This meant that someone else had gotten here before her.

As she pulled the heavy door open, she heard a sharp intake of breath. She shoved her hand
into her purse and curled it into a ball; her knuckles rested against something hard as she
inched her way into the carbon coated room.

The smell of meat was stronger in here. The room was not large, but there was a shape, about
the size of a single bed, somewhere near the middle of the room. Around it was a perfect
circle drawn out in deadened flame, as though the fire had been started here, in the middle,
and had worked its way symmetrically outward.

Perhaps, she mused, the circle of flame had started on the outside and moved ominously
inward, instead.

There was a soft whimper from the corner of the room, and Chloe whirled, expecting to see a
terrified Clark huddled in the corner, reaching for her, thankful that she’d finally come and
save him.

But she knew, before she even turned, that it couldn’t be.

A small woman sat, kneeling, next to the horrifying sight of two blistered, bloated bodies. They
weren’t unrecognizably burned, and Chloe realized that they had probably jumped free of the
flames and died of carbon monoxide poisoning before the woman had gotten there.

“Who are they?” Chloe asked, not wanting to get any closer; not wanting to guess because
who they were, she suspected, would reveal to her a hint of who might had killed them. She
couldn’t believe that Clark—she couldn’t even form the notion in her head.

“Just doctors who worked here,” she said, her voice low and steady. “I didn’t know them
particularly well, or even like them. It’s just shocking, you know?”

“Who are you?” Chloe asked. The woman stood, and she was much taller than Chloe was. She
seemed strong; Chloe would have liked her immediately, if they’d met under normal
circumstances.

“Nineva,” she said. “I worked here, too.”

“Oh,” Chloe replied. “Why aren’t you dead?”

Her voice was quiet. “I don’t know.”

Chloe didn’t ask the next logical question. Clark might be a different person than she had
known. Clark had been through torture and lived through his worst nightmare, and if he was
alive… if he was alive, then she was happy. That was all she could ask for, she thought,
looking at some anonymous man’s blistered face. She suspected that people didn’t leave here
alive very often.
And now that she knew that something had truly gone wrong here, that there had been deaths
and surely, they should call someone; she didn’t. Her hand was still in her purse, and she
opened her hand, letting that cold, reassuring thing fall into her palm. She didn’t pull out a cell
phone to call the police. She pulled out a gun, and she leveled it calmly at Nineva’s chest.

“My friend was here,” she said, her voice loud and steady. “You were part of the team that
experimented on him. I want the research destroyed. But first, I want to know where he is.”

Lana’s hands shook as she applied mascara to her already long, curled eyelashes. She
glanced in the mirror. She ran a brush through her hair. She applied one more coat of
mascara.

Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

Shot of vodka; sip of orange juice; has to pee. Her hands shook as she wiggled her underwear
down her legs and pulled her skirt over her knees.

Viktor would be here soon. He wasn’t Clark; he wasn’t the police; but he was tall, and he
would protect her. They would stand outside a club together, and he would glance at his guest
list and she would position herself near the security guards.

She washed her hands. She ran her fingers over her tummy, taut under the tight material.
She almost felt as though she’d dodged a bullet. She’d nearly had that monster’s baby.

Chloe hadn’t answered her phone all day. Maybe, Lana speculated, Lex had already gotten to
her. Maybe, she wondered, as a crystal of sweat ran down her face, Chloe was dead.

She didn’t know it, but Viktor was standing outside her door. He didn’t know why he’d
answered her calls; since Lex had been released from prison the money had stopped, and Lex
refused to see him. He had no reason to be here. He felt nothing for her; she was a project,
just a job. Yet, here he stood, rocking forwards onto the balls of his feet, as a nervous boy on a
first day might do before ringing the doorbell.

He never could resist a girl in peril.

He knocked on the door.

When she slowly pulled it open and revealed herself, Viktor was startled at the mess that
greeted him. She looked sexy as hell, he decided, but like more like a hot diva on cocaine than
the pretty child with schoolgirl like innocence that he had met.

“Are you doing drugs?” he asked.

“No,” she said, her voice low, dramatic. “Just had some drinks. I haven’t slept for a while.”

He offered her his arm, and she took it. She trembled slightly at his touch, and had to give it a
few tries before she got the key in the lock.

“Lex isn’t going to come after you,” he said, trying to sound certain. In truth, he had no idea
what Lex was planning, of course, Lana had no idea that how unsettling it was for him to have
no idea. She just assumed that he expected not to be privy to Lex’s plans.

They walked silently down the stairs. “Lana,” he said, not looking at her. “I know I haven’t
known you that long, but there’s something I need to say.”

He shuffled in front of her and looked into her heavy lidded eyes. They were dark, and
quivered, like the eyes of an animal that’s been cornered. He was giving Lana such an intense,
pleading look that Lana was sure that he was about to tell her that he loved her; that he
wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, or something equally flattering and life altering.
She didn’t love him, but she always wanted to be loved—no matter by whom.

“You’re drinking too much, Lana,” he said solemnly. “You’re just a little girl, with a little liver,
and little livers have low alcohol tolerances…”

Lana pulled her arm away from him. “You’re making yourself sick, Lana,” he continued. “It’s
only seven o’clock, and you’re already smashed.”

“You’re right,” she said, voice low and steady. “You haven’t known me very long. You’ve no
idea what I’ve been through.”

“A lot,” he said, his eyes searching, too blue to be Clark’s. “From what I’ve heard: betrayal,
rape and miscarriage at the hands of Lex Luthor.” She opened her mouth, to protest, to
explain, she didn’t know. “But that’s no reason to drink yourself to death. Don’t you have any
friends, any family that can help you through this?”

Lana stared just past his ear, and his face swirled slowly around that focal point. “No,” she
said finally. “Not any more.”

He held his hand out. Confused, defeated, Lana took it.

Viktor didn’t know why he should care. But maybe, just for tonight, he did. “Then we’ll deal;
take it one day at a time.”

He got her into his car. The light was less bright here, and without its scrutinizing glare she
looked nearly healthy. She would still be the girl with the shocking good looks and perfect
smile. Though, Viktor thought, her distracted sway would give away to sexual predators
exactly how drunk she was. He reached over the gearshift of his car and took Lana’s hand in
his own. Maybe he wasn’t being paid, but tonight, at least, he’d protect her.

Q16

He loved that he could run faster than anyone could see. He had landed after situating
himself, and he ran as far as he could, not stopping to draw breath. He looked at everything,
taking in the bright green of this world, so entirely different from the world he had been taught
was his own. He had watched from behind Clark Kent’s eyes for years, and he had always felt
resentful and jealous of this boy who kept him from truly living. He had hated the scenery that
Clark loved so much.

Now though, he took in the stark beauty of the landscape with naïve appreciation. Some parts
of this land had ice, and were staggeringly similar to Krypton, but some also had vegetation:
trees, grass, corn, flowers, and sometimes he came across animals, and recognized them from
his education. Finally he found the city he had been craving: Metropolis.

He stopped running.

It was then, as he stood silently in the middle of the sidewalk, with people rushing past him
and bouncing off of him as though he were a street post when he realized that he did not
match.

He sighed. People were staring.

A moment later he had disappeared, and was zooming through buildings, until he found
suitable clothes. He did not feel bashful. He simply wanted to blend in until he had gotten his
bearings in this primitive world.

He dressed himself entirely in black. It seemed unassuming, and he remembered how useful it
had been for residents on Krypton: the dark colour would absorb more light from their dying
sun, and would keep them a little bit warmer.
He felt no remorse from having stolen the clothes. These humans were an inferior race—they
weren’t worthless, and they were certainly not unintelligent, or even all that different from him,
but that slight difference was everything. He could, and would, have what he wanted. There
was no reason that he shouldn’t.

He stole money, next. By the time that night had fallen, he had secured a room in the most
expensive hotel he could find. He felt like he needed something cushy after the month he had
spent sleeping in a cell, and the years before that on an old, lumpy bed.

The plan, however, was not to sleep. He only entered the hotel room to open the window all
the way, noting what the building looked like, before he jumped.

And flew.

It was a wonderful feeling; it was freer than he had ever felt. He had spent most of his
existence jailed: trapped inside a body not his own; held against his will in a cage,
experimented on and tortured. Flying over the streets of Metropolis, dressed in black and
cloaked in darkness, he was free.

He wanted to learn more about this race of humans. He wanted to go where the beautiful,
powerful people were and then, he wanted to conquer them. When he thought about it, he
could accomplish so much on this world that the humans, so uniformly inept, could not. He
could vanquish poverty, destroy disease; he could advance their technology and unite them as
a common entity.

He was the son of Jor-El. He was not evil. He felt stung, though; his father had trusted these
people, these Kents, these humans, with his life. His father had hoped that they would protect
him against starvation, entrapment and discrimination. Right now, he didn’t know if he was
angrier at his surrogate family, for letting him suffer, or at his own father, for believing in the
wrong people.

So he would be selfish for now. He would learn about what he’d been missing in life while he’d
been held against his will. He’d experience, he supposed, what Clark hadn’t.

He landed discretely in an alley.

He watched, for a while, as people walked by, their steps cautious, a little bit frightened, as
though the dark hid from them what really lurked ahead. They looked, to Kal-El, like nearly
blind pilgrims, hoping that each step would bring them a little bit closer to absolution.

They were heading home; they were looking for a decent bar; they were searching for a place
to dance, to drink, to forget. Every one of them wanted comfort; a release.

He joined them, undeterred by the darkness. His pupils dilated, taking in the light of the moon
so that the streets of Metropolis nearly glowed like it was day. He walked past long queues and
anxious people, peering above the heads of others, checking how far away they were from the
door.

As he walked past an especially prestigious looking one, he heard someone call out his name.

“Kal!”

He looked back. There was a man, slightly shorter than himself, but nearly as broad, standing
behind a velvet chord. He drew the chord aside and ushered Kal in. Kal didn’t know how this
man would know his real name, but could only assume that at some point in Clark Kent’s life
he must have used the name. In any case, Kal flashed the man a grin and then smiled
apologetically at the women still in line. The simple knowledge of a name seemed to grant
him access to a place that all these people desired to be in.

This was his advantage. It was subtle now, but it would grow.
“How’ve you been, man?” the door keeper asked. “I haven’t seen you in ages.” He did not
hug Kal, though he wanted to. The boy had been a regular at the club for a few months, and
had always been friendly to the bouncer.

“Adequate,” Kal admitted. “But now, better than.”

“What have you been up to?” He followed Kal a little ways into the club, and gestured for a
different bouncer to take his place.

“Well,” Kal grinned again, but it wasn’t Clark Kent’s winning smile; it was a knowing smirk.
“Let’s just say I didn’t stay away because I chose to.” The man nodded at the bouncer and his
girlfriend as they walked past, and turned back to Kal, ready to inquire about the
circumstances that kept him away, and ask about women and money and work.

“You went back home, I guess,” he said, leaning up against a wall, next to the boy. He had
sometimes doubted Kal’s age, but had never asked for identification. There was just
something about him; it was the swagger, or the smile, that told the man that he would be
better off leaving it alone.

“Home,” Kal repeated, and then laughed. Home was Krypton. Home was gone. “Hardly.”

“Clark?”

A girl, with wide, dark eyes and a weak, imploring voice, stared up at him. She stared up at Kal
as though he were her savior, finally come to rescue her.

But Kal seemed not to recognize her. Slowly, the bouncer backed away. He recognized her.
She’d come looking for him the last night that Kal had been around. He didn’t remember
recognizing the name she called him that time, either.

Kal looked down at her. While he could appreciate her physical beauty, he hardly wanted to
look deep into Clark Kent’s memories to discover who she was. He’d put that life behind him.
If she wanted this body, if she wanted Clark, she’d have to settle for Kal.

He let a smile spread over his face. To be with Kal would be anything but settling.

Lana stared at the man through a haze. She knew that she’d had too much to drink, but she
was sure, absolutely sure, that this man was Clark.

He’d been gone for so long. She wished she was sober enough to cry. She couldn’t stand the
thought of anyone touching her; every caress seemed a violation, but she knew that with
Clark, it would be different. With Clark, she would be home.

“Where did you go?” she asked. She knew he could hear her, even over the music. She had
seen what he could do, before the wedding she’d been forced into. She’s listened to his
testimony during the trial—he’d heard her heartbeat from halfway around the world.

“Does it matter?” Clark replied. His voice was different, harder.

“Of course it matters,” Lana whispered. “Clark… what you did for me…”

“My name is Kal-El.” He sounded sure. He could call himself Aster for all she cared.

“Take me home?” she asked. Her conviction wavered as he wrapped his arm around her. He
felt foreign. But the hand on her arm was a Clark hand. His eyes looked like ice but they were
Clark’s green behind the frost. In that moment, though, she didn’t care if he was Clark. He
looked close enough that through the drunken film that separated her logical mind from the
world, he was safe; he was home.
He was exactly what she’d been looking for. And maybe, she thought, when she woke up with
him, it wouldn’t be some nameless look-alike, the way it had been with Viktor. Maybe, when
she woke up, he really would be Clark.

She closed her eyes and embraced the whirlwind that her night had become. They were
suddenly inside, in a cushy hotel room; the dim lights revealing Clark, his eyes a touch softer;
his smile less hungry. He held her to his chest, the way Clark had done so many times before.
She muttered his name.

He was Clark. He was magical.

She loved him so much.

There were police everywhere. Some of them, she knew, were not police, exactly; there were
detectives and scientists and Federal Agents. There were doctors, paramedics and, as of yet,
no reporters.

Except Chloe. She stood away from the swarm of officials, clutching her camera to her,
sneaking the occasional picture of the fire. Her hands trembled; she increased the shutter
speed to get more light, but her shaking hands made the spotlights into streamers of colour.
She wished Jimmy were here.

The woman that Chloe had found was in handcuffs. Nineva, she said her name was. She’d
been very helpful at gunpoint. Chloe had taken the papers, the computer hard drives, the USB
keys and the gun and placed them carefully in the trunk of her car. She’d returned to the lab;
she’d called the cops.

They’d been interrogating her for hours. She thought that it was probably almost very early
morning. She’d made up a story about scoping out a good site for a bush party, and they’d
chastised her and soon forgotten about her. They were far more interested in what was in the
building.

They’d found rooms full of test subjects. Chloe shuddered to think of the ordeal they’d
suffered.

They’d found hours of video documenting what had been done to them. Chloe was glad that
she’d gotten Clark’s tapes out of there.

They’d found the charred remains of the scientists; the thick metal door torn from its hinges;
hospital scrubs torn to bits and discarded on the front lawn; blood painted hallways and broken
restraints.

They’d found the body of Lex Luthor. Chloe had eavesdropped the best she could, and from
what she’d heard, he’d been practically torn apart.

She kept telling herself, again and again, that Clark couldn’t have done this. Clark hadn’t burnt
those people alive or ripped open Lex’s chest. He couldn’t have.

But she couldn’t think of any other being who could have.

She awoke strange feelings in him. He could feel thoughts forming, not his own, screaming in
pain and anger. He could feel revulsion; he could feel hate. Clark Kent, just below Kal’s
conscious, wanted to know how the woman he had sacrificed so much for could possibly be
living how she was.

Kal closed his eyes and let the alien thoughts wash over him. That this drunken waif could
ignite such anger in his other self excited him. It aroused him; for once, he was not the
powerless partner; he truly controlled his future. The emotions that the too-human Clark
experienced were trivial to a Kryptonian like Kal.

And Kal could have this girl; she clearly wanted him. Kal could have her and Clark would have
to take a backseat, and protest in his weak, quiet way.

The boy at the door, the one Lana had stood with, had looked too similar to Clark to be
shrugged off. She had replaced him.

Kal pushed those thoughts away, disinterested in names and histories, and swept the girl into
his arms. They were back in his hotel room before the intoxicated girl could get her bearings.
A name rose to her lips; soft and trembling, she whispered, “Clark.”

“Sorry,” he said, his voice deep and honest. “You have me confused with someone else.”

Her eyes focused and she stared up at him in wonderment. He placed her down, gently. She
clung to his hand, as though afraid he would disappear if she let go.

She reached up, with her other hand, and trailed her fingers down his cheek, pausing for a
moment on the mole high on his right cheekbone.

“No,” she said. “I haven’t.”

And she stood on her toes and kissed him; he took comfort in the human contact. After a
month of being locked away, of being prodded at, of being torn apart, the touch of her lips took
his breath away. His thoughts, and Clark’s thoughts, trickled from him and left only exquisite
silence. It was beautiful.

He wrapped his arms around her, and she was so tiny that his hands came back around to
himself. He could feel her relax into his grip, as though she weren’t trapped; enfolded in arms
that could move mountains.

No matter what the man said, he kissed like Clark did; he held her like Clark did. It felt just
different enough to be new, exciting, slightly terrifying. Wherever Clark had been, whatever
had happened to him, it had changed him. She only cared that he could still love her.

Kal deepened the kiss, moved one hand to her head, buried his fingers in her hair, listened to
the sounds of her sighing and their breathing deep and synchronized. She was indescribably
small, and a desperate, human part of him was frightened by her delicateness. The larger,
stronger part of him was incredibly turned on by it.

All at once, he shifted his hands to her thighs, and lifted her; legs wrapped around his hips and
gripped.

He started to move, planning to slam her up against a wall, tear off her clothes and fuck her
hard enough to leave bruises, but the tiny fingers of one hand caressed his own and at the last
minute he turned, so that his back crashed against the wall.

Dry wall splintered.

Lana moaned.

She felt the world slow into a blur of pain and desperation. His hands were just a little too
rough; a little too harsh. She could feel herself tumbling into memory, but it wasn’t Lex’s
hands that haunted her.

She could remember how he’d touched her the few times they’d been together; softly, as
though she were about to break; and after, how she’d begged him to touch her—this was what
he’d been afraid of. It was this violence, this passion that he’d been too frightened of
unleashing.
His fingers dug deep into her thighs. He pulled away from her.

“Clark,” she whispered. They were both out of breath, gasping slighting in the aftermath of
their kiss. Their eyes met, and she understood that he’d been through an ordeal as terrible as
hers had been. Those betrayals had changed them.

“You can touch me,” she said, pulling him close, burying her face in his neck. “I won’t break.”

Clark’s voice was low; his words were harsh. His fingers clutched harder into her legs.

“I know.”

Q17

Lana’s eyes flickered open. She felt shame boil in her throat as she realized that this wasn’t
the first time in the last few months that she’d woken up in a stranger’s apartment.

Memories from the night before tip toed to the surface of her mind. Viktor had picked her up
from her Metropolis apartment; they’d stood in front of the club, and she’d already been pretty
smashed.

Then, a face flickered into her mind. She rolled over.

Clark.

She reached out and touched his face.

Kal felt fingers brush across his cheek. Without opening his eyes, he let a flurry of emotions
wash over him. He half wanted to recoil, to curl almost fetal and shudder from the horrible
memories that touch brought him. His second impulse was to crush the hand.

He stifled both. The hand was smaller than Sean’s had been, and though similarly soft. Clark
Kent, the man of emotions and barely contained impulses, didn’t exist any more. He couldn’t
exist any more. He was far too damaged; too torn.

He opened his eyes. A beautiful, exhausted looking girl was appraising him. He gave her a
look—an almost sneer—and got out of bed. She squealed as the blankets fell off of her, and
gazed at him as he walked, unabashed to the shower. Though his flight had gotten rid of most
of the stench of that place, he still longed to feel warm water flowing over him.

He wondered if she’d still be there when he returned. He wasn’t sure what the etiquette for
emotionless sex was.

It hadn’t exactly been emotionless, though. Clark was there, too, and the emotions he felt
were powerful enough for the both of them. He turned on the shower, as hot as it would go,
and stepped in, turning his face to the faucet. He thought of Clark’s hatred, of the remnants of
love and awe, of the disgust at the thought of other men touching her, of the terror that Kal
might hurt her.

Lana stood outside the bathroom. There was a full length mirror there, and she ran her fingers
over her hip. There was a hand shaped bruise there, and another on her shoulder. There were
matching ones on either thigh. She hadn’t been this beaten since Lex… even then, the marks
were lumpy and nondescript. None were so perfectly shaped as these.

She placed her hand awkwardly over the hand print on her thigh. The other, she placed on the
bathroom door. Where had Clark gone? Who was this robot who had taken over his body?

She thought of when Chloe had been taken over by a vengeful spirit. She thought of Chloe’s
parasite; of when the will of a fellow student and hopeful prom queen had slipped into Chloe’s
body.
Any of those could be afflicting Clark. He’d been gone for months; she had no idea where he’d
been, or what had been done to him.

He emerged, a towel wrapped around his waist. Blushing, Lana pulled the blanket up off the
floor and covered herself with it.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“Just a little,” she replied.

They stood.

“Clark,” she said.

“My name is Kal,” he said. “Sorry, I didn’t get yours.”

“It’s Lana,” she said, sounding shocked.

“Lana,” he repeated. “It’s a nice name. Reminds me of my mother’s name.”

“Martha?” she asked, desperately.

His brows furrowed. “Lara.”

“Clark,” she said, she begged.

He closed his eyes. Searching. Clark was gone. He couldn’t say he wasn’t pleased. It was a
little unsettling, though, to be the only voice in his mind.

“Sorry,” he said again. “Do you need money for a cab?”

She picked up her clothes, slipping them on as best she could. She didn’t want to lose him; he
was Clark, down to the blue flecks in his green eyes. “Can I get your phone number?” she
asked.

“Don’t have one,” he said. He had grabbed another towel from the bathroom and was using it
to dry off his hair.

“Email?”

“Don’t have one,” he repeated.

“Last name?”

“My name is Kal-El,” he said, and at last, recognition grabbed onto Lana and she realized.

The people from the ship, the ones hell-bent on destruction and they’d been looking for
someone. ‘Callel’, it had sounded like. She hadn’t cared, at the time, she’d just wanted to get
them to the meteor rocks. She hadn’t even registered what they’d been looking for.

“Please, Clark,” she said. “I understand, now. You don’t have to lie to me anymore, I know. I
know where you’re from, what you are. I don’t care, Clark, I love you. Please, let me call
Chloe, let me call your mother.” He frowned. “They’ll know what to do. Or Lois, even, let me
call Lois.”

He knew that name. “Lois,” he said. “She talks a lot.” He smiled. “Doesn’t like uncomfortable
silences. Nicorette addiction.”

Lana frowned. She had her cell phone out. She was dialing.
“I’m leaving,” he said.

“Clark,” she said. She seemed to be stuck; wishing, hoping, that Clark would suddenly be
himself again.

Martha was on the phone. She was shocked; asking Lana to describe his behaviour. Kal
moved lazily; pulling a shirt over his head, buckling a black leather belt around his hips. He
was unsure what to make of this girl’s words, but he couldn’t force himself to care. She
seemed shallow; without much history. These humans had little more to offer him than their
stories.

“The door locks automatically,” he said. Lana looked up. He could hear a woman’s voice on
the other end of the phone.

He had pulled on a pair of socks, and was idly tying his shoes. “You can call room service, if
you want,” he added. “Their Thai menu is spectacular.”

Then, Martha yelled something, and he heard it. “Tell him,” she gasped, “that I can bring him
to the sign.”

He paused. Lana held the phone limply by her head.

“The stones have been united. The sign is meaningless.”

He took the phone from Lana’s hand. He snapped it shut. Lana looked up at him, tears in her
eyes, and she said to herself, over and over, that this was Clark. It had to be Clark.

“Can I call Chloe?” she asked. Her eyes begged; her lips trembled. He was looking back at
her, now, but no longer with that unconcerned, uninterested expression. His eyes closed for a
moment, and when they opened again, they were soft.

Kal thought of how it had been, sleeping with that giddy, drunk girl, and suddenly he realized
that the girl standing in front of him was much more. She was broken; disturbed; she had been
hurt badly—perhaps as badly as he had been. He reached out for her, strangely interested.

“Who hurt you?” he asked, and Lana nearly sobbed. His voice was Clark’s again, she was sure
of it. He reached out for her, placing one hand in the small of her back and drawing her close.

“You know who,” she whispered, not wanting, not daring, to say his name.

“Babe,” he said, his voice still soft, “you can tell me.”

He wrapped his other arm around her, so that she was held in a hug, her face pressed to his
chest. It was the closest to home she’d ever felt.

“Lex,” she said.

“Lex Luthor?” he asked, holding her away for a moment, looking into her dark green eyes. She
nodded, and he brought her close again. “We have more in common than I thought,” he
muttered into her hair.

She didn’t understand it: his sudden compassion. But she wasn’t about to question it.

A tear fell from her eye and he reached for her face, as though he’d heard the tear, and wiped
it away. He tilted her chin so that their eyes met.

Kal loved what he saw in her eyes. The eyes mirrored the pain, the fear and the hatred of his
own. She had buried her memories in alcohol and anonymous sex and he had locked his
twisted self into a box in his unconscious, but they both were dealing as best as they knew
how.
And he knew what she wanted. Strangely enough, he wanted to give it to her.

So he kissed her, holding her softly, inhaling her scent and then looked at her.

“Clark?” she asked.

“Kal,” he gently corrected.

Clark had surfaced again; his presence was loud in Kal’s head. With a tender grin, Kal forced
him away, and moved his hand into Lana’s hair.

He pulled her shirt over her head. He ran his hand over the bruise on her shoulder. “I’m
sorry,” he said.

She laughed quietly, surprising herself at the sound. “I don’t care,” she said. “I’m just glad
you’re here.”

She threw her head back as he kissed down her neck, and for once, the feel of skin on hers
didn’t make her shudder. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had touched her while
she was sober, and it felt perfect. With one hand still buried in her hair, and the other rubbing
the bruise delicately, he was Clark again, she was sure of it. She wanted to say his name over
and over, she wanted to hold him close and chant it into his chest, whisper it into his hair,
breathe it into his ear.

He swept her up, bridal style, and she laughed as she wrapped her arms around his neck. He
lowered her onto the bed, taking a moment to pull off his shirt before he lay down next to her.
He kissed her collarbone, jutting a bit too sharply from below her neck, and then continued
downward. He paused when he reached the wire of her bra. He looked up at her, and his hand
ghosted over her skin. Pinching the wire between her breasts, there was a quiet snapping
noise, and the bra fell to the side.

His smile was cute, sheepish, perfectly Clark. He placed his hand on her stomach. “Does it
feel right?” he asked, as though he knew exactly what she’d been through.

And for once, it didn’t matter that his behaviour didn’t make sense, or that he’d been gone for
so long. It didn’t matter that he was hiding things from her and always had been, or that he
might be some sort of extra terrestrial creature. She leaned towards him and their lips met
again. “It feels right,” she said. She giggled. “You broke my bra.”

“I’ll buy you a new one,” he muttered, his lips whispering over her pale skin. They ghosted
over her nipples and she arched her back, moaning, burying her hands in his hair. Lying next
to her still, he ran one hand down to her hip and over the bruise he’d left from last night.
Instead of holding on to her, the way he’d done before, he just touched her, because he knew
it was exactly what she wanted.

She needed this, the way that humans needed oxygen and nutrients to survive. She’d been
waiting for this; for her beloved Clark to return to her. Kal wanted to fix her; he wanted to help
her heal because he needed to believe that if there was someone that could help him heal,
they’d do it, too.

So he kept his motions tender and soft and gentle. When he turned her on her side to face
him, he looked deep into her eyes. When he draped her leg over his body he ran his fingers
along it as though captivated. He opened Clark’s mind, just a little, and brought out a look of
longing and of affection and the total knowledge of his history with this rag doll of a girl.

This way, when he cupped her face with one hand and caressed her leg with another and
buried himself inside of her, she could truly believe that they were making love.

And when he disappeared, she could read the note left on his pillow and believe that he’d
opened up to her and been truthful, for once.
Lana, the note read. I will always love you. I always wanted to tell you the truth: where I’m
from, what I am, and now that you know I feel liberated. I wish that I could have given you
what you deserve. I wish I could have stayed to hold you each time I saved your life, or
explained every truth of why I had to disappear. I wish I could have taken you flying.

This time, when I leave, I can tell you the truth.

I’m going home.

I will always be indebted to you; where I’m from, people are cold and you, Lana Lang, are the
source of my humanity; you have always been, and will always be the place from which I draw
my conscience.

You looked too peaceful to wake.

Live free and pure and know that I am always with you.

Love forever, Clark.

She held the note to her chest, clenched in her shaking fingers. She did not cry.

Q18

Chloe returned to Martha.

News of Clark had already reached her. Lana had called, Martha had explained, and she’d
heard his voice.

Though Chloe had the tapes and files in her car, she couldn’t bring herself to show the woman
what her son had gone through. She paraphrased, instead.

“He was taken to a lab,” she said. “I found the key in the caves, and so I started to suspect
that he hadn’t quite gotten to his ethereal classroom in the North.”

“And you found him?” Martha asked, her voice breathless.

“I found where he was kept. I think… I think he escaped.”

“Thank God,” Martha gasped. “But Chloe, I think that he’s been affected by black Kryptonite.”

Chloe’s eyes widened in shock. “Black Kryptonite?” she asked. “Green, red, silver… black?”

“It turns him into his Kryptonian personality,” Martha explained. “Like how Jor-El programmed
him. The same rock has turned him back, before. Lana was with him, but her cell phone
hasn’t been working since this morning.”

“I can GPS it,” Chloe said, pulling out her laptop and glancing around for an Ethernet cord.

A few hours later, they drove into the driveway of a hotel. Clasping hands, with the black-K in
a bag, they stormed the lobby. Martha became Senator Kent, demanding the room number of
“Kal-El” and the respective key.

But the door wasn’t locked.

Lana sat cross legged on the floor. She was wrapped in a robe.

“I didn’t want to leave until dark,” she explained to a shocked Martha and Chloe. “My clothes
are kind of skanky.”

“He’s gone,” Martha asked desperately.

She held out the note.

“I know about him, Mrs. Kent,” Lana said. “He’s an… alien. He says he’s gone home.”

Chloe and Martha looked at each other, but neither one explained to Lana that Krypton had
been destroyed; that Clark was the last of their kind.

Martha returned to the car to grab some extra clothes and Chloe helped Lana to her feet.

“He loved me,” she said. Their eyes met, and she continued, “That’s all I needed to know.”

Chloe smiled sadly and stroked Lana’s hair. She knew Clark better than Lana; he was never
planning on leaving the planet. The letter had been to comfort her; to make her complacent so
that she wouldn’t look for him.

Chloe and Martha helped Lana into the truck and they drove back to Smallville. Martha set
Lana up in the guest room since Chloe was already using Clark’s, and she stayed the night,
despite her responsibilities in Topeka.

Once Lana was settled in bed Chloe and Martha sat down at the dinner table across from each
other, and they knew, without speaking, that neither one of them would ever stop searching.

Kal hovered somewhere above Egypt. When he closed his eyes, he could hear the sounds of
the world. His senses had been much sharper since he’d escaped.

When he listened like this, it was clear to him that the world didn’t deserve his anger. It was
the noise of children that convinced him. He could hear the music of laughter and the sound of
sobbing and it was innocent and pure and needed to be protected.

He thought of how naïve he’d been before. He remembered how much he’d loved Lex, who
had turned into such a… a monster. He remembered how he’d devoted himself to Lana and
how he’d lied to her, to protect her, he’d believed. He thought of how she had spun from man
to man and back to him, eventually. It nearly hurt him that it no longer hurt; that he no longer
cared for her as he did.

Clark Kent, he thought.

He closed his eyes. Even now, it was hard to stop lying; even to himself.

Because when Lex had pressed that black meteor rock to his chest, he had been terrified that
the spirit of Kal-El, the true son of Krypton, would come bursting forth like an angry beast that
had been caged for years. He had thought that he would take over, like he’d done before, and
leave Clark Kent as nothing but a passenger in his own body.

It hadn’t happened like that. Instead of an explosion, there had been a shift, like a strong
current. What he experienced was a singular moment where suddenly understanding had
flooded every molecule of his being. And though he had pressed Clark Kent’s memories away,
pressed his humanity as far back in his consciousness as he could, he hadn’t become a
different person.

He hadn’t become a robot, brainwashed by his biological father.

Kal opened his eyes and looked down. He’d drifted somewhere over the Mediterranean Sea.
Finally, he let the truth fill his mind; he realized that he was himself. Clark Kent, Kal-El, or
someone new.

He understood his powers, his purpose and his heritage. He remembered, though he often
wanted not to, his humanity and history.
At the time, in that lab, he had known what it would take to be free again, and with terrible
efficiency, had done it. He had executed his plan; he had taken back his life.

And he had still been Clark. He had become a horrifying version of himself; sculpted by the
months of isolation and torture and solidified by the black stone. The stone had given him
knowledge and confidence.

He had suddenly understood that he could move fast enough, even in his weakened condition,
to tear the box from under his skin. Though he hadn’t seen the sun in months, his ribs where
the box had been fastened had snapped and healed within a few seconds, and as he smacked
Lex across the room, his own blood flew from his fingers and painted the walls.

The world had slowed. He had watched as the guards had started to pull guns from lead
holsters, and he disabled them before the Kryptonite bullets could clear the lead protection.
He turned last to Sean, and tore the boxes from his hands before knocking him out.

His blood had sprayed over the walls. He stood silently for a second; he hadn’t been the one
to destroy the equipment that littered the room, but he was responsible for the human debris.

He had reached down and picked up the black stone; known, in that moment, that it would
never hold sway over him again.

He had glanced at the mirror that hid Dr. Williams and some nameless woman.

The shards of glass hadn’t finished falling to the floor; the Dr. Williams senior and junior were in
each of Kal’s hands. His anger had been pure and conclusive. One of these men had betrayed
him and put him here. The other had ensured his continuous pain and discomfort; had taunted
him and treated him like an animal.

Unceremoniously, he’d thrown them into a room. The younger man was still passed out, but
the gray haired Dr. Williams stared at him.

“Clark,” he’d said. “Think of your mother. Think of that boy she loved.”

Kal had looked at him blankly.

“You killed that boy,” he’d said before he had done what he’d sworn never to do; what he’d
never thought himself capable of doing.

His powers were getting stronger every second that the wretched box was out of his body.
He’d started the fire around them with his eyes; and ability that they’d never torn from him.
He had enjoyed how it had shocked the doctor and how he’d looked upon Kal as though he
were the devil.

When he returned to the experimentation room, he’d stepped over the guards and picked Lex
up delicately.

He’d walked slowly to the room where he’d spent every dark, horrifying night wishing he could
see the stars.

He’d waited.

“Clark?” he remembered Lex saying.

“No,” Kal had replied. He sat on the edge of the bed. Lex had tried to sit up.

“God,” Lex had hissed.

“We’re more alike than you know,” Kal had said softly, quoting Lex. “We both have this…
darkness. I tried to protect you from it.”
“Why me?” Lex sounded scared. Kal couldn’t remember ever hearing him scared before.

“Not you,” Kal had whispered. “I meant all of you.”

Lex’s face had twisted, and deep in the darkness of the Mediterranean Sea, Kal could still see
that deformed, horrified expression.

He could still see how Lex’s blood had bubbled around his finger tips, and how it had sounded,
pathetic and plastic, as he’d punctured lungs.

He could hear the pop of each finger jammed between each rib.

And the earth shaking crack of his sternum breaking. Lex hadn’t screamed.

Finally, Clark had looked at the corpse. His hatred was gone. He didn’t feel scared or
disgusted or guilty; he felt empty. He had gone to the sink in the corner of the room and
washed his hands. He’d moved through the facility as though in a trance; he’d traced each
memory of Lex in his mind and tucked it away, so that it was nearly as though he’d never
existed.

He had heard the guards stirring. He hadn’t cared if they escaped.

He had heard a woman crying. He hadn’t really minded if she lived.

He could hear his heart beating.

He had torn the metal door at the end of the hall off its hinges. He could smell smoke.

Somewhere in the world, he could smell smoke, even now.

It had been so long since he’d seen the sun.

As he’d stepped out of hell and back into the world, he’d tilted his head back and remembered
what it had been like to be Clark Kent. Now, as he watched the sun rise from miles above the
earth, he remembered again: everything he’d done and everything that had happened to him.

He remembered his mom and Chloe, waving at him, his backpack over one shoulder and the
farm house behind them.

He remembered Lex, grinning at him from across a pool table.

He remembered Lana, kissing him softly on the cheek after their walk in the cemetery and first
real conversation.

And he didn’t think that he could recover from this. He didn’t think that this was a place he
could come back from.

Unbidden, he thought of Lois Lane, and how she’d entered his life in a blaze of headlights and
awkward grins. He’d asked who she was, and she’d replied as though he were an idiot not to
already know.

A brief smile surprised his face and his eyes came open. He looked down and realized that
he’d passed over the Mediterranean and was pretty close to the Swiss Alps.

Maybe he’d never be the Clark Kent he had been; maybe he’d never be able to forgive the
people who’d captured him and humiliated him; but that didn’t mean he’d never heal.

And as the yellow sun came out fully from behind the mountains, he let strength and warmth
fill his body. Shifting from his passive position, he let his ugly thoughts fall away.
The scenery blurred beneath him and land became the Atlantic Ocean, which soon became
land again, and ahead of him, the green faded to white and he paused, only for a moment,
over Kansas before heading north.

END