“So this is what I’ve got,” Whitney said, spinning around in his chair to face him. Clark blinked wearily and tried to focus on him. He hadn’t slept a wink the whole night and it was starting to tell. Not that he hadn’t tried, he thought to himself, but after the argument with Chloe he hadn’t been able to rest. “You alright?” Whitney asked him, noticing his lack of attention.

“Yeah, fine, just a little tired.” He stood up and walked over to the computer monitors. Squinting at them, he forced himself to read the text on the screen.

“When’s the last time you slept?” he asked him.

“Last night.”

“Amateur,” Whitney scoffed. “I don’t really do that too often myself. Not when there’s nature’s alternative.” He waved his mug and set it back down, turning back to the screen. “If I ever switched to decaf I’d probably fall into a coma.”

“You said you had something,” Clark reminded him, bringing him back on track.

“Right. Well, basically, we’re looking at an across the board alert here,” he gestured at the screen. “Everybody on the Luthorcorp payroll or mailing list has been put on notice about you. File clerks, plant managers, factory workers; roughly 80% of the people who have a job in this town are on the look out for you.”

“That many people?”

“Smallville begins and ends with the Luthors, Clark,” he sighed. “Believe me I wish it wasn’t true.”

He breathed out and then shrugged. “Well, all the emails and alerts, that’s the general stuff, kid’s play to dig that out,” he went on. “I got all of that in the first hour. Hacking the encrypted stuff, scanning their frequencies, that takes longer. I still can’t get into all of their files yet, but I think I caught the important pieces.”

“Is anyone going to be able to trace what you’re doing?” Clark asked him.

Whitney laughed and then smiled at him strangely. “I’ve got a backdoor into their system. Trust me, no way they could trace this.” Clark nodded dubiously and continued to read.

“Is this the Luthorcorp mainframe?” he asked, a little surprised.

“One of the smaller servers,” he shook his head. Glancing around, he asked, “You going to get Chloe for this?”

Clark winced and looked away. “That might not be a good idea. She’s… worse off than I am. Let her sleep.”

Whitney studied him for a moment and then nodded. “Fight, huh?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” he remarked. Whitney shrugged and turned back to the screen. “So, what else have you found?”

“Well, I have what they have, or what I can find of it,” he started. Whitney pointed to a section with his mouse and highlighted it. “They’ve got a description of both of you, an ID on Sullivan, no ID on you yet, but they do have a whole page of warnings about you though. All of this is the general info, what’s been passed onto the police and FBI,” he explained.

“FBI?” Clark gulped. “The government is after us?”

“Sure, why not?” he replied offhand. “Officially, they’ll supervise the search. Unofficially, they’ll leave it to the Corps. I doubt you’ll even see an agent in town. Smallville is pretty much cut off from the rest of the country these days. Government steps back and lets Luthorcorp take care of all of us. They call it ensuring the security of contracts. Luthorcorp builds and runs a lot of things for the government, half of them the rest of the country probably doesn’t know about.”

“What else?” Clark asked, a little sick to his stomach.

“Well, it gets more interesting the deeper you dig through their system. These warnings, they’re pretty detailed,” he said, bringing them up on the screen. He read them aloud. “’Please note that the subject should be considered extremely dangerous. Do not approach or provoke in any manner. Do not attempt to fire on or subdue the subject in any manner. Report any sightings to the nearest Luthorcorp office.’” He shook his head. “Seems kind of extreme for just a teenager. Any idea why’d they be so afraid of you?”

“No,” Clark said carefully. It was the truth, he rationalized, he didn’t know why they’d be afraid of him. Whitney shrugged and went on.

“That’s everything that was sent inside the city limits, farther out, at some of their more rural stations, things get a bit weirder. They talk about reporting any unnatural disturbances; lights in the sky, sounds, crop circles, cattle mutilations.” He paused and made a face. “I wish I made that last one up by the way,” he remarked, “but it’s there. Since this afternoon, it’s like the entire county’s been put on X-Files alert.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Uh huh,” Clark said slowly. This was all hitting a little close to home for his tastes. How could they know this much about him already?

“Is that it?” Whitney asked him. “’uh huh?’ I think you’d be a bit more concerned about this.”

“I’m just a little overwhelmed,” he said quickly. “It’s not every day I’m public enemy number one.” He leaned in to get a closer look of the screen. Whitney watched him closely as did so.

“You know, there’s one more thing I forgot to mention,” he told him. There was something in his tone that made Clark look up anxiously. “Two hours ago, they sent an order to have three of their satellites positioned in a geo-synchronous orbit directly over Smallville.”

“They’re searching for us with satellites?” Clark asked in a strangled voice.

“Yeah, except they’re all pointed the wrong way; straight up.” He fixed Clark with an intense stare. “Care to tell me what they’re looking for?”

Clark looked back at the screen, his throat suddenly dry. “I don’t know what they expect to find,” he replied.

Whitney pursed his lips and nodded. He sat back in his chair, thinking to himself. “I realize I haven’t given you every reason to trust me just yet,” he said quietly. “We only met a few hours ago, and through Sullivan, who I have to admit, is not my favorite person,” he shrugged. “But you can trust me. If you’re in this against Luthorcorp, I’m with you. I owe them that much.”

“I don’t want to be against anybody,” Clark remarked, walking away. He rubbed the back of his neck and looked at Whitney. “I’m not from here… I don’t anything about what’s going on. I stepped into this town today for the first time and people started shooting at me. No reason, no explanation, they just started firing. They cut through a crowd, just because I was there. And I don’t know why!” he shouted, slicing his hand through the air.

Whitney shrugged and looked sympathetic. “They did it because they could, as for why…” he sighed and turned back to the computer. “It might be in here somewhere, we just have to keep looking.” He paused and looked back at Clark speculatively.

“What?” he asked, seeing the look.

“You feel bad about what they did to those people today?” he asked suddenly. Clark blinked and then frowned at him.

“Of course I do, what kind of question is that?”

“What I mean is,” he said, “how far would you be willing to go to make sure that doesn’t happen again? To make things right? Maybe get some answers while we’re at it?”

“What do you mean?” Clark asked him carefully.

Whitney smiled. “There might be some people I know who could help you. I think they’d be interested in meeting you. With all the bad press about you, they’d be really willing. Any enemy of Luthorcorp would be a-“ he was cutoff suddenly by a buzzing sound from a device on the wall. A read light on the device started to blink quickly. Whitney spun around and keyed into the computer as Clark stood there, staring around wildly.

“What it is?” he asked. “What’s happening?”

“I’ve got a security system set up for the house. Someone’s trying to get in,” he replied tersely. “I locked the house up tight and turned it on as soon as you got here.” He paused and looked up. “No one followed you here, right?”

“No, no one,” Clark said. “What are you doing?” he asked, as Whitney started to type at the computer.

“There’s a camera outside the front door, should tell us who’s there.” He pulled up a video window on his computer screen and stared at it. There definitely was a figure there, playing with the lock, but they couldn’t make out anything. “Too dark,” he muttered. “Maybe I can change the resolution.”

As he started to adjust the settings, Clark turned around and stared at the wall. He focused his vision for a moment and the house seemed to fall away. He could see Chloe’s prone skeleton at the back of the house, sound asleep, and another skeleton standing at the front door. Then his eyes caught something and he looked closer. There were green patches of light covering the intruder’s skeleton. It was the meteor rocks, he realized in a rush. Then he remembered where he’d seen that kind of marking before, and on whom.

“I got it,” Whitney started to say behind him, but Clark was already gone. He shouldered the computer room door open, splintering it off its frame, and dashed through the house. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or that he was still on edge from the previous attack, but Clark was suddenly fighting mad. All the aches and weariness in him fell away in a blind rage. If they wanted keep sending people after him, he though, he’d just have to convince them otherwise.

Clark wasn’t quite moving at top speed when he hit the front door, but it was going fast enough. He exploded through it, tackling the girl standing in the doorway. Splinters of wood rained down around them as his momentum carried them through the air. He heard the wind rush out of her as they fell onto the lawn and he rolled away, his fists ready. Too many things had happened to today to make him go easy on her. She tried to climb to her feet, but he knocked her back on the ground with one punch. As he pulled his fist back to hit her again, he heard Whitney rush up behind him.

“Get back,” he warned. The girl started to stir and Clark cocked his fist again, but Whitney flew past him.

“Are you insane?” he nearly shouted at him. “What the hell are you doing? Why did you attack her?”

“Get out of the way,” Clark tried to step past him, but Whitney bent down and took her in his arms.

“If you try to do anything like that again, I’ll turn you in myself,” he warned him. The sheer vehemence in his voice made Clark take a step back, suddenly confused. Turning back to the girl, Whitney stared down at her worriedly.

It wasn’t hard for Clark to recognize her, even without using his x-ray vision to identify her. He had even briefly seen her earlier in town. She had the same long, dark hair and slightly angular face that he remembered from his world. Clark focused his x-ray vision on her one more time, and sure enough, the signs of the meteor rock radiation were still there. There wasn’t any doubt about it, it was Tina Greer.

“Oh my God,” he whispered to her, “Tina, are you okay?” She rolled her head around and stared at him dully. A nasty looking bruise was already forming on her jaw. Clark could only stare in shock as Whitney touched her cheek gently.

“What the hell was that?” Chloe asked behind them. She was standing in what was left of the doorway, bleary-eyed and an unsteady. “Can’t we go like an hour without getting attacked?”

Clark turned towards her quickly and tried to shove her back inside. “Just get back inside,” he told her. “I’ll take care of this.”

“You’ve done enough already,” Whitney snapped as he walked past them, carrying Tina in his arms. She moaned something unintelligibly and he shushed her. He stopped at the hole in the doorframe and stared back at Clark. “Fix this and then both of you get inside,” he said through clenched teeth. “I think we’re all going to have to sit down and have a talk.” With that, he disappeared back inside, leaving Chloe and Clark standing there.

They looked at each other uncertainly until finally Clark shrugged. “I thought …,” he started to say lamely, but she rolled her eyes and stepped through the gaping hole in the doorway, ignoring him. He stared after her and then glanced around at the scattered, broken pieces of wood lying around him. He started to gather them up, muttering to himself, but then he stopped and slowly looked up at the houses directly across the street. Then he looked up and down the block at all the other houses surrounding them. So far no other lights were on, but there was no telling how many people had heard all the noise. Dropping the pieces of wood, he stepped quickly through the doorway and started down the hall. He met Chloe standing there halfway in.

“Forgetting something?” she asked. He blinked and she nodded behind him towards the large hole where the door had once been. Clark winced and then looked around quickly for something to block it with. Finally he settled for pulling a nearby closet door off its hinges and jamming it into place where the front door had been. He thoughtfully jammed a few of the larger pieces splinters of wood into the gaps to keep anyone else from forcing it open.

“Oh Whitney is just going to love this,” Chloe remarked behind him. “I bring you here, we force our way in, and you go and destroy his house and attack his girlfriend. Was that actually planned, pissing him off that badly?” she tossed back as she walked down the hallway. “Or was that just another one of your powers I didn’t know about?”

“Hey it wasn’t like I knew she wasn’t here to…” he stopped and blinked suddenly. “Wait a minute,” he called after her. “Girlfriend?”