Pete took the truck across the second field in a row, cutting through the grass to avoid roadblocks and watched intersections. Chloe moaned a little and Clark braced himself again. It was an old truck and apparently had nothing in the way of shocks since they could feel every stone and furrow they drove over. And since they were trying to remain undetected, Pete had left the headlights off, which made the bouncing, jarring trip across the field that much more never racking.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Clark asked nervously as he strained his eyes forwards, watching out for the first sign of any ditch or abandoned bit of farm equipment which might have ended their trip in a hurry. And with the sky full of thick clouds, there wasn’t even a hint of the moon to see by. As it was, Clark could only make out things a few feet in front of the truck. He shuddered to think of how far Pete could see.
“Relax,” Pete said quietly, not taking his eyes off the ground in front of them. “Besides, aren’t you invulnerable? What are you worried about?”
“Not all of us in here are,” Chloe snapped. She was sitting wedged in between Clark and Pete, looking none too happy as the car bounced wildly again.
“Yeah, and somehow wrapping this truck around someone’s old thresher doesn’t seem like the best way to keep LuthorCorp from finding us,” Clark agreed.
Instead of slowing down, Pete actually accelerated a little. Clark’s stomach lurched as the truck bounced over another dip. “I thought that was the entire idea behind this trip,” Pete remarked.
“You know what I mean,” Clark snapped at him.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Look, I’ve taken this route before and it’s the safest way. No one’s going to expecting us, well you at least, to come driving into town, now are they? So just sit down and relax, already.”
“Yeah, like that’s possible,” Chloe snapped at him. Then she winced and glanced at Clark, but he refused to look at her. He was having a hard enough time trying to keep his nerves under control as it was, trying not to think about what they were about to do.
The truck screeched to a halt suddenly, throwing Clark and Chloe forwards. While Clark managed to brace himself, Chloe made a gasping sound as her seatbelt caught her and threw her back against the seat. Coughing, she glared at Pete as she unbuckled herself. “We’re here,” Pete said laconically, ignoring her.
“Think we noticed,” she grumbled. Pete pushed the door open and jumped out, jogging a few steps forwards. He pulled out a pair of binoculars and swept them back and forth across the horizon. Chloe swung herself out the door, standing on the edge of the cab and staring over his head. Clark climbed out slowly, looking forwards as well.
They were at the edge of an old cornfield, parked behind a derelict shed. The field skirted the road on the other side, and down that, not even half a mile, was Smallville. Clark could just make out the outline of the courthouse and the Talon, illuminated by lights in town, from where he was standing. This far away, he realized, it didn’t look that different from home. But past town, another half a mile down this same road, was something that was not just like home. LuthorCorp Labs. He shivered in the warm night air in spite of himself. He saw Chloe glance at him worriedly, but he still couldn’t bring himself to look at her. What am I doing here, he thought suddenly. This is way over my head, I should just get back in the truck and get the hell out of here. He’d never done anything like this before, anything this dangerous. He was about to walk right into the lions’ den and there was no guarantee he’d be able to walk out again. He could wind up just like his brother, or his mother.
Okay, run then, he told himself. Get out of here and don’t look back. But before you do, ask yourself, who else is going to do this? Who else is there?
Clark wasn’t a coward, but he didn’t consider himself brave either. He didn’t go looking for trouble, like Bruce did, but he wasn’t one to run from it either. If trouble happened and he did get involved, it was just because, he reasoned with himself, well, because there was no one else who could stop it. It was this same reasoning that drove him forwards now. Who else is going to get them out, he asked himself.
“The road looks clean,” Pete said quietly. He lowered the binoculars and glanced back at them. “I can’t spot any patrols, but you should still be careful.”
“Why, they’re going to catch me anyways. Or wasn’t that the entire reason for this trip?” Clark tried to sound flippant.
Pete didn’t smile back. “I mean it, man,” he said. “Be careful.”
Clark walked around the front of the truck and took Pete’s shoulder. Squeezing it gently, he tried to think of something reassuring to say, but nothing seemed to come. He settled for just nodding and giving Pete what he hoped was a steady smile. He could feel Chloe staring at him, but he avoided her eyes for now. Pete exhaled loudly and shook his head. As he stuffed the binoculars back in his jacket, he muttered, “Braver than I am, Clark.”
Taken aback for a moment, Clark shrugged. “Are you guys going to be okay getting back?” he asked trying to cover his embarrassment.
“Yeah, we’ll be fine. They won’t be looking for us anymore, once they have-, well…” his voice trailed off. Clark did smile then, albeit glumly.
“Clark…” Chloe said quietly behind him. He winced and turned around slowly, bracing himself for the worst. He was expecting a stormy tirade, some angry speech telling him to think things over, but again, just as she always seemed to do, Chloe surprised him. She was standing on the edge of the cab, staring down at him with tears in her eyes. Letting go of the truck, she fell down into his arms and latched onto him in a fierce hug. Clark blinked, surprised, and then hugged her back gently.
“You’re going to do this no matter what I say, aren’t you?” she asked into his chest, her voice muffled.
“I don’t have any choice,” he said.
She pulled back and looked up at him, her chin pressed against his chest. “There are always other choices.”
Clark looked down at her sadly and said, “I’ve tried those other ways. They don’t fix anything, Chloe. They never do.” She stared up at him in confusion. “Hey, I’ve got something for you,” he said brightly, trying to lighten the moment. He dug around into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. “Here, he said, handing it to her. “To keep safe.”
“Hope you counted it first,” Pete said with a smile. Chloe gave him a dirty look as she took it.
“Why?” she asked.
“I don’t think they’d let me keep it in there,” he told her. “And there’s something special in there.” She opened it up and took out the photo Lana had given him, a whole world ago. “Keep it safe for me?” he asked her. She nodded silently, staring at the photo. “Thanks. Well, I’ve got to go,” he told her quietly and started to pull away, but she clung to him suddenly and buried her face in his chest.
“Come back,” she said. “Just come back. That’s all I’m asking.” She looked up at him. “Please.” Then she let go of him and ran back to the truck, facing away from him and not looking back.
Clark could have covered the half mile into town in an instant, but instead he chose to walk up the dusty road, his hands thrust deep into his pockets and his head hung low. Not a single car passed him and there wasn’t the slightest hint of anything moving in the fields or woods along the road. The night was utterly quiet and empty except for the slow falls of his feet on the pavement. He’d never felt more alone in all his life then. It was just him, alone, on this road and in this world. No home, no family, just a handful of people he barely knew and his memories. Was that all he had, he wondered, and as he did, he felt a terrible sadness well up inside of him.
Overhead, the clouds parted momentarily, and Clark stopped, craning his head up to see the stars. They shone out brilliantly, dazzling the heavens above him. A strange sort of melancholic comfort fell over him as he watched the stars. Even if he was on a different version of the earth he knew, the stars were still the same in the sky. He could trace the constellations out, seeing old familiar shapes. Then the thick clouds rolled in again and Clark was shrouded in darkness once more. He sighed and continued down the road.
The shops and businesses were all closed up when he reached town; even the bars, and there were a lot more than Clark remembered, had all closed their doors. He glanced up and down the street, seeing the filth covering the sidewalks and the graffiti on the walls. It made him sick to see his town reduced to this. For a moment, doubt started to creep in and he asked himself, was all this really his fault? Had his ship landing in town rather than the fields outside caused all of this destruction? Then he looked up and saw Lionel Luthor’s face smiling down at him from a poster plastered to the window of a shop. ‘Another proud member of the LuthorCorp community’ it read.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
No, Clark answered himself. It wasn’t his fault. Maybe his ship had caused more damage coming into the town, but this, the filth and the pain here today, that wasn’t his fault. It was Lionel Luthor’s, he thought grimly. It all comes back to Lionel, all the pain, all the betrayal. He was the one who had wanted all of this. He had caused it and he was going to answer for it.
Clark took hold of a mailbox set into the street and with one hand, ripped it out of its mooring, and with one clean motion chucked it at the poster of Lionel in the window. The glass exploded inwards with a satisfying crash and an alarm started to ring inside the shop. Clark smiled, listening to the noise. Walking over to a bench, he ripped that out of the ground too and flung it through another window. Alarms were starting to go off all over the street. From far off, he could hear sirens wailing, heading closer.
“Here we go,” he muttered to himself.
Lex almost couldn’t stop himself from springing out of the elevator doors as they slowly opened. Stay calm, he cautioned himself. Now isn’t the time to be overexcited.
Not that anyone would have noticed his enthusiasm, indeed, there didn’t seem to be anyone on the main floor of the labs who wasn’t panicking. Aides and technicians were scurrying around readouts and reports in hand; the guards were all nervously holding their weapons at the side of the room; and in the very center of it all, eight men were carrying in a coffin-shaped cage, grunting from the weight. An entire squad of ‘Corp’s soldiers was accompanying them in, their weapons aimed tensely at the cage. Not helping anything was Dr. Hamilton, practically beside himself as he tried to simultaneously study the monitor attached to the cage and guide it onto the motorized cart the men where moving towards.
“For the love of God, be careful with that,” he yelled as the cage banged against the side of the cart. “It’s already damaged enough without you idiots ramming it into everything.” He started waving his hands from side to side, trying to position them so that the cage was in line above the cart. “There, finally,” he said and lowered his hands. With a sigh of relief, the carriers dropped it and the cage fell onto the cart with a loud slam, setting off another fit of screaming from Hamilton.
“Go, get out of here, all of you!” he bellowed, waving them away as he pushed past them. “Idiots, morons,” he muttered, not bothering to lower his voice. The carriers gave him ugly looks, but Hamilton was too engrossed in his study of the cage to notice. As the carriers dispersed, lab technicians and aide began to swarm in, taking readings and flocking around Dr. Hamilton.
“Is it damaged?” someone asked, craning to see.
“Probably, but it’s impossible to say for certain just now,” Hamilton replied loudly, straightening up. He nodded at a pair of aides. “We should be able to do an almost complete series of scans while it’s still in the cage. Plug it into the network and see what you can come up with. I need to know what its status is as of ten minutes ago. Hurry.” They nodded and ran off as Hamilton continued issuing more orders.
Lex stared at the containment box for a moment, worrying. It was impossible to tell how badly Clark was hurt from here, but there had been no other recourse. The only way Clark could get into the labs was in that box, he reminded himself grimly. They could only hope now that the ‘Corps hadn’t injured him too badly in the process.
“Hasn’t anyone contacted Mr. Luthor yet?” Hamilton asked loudly, jerking Lex back to his senses.
Shoving aside his worry, he stepped through the chaos on the floor towards them. “I’m already here,” he assured them casually, his eyes on the cage.
“Thank God. We’ve finally found it…” Hamilton started to say when he trailed off, staring at him. Lex fought to keep a smile off his face as realized how strange he must look. He was dressed much more casually than he usually was, in a simple shirt and slacks, but that didn’t seem to be what Hamilton was staring at. What had gotten his attention was that Lex had shaved his head completely, even going so far as to trim off his eyebrows.
He let Hamilton flounder for a moment, savoring it, and then he gestured at the cage. “I assume that’s something of interest then? Or is this just another drill.”
“Uh, no, Lex,” Hamilton recovered shakily. “I think we should wait for your father-“
“My father isn’t here,” Lex cut him off. “And so, for the moment, I am Mr. Luthor.” Hamilton stared at him blankly. “I have full power in my father’s absence, Doctor, and his full consent. So again, what exactly did you find?”
“The… the alien, Lex… sir,” he stammered. He glanced at the cage and seemed to recover some of his footing. “The ‘Corps captured him in town a short while ago. They just brought him in now.” He spun around to another aide and began barking out orders. “We need to initiate a full security lock down, as soon as we secure the alien, we secure the base; no one leaves or arrives without the proper permission.”
“And just where are you going to put him?” Lex asked almost casually. The question seemed to freeze the Doctor up again.
“We have the spare containment cell,” he stammered after a moment.
“Which will be ready in three months time,” Lex answered promptly. “We only started building it a few days ago,” he remarked, seeing the look on Hamilton’s face. “You didn’t expect us to just produce something of that magnitude overnight, did you?” He treasured the look of confusion and panic on Hamilton’s face for a moment and then played him out some more.
“What about the cage there?” he asked, pointing at it behind them. “Could it hold him until we have the cell ready?”
Hamilton blanched and gave the cage another panicked glance. “Not a chance; it’s only for transportation, and even then we have to sedate the alien heavily. No, we need to get him contained as soon as possible.”
“How long do we have then till he wakes up?”
“No way of knowing,” Hamilton admitted, looking a little ill. “We haven’t had a chance to study him yet so we don’t have him sedated. If he’s too weak and we use too much, he could…” he trailed off. “He doesn’t look to badly injured though,” he concluded. “There still might be internal bleeding though, it’s hard to tell. From what I can see, we have maybe, two hours, maybe more.”
“Maybe less,” Lex said dryly. Hamilton nodded reluctantly. “So where can we put him them? Don’t tell me we’ll have to turn him loose and tell him to come back in three months?”
Hamilton thought for a moment, and then swallowed visibly, clearly distressed. “We’ll have to contain it in the same cell as the first one.” He looked like he could hardly believe he had just said the words. Lex could hardly keep himself from smiling. Turning to the grouped aides, Hamilton said, “Make sure we they have a set of the cuffs waiting by the cell. Make sure the first subject is subdued as well. Stun him if you have to.” He turned back to Lex and looked at him helplessly. “There’s a problem though, I’ll need authorization to put them together like this.”
“Then you have it, Doctor,” Lex told him, but Hamilton shook his head.
“No, I’m afraid that’s not good enough. I can’t open the doors to the cell without the express consent of Mr. Luthor or his chief of security.”
“Then as the man said, you have it, Doctor,” Lana’s voice rang out behind them. Lex turned almost idly as Lana walked into the room, or rather, as Tina Greer did. She stalked past Lex without giving him a glance and went straight to the cage. He could see her lips curl in disgust as she bent over, examining it. She apes her almost perfectly, Lex thought to himself with a trace of amusement. He admired her for a moment and was a little surprised to notice how beautiful Lana was. Too bad the real version’s a raving psychotic, he thought. I can almost see why Clark’s so infatuated with her.
“Which team brought him in?” she snapped at Hamilton. “Where’s the report?”
“Uh, I’ll get that to you as soon as I see it. Did you mean it?” he asked, distracted. “You want us to put them together?”
“Where do you suggest we put him?” she demanded acidly. “A broom closet?” She snorted and stood up, taking a commanding stance. “The way I see it, we have two choices: we can either stand around and argue until that thing wakes up and I have to kill it, or we can put it in the cell and I get to it later. Personally, I wouldn’t mind the first, but I have orders, so I suggest we get moving.” She snapped her fingers at two aides. “Get this thing out of my sight. You all, follow them,” she said to the armed escort.
Everyone, even Lex, was surprised in the command in her voice. Within moments, the cage was on the move again, flanked by the LuthorCorps guards and a few aides. Hamilton stayed behind for a moment to talk to Lex.
“Um… Lex,” he started hesitantly, “it’s all well and good that you’re in charge here, but we need to contact your father as soon as possible. God knows why he got called away now, but with a situation like this…”
“I’ve already called my father, Doctor, and he’s well aware of what’s happening,” he assured him. “As soon as he’s able, he’ll be here, I promise you. In the meantime, we need to get the current situation under control. We wouldn’t want my father to come back to a catastrophe, would we?”
Hamilton nodded slowly. “Yes, yes you’re right.” He looked down the corridor towards the labs. Well, there are a million things I need to take care of right now. I’ll call you in the hour with a better report on the second one’s condition.”
“Forward it to my office,” Lex said, “I’ll be working in there. I’ve got to prepare my own report for my father.”
He nodded and started off, but stopped after he’d gone a few steps. “By the way, um, that’s an… interesting look for you,” he said, glancing quickly at Lex’s bald head.
Lex nodded briefly and smiled as Hamilton walked off. When he was sure he was gone, he looked at Lana. “Well, what do you think? It is a bit extreme, but I have to admit, it looks good on me.”
“Why in God’s name would you do that to yourself before we started this?” she hissed at him in a low voice. “I thought after we spent so much time trying to make me look like Lana you would have at least made sure you looked like yourself.”
“I wanted a change,” he shrugged, still smiling. “I talked to Clark and found out my other wears it this way.”
“Good for him,” she said shortly.
“He also betrayed his father and beat him at his own game a few times. So call this a little bit of good luck, if you want.” His smiled again, and then he was all business. “So where do we stand now?”
“We’re all in and alive, so far,” she said quietly. “I haven’t had much time to work yet, but I’ve reorganized the Corp’s shifts like you showed me.”
“Good. Do you remember what I said about sealing off the armories and the barracks?”
“Every word,” she replied.
“If we can lock those down then the Corps will be cut off from any of their heavy ordinance, including their meteor powered weapons.” He reached into his pocket and tossed her a small, black cell phone. “I just put a nasty little bug in the LuthorCorp mainframe that will tie up all the phone lines. It’ll take our tech department hours to sort through it. Also, someone seems to have played havoc with all our towers, so you might have trouble using a cell phone that’s run by our service, which oddly enough, seems to include everyone in this building. No one’s going to reaching us for a very long time,” he smiled.
“Everyone has a LuthorCorp phone?” she looked surprised.
“It was part of our benefit package,” he smiled innocently. “Who do you think wrote it? In the meanwhile, if you do need to contact me, use this. It’s separate, the number’s programmed in.”
She nodded glumly at him.
“Hey, Tina,” he said, bending in close to her and lowering his voice. “We’ve planned this all out, now we just have to do it. We’ll win, I know we will,” he assured her. “Nothing is going to go wrong.”
Clark woke up in a haze of pain and nausea. He blinked his eyes, trying to clear his vision, but everything was still just a blur of white. He closed them again, waiting for the dull ringing in his head to stop.
When he was finally able to raise his head without almost retching, he opened his eyes and stared around. He was in a large room with a high, slanted ceiling. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all pristine white, so much so that the effect was almost blinding. There was something strange about the air as well. He took a breath and his head started to swim again. Fighting it back, he started to get up, but as his arms began to move, he felt something attached to his wrists. He lifted one hand up and saw there was some kind of thick metal shackle on it. He turned his other hand over and saw another one, and then he looked down and saw a pair on his feet as well. He grabbed hold of one and started to pull, but a voice suddenly spoke up, stopping him cold.
“Don’t,” it said in a wavering croak. “They’ll pump this room full of gas if you try and remove them. I’ve tried.”
There was another person sitting against the wall at the end of the room. He was wearing a ragged pair of pants and a shirt that might have been as white as the walls once, long ago. The same shackles were encircling his wrists and ankles as well. He was young looking, with wild black hair that hung over his eyes. He smiled a dangerous, wavering sort of grin.
“There’s not a lot they don’t punish,” he said in his strange voice again. Clark had heard his own voice on a recording once, and he remembered how odd it had sounded. He had the same feeling now, only about a million times stronger.
“If you try and take off the cuffs, they punish you. You make a lot of noise, they punish you. Get up and move around too much, they punish you. If you want to do anything, ask me. I’ll tell you if it’s safe or not.”
It was his face that had shocked Clark the worst, because it was his own face staring back at him, almost. They had the same nose, the same chin, and cheek-bones, but they didn’t have the same eyes. Clark still had both of his.
A thin metal band crossed the young man’s head, with a metal patch attached that covered his left eye. Clark could only stare at it in horror. He felt his stomach start to heave as the young man tilted his face, making the patch wink in the light at him. He tried to look at his good eye, but what he saw there wasn’t any better. There was intensity there and a wild desperation that he’d never seen in his own eyes. It was like looking into a mirror, a very dark and dangerous one.
Lex never told me about this, Clark thought for one panicked moment, and then his stomach heaved again and he retched over the floor.
His double didn’t seem to mind. He stared at Clark intently, hardly even blinking. “I’ll help you out,” he croaked again, “but you’ve got to do one thing for me first. Tell me if you’re real or not.”