Lex had picked a great evening to get upset and storm away from the table. For the first time since he had left the hospital, he was actually hungry.

When the initial anger had faded, most of what he felt was exhaustion. He had been awake for almost 6 hours, and that was still usually his limit. But when he laid down, he found he couldn't get himself to settle down enough to sleep.

He kept thinking about kryptonite. He was willing to believe that Smallville was the only place in the world where aliens had touched down. It seemed like something that could have been extremely rare.

On the one hand, he had always wondered if it was more common than he thought—after all, no one else in the country seemed to know much about what was going on in Smallville, even though the sheer number of murders at the high school should have put them on every watchlist in the world. There might have been other little towns with alien issues he knew nothing about.

But writing off one town as the product of a corporation's pollution was easy. Looking around at all of the lore books in Bobby's house… If there were other cases, hunters would know. And they certainly didn't. The look Bobby gave him when he used the word "alien" was the same look Lex would have given before Clark impossibly survived that car accident three years ago.

So aliens were rare. Maybe alien minerals were rare. Lex knew of several different types of kryptonite, but for the most part, they hadn't been found outside of Smallville. The infected monsters, though, could be found anywhere. Lex knew that he and Dean (and Sam, and probably Clark) had to run a pack of mutant werewolves out of town when Lex was 17. He was pretty sure he had encountered a mutant bird on the island, if that has just been a hallucination. And the infected demons from the summer before, they wouldn't have stayed in the same place. In fact, they had seem to be actively interested in kryptonite, in Clark. Meteor mutant monsters were everywhere. There was no escaping that.

But there was something bigger on his mind. If kryptonite could mutate monsters, change them, what else could? Lex had never gotten to run any tests on any particular monster; it wasn't the kind of research he did, and he was always nervous it would make him too much like his father, somehow. But because of that, he didn't really know exactly what about kryptonite caused the mutations. It wasn't exactly radiation, at least not any kind of radiation that could be picked up by a standard Geiger counter. It did cause some monsters to give off radiation. But if kryptonite could breed entirely new monsters, that followed completely different rules and required different methods to hunt and kill them, what else could have that effect? Could there be other alternate versions of Jen and werewolves and demons and shape shifters and ghosts and everything else? How could anyone ever go into a hunt certain of what they were dealing with?

Bobby seemed so certain about everything. Lex wasn't feeling so certain about him. On some level, Lex understood his reaction. He did the same thing when his own pride was hurt. On another level, though, it felt dangerous to him. People relied on Bobby for information their lives would depend on. Bobby couldn't be pushing away new intel just because it was a new or sounded weird to him.

It made Lex nervous. Dean was one of those people who relied on Bobby; he wasn't much for doing research himself.

When the sky out the window had gone dark and Lex was fairly certain Bobby had gone to bed, Lex picked himself up and went out into the living room. More than anything, he wanted to find his phone, but if he found anything else along the way, anything that would give him any more information about Bobby himself, he wouldn't have minded that.

Somewhere in his mind, he felt like maybe what he was doing was a bad idea. But he was really, really tired, and he didn't feel like he would be able to sleep until he got a hold of Dean. He checked both ways in the hallway and peeked into the kitchen before settling down to the messiest areas in the living room.

He looked around in the piles of junk and papers and books, but he wasn't really expecting to find anything there. He figured Bobby wouldn't have been that sloppy. There was a desk with a locked drawer, though. That seemed like it might be promising.

Over the past couple of years, Lex had picked up a lot of skills he never thought he would need. Lock picking was one of them. He would've been able to do it a lot quicker if his fingers were working; they kept slipping, weak with exhaustion.

Finally, the lock turned, and Lex began to rummage around inside. He didn't find his phone; what he found was much more interesting.

Photos. A woman, with short blonde hair and a sweet smile. Bobby was in a lot of the photos, too. They look happy. Along with the photos were a lot of articles and clippings from copies of books, about demons. How to summon them, how to trap them, how to kill them, exorcisms.

The story it all told chilled Lex. He had accused Bobby of being careless. And it had absolutely been the wrong accusation to make.

"Find what you were looking for?"

Lex shot up. All of his fatigue was gone. "Bobby, I didn't mean to—"

"I don't care what you meant to do, Lex. I'm calling Dean in the morning, there's got to be another safe house you can go to. You're not welcome back here."

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Lex's heart pounded, deep and hard and slow, but he didn't resent the words at all. "Fair enough," he said. "You have my apologies."

"Go to bed, Luthor."

"Yes, sir." Lex felt bad that the only place he had to go was Bobby's guest room. If he had his way… "Bobby, if you give me my phone, I can call a helicopter and be out tonight—"

"I said go to bed!"

Lex started, and he hurried to the guest room.

----------------------------------------

Dean thought about going back to the Kent house. He really didn't know where else to go for new information.

Halfway to the farm, though, it occurred to him that if they knew anything else about how to persuade the AI, they would've told him. And as it was, he was about ready to start throwing punches. Aunt Martha and Uncle Jon were stressed and mournful enough about Clark's absence; they didn't need Dean to come in and start venting about his inability to get through to an alien computer.

So he turned his car around and headed back to the mansion. He would just have to be careful about not eating or drinking anything there, but as long as he did that, he assumed he'd probably be safe. He doubted any traps were meant for him, and there wasn't a high chance he would stumble into some thing if he didn't follow Lex's usual routines. And if any of his staff were untrustworthy, they wouldn't be after Dean.

Dean went up to the guest room where he usually stayed, paced angrily for a bit, threw some things off the table, and then settled down. Throwing things wasn't going to get him anywhere. Instead, he grabbed some beer he had bought for himself and drank for a little while until the sharp edges of frustration started to wear away.

He was careful not to go overboard. He needed his wits about him, without the distraction of his anger and fear. But even when he could think clearly, he didn't know what to do next. This wasn't an ordinary hunt. There was no research to do, no lore to consult. Those caves were the only link he had. At least, the only link he knew of—he hadn't known Clark's secret for very long, and this kind of strategy wasn't his strong suit. Really, Lex would know what to do more than anyone, but Dean wasn't sure if he should call him. He would probably make some excuse to come out there, and Dean wasn't sure if he was comfortable with that yet.

He knew his dad would want him to call him, but his dad was the last person he would reach out to for help with something alien—he did not want to be having that conversation right now. He could always call Bobby, but Bobby also had his hands full, and Lex might overhear the conversation, and Bobby wasn't in on Clark's secret. Dean would make that call if he had to, but if there was another option, someone who knew Clark's secret and was experienced with hunting, someone smart enough to have some ideas about strategy…

Dean sighed heavily. He was going to have to bite the bullet. He called up Sam.

He should have predicted the outcome. Sam didn't pick up. He looked down at the time — it was pretty late at night, but he was sure Sam was still up. Bobby might not have been, but Sam was in college. College students didn't turn in early.

"Come on, Sammy," Dean muttered under his breath, and he texted three words: It's about Clark.

His phone rang less than a minute later.

"Hey Sam."

"Is Clark OK?"

"Well, that's a good question. His biological dad's voice guided him into some opening in that cave, and today the voice told me Clark needed to be reborn or something like that. Sounds like he's coming back sooner or later, but I need him sooner."

"Is this about a hunt?"

"Not exactly. You still keep up with the news in Smallville?"

"Yeah, I heard about Lionel. And Lex. He's not answering his phone, though."

Dean wondered about that. Most likely, the reception was bad out there. And according to the doctor, Lex was going to have to sleep for at least 12 hours a day. That was probably all it was. "Yeah, I'm not sure what the news said about what happened to Lex, but he was poisoned in his own study. We think his father—"

"I get it. You get him to a safe house?"

"Yeah, he's staying with Bobby."

"Lex and Bobby. Huh. I wonder how that's going."

"Believe me, I've been thinking the same thing. But listen, Lex is real concerned about LuthorCorp, the whole thing is on his shoulders since his dad isn't around anymore."

"You need to get him back to work."

"Yeah, only I don't want him in Smallville at all, or anywhere his father knows about, not until I know it's safe."

"You check the mansion?"

"I want Clark to check it. I want him to keep an eye on Lex, keep an ear out. That's one of his powers, right? Super hearing or whatever?"

"Yeah, pretty recent. So how are you going to get Clark back?"

"Well, that's kind of what I was calling about. I went down to that cave, had it out with his bio dad. Piece of work, that guy."

"Tell me about it. He's worse than ours."

Dean felt his stomach clench, but he chose not to comment on it. "I tried to reason with it. Tell it about the resources and power Lex brings to the table."

"Isn't it an AI?"

"I guess."

"It probably has programmed responses for different situations. You just need to figure out how to either undermine the programming, or what kind of trigger it's looking for to give up the goods."

"Trigger?"

"Well, it's probably not built to accept arguments from a human, and if you try to tell it there's a human worth changing its plans for, it probably can't accept the input. It doesn't compute."

"Right." Some part of Dean had known that, but he wouldn't have known how to phrase it. And he definitely didn't know how to get around it.

"Any chance of convincing it you're Kryptonian?"

"No, I think it has scanners or something. Some way of telling."

"Huh. Well, you could always try threatening it."

"Threatening?"

"Yeah, there's probably something in the cave it needs. If you threaten to destroy it, that might loosen its tongue, or send it back to some kind of… default. That might send Clark back to you."

"How do I know the AI won't kill him?"

Sam's voice caught. "Well, technically you don't know that he's still alive. Be honest with yourself, Dean, you have no idea what you're doing here. Neither do I. This is alien stuff."

"Yeah, yeah," Dean mumbled.

"Got any explosives?"

"I think Luthor has some kind of weapons room around here somewhere."

"Great. You want to bring those, loaded up with kryptonite."

Knowing Lex, they probably already were. "I'll give it a try."

"Good. Let me know how it goes."

"Yeah, thanks."

It was silent for a moment.

Sam took a deep breath. "So, you gonna ask me how college is?"

Dean wished Sam wouldn't do this. "Come on, Sammy. We had a good talk here. Let's not ruin it by fighting."

Silence on the other end, and then Sam hung up.