1
Encryption
-You think you know ... what's to come ... what you are. You
haven't even begun.
-Tara, from BtVS (4.22) "Restless"
-Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because of unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by the excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den.
-Plato, The Republic qtd. in the beginning of Flowers for Algernon
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Chapter One
It's musty in the cave. It always is. The dust is so thick down there that if she were human, she'd be doubled over in a coughing fit. Clark always is whenever she can convince him to follow her down here. But she's not human and he's not here. It just her in the cave, floating delicately above the dirt floor. Just her as she holds her hand out in mid-air, lining up her key with the indentation in the wall.
It's quiet down there, so still and silent that she can hear every rustle in the fabric of her clothes as she moves, can almost if she tries hard enough hear the scritch scratch of the bugs that have burrowed into the cave walls. She loves it here in a way she can't explain to anyone, not her father, and not Clark. Everything always feels right here, like it was left especially for her. These walls and paintings are more than just the heritage of Kawatchee people. They're here history, her story, and even if she can't prove it yet, she can feel it deep in her soul.
Being here is the closest to being home that she's ever felt, even more than The Daily Planet and that surprises her just a little.
She releases the disc from her hand and it hovers there for a minute, and she takes that pause, that moment of anticipation, to shift her position, to make sure that, at least literally, her feet are planted firmly on the ground. The sigils etched into the rock face begin to glow, first red, then blue, and finally gold. The disc is pulled forward, fitting itself perfectly into the wall.
Holding her breath, she waits for whatever comes next, for whatever revelation or truth will finally be granted to her after a lifetime of searching.
There's a building hum, a flash so bright that even she with her invulnerable eyes is forced to slam them shut.
There's that light.
And then darkness.
And nothing in between.
Screeching tires woke Chloe up. Disoriented and disappointed, she sat up and blinked, staring straight into the fluorescent headlights of a very expensive sports car. For just an instant, the lights were so bright that she could almost believe that she was still in the middle of the caves, that the answers she so desperately sought would still be revealed to her.
That illusion didn't last long.
The driver's side car door slammed shut, and she was brought back to the here and now, to the fact that she was lying in her cow pajamas in the middle of the highway leading out of town, and that there was no legitimate reason for this to be so. Hell, there wasn't any lie she could think of, even with her writer's imagination, that would come close to alleviating the suspicions of the owner of the car.
Sighing, she started to push herself to her feet when strong (for a human) hands pushed back down on her shoulders. Chloe decided to humor or would-be rescuer and let him push her back to the ground.
Steeling herself, she took in a deep breath and stared defiantly up at a familiar pair of hazel eyes. "Lex."
He frowned and once again, Chloe had that odd sensation she often had when dealing with him. There was a wariness, a terrible and calculated scrutiny in his gaze. It was the look of a man intent upon solving the problem of nuclear fusion or three rubicks cubes at once or of, ostensibly, a short blond girl from the suburbs of Metropolis. And yet at the same time there was a genuine concern there. He cared. He was worried.
Her stupid stomach fluttered then and she promptly reminded herself that this was the same man who'd investigated her for at least a year (not that that had come as a surprise), who had sicced a low life paparazzo from The Inquisitor on her and her family. He might care about her, but he cared about her secrets more.
Of that she was almost positive.
"Chloe, my God." He said, running his hands over her shoulders and her arms. "I didn't hit you did I?"
She shook her head and forced her way up. "Of course not. You can tell by how I am clearly not pavement pizza."
"There's no need to snap." He said, touching her arms one more time to reassure himself that no damage had been done. As he trailed his fingers over her forearms, his frown deepened. "You're not cold."
"So," She replied, her chin and shoulders held high.
"It's February in Kansas and too cold even with the best cashmere and wool coats on." He said, gesturing to his winter friendly apparel. "You were sleeping out here. You should be freezing."
Chloe sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "It's late…or early depending on how you look at it, and I so don't want to play twenty questions right now. Can't you just take me home?"
"Am I supposed to not notice anything?" He asked following her to the passenger side of his car and opening the door. Holding it out for her, Lex waited until she was seated and buckled before he walked back to his own seat.
When he had started the engine and turned on the heat, she answered him back, "You wouldn't be you if you stopped being so observant. I suppose it's a little much to ask that you keep your investigations of me private. Are you still hiring underlings to do your dirty work for you?"
Posture rigid and voice tight, Lex kept his attention on the road as he spoke, "I think you'll remember that I do all the wet works myself."
"I never asked for that."
"But it had to be done, and you're my friend and I wanted to protect you."
"Then stop asking questions."
He hazarded a glance at her and gave her a wry smile. "Could you, Chloe? Could you stop seeing the inconsistencies in the world, the stories lurking just beneath the surface, and turn a blind eye to it all? Choose perhaps a nice stint as a homemaker over being a headline writer for the Planet ?"
"It's not about my reputation or the mark I want to make."
"Fine, forget the career aspirations. Could you stop ever asking why? I doubt that you could."
She shook her head. "No, I couldn't." She ran her fingers over her palm, still dusty from the highway. In her mind's eye, she could see herself back at the cave, pressing even more for the answers she craved. Ever since Gabe had given her back the key to her ship, her need to know had been consuming her, dominating her every thought, her every desire.
If things hadn't been so tense this past week, she'd have enjoyed the irony in the fact that the alien artifact, that other half of who she was, had made her more of an investigator than ever.
Lex nodded at her reply. "I can't stop searching either." He paused and gripped the steering wheel tighter. "Am I also supposed to ignore that you passed out less than a mile from the caves you discovered."
"That's a very Eurocentric perspective there. I didn't discover anything. I fell through a fissure and found a place that a lot of other people have used over the years. It was always there."
"Fair point." He conceded. "But they were lost even from the Kawatchee until there was you. I find that so interesting."
"You find everything about me interesting."
"I do." He said, glancing back at her, and, again and like always, the look he gave her was equal parts true emotion and all-consuming curiosity. She was used to the concerned friend attitude and the mirthful amusement at her wit, but the older she got, the more time she spent with them, the more she noticed something else in his looks. There was a hunger there, too, that had nothing to do with her secrets.
It made her feel flushed in a way even her first ever cold never had. She loved Clark, really she did, couldn't imagine how she could have survived high school, and Smallville's weirdness, and her weirdness without him, but there was always something about Lex. Something inviting, something there as powerful in its own way as she was.
Puritans held that people who sold their souls to the devil wandered off into the darkest woods, signed a book bound in human flesh, dealt with the darkest of beast. In their time evil had always been ugly, brutal.
She knew better.
It was seductive and charming, always had been.
Lex wasn't evil.
Despite their differences and the lies piling up between, he still had his moments, instances in which the good man he could be shone through, like with flying in specialists for Ryan or calling in her father when she was out of her mind on Red K. Yet, it seemed to her that they fed the worst in each other. Over the last 18 months, they'd left quite a bit of collateral damage in their wake-Whitney, Phelan, Nixon.
He was dark and dangerous, seductive and inviting, and even though she knew better, she couldn't always squelch the brief flickers of attraction she felt when he looked at her like that .
Shaking her head, Chloe grabbed a hold of herself. Sarcasm often helped with that. "I hate to break it to you, but I'm not that interesting. I mean, Lana's beautiful and even without the cheerleader bit all the guys in school are lining up to date her, and even if you weren't going for the superficial, Dr. Bryce is a lot smarter than I am. Hopkins trained and all that. All I do is work at the school newspaper and sometimes intern at the Planet ."
"You do a lot more than that." The double entendre in that was glaringly obvious.
"Subtle is not your strong point at five in the morning."
"I'll try for better next time." He quipped. "Why were you out there, Chloe, really?"
"I hear that sleeping on tarmacs does wonders for your back."
"Try again."
"Lex, what was the first thing I told you when we agreed to be friends?"
"Not to offer you fava beans and a nice Chianti?"
"Ha-ha. No. I told you 'ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies.'"
"I'm tired of biting my tongue, Chloe, and I'm even more tired of the lies. They're better than Clark's. Get that kid over for a game of pool and throw him a few curve balls-"
"Mixing your sports terms, I see."
"Many apologies. If you get Clark talking over a game, ask him a few key questions about you and he fumbles for excuses worse than a freshman stoner caught with a cheat sheet at his final exam. If you ask him, adrenaline pretty much does everything."
"Ah, the mysteries of endocrinology," she quipped. "You're the one who pushes, Lex. I'm giving you everything I can. I'm giving you a Hell of a lot more than I give Lana or my minions at The Torch or most of the other people in my life short of Clark and my dad."
"So do I have to see you naked to get anything of substance out of you?"
"Boy if ever there were a sentence that could be misconstrued." She said, unbuckling her seatbelt as the car came to a stop in her driveway. "For the record, Clark's never seen me naked."
Lex arched an eyebrow at her. "Even with that radical change in personality that seems to come over you every six months or so?"
"Even then. Second, it's not about intimacy. It's about trust."
"You don't trust me."
"Do you blame me?" She sighed and patted his shoulder. "It's nothing personal. I don't trust anybody."
"You trust Clark."
"There are things I've never told him, things he wouldn't understand but that you do."
Lex nodded. "So he still doesn't know how Whitney lost his scholarship."
"No, he doesn't. You understand the grey and the way things really are. I have you for those thoughts and wishes that I can't share with my family."
"The dark things, you mean."
She shrugged. "Some, not all of it. You do have a wicked sense of humor and are the best read person I know."
"I resent that. This is Smallville. If it's not printed in a Sports Illustrated or a Playboy , these people haven't read it."
"Don't forget The Inquisitor ," Chloe replied glumly. "My dad's in love with that paper. Yesterday he made me read this expose on Atlantis."
"Oh the horror."
"Thank you, Kurtz." He laughed at that and she continued. "See, you get that. I…no one gets all of me, not ever. Clark gets the editor, the girlfriend, the-"
"Small town heroine."
"Let's not start up with that now. I told you. I'm just a right time, right place kind of gal. I get lucky."
Lex frowned, as if he'd bitten into something incredibly bitter, but didn't argue her point. "So you've said."
"But yeah. You're right. Clark gets all of that, the paragon or whatever, and my dad gets his little girl. The same bundle of joy he took home from the, um, orphanage. He still sees me as about three years old. To the rest of the town I'm just the strange city girl."
"What are you with me?"
"I don't know yet, but I do get to be imperfect. I get to make mistakes and be petty and be human ."
"Flawed, you mean."
"And I was never terribly fond of apples to begin with, but, yeah, with you I'm flawed and that's okay because you're not going to put me on a pedestal." Maybe in a lab, she thought to herself, but never on a pedestal.
"Clark's an idealist."
"And you're a cynic to match me or possibly Dana Scully."
He laughed again, enjoying the moment of geek solidarity, despite the tension still between them. That was the odd part of their relationship. There was always tension there, always discontent, but they were able to sneak in moments of affection and camaraderie too. They were like two shipwreck victims lost at sea, taking in desperate gulps of air between crashing waves. Eventually, they were both going to drown, but they had now and they had those blessed breaths of fresh air. "You know,' He said speculatively, "Even Scully had a close encounter." His eyes narrowed on her as he said that and she felt herself shiver.
The waves had come crashing down again.
Opening her door, Chloe started to climb out of the car. "Goodnight, Lex. Thank you for the ride."
He pulled the passenger door back into its latch. "It was my pleasure, and, of course, if you ever want to tell me what you were really doing on the road, the mansion is always open to you."
"Begging again, Lex?"
He shrugged. "Maybe, but something tells me that Gabe and Clark aren't going to be any more thrilled by your late night pavement rendezvous than I am. If you need a break from it-from everything they expect of you-then you know where to find me." He finished, gunning the engine and speeding away.
Damn, the little bastard sure did know how to make an exit.
Chloe sighed one more time and looked up at her father's bedroom window where the light had already been turned on. He'd be down soon. Time for another batch of waffles. Time for another uncomfortable truth and another argument and another chance for her father to close his eyes and pretend that none of this was happening.
Her father loved her-all of her, Chloe was as sure of that as she'd been of anything else in her life-but he didn't want to lose her to her other family, to who she'd been.
On the porch step, Chloe turned for an instant and glanced in the direction Lex had sped off in. In some ways it was a shame she couldn't bring Lex into her confidence. There were some days when she thought he'd understand her better than her family. He'd get the need to break away from what your father wanted for you, know what it was like to crave the truth like a drug, to feel that pull of destiny calling.
Because, for lack of a cheesier term, this was what was happening.
The Key was calling to her and it wouldn't be denied, not any longer.
And while she longed for it and its revelations, she was also afraid.
And alone.