Casting the Die

"Hey, I've been looking all over the mansion for you." Lex said, entering into the nursery and putting his hands on Lana's shoulders as she rocked in the chair. She relaxed into his grip, enjoying the feel of his strong hands kneading her shoulders. She always felt protected with him and that reminded her of the better parts of being with Clark. She always felt cherished and important, too. Something that she had not always felt with her former lover. There were just too many secrets between them, and she'd always felt that there was something bigger he was involved in that just didn't concern her.

That feeling of being excluded had hurt the worst, far more than the feeling of being deceived.

She was not a fool. She knew that there were things Lex kept from her. Lex was never completely honest with anybody, a Luthorian trait bred into him since day one by Lionel. She didn't know anything about what he did day-to-day in his business, nor did she care. About the important things, the life-changing stuff, Lex never lied.

He'd told her about the ship and about his deals with Fine. He'd told her that he loved her and the baby, and she believed in that.

She had too.

Yet, what Chloe and Clark had said weighed heavily on her mind. Lex had denied that 33.1 had ever existed. He'd sworn to her that it had just been a delusion in their attacker's mind and an urban legend only foolish cub reporters pursued. It wasn't real. He didn't violate peoples' rights like that.

But maybe he did. She'd always known that Chloe'd been jealous of her. She'd won Clark, after all, and she also knew that although Clark apparently no longer wanted her, he was upset that she'd chosen Lex as his replacement. Maybe everything they'd said had been out of spite.

She just didn't know, and there was only one way to be sure.

"Lex?"

"Mm?" He asked, leaning down and placing a gentle kiss on the crown of her head.

Lana took a deep breath, steeling her nerves as she continued, "What happened to Tobias?"

"Huh?"

"Tobias Rice. You promised he'd get his surgery."

"He did."

She stood up and twisted out of his grasp. She needed to think clearly when they spoke. She couldn't let pregnancy hormones and need get the better of her, not this time. "No more lies. Where'd you take him?"

"I brought him to a facility I had set up. He's been in the care of some very well-trained specialists."

And there it was with Lex. The key to his success. He never ever said anything that wasn't at least partially true, and, as a result, he always believed in what he was saying. Where Clark was obvious in his lies, Lex was smooth. Where Clark naturally bucked against the untruths, Lex bought into them, became invested in them. You just never knew.

"I'm serious. I want to know everything. I want to know if 33.1 is real. If Tobias is being used as some sort of meteor freak detector against his will. I want to know if you abducted Chloe."

"Lana." Lex said, frowning. "I don't know where all this is coming from."

She shook her head. It wasn't good enough this time. "Clark was at Chloe's final dress fitting. We had a fight, and she told me that you'd taken her because she's a meteor freak."

"Those sure are a lot of accusations to fit into one sentence." Lex said coolly.

"She was pretty sincere about the whole thing. Clark, too, and we both know that Clark couldn't lie to save his life."

"Or to keep you." Lex said, his tone still politely detached. This was the boardroom Lex she was dealing with. The one who weighed everything carefully and always had every angle covered. The one with all the answers.

"There is that," she conceded, not taking the bait and being drawn into a guilt trip about her residual feelings for Clark. "But I don't think they were lying."

"You really think Chloe's a meteor mutant? I know she's spent her life exposing them, but to actually be one is quite a leap."

"I saw her. At my bachelorette party, I saw her use her power. I know what she can do. If that part's true, then maybe the rest of it is too." She shook her head. "You know me, Lex. You know how I feel about lying. I won't be lied to about this. Whatever slightly shady deal you've pulled to get one over on Wayne or Queen Industries, I don't care about. You can fib about that all you want, but I won't have something that concerns my friends just swept under the rug. If you're not honest with me right now, that's it. I'm leaving."

Lex took in a deep breath and flinched like she'd struck him. No, scratch that. Like Clark had sucker-punched him. When he spoke, his whole demeanor changed. It was no longer the cool and collected corporate Titan she was dealing with. It was the lost little boy, the sensitive side that she was pretty sure only she, Lionel and Helen Bryce had ever seen.

Maybe Clark, too. Once upon a time.

"That's two then."

"Huh?"

"Helen. I did something underhanded and confessed it to her. She called off the wedding. She changed her mind, of course. Nothing like the promise of billions to lure out the black widow." He gave a bitter laugh. "I don't know why I expected this marriage to go any better than the other two."

Lana sighed and restrained the urge to pat his cheek and tell him that everything was going to be alright. Not now. He'd have to be a grown up here. Come to think of it, so would she. "I do love you."

"Not as much as him."

"Not the same as him." She corrected, and it was true. Clark was the boy next door, while Lex was the father of her child. They were two very different kinds of love. What she'd had with Clark was more romantic, much more Romeo and Juliet. What she had with Lex was infinitely more complicated and, she hoped, more real. "But that's not the issue. All you have to do is answer one question, Lex. Is there a 33.1?"

He swallowed. "And if I said 'yes?' What would happen then?"

Well that was the answer she was looking for. That might be as close to admitting 33.1 existed as Lex would ever come. Lana fought back the vertigo. Her world was turning upside down and she most certainly had not asked for it. A month ago, she'd been in Paris planning her dream wedding and now she was trying to figure out if Lex was worth marrying.

"I…I don't know."

"Would you still leave?"

"I don't know."

"Not good enough."

"This isn't a business deal. I can't give you a counter offer, Lex."

"Everything is negotiable, and, as much as I love you, it's still a contract, something legally binding. How does the deal change if I came clean to you?"

"Haven't you already?"

"I've given you hypotheticals. I've neither admitted nor denied anything."

There were a lot of days she wished she were a lawyer or, at least, had inherited her biological father's sense for logic and arguments. "Then tell me!" She said, throwing her hands up in the air.

"What will you give me in return? Will you still be here in the morning?"

"I can promise you I won't be here in an hour if you refuse. I don't care if I live in a cardboard box and eat tuna for the rest of my life. I'm not get married to someone I don't know. I won't have you lying to our child and spinning happy stories for her either."

"Lana…" he started, reaching for her hand.

She batted it away. "No, not this time. Don't placate me. Is there a 33.1? Yes or no?'

"Lana…" he said again.

"I'm done," she said, shaking her head and starting out the doorway. What she heard next was so faint that she thought she'd imagined it. But then he said it again, louder.

"Yes."

She turned back and saw Lex, his shoulders slouched and his head bowed. His voice was even and as cool as it ever was, but she could hear how ragged his breathing was. He didn't want her to leave. "What?"

"Yes. 33.1 exists. I've been running it for almost three years."

"Since the day your father was sentenced."

He nodded. "Since the day the company was officially mine. My father had already started meteor rock experiments at the plant. I was just building off of what he'd started. So I started collecting the most dangerous criminals, taking them off of Belle Reve's hands and the taxpayers' wallets. I found some others, too. Ones who weren't meteor-infected, like the foreign exchange student."

"Mikhail?"

He nodded. "He tried to kill Chloe. Threatened to blackmail Clark into throwing the championship. He's dangerous and there as well."

Lana nodded and sat back down in the rocker. This was all too much. "If what you're doing is so noble, why'd you lie to me before?"

"I didn't want you to know. It's like the black ship. This is all very top secret. I've got military contracts in on this and, although I trust you with my life, I didn't want to get you dragged into the cross fire if things fell apart."

"I see, and what about Chloe and Tobias?"

"Tobias will get the best medical help available, but I have not yet arranged for his surgery. I need him."

"To find the others, like Chloe. But she didn't do anything. Why take her?"

He sighed and knelt down in front of her. "I know you love her like a sister and you trust her now, but that might change. You know better than I do that many of the meteor mutants start out perfectly sane and pleasant and then…"

"They change."

"Part of the project has been putting trackers in the ones that haven't yet become dangerous. I wasn't going to keep Chloe locked away. I was just putting a GPS chip in her, like with dozens of others."

"Dozens?" Lana gulped.

"Maybe several hundred by now. If we can keep track of the ones that haven't manifested psychosis yet, keep a close eye on them, we might be able to stop them before they hurt anyone. If someone had kept an eye on Tina, had known when she'd escaped from Belle Reve, then Van McNulty's father would still be alive. Mrs. Fordman wouldn't have gone through all that suffering."

"I…I guess that makes sense."

"I do not love Chloe like you do. She's been quite the thorn in my side lately, but I know how much she means to you, and I do respect her. We might not be on the same side of things anymore, but I do admire an opponent that intelligent and, frankly, dangerous. I wouldn't turn her into some kind of lab rat. In fact, I resent the term. I think our patients are treated much better than the ones at Belle Reve."

Lana nodded. "I would imagine so." Lex had tons more money and probably had established a nice set-up for the meteor-afflicted in his care. Besides, she'd visited Belle Reve just once. She'd gone, against all her better judgment, to see Van and thank him for saving her life.

She could still smell the place. It wreaked that badly of ammonia and urine.

Anything had to be better than that.

Lex reached up and stroked her hair, and she relaxed once again into the gesture. Lex wasn't hurting anybody. He was trying to protect people, just like he had with the black ship and Fine. It hadn't worked, but he'd tried so hard to prepare against another invasion after what had happened on graduation day. He'd been right to do it because Zod and Fine hadn't followed far behind those things.

Lex could save her, keep her safe. Keep their baby safe.

Chloe was just confused; that was all.

"What I'm doing is no more harmful than the treatment at Belle Reve or in prison. It's much better in fact. I'm trying to help them, maybe find a way to undo it, if that's possible. I have the best scientists working on it."

Lana frowned. "Why would you even care about curing it? As long as we keep them from hurting the rest of us, I can't say I care much else about what happens to them." And that was mostly true. She loved Chloe and was extremely sorry for her, but she could care less if Ian ever regained a normal life.

Lex sighed and started unbuttoning the collar of his shirt. Lana started to ask him a question, but he shook his head, silencing her until his collar bone was completely exposed. He picked up her hand and brought it to a point right under his carotid. "I know you can't feel it, but it's there."

Her frown deepened. She was more confused than before. "I…I don't understand."

"I have a tracker, too, just in case. Considering Lionel's my father, it's a miracle I didn't go on a killing spree the second I woke up in Smallville Medical after the first shower."

She shook her head. What he was saying didn't make any sense. "I'm still a little lost here."

"I've been meteor-infected too. It's not just my hair, Lana, although I can assure you it's nothing nearly as spectacular as what Chloe can do. It's a bit more along the lines of what Tobias does."

"I…how?"

"It's one of the few meteor powers that can't be used against anybody else. Actually it doesn't benefit anyone but me."

Lana took a deep breath and suddenly felt very stupid. Of course, she should have known. Everyone in town----Hell everyone in the free world----knew that Lex Luthor had been bald since the meteor shower. The fact that he was a mutant was obvious for anyone with working eyeballs (and apparently Tobias) to see. Still, she'd never associated bald with mutant powers. God, everyone she knew was a meteor mutant: Clark, Chloe, her fiancé. On the plus side, none of them had tried to kill her. Clark had abducted her lately and strangled her that one time, but none of them had tried to kill her when they weren't clearly drunk or meteor-infected (silver kind not green).

Inhaling, she asked, "What do you do?"

Lex smiled a little, apparently encouraged by her not running from the room in screaming horror, which she wouldn't have done. She wasn't exactly comfortable around the meteor-infected, but she did want to give the ones like Tobias and Clark a fair chance. As long as no one tried to stalk her, she wasn't going to hate them outright for no reason. She was still nervous, though. You couldn't blame her for that.

"I heal."

"What do you mean?"

"I have a heightened immune system. I haven't been sick since the shower and I heal faster than normal people do. I thought you might have noticed last year when we were working together. I still wore the sling for weeks, but my arm healed up from the gunshot wound within a few days. I was afraid that since we were spending so much time together, you might have noticed me not favoring it as much as I should have."

"Oh." Honestly, the next week, Lex had kissed her, Mr. Kent had died, and she'd put her relationship with Clark on hold. She'd been so mired in her own pain and confusion that she hadn't had time to notice the presence of a sling. "I'm still confused."

Lex nodded and leaned in closer to her, taking her hand in his. "What about?"

"Why would you keep people in 33.1 if they're like you?"

Lex face contorted as if he'd tasted something incredibly bitter. "They are not like me. 33.1 is a lockdown facility. Only the psychotic are housed there. The harmless are left free-range until they, too, have a break with reality."

"Too?"

"Most go psychotic, you know that. We both know that. I and Chloe have just been luckier than most, so far, but I don't intend for that to happen to me. If that means keeping an extra close watch on the meteor mutants who are already insane and trying to figure out what made them that way, then so be it. I consider the unfortunate experimentation necessary for the sake of my family."

Family? Oh God. Involuntarily, Lana grabbed for her stomach. Some story Lois had once told her about the foster daughter of Mrs. Kent's first chief of staff came back to her. She was a little girl who could manipulate anything made out of glass. A girl, who though perfectly sweet and friendly (at least if you were Clark, big surprise there), had managed to inadvertently injure people when she got excited. And she had inherited her power from her father, a mutant who'd been in the first shower. "You think the baby is affected too."

"I know she's affected. It might be what I have."

"Might?"

He shrugged. "Or it could be a variant of what you have or some combination of the two."

Lana felt her heart speed up as if she'd just finished a triathlon. She must have misheard him. Hell, maybe she was just having one long nightmare starting with her bachelorette party and none of this was real. "I…I'm normal."

He shook his head. "When I first procured Tobias, I had him come to the mansion. I had feared that our daughter might be afflicted and I wanted to know for sure. I wanted to be able to start planning as early as possible in case she had special needs. You were sleeping, but I brought him into your room for a look. He was able to tell that the baby was infected, which I'd suspected, but he also told me about you."

"I'm not anything! This is crazy" She said, trying to rise to her feet.

Lex kept a firm grip on her lap as he spoke, "Tobias is never wrong, and he's only able to pick up those who've been affected by meteorite poisoning. We've tested his ability on Mikhail and several other what we call metahumans who grew up outside of Smallville. He noticed nothing different about them."

"But I don't have any powers."

Lex stroked her hand gently. "And until your night of bowling fun, neither had Chloe. You, however, have had a power all along. You just haven't realized that you've been using it."

"No."

"Lana, you wore a piece of meteor rock around your neck, twenty-four hours a day, for twelve years. You've had more exposure than anyone else in this town. Is it that surprising that you've been infected?"

She shook her head. It wasn't true. It just wasn't. "I've never felt any different."

"And you wouldn't, although, I suspect after piecing everything together that your power didn't manifest until puberty."

"How would you even know what it is, if I didn't know?" She demanded.

"We analyzed some of your blood that you'd been giving the doctors for your weekly check-ups."

"You analyzed my blood without asking me? Maybe Chloe's right about all of this. How could you violate me like that?"

"First of all, you already consented to have your blood drawn. The remainder of the sample was used to measure your health and make sure the pregnancy was progressing well, which, considering the parents' unique genetic make up, it is. Or at least as well as can be expected. Second of all, if I had asked, you would have refused."

"That's how consent works." She spat, pulling her hand away.

"And that's my child in there too and I need to know everything about you to keep her safe and healthy."

She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms over chest. "And what did you find, then?"

"Traces of a pheromone-like compound. It's fascinating really. We distilled a sample of it and discovered that it only attracts other meteor mutants. Any other metas and humans are immune to it."

"So you're saying?"

"You've been attracting your own stalkers all along. You didn't mean to, of course, but you have. It explains why so many of them have come after you."

She reeled back with the news. If she'd been attracting meteor mutants to her, then a lot of things made sense. It explained why she had a legion of stalkers, why Clark had been crushing on her since he was five, why a man as worldly as Lex had fallen for a country girl. Maybe nothing anyone important in her life had ever felt for her had been real.

God, what if no one really loved her?

Broken, she croaked out, "Is that why you love me?"

"No." He said, taking both her hands in his once more and staring up at her sincerely. "I fell in love with you because you were my partner and my equal. You worked with me on The Talon and with the black ship. You've believed in me all along when my other so-called friends abandoned me, even when the world was falling apart. You're the mother of my child. I love you."

"So the magical pheromones you say I have had nothing to do with it?" She asked, her insecurity still gnawing at her.

"You're an intoxicating woman despite your powers. Jason, Adam, and Whitney all knew that and they weren't meteor mutants."

She noticed he'd left a name off of his list. Maybe Tobias had outted Clark to him. She knew that Chloe and Clark had met with Tobias a few times before Lex had scooped him up. That's how Chloe'd been identified. Head still spinning, she asked, "And Clark?"

Lex rose and waited for her to do the same. "In the spirit of full disclosure, I have one more thing to show you."

Lana closed her eyes and took in a few more deep breaths, trying to find her center. She didn't know which rabbit hole she'd fallen through, but she sure as Hell wanted to pop back out of it. Still, she was clearly deep in it now. Although she still did not believe Lex's insinuation about her own ability, she did believe what he'd told her about himself and their child. Van McNulty, after all, had gone after Lex. Chloe'd figured it out and had the suspicious medical records to prove it. She was in this, whether she wanted to be or not, whether she left him or not. Opening her eyes, she took his proffered hand and steeled her nerves. "Show me."

She thought she'd understood obsession before. She'd been stalked by more than her fair share of people, after all (even a few non-mutants). The Torch had been a testament to Chloe's obsession with all the oddities in Smallville. Clark's loft was strewn with astronomy texts and star maps, and she'd watched Lex puzzle over the black ship right along with her for months.

But she'd understood nothing.

The room in front of her was beyond creepy. It was as large as a warehouse and how he'd manage to carve out such a large space in an antique stone mansion and have it blend in so seamlessly with the rest of it, she'd never know. In the center were the remains of a car. At least she thought it'd been a car. Currently, it was crushed into 3-by-3 cube. It was set beside a computerized simulation of a sports car crashing into a person, over and over again.

And that was just the beginning.

There were photos of Clark, some he must have had stolen from the Kents' family albums and others that had been taken without Clark knowing. There were dozens of candid shots, spanning the entire time that Lex had known Clark. The last one was taken only a few days ago according to the time stamp on its bottom corner. There were other things too, she realized, as she leafed through his files. There was a copy of Clark's birth certificate and of his adoption papers and of every school record he'd ever had. They spanned from the first day of kindergarten all the way to the last paper he'd turned in for his History of Journalism class the week before his father had died.

A few of the documents---the birth and adoption certificates, his medical records, the hospital report from the day he "died," and a disciplinarian report filed on him when he'd been in first grade---had been set aside in a special red folder. Ear-marked, she realized, because they were the most intriguing. Lana thumbed through the discipline report. She'd been very little, of course, but she'd remembered the day it had happened. The third grade bully, a kid already over a hundred pounds, all of it fat, had decided to pound Pete into hamburger.

Clark hadn't liked that very much, so he'd pushed the kid back before he'd even had the chance to deck Pete. He'd pushed him right through the doors to the playground. The third grader had been in the hospital for a week, and Clark had been suspended. She actually remembered being jealous because he got out of school for a whole week. No one had ever said much about it because, after all, they lived in Smallville, the land of Denial.

There were other things in the shrine---for that's obviously what it was---too. None of them school related. There were several glass cases containing three different varieties of meteorites: green, red, and black. There was no sample of silver because the rock that had been mysteriously sent to her had vanished at the mansion. The walls were covered with murals that perfectly recreated the legend from the cave, and in near the cases of meteor rock was what looked like a giant slug. Another computer screen was set up in this corner of the room, playing a simulation of an octagonal disk with even more Kawatchee sigils engraved on it.

"What is all of this?" She finally asked, turning to look at him.

"This is my obsession." Lex answered simply. "Along with the meteor rock research, of course, or maybe just as a side light to it."

"It's all of Clark."

"It is."

"Some of this stuff is from the first month, Hell, the first week you moved to town." A lesser woman would have been threatened, but Lana knew that this wasn't about any feelings Lex might have been harboring toward Clark. One tended not to stab secret crushes with chisels, after all. This was more than that. It was the same annoying question that had been plaguing her since she'd first noticed Clark back.

Lex was even more desperate than she was to know Clark's secret.

Curious to know more, Lana continued, "You've been studying him from day one."

"Less subtly than I hoped. He found this room once, right before you went to Paris, actually. He didn't take it well."

Well that wasn't exactly a shock, but it did explain why Clark had been downright hostile to Lex for the first few weeks of senior year. Even Jason had commented on how cold Clark had been to Lex when he'd unveiled the Crows' new uniforms. She'd never thought much about it until now. "I can imagine."

"I dismantled it once for him, but he didn't appreciate it. After we finally severed our friendship, I reopened it and added more extensively to it than I had before."

She should be appalled and part of her was, but she didn't owe Clark anything anymore. He'd dumped her, after all. Left her devastated and depressed and Lex had saved her from that. Besides, she wanted to know what he'd found.

She needed to know.

"What do you know?" She prodded.

Lex smiled back at her, the kind of grin a wolf wore before devouring the weakest lamb, and she wasn't afraid. Quite the contrary, she was intrigued, drawn in. "Not as much as I'd like, more than you do. Then again, maybe less. I've never shared a bed with him."

She ignored the slightly wounded aspect to his tone. He knew she'd been with Clark first when they got together. Hell, she'd fallen into his arms partially because she'd been so desperate to rebound from Clark. Still, he pouted. Some days his wounded boy act was endearing---that warmth she got knowing that he'd shared something with her he'd never share with anyone else---other days, like today, it grated. "I don't know anything. He dumped me before he let the armor crack, remember?"

Lex nodded and sauntered from the entrance of the room to the crushed cube. "Here's what I know. The first day we met, I hit him with my Porsche at sixty miles an hour and he didn't die. His medical record, birth certificate, and adoption papers are all fakes. Expert fakes, but I know my father's hand, know the experts he prefers and uses. These," he said, gesturing to the red folder. "…are about as real as Monopoly money."

"Why would Lionel do any of that?"

"That I don't know, but Clark's a person who doesn't exist. There's no record of him ever being born, and I regret that that observation was something I failed to make on my own. Jason pointed that out to me at gunpoint, actually."

Lana tensed at the mention of her ex-lover, but the moment's hesitation passed, "Oh."

He shrugged. "That's another long story. Of course, the Kents wouldn't be the first family desperate enough to go to the black market, or maybe they simply took an opportunity that presented itself. They might have found Clark the day of the shower near whatever remained of his real parents and kept him for themselves."

"It's possible," Lana said, but something in that didn't feel right. "What else besides the faked records and the obvious invulnerability?"

"He's tied to the caves, but I can't figure out how, unless he's Kawatchee."

She nodded, growing more intrigued with Lex's theories by the minute. "Yeah, well that's pretty obvious too. He used to spend all his time down there." Lex walked over to a file cabinet and removed a folder, tossing it to her. She started to leaf through it, but frowned. "These are e-mails but they're coded---"

"With the language from the caves. I know. There's dozens of them over a period of two and a half years, all between Clark and a Virgil Swann. Have you ever heard of him?"

"Yeah, we covered him in one of our astronomy classes. He's almost an urban legend, part Howard Hughes and part Bill Gates. Rumor is he retired over a decade before his death and set up a foundation to look for little green me, like SETI but better funded."

"Virgil Swann was a recluse. He only received two visitors after he retired: Clark, twice, with whom he kept up a regular and encoded correspondence, and my father."

Lana flipped through the pages and tried to catch her breath. "I asked him. Point blank, when all that mess happened with Isobel. I wanted to know what she marked on me. I was scared and confused and he fucking lied about being able to read the symbols."

Lex arched an eyebrow at her uncharacteristic profanity. "That's all I know. That and Tobias can't identify him."

"You tested it?"

"The Talon had a large party last week. A new annual event which brought in record numbers. It was very crowded and one lone boy and his aide went by undetected." He shrugged. "It worked out well for me. Tobias identified fifteen other mutants for me that night."

"But not Clark."

"No, whatever he is, he's something different."

Lana nodded and stepped closer to the large slug. She was a girly girl through and through---horses and pink party dresses and everything else. She'd always been squeamish around bugs, especially spiders, but this was different. As repugnant as it was, it drew her in too. She knew what it was. She'd seen Chloe's X-ray (her roommate had proudly displayed it on her home version of the Wall of Weird for months until Gabe made her take it down). It was an alien parasite, infinitely more interesting than those bacteria from Mars she'd read about in her astronomy text.

It was there, bathed in the eerie up-lights illuminating the parasite, that everything finally clicked. She'd had an epiphany moment just once before in her life, that golden moment when everything made sense. That time, it had been for an essay in AP English. Mr. Farnsworth hadn't given an A on a paper in three years, and then it had struck her, this inspiration and insight, while trying to write a paper on "The Love Songs of J. Alfred Prufrock." And everything had been right.

She'd gotten her damn A, too, much to Chloe's seething jealousy.

It was the same now. The documents just a step above something doctored up in a backroom bar, the caves, the connection to the preeminent extraterrestrial researcher on the planet, all of it. "I know."

Lex leaned against the Porsche cube, crossing his arms over his chest. "And that's part of the reason I brought you in on this, besides the obvious threat of being left at the altar without the disclosure. We have always worked well as a team, even when I was blocked with the black ship, even with all these so-called scientists at my disposal, I could count on you for a fresh perspective. Maybe it's your artist's eye."

"Or the fact that I'm the only person who ever saw the thing open and lived to tell the tale. Nothing like first hand experience."

"True." He conceded, "So, tell me then, quid pro quo. What do you know?"

She turned to face him. "Why here?"

"Now you're drawing this out." He said, chuckling a little.

"Maybe a little. The last hour has been nothing but a painful reminder of just how little I do know. It's nice to be in control of something for a change."

"The pace at which I finally get my answer?"

"Perhaps, but I'm serious. If you were an alien, part of an advanced race that presumably had done just a millisecond of homework on Earth, where would you go? If it were up to me, I'd head straight for Washington. If those things had started there, they'd have had the military and the president at their feet inside of an hour. Even if they weren't into ruling the free world, they would have started with a huge city---New York, Paris, St. Petersburg, Beijing, Geneva. They'd have started with the major business centers and capitals of the planet."

"You left out L.A."

"I doubt they wanted air time. Seriously, you're in business. If you're going for a hostile takeover, I assume you go after the head of the company. What's the point in harassing the guy in the mailroom?"

"I'm listening."

"So here's the thing. Those things, Fine, Zod, they all stake out one of the smallest towns in Kansas. Smallville is basically in the middle of nowhere, renowned for its corn crop and high school football program, but they all zeroed in on here first."

"Zod made his way to Metropolis pretty damn fast."

She shook her head. "But that was a side trip. What he wanted was here, just like the others."

"They wanted the caves, whatever they control."

"Probably, but I'm thinking that's not the only draw. There were two meteor showers here inside of sixteen years. You're smarter than I am. You know the odds are astronomical to begin with that a shower of that size would ever make it through Earth's atmosphere. The fact that two did and hit in the exact same place is impossible. Statistically it never should have happened."

"Unless there's something here worth hitting like, say, the caves."

"Okay, let's argue that the caves had some connection to the first shower. That might be a given. But I don't think they did to the second. I think what was already here had the connection, maybe even caused it."

"The stones?" Lex asked, frowning. She could practically see the wheels in his head turning as he worked through the problem.

"Yes but not on their own."

Lex narrowed his eyes. "I know you relish being the story-teller this time around, but I'm not fond of guessing games."

"I spent months going over the records from the first shower."

"And this is not directly answering my question."

"And I'm your fiancé. Last time I checked I wasn't on your payroll." She snapped.

"Point." He said coolly, though with a hint of respect in his voice. She had a feeling not many people dared to talk back to Lex Luthor. Well, screw that, she dared. After everything he'd put her through tonight, she so dared.

Continuing on, enjoying his rapt attention, she added, "Something came down that wasn't a meteor. Something that---"

"…landed. Yeah, I'd heard a rumor of such a thing but the source was a farmer who spent more time drunk than sober, hardly anyone to trust. I half expected him to tell me about the gremlins in his cornfield too."

"But I double and triple checked. I don't know why everyone else missed it, but it's there if you look for it. Zod, the others, they weren't the first. Someone came down seventeen years ago."

"Clark."

"Exactly. I brought up the theory to him and he got all quiet and defensive."

"His usual M.O."

"When I'm asking the ever popular question, 'How'd you do that?'"

He nodded. "I know."

"Everything…it all fits. He knew you were going to come back different. He worked for Fine for months as his T.A. How many first semester freshmen do you know who are T.A.'s? Come on. I gave him one of the stones the day of the meteor shower."

"And someone stole the third one from my office, ripped the door right off its hinges just like the others did to my office after their arrival."

Lana lay back against the stand encasing the parasite and let herself slide carefully down to the floor. She was very tired and had taken more shocks to the system than she had since the day Clark had dumped her. Her fiancé and her child were undeniably meteor mutants. She might be one, although she'd never believe it until she had at least the results of a dozen blood tests in front of her. Lex really was running underground experiments on the psychotic meteor freaks in 33.1, and Clark was one of those things from the ship.

She wanted to go back to her bedroom, curl up under her comforter and never wake up again. It was all too much. How can your life look like one thing and then do a total Monet and become another?

Superficially, she was the soon-to-be wife of the richest man in the country, being groomed to be the perfect society wife and loving mother. Underneath it all, she was caught in a world of monsters and she wasn't sure which side the monsters were even on.

Hell, which side she was on.

Lex sat down next to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He had always been so solicitous of her, even now. "You're tired."

"I am." She replied, leaning into him.

He reached out one arm and checked his watch. "We have a wedding in twelve hours, don't we?"

And it was there again, that loveable insecurity that he'd let her see. Lex, despite his upbringing and his hardened demeanor, let his armor crumble for her, and for that she did love him. And yet, 33.1 still bothered her. It sounded like a good idea in theory, but she still had the unsettling feeling that in practice it was much more sinister. "I want that to be true."

"But?"

"If I marry you, I'm tied to 33.1, aren't I? I know about it now, no more plausible deniability."

"That's true, but, honestly, is what I'm doing so wrong? I'm protecting this town and this world from psychopaths with powers the police or even the military couldn't subdue. It might be an extreme measure, but no one else has taken the initiative."

"I know."

"It's us or them."

"The sane or the psychotic?"

"It's more than that." He answered, his voice softening as his hand strayed to her belly. "This is our child. What we learn from the others, with that, we could make her normal or at least keep her healthy. She wouldn't have to grow up terrified with a clock in her head counting down until she went insane."

Lana squeezed his hand. "Is that how you feel?"

"I've wondered if I'd turn out as evil as my father since Julian died. The fear of mental instability is almost a pleasant tickle in comparison."

"But it's not. Not really. You've been to Belle Reve."

"A visit I most blessedly do not remember. But, yes, on long nights alone in my office, I wonder if the darkness I feel creeping in isn't my father's influence but my own insanity. I don't want her going through that."

She placed her left hand over his, her engagement ring resting securely on the back of his hand. This was her family now. As much as she loved Chloe, as much as she felt like the other girl was her sister, she was tied to Lex by blood. She'd been three the last time she'd had a real family. She was not losing this one.

And she couldn't bear losing her daughter to madness, being forced to lock her away in a hellhole like Belle Reve.

And yet there was one nagging fear in the back of her mind. "And Clark? You want him for 33.1, don't you?"

"If I said I did, would it change things?"

"No more lawyer talk. You're going to lock him away, aren't you?"

"You've seen the damage those things can do. He's tried to kill us both. Me a little less than a month ago, if memory serves. I've worked so hard to keep this town safe from all the run of the mill meteor mutants. I couldn't, in good conscience, let something that dangerous run wild. Would you have me wait until after he actually succeeds in choking the life out of you?"

"He was sick, the silver meteor rock."

"And if he gets sick again? Who's going to stop him?"

"No one asked you to save the world." She said, snuggling deeper into him, her voice as small and lispy as it had ever been.

"No, but I'm not going to sit by and watch it be destroyed when I could do something either. At the very least, it's bad for business." He said, laughing weakly.

She gave a forced chuckle, glad for anything to break up the tension. "This doesn't feel right."

"Things done out of necessity rarely do."

Yes, she knew that. There had been nothing comfortable or noble about trying to stab the man she loved, even if she had been doing it for the greater good. It had left her feeling sick and empty. Like now. "So now I know everything, don't I?"

"You do."

"And you're waiting to see whether I walk down the aisle or not."

"I am." He said, caressing her stomach again. "I didn't want this to be so cold and calculating----I respect Chloe and, once upon a time, Clark and I were like brothers----but it's all very Darwin in the end. It's us or them. Her," he said, running his fingers nimbly over the slight swell of her abdomen. "…or them."

Lana sighed. It was a choice that wasn't a choice because she already loved her daughter fiercely. "Us, I choose us."

"Even though you know I'm going to take Clark?"

Then she spoke the words that sealed her as a Luthor so much more than the phrase "I do" ever could. "I know, but could you not do it at the wedding?"

"I'll wait," he answered, giving her a gentle kiss on the top of her head.

Lana snuggled into him and tried desperately to recapture the safe feel of family, that secure and snuggly sensation she hadn't felt since she was three years old and watching Bugs Bunny cartoons in the back of an old station wagon. She couldn't find it.

Yet.

But surely soon.

And she would have known what a futile and foolish hope that was had she been able to see the predatory gleam in Lex's eye and the sickening smirk that crawled across his face.