Chapter Four

"Alright Chloe!" Jimmy yelled. Chloe turned to smile at him when she felt the rig beneath her jolt again. This time the bolts finally gave way and the whole thing came crashing down. She screamed and jumped off of the falling metal just before it hit the floor. She hit the ground hard, feeling a sharp pain in her wrist. She rolled to a stop and slowly got up, clutching her arm. She looked up to see Jimmy and Professor Hamilton running toward her. She also noticed that she was standing directly between the firing end of the projector and the machine that displayed the images.

"Oh, crap!" she yelled as a bright burst of green light filled her vision.

Jimmy looked on in horror as the beam shot from the end of the projector and hit Chloe square in the chest. Everything seemed to move in slow motion as the energy swept across her body. It almost looked as if she was burning into nothing from the inside out. Within an instant, she was completely gone.

"Chloe!" he screamed, still running to the spot where she had just been standing. Several pairs of arms grabbed him and pulled him back.

"Mr. Olsen!" Professor Hamilton said. "Don't go any closer. It could happen to you as well."

"You killed her!" Jimmy yelled. "You killed my girlfriend!"

Hamilton sighed and looked on helplessly as the projector continued to fire at the cylinder. There was an image of Metropolis as it normally appeared, only with dragons flying in the skies. Now he could see the city as if it were two hundred years in the future.

"Security just called, sir," one of the professor's assistants said. "They're shutting off the power to the entire floor."

He continued to watch the ever changing picture until it finally stopped and all of the lights went out. Slowly, the soft glow of the auxiliary lights came up enough for him to see his surroundings.

"Mr. Olsen," Hamilton said. "I'm truly sorry."

"Tell that to Chloe," Jimmy said. "She's been researching those rocks for years. There's never been a story of any of them doing anything good. They destroy everything that they come into contact with. And now one of them has killed her."

The fire escape doors opened and a security team came into the room. After a few minutes they had cleared enough of the debris of the catwalk that the reporters and assistants were able to be evacuated. Hamilton helped Jimmy to his feet.

"Professor Hamilton," one of the security guards said. "You and Mr. Olsen will have to follow us to the lobby. EMS is en route."

"We're coming," the professor said. "Oh. And have someone contact Mr. Luthor. There has been a fatal accident."

"More like a murder!" Jimmy said.

"I believe Mr. Luthor is already on his way down, sir," the guard said before he left.

"Mr. Olsen," Hamilton said. "I assure you that every precaution was made to ensure that nothing like this would happen."

"But it did," Jimmy said. "You killed her! She was a sweet and innocent girl and you killed her trying to get into the limelight. Well, I'll tell you what, Doc. I work for one of the biggest newspapers in the world. I'm going to make sure that everyone knows what happened here today."

"Well that would be unfortunate for you," came a voice from behind Jimmy. He turned around and saw Lionel Luthor standing in the doorway to the fire escape.

"Mr. Luthor," Hamilton said, making his way across the room to greet the man. "There has been a terrible accident!"

"I'll deal with you in a minute, Emil," Luthor said. He turned to Jimmy. "You're Jimmy Olsen of the Daily Planet. Correct?"

"Yeah," Jimmy said. "You're Lionel Luthor."

"Very good," Luthor said. "You are evidently a very bright young man. I hope, then, that you will not find any difficulty in comprehending what I am about to tell you. If a word of what happened here today makes it into your newspaper, there will be consequences."

"You can't threaten me," Jimmy said. "There were twenty other reporters in here today. Are you going to kill all of them, too?"

"Every other press person in this city has enough sense not to cross me," Luthor said. "Ask around. And by the way, I never said that I would kill you. You may go."

"Chloe Sullivan is dead," Jimmy said. "Somebody is going to answer for it."

"Oh, you're absolutely right," Luthor said. "Someone will answer for it right now." He turned to Hamilton as Jimmy went out the fire escape door.

"Mr. Luthor," Hamilton said. "This wasn't my fault."

"What happened here?" Luthor said, stepping closer to the professor.

"There must have been some sort of power surge," Hamilton replied. "The projector started blowing apart. Then the catwalk came down and somehow Ms. Sullivan got hit with the projector beam."

"And it killed her?" Luthor asked. "I thought that it was nothing more than light."

"It was, sir," Hamilton explained. "At least it was in the early stages of the experiment."

"What changed?" Luthor asked.

"The introduction of a piece of one the Smallville meteors," Hamilton said. "It must have changed the experiment more than I anticipated."

"Professor," Luthor said. "The pieces of meteor that hit Smallville are extremely unstable. I've been having them sampled and researched for years. We still don't know what it is that makes them so unique, but we do know that when they are introduced…they change everything. And so now you tell me that one of these meteor rocks turned a harmless projector into a fatal weapon?"

"I'm not entirely certain, sir," Hamilton said. "There shouldn't have been anything about the device that could cause destruction. I think that it is more likely that Ms. Sullivan's DNA was pulled apart by the beam and projected into the image."

"So you think that she could still be alive?" Luthor asked.

"It's possible, sir," Hamilton said.

"Well, then where is she?"

Hamilton sighed and looked down. "Well, sir. Either her DNA was separated and scattered across the entire multiverse, or it was reconstructed in one parallel world."

"So she's either as good as dead or she's in another dimension," Luthor said. "Well, Professor, you have work to do. I want you to put your machine back together and find Ms. Sullivan. If she's dead, then you will be fired, your career will essentially be over, and your life will be worthless. If she is alive then you will have discovered a way to not only view other worlds but also to visit them. You will make my company a lot of money and you will possibly win the Nobel Prize. I will check on your progress."

And without another word Lionel Luthor turned on his heel and marched out of the laboratory, leaving Professor Hamilton standing speechless in the ruins of his greatest invention.

Clark Kent was busy putting new fence posts in the ground on the back side of his family's farm. It was the kind of work that he was used to doing as long as he could remember. His father had begun letting him do some of the chores like than when he was only about seven or eight. The same job that would have taken his father hours to do with a post hole digger and a shovel only took Clark a fraction of the time. All Clark had to do was pick up the post and shove it into the ground. It was as easy as if a normal person were to put toothpicks in their mashed potatoes.

He still could not explain the source of his abilities. He knew that he was from another planet and that the radiation given off by the Earth's sun had changed his physiology. But he still could not get his head around every aspect of it. He was learning though. Just as his body and his superhuman abilities had grown over time, he knew that his superhuman brain would eventually develop as well.

"Clark!"

He looked up and saw his mother standing on the porch of their old farmhouse waving at him. He allowed his eyes to focus more, using what he only knew to refer to as telescopic vision, and saw that she had a slightly worried expression. He took off in a run to the house. He moved so fast that the human eye would only be able to see that he vanished from where he was and instantly appeared again next to his mother. He had run over a quarter of a mile and was not even winded.

"What's wrong, Mom?" he asked. She turned to him. She had been looking where he was out in the field.

"Jimmy Olsen is on the phone," she said. "He sounds really upset about something."

Clark stepped into the house and picked the telephone up from the desk where his mother had set it. He had a feeling sweep through him. It was the same feeling that he always got before something bad happened. It was almost as if he had a sixth sense about trouble, especially when it involved the people that were the closest to him.

"Jimmy?" Clark said into the phone. "What's the matter?"

"CK!" Jimmy said. Clark winced at the panicked excitement in his voice. "It's Chloe! There was an accident at a press conference! She got zapped! Lionel Luthor threatened me! I don't know what to do!"

"Slow down," Clark said calmly. "What about Chloe?"

"She's dead," Jimmy said. Clark's heart sank. He knew that there had been many times that he had feared that his friends were dead and everything turned out to be okay. But it still always hurt as if it were true.

"What do you mean?" Clark asked. "What happened?"

Jimmy quickly recounted as much of the tale as he could to get the jest of it across to Clark. Finally, Clark told him that he would be there as quick as he could. Little did Jimmy know how quick that actually was. He hung up the phone and turned back to his mother who was still in the doorway, looking at him with a worried expression on her face.

"What's wrong, Clark?" she asked.

"Jimmy said that Chloe got killed in an accident at LuthorCorp," he replied. Martha Kent gasped an placed her hands over her mouth. "I've got to get over there."

"Go ahead," she replied. "I'll come behind you and meet you there."

With that, Clark vanished in a blur and a gust of wind. He was five miles down the road before the screen door slapped shut behind him. Senator Martha Kent reached for the telephone and searched the addresses for the number of the one man that may have some answers. She knew that he could not be trusted, but at times in which LuthorCorp was brought into question, he usually had a small bit of help to offer.

She scrolled down until she found "L. Luthor" and allowed the phone to dial itself.

Less than six minutes after he disappeared from farmhouse in Smallville, Clark reappeared on the street in front of LuthorCorp in the downtown section of Metropolis. The sidewalk was so busy that no one noticed when a new face suddenly popped up out of nowhere. He looked around to be double sure that no one had seen him. That was when he saw Jimmy sitting on the steps of the Daily Planet across the street.

"Jimmy!" Clark yelled as he jogged over to where the photographer was sitting.

"Clark?" Jimmy asked, staring in disbelief as he stood up and walked toward him. "I just got off the phone with you a few minutes ago."

"What are you doing out here?" Clark asked.

"I don't know what to do," Jimmy said.

Clark could see that he was near tears, and looked suspiciously as if he had been crying already. He did not really blame him. Clark usually turned off his emotions until after a crisis was over. But Jimmy was not that kind of person. And he loved Chloe.

"Where was the accident?" Clark asked.

Jimmy looked up at the LuthorCorp building. "On the fifth floor. Professor Emil Hamilton has a lab up there. Lionel Luthor threatened me and security took me out of the building. I started to go back into the Planet, but this is as far as I got. I can't believe she's gone."

"Calm down, Jimmy," Clark said. "You don't ever know what you're dealing with when LuthorCorp is involved. But I'd much rather deal with Lionel than Lex."

"That's because he's never threatened to kill you," Jimmy said.

"Not directly," Clark said. "But he's a lot better of a man than he used to be." He looked at the building and started back across the street.

"Where are you going?" Jimmy asked.

"Inside," Clark said.

"They're not going to let you in," Jimmy replied.

"I'll find Lionel," Clark said. "I'm going to get some answers."

Clark and Jimmy stepped through the front doors and into the lobby. There were still several reporters standing around talking to police officers. The elevator doors opened just as they were walking to the information desk. Clark looked up just in time to see Lionel Luthor getting out.

Most of the reporters broke away from the officers that were writing up their statements to thy and get a comment from the company owner before he escaped to his limo that was undoubtedly waiting outside for him. Lionel held up his hands as if to say that he would make a short statement.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," he said. "There has been an accident in one of our laboratories. Rest assured that everything is now under control and that everything is being done to determine exactly what happened so that Professor Hamilton's experiment can be repaired. You will all be notified when he is ready to demonstrate it once again." He turned toward the front door and headed in that direction.

"Mr. Luthor!" one of the reporters called. "What about the reporter that was hit by the beam of the device?"

"I don't have any information about a reporter," Luthor said.

"Chloe Sullivan!" Jimmy yelled. Luthor stopped and looked up at him, noticing Clark for the first time. "Reporter for the Daily Planet! I believe you knew her personally, sir!"

"Yes," Luthor said, the trademark grin still on his face. "I know Ms. Sullivan. I'll find out what I can and issue a press release this afternoon." He turned to the door again but gave a short nod at Clark.

"Jimmy," Clark said. "Stay here. I'll be back in a few minutes. I'm going to see what I can get from Luthor."

"I'm going with you," Jimmy said. "She's my girlfriend, Clark!"

"I know, Jimmy," Clark said. "I'm going to do everything that I can. I promise that I won't leave you out of the loop. I'll be right back. Okay?"

Jimmy nodded and watched as Clark ran out the door.

"Mr. Luthor," Clark called as Lionel Luthor got into his limo. The older man leaned out and jerked his head, indicating the younger man to get in. Clark made his way to the other side of the limo and got inside.

"Clark," Lionel Luthor said. "What are you doing here?"

"Jimmy Olsen called me," Clark said. "He told me that Chloe was killed this morning."

"Jimmy doesn't know what happened," Luthor said. "Clark, I spoke with Professor Hamilton a few minutes ago. He has a theory. It's possible that Chloe wasn't killed."

"Then what happened to her?" Clark said.

"I don't know if you know anything about alternate dimensions," Luthor said. Clark decided against telling the man anything about his adventure in the Phantom Zone. "Hamilton thinks that Ms. Sullivan may have been transported to a parallel Earth."

"When is he going to bring her back?" Clark asked.

"Clark," Luthor said. "Hamilton's invention was never intended to send a person into another world. Assuming that he can recreate the circumstances that caused the accident, it could take months or even years to find out which world she was sent to. There are literally billions of these alternate worlds out there."

"I have to see this Professor Hamilton," Clark said. "I've got to help him."

"I'm sure that if you wanted to get past my security and find the professor, you would have no trouble doing so," Luthor replied. "But what help would you be to him, Clark. He's a brilliant scientist and you're a farmer from Smallville." Clark's fists clenched. "I mean that with no offense. But its the truth. Besides, I think that you may find that his secret ingrediant in his machine may be just the incentive that you need to stay away."

"What do you mean?" Clark asked.

"Hamilton used a prism carved from a meteor rock to create the beam from his projector," Luthor said.

"Well, that explains everything," Clark said. "Meteor rocks always throw a wrench into anything that they're a part of."

"I know that," Luthor said. "And Hamilton had orders not to use them. I will deal with him in time. However, judging by what happened to Ms. Sullivan when she was hit by the beam, I would think that the outcome would be even more tragic in your case."

Clark knew that Lionel was right. If he were to be hit by a pulse of pure Kryptonian energy it would probably kill him. He nodded.

"What am I supposed to tell Jimmy?" Clark said. "That I can't do anything?"

"I promise you that I'll do all that I can," Luthor said.

Clark took a little comfort in his words. But as with everything that Lionel Luthor said, there was always the possibility that he was lying.

End of Chapter Four

I know. I know. You guys were hoping to find out what's going on with Chloe. Well, the next chapter will be about Clark and Jimmy again. Sorry. But I'll get back to the mirror universe again real soon.

I love the reviews that you guys are sending me. And you have no idea how on the money you are with some of your suspicions as to what is coming up in a few more chapters. I have to tell you, I know what's coming up and I know how the story will end...but I don't know how long its going to be. I keep having more ideas as I go along.

And yes, I know that Lex is missing from the fic so far. Don't worry. His alternate self will show up a little later. But as for the version in this universe...he doesn't really come into play in this story. Neither does Lana. I had thought about writing a little side story to include them...but I felt that it would just take away from what's going on.

No, Clark doesn't really trust Lionel Luthor. But he is the only one that could turn to. He has to get information so that he can find out what happened to Chloe. Plus, Lionel does know his secret.

That's all for this time. Chapter 5 is coming up shortly.

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