“So come’on, show me something,” Chloe heard Sarah ask. She was passing by another of the slung walls of tarps and blankets and her voice had come drifting through to the outside. “Please,” the girl was saying, “just for a bit, I have to see this.”
“No, I really don’t want-“ Tina’s voice came unexpectedly. “How do you...”
“Oh, that’s old news around here,” Sarah remarked. “Or, not as big as you’d think now; it’s sorta been a big day for sharing.”
“But how?”
“Oh, that new girl, Chloe something, was talking about it and Pete mentioned something,” Sarah breezed. Chloe winced in spite of herself. For a moment, she felt oddly guilty, but then Sarah was continuing on and Chloe moved in closer to listen.
“Anyway,” Sarah remarked, “it’s not like I would have found out eventually, not with me digging that bullet out of you. A few surprises there. Do you know you don’t have any bones? You’re body’s like… firm jello on the inside.” She made a little sound of disgust. Chloe rolled her eyes irritably.
“Am I going to live?” Tina asked dully.
“Well, yeah,” Sarah remarked, sounding a little put-off. “It was big bullet, but it didn’t go too deep and I got it out. Barring you doing anything weird like melt off the table into a big puddle, you should be fine. But there’s still a few things I have to check up on.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, just a few routine questions,” she said innocently. Chloe heard her flip over a piece of paper and then clear her throat. “So did you and Whitney ever experiment around with this shape changing thing?”
Chloe threw back the blankets quickly and stepped inside. “Ah jeez, this isn’t the poolhouse, is it?” she remarked, glancing around the room. “Place is so confusing.” She looked innocently at Sarah and smiled. “Oh, am I interrupting?”
Sarah smiled back at her snidely. “Yeah, actually you were; doctor-patient privilege stuff, strictly confidential. So why don’t you turn around and go back to being lost.”
“Doctor, huh?” she glanced at the wall behind Sarah and shrugged. “I don’t see a diploma.”
Sarah’s grin got more fixed. “No, but look,” she said between her teeth, “I see scalpels. And needles. And a bone saw. Now who’s the doctor?”
“You know it’s actually good I ran into you,” Chloe told her smoothly. “Lex was asking for you. Something about a headache, maybe a migraine; he thought you could help.”
Sarah stared at her intently for a moment and then shrugged. “Fine,” she remarked, going to an old cabinet and pulling a drawer open. She rummaged around for a moment and came out with a plastic bottle. “You think you can handle watching Tina for a while?” Chloe nodded brightly and waved her out. She started to leave and then holding the curtain-door aside, she paused and turned around. “So how’s ET?” she asked casually. “Feeling, I mean. Sounds like he’s been through a lot.”
“I think he prefers ‘Clark’,” Chloe said shortly. “And he’s doing just fine.”
“You’ve talked to him?”
“Not really,” Chloe admitted. Sarah smiled faintly at that.
“’Clark’, huh?” she considered. “Well, anyway, tell him to stop by if he needs anything. I’d really like to take a look at him.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Chloe told her dryly. Sarah smirked and left, the curtain swing back and forth behind her. Chloe glared after her and then shook her head. “Bitch,” she muttered under her breath.
“Amazing,” Tina said quietly. “It takes most people a few days to realize that. And you didn’t even have her digging a bullet out of your arm.” She was sitting up in an old hospital bed that looked like it had been salvaged from the junk pile. Tina didn’t look much better. She was very pale and the skin on her face looked stretched. Her hair hung limply against her face. A heavy bandage was wrapped around her shoulder, stained pink in the center. She smiled wanely at Chloe. “You’re all right. That’s good,” she said without conviction. “Sarah didn’t tell me how you were.”
“Oh my God, does it hurt?” Chloe blurted out, then immediately backtracked. “What am I saying, of course it hurts. You got shot, didn’t you,” she said in a rush then. “Why do people always ask that? It’s a stupid question to ask someone. I’m stupid, geez.”
“A little,” Tina told her. Chloe stopped and they stared at each other for a moment, then they both laughed. Tina went pale and winced, her other hand reaching up to touch her bandaged shoulder gently. Chloe stood there uncomfortably, unsure of what to do. Tina sat up, biting her lip for a moment, and then she relaxed, falling back into the bed with a pained sigh. She lay there with her eyes closed, breathing heavily. She asked weakly, “Lex doesn’t really have a headache, does he?”
A smile flashed briefly across Tina’s face. “Well, he’ll have one when she finds him.” She tried to sound cheerful but it was hard to keep it up watching Tina. “So, well… I guess I should say thanks… for back at the farm. That was really something.” Tina made a pained face and turned on her side, her bandaged shoulder propped up. “You’re kind of a big hero now, you know? Everyone thought so,” she tried to cheer her up.
“They all know about me now,” Tina said quietly.
Chloe winced and said slowly , “Sorry about that. It’s my fault,” she admitted. She faltered and looked down at her feet. She’d done a lot of questionable things in her life, but she’d never really felt bad about anything before. It wasn’t even that serious, Lex would have found out eventually, but still, it didn’t make that uncomfortable feeling of guilt go away. “Everybody was asking a lot of questions and Clark and Whitney didn’t really feel like talking.” Tina opened her eyes at Whitney’s name, but didn’t respond at once.
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“After the farm, he brought you here?” she asked hesitantly.
“Who? Whitney? Yeah, it was his idea. You were… well, you know, out of it, and we couldn’t really bring you to a hospital. So he took us here.”
“How… How is he?” she asked.
“He’s fine,” she replied, a little puzzled. “He’s been in to see you, hasn’t he?” Tina looked away quickly and shook her head. “Oh my God, he hasn’t. That…,” several words came to mind, but she thought of Tina and picked the least offensive, “…jerk! You save his ass and he hasn’t even seen you yet?”
“I don’t want to see him,” Tina said quickly, her voice almost frantic. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t.”
“What?” Chloe asked, a little alarmed.
“I did it for him,” she said, sounding near tears. “I did it all for him, but he wasn’t supposed to find out.”
“About you?” Chloe asked, stepping towards her. She tried to touch her gently, but Tina flinched away from her hand. She pushed herself away from Chloe, covering her face with her arms. “Tina, what’s wrong?”
“Do you know what it’s like to grow up like this?” Tina asked her from behind her arms. “With a secret? Always knowing you were a freak, that the face you showed everyone was a lie?”
“Tina, I don’t…,” Chloe started, trying to comfort her. She reached across the bed and tried to pull Tina’s arms away from her face when the other girl thrust her away. Chloe stumbled back and then gasped as she saw the girl lying on the bed. It wasn’t Tina she saw, but her own face staring back at her.
“This is all I am,” Tina said with Chloe’s own voice, “a mirror. A freak. I’m no one, just a living reflection.” She held her hand up and stared at it. Slowly, her skin started to flow and ripple around her and then she was Tina again. All Chloe could do was stand there gaping. Tina looked at her sadly and shook her head. “With Whitney I could pretend, and that’s gone now,” she moaned. “I was doing it for him; I wasn’t supposed to come back. I wasn’t supposed to come back.”
“I knew there wasn’t going to be anything to come back to,” she cried.
“What am I supposed to be looking at here?” Clark grunted, sitting back in his chair. Pete glanced up at him and gave him a sympathetic look.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “My brain gave up trying to read anything an hour ago.” He pushed his hand through the papers littering the desk. “All I see now are just blue lines and blurry numbers.”
“They’re the blue prints and security read outs to the lab,” Lex told them evenly. While Clark and Pete had been bent over the table for the last few hours, he had pushed his chair further back and was sitting away from them with his computer resting on his lap. He varied between typing idly at it and staring motionlessly at the ceiling. “They’re as up to date as I could get, so it’d be a good idea to familiarize yourself with them. Of course we still don’t have anything on Lab 2, where they’re keeping you mother, Clark. I couldn’t even find the original blue-prints for it.”
“At least you know where it is,” Clark said. “All you need to do is get me there, I’ll do the rest.”
“Optimism is a wonderful thing, but I’d prefer to know what I was charging into first.” Lex rubbed the back of his neck and pursed his lips. “Still,” he allowed, “whatever defenses my father has in there, I don’t think he’d have planned on someone with your abilities breaking in.”
“That’s something,” Pete remarked.
“Of course, he has the rest of the base for that,” Lex went on. “Magnetized shutters, high speed motion detectors, nerve gas, guards armed with the meteor powered lasers…” He smiled and shook his head.
Pete raised his eyebrows and stared at him. “Sounds fun,” he said finally. “Glad I’ll be there.”
“No, actually you won’t,” Lex told him.
“Thank God!” Pete burst out, relieved. Then he blinked and asked, “Wait, why not!?”
“Too many people would recognize you and I need you to do something else for me.” Lex moved his chair back to the table and put his laptop down on it. “I need you to organize a distraction outside the city, something loud enough to draw most of the attention away from the base for a night.”
“Done and done,” he said with a smirk. “I can usually find something of your dad’s worth burning. That’s not going to get everyone out of the labs though. You’re dad didn’t even evacuate when that tornado plowed through last year.”
“The less we have to fight the better,” Lex told him.
“Yeah, but it still leaves a hell of a lot left. Any bright ideas about getting them out?”
Lex smiled broadly at them. “Who said anything about getting them out? I’m going to lock them in.”
“How are you going to manage that?” Clark asked.
“You forget you’re talking to the executive vice-president of Luthorcorp, and as such, I have clearance for almost all of the electric locks in the building. I can rearrange the guards’ roster so almost everyone’s in their barracks and then seal them up inside.”
“Leaving us a clear path inside,” Pete finished.
“Not quite clear,” Lex amended. “If I draw everyone off it’ll look suspicious, I’ll have to leave a few at least. Not enough to worry about though.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Clark said. “I’ve gotten pretty good at dealing with your father’s soldiers.”
“No, you’ll be somewhere else when we come in,” Lex told him. “Getting you in the front door wouldn’t help us, you’ll have to be-“
The door swung open at the end of the room and Chloe walked in hurriedly. She was holding a length of pipe underneath her arm. They all stood up in surprise, but she hardly stopped to notice them. She glanced around the room, her eyes resting briefly on Clark, and then moving away. “Anyone seen Whitney?” she asked.
“Not recently,” Lex answered, frowning slightly as he stared at the pipe. “What were planning on doing with that?”
“This?” she asked, holding it up. It looked blunt and very heavy. “I was thinking of just beating him senseless with it. Anyone have any problems with that?”
Clark blinked in surprise and took a step forwards. “Chloe, what’s going on?”
She turned on him and looked at him in mock surprise. “Gee sorry, Clark, didn’t notice you there. So this is where you’ve been hiding out lately. Thanks for checking up on me by the way, I’m fine.”
“I meant to,” he started guiltily, “it’s just things have been a little crazy. We’ve been trying to get a plan together-“
“Yeah, save it. If Whitney wasn’t numero uno on my hit list I’d be denting this thing on your skull right about now.” She started to leave and then turned around, glaring at Lex and Pete. “Oh and guys, great little clubhouse you’ve got here. Thanks a bunch for giving me the lifelong membership.”
“Is that why you’re about to give Whitney a concussion?” Lex asked idly. “Haven’t you ever heard of the phrase, ‘don’t shoot the messenger,’?”
“Or beat him senseless with a lead pipe?” Pete added.
“No, it was sort of a scorned woman thing. Well, I’m not the scorned woman or anything; I’m just passing it on for a friend. She’d do it herself if she wasn’t shot,” she emphasized. “Oh, she’s fine to by the way. If you guys are done with your little circle-jerk in here you might want to think about seeing her.”
Clark flushed a little and looked away. Lex didn’t seem to notice, he was frowning quietly. “I didn’t consider that,” he remarked to himself.
“Yeah, I’d kind of figured that since no one’s been in to see her yet,” Chloe said acidly. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve something to take care of.”
“If you can hold off on that for a minute,” Lex said quickly, “I’ve got a job for you.”
“Oh it won’t take a minute,” she said. “I’m pretty sure if I can get a few good swings in I can take him.”
“Well before we have to find out, I’d like you to stay with Tina for a while,” he said smoothly. “Pete will handle talking to Whitney.”
Pete looked up and nodded. “Yeah, I might even be able to do it without cracking his head open.”
“What’s the use of that, then?” Chloe asked petulantly.
“Chloe,” Lex said quietly.
Finally she rolled her eyes and nodded. “Fine, but if I’m the only one in there today, Whitney’s not the only one who’s going to be seeing double for a while.” She tossed the pipe away with a clatter and stormed off, shaking her head. Pete started after her, when Lex called him back.
“I think I’ll have to handle Whitney,” he told him, getting up. “You and Clark have something else to take care of.”
“We do?” Pete asked. “When did this happen?”
“When I caught a company-wide message posted by my father a little while ago.” Lex glanced at Clark. “It seems you had more of an effect on Lana than anyone thought. She’s gone missing.”
“Missing?” Clark said, surprised. “You mean she just ran off?”
“That is the definition for it, yes,” Lex smiled. “My father’s got everyone he can spare looking for her. It’ll be risky, but if you can find her before they do, it would save us a lot of effort.”
“Not much though, she’s not going to come quietly,” Pete said frankly.
“No, I think I can do it,” Clark told them. He saw their disbelieving looks and nodded more forcefully. “I know I can.”
Pete glanced at Lex and he nodded slightly in response. Reluctantly Pete shrugged and then squared his shoulders. “All right then, any ideas where we might find her?”
“She’s lived in the lab since she’s been five years old,” Lex raised his hands helplessly, “I don’t even know if she has anything left to go back to. Plus, if Clark had as much an affect on her as I’m guessing, she’d be confused and frightened. Who knows where she’d go to?”
“I might have an idea,” Clark said slowly.