- Chapter 23 - Prison -

The end rolled inexorably forward, and Kal-El cursed the moments of waiting. His Eradicator was destroying the Over Council, one seat of power at a time, annihilating their existence from the inside. He hoped she might start with him, but that seemed unlikely now.

The wait had been too long.

She would end him…eventually.

Wouldn't she?

Doubt tormented him. Yes, the Eradicator had obeyed him since his ascension, but she was unstable, ever changing and destroying him was asking a lot. It went against every ingrained impulse in her. What if she couldn't destroy him? He had ordered her to build her will in anticipation of asking her to deny the most ingrained of her catechisms. Had it been enough though?

What if she couldn't do it?

What then?


Oblivious to the cry of pain she had released, Reo sifted through the contents of the lead box she had located, grimacing. A handful of Kryptonite, a shard of Kryptonium, and a white shard of nothing in particular, the haul, was far less than she'd hoped for. For this pittance she'd waded up to her ass in potentially parasite infested planet mud. "Why couldn't we be stranded on a developed world?"

"There are worse places to be stranded," Luci said. "At least there's an atmosphere and the humans don't seem very dangerous."

Reo snorted and shook her head at Luci. Only a child could be so blasé and oblivious. "There are billions of humans on this world, with only a handful of us. Putting aside whether we are superior genetically, intellectually, or technologically, sheer numbers make humans terrifying. And yes, there is an atmosphere—" Reo wrinkled her nose and wiped a layer of mud off her arm. "—but the quality is less than stellar."

Rolling her eyes, Luci turned back toward Reo's workspace, but before she could take a step the Kryptonian that Reo just robbed was standing in front of her. Despite her bone deep desire to tell Reo-Ra that she'd told her so, Luci just stared, mute as usual when faced with Clark Kent and his rather striking blue eyes.

"Luci, where is she? Do you have her? Did you find her?" Clark asked.

Clark's attention didn't linger on Luci when she didn't answer. He had already spotted the real culprit and his almost stolen goods. Apparently Reo didn't need to be told that she had messed up. Her eyes had gone wide, and she thrust the lead box at Clark stiffly. "I was just scavenging. It was discarded in a sinkhole. How was I supposed to know you were keeping it there?" Reo paused, and her brows drew together. "It's not like you have other Kryptonians to keep out of your treasure box, why would you store Kryptonite inside?"

"There's Kryptonite inside?" Clark hesitated, his hand resting tautly on the lid. "Of course there's Kryptonite inside. That's what this box is for, a place to store the dangerous rocks whether they're dangerous or just vaguely threatening to xenophobes."

"What's a xenophobe?" Luci asked, her English skills failing her.

"A xenophobe is afraid of other, of different. In the context of this world a xenophobe is afraid…of us." Reo crossed her arms over her chest and she switched seamlessly into galactic standard to be certain that Luci would understand. "Xenophobia is a sign of low evolution. The fear of alien is primal genetics. Rising above that fear, makes us civilized."

"And succumbing to it?" Clark asked. "What does that make someone?"

"Evil." Luci frowned darkly, remembering the multi-limbed miners who lashed out at the nearest alien in their fear and killed her mother and father in their rioting rage. "Xenophobes are evil."


The Kents' old blue truck rolled to a stop in front of the Sullivans' slightly overgrown lawn. Mrs. Kent smiled uncertainly at her passenger and shrugged.

"Thanks for the ride," Chloe said. "Would you mind asking Clark to call me when he gets home?"

"No problem," Mrs. Kent said. "You reciprocate if you see him tonight. He knows better than to disappear without an explanation."

Chloe didn't bother to argue that Clark was quite old enough to wander off without explanation when the mood struck him so long as he made it home at a reasonable hour. Besides, Martha Kent couldn't help her over-protectiveness. Who could blame her with everything that had happened to her family over the last year? Even beyond responsible handling of his parents' justifiable paranoia, Clark should know better than to wander off at the end of a date without a proper explanation.

With a quick wave, Chloe jumped out of the truck and headed for her front door. She slipped in as quietly as possible and crept toward the stairs. It was barely nine, well before curfew, and aside from a bad date, there wasn't any reason for her to be home yet. Her dad already had some concerns about Clark, and she didn't want to have to explain that it was a perfectly fine date that was interrupted. As she had no idea what the interruption was or if she was mad about it yet, she didn't want to have to explain it to her dad.

Once safely in her bedroom, Chloe felt herself deflate. "Well that was an ignominious first date." Spreading her arms, she fell back on her bed dramatically and tried to fathom what Clark might have heard or sensed to make him go investigate it. The only thing she could think of was the Eradicator, a defective relic who could put the Energizer bunny to shame.

Chloe's mind sipped seamlessly off on a tangent. Bunnies were good reproducers. They dealt in volume ecologically. Chloe smirked darkly, the Eradicator wanted to start a bunny farm out here on little old Earth. Was she back and discussing the project already with her lead bunny then? She had just started to get angry at the thought of the Eradicator harassing Clark when the tapping started at her window.

Crouched precariously on the slanted roof outside her window, Clark looked in at her and smiled, an sheepishly apologetic expression. Chloe was suddenly very glad that she hadn't already starting changing for bed, not that her clothes or even walls could preserve her privacy if Clark wanted to invade them. She propped her hands on her hips and arched an eyebrow at him, but she didn't make him suffer in suspense that she might close the curtains on him. "Get in here," Chloe commanded. She swung the window open and hauled him forward by the shirt. "I don't know how you planned to explain the house scaling if my dad saw you."

"Sorry, I saw your light and didn't want to run into your dad at the door," Clark said. "I apologize for the fast exit earlier. It was rude, and you have every right to be angry."

"Clark." Chloe shushed him with a light touch of her finger to his lips. She shivered at the impulsive intimate gesture. "Just explain it to me. I'll tell you if I'm angry after. Right now, I'm mainly a little worried."

Clark wondered briefly how acutely Chloe's finger could feel because her brief caress of his lips had set off his senses. The silky whorls of the patterns on her skin tasted of salt and movie popcorn, the scent of lavender soap and nail polish tickled his nose, and then her finger was gone taking its mysterious sensuous treasures with it. As tempting as it was to kiss her again, right then and there, the weight distending his pocket required attention now. "I trust you, Chloe." Clark pulled out the lead box he had taken from Reo and presented it to her. "My friend Lola, the Kryptonium, is in there, and I want you to meet her tonight. I need your help to get her safely out of that box as there's Kryptonite inside. I trust you to open it and get her out for me."

"There's an alien in this box?" Chloe ran her hands along the top, excited to finally meet another alien, but her smile was a bit puzzled. "Why would she hang out in a metal box? How did she end up in there?"

"I think I know," Clark said, "but I'm withholding final conclusions until I ask her myself. The Kryptonite in there will make me ill when you open the box. Lola will be the blue meteor rock. You can't miss her."

"Grab blue rock; close box. I can handle that."

"Then do it." Clark moved back against the wall, anticipating the nauseating drain of Kryptonite's incessant hunger. He could see the sickening green glow of the parasites gleeful feeding from the moment Chloe opened the box. He could feel it in his skin, muscles, bones. He expected to hear Lola call out to him again. He expected a blue wave inside his head. But the wave didn't come. Chloe dropped the lid shut, cutting off the Kryptonite, but where was Lola? He had been so sure that it was her, that she had called to him.

"The only bit in there that wasn't green, wasn't blue either, Clark." Chloe held out a small white crystal that sat in her palm lifeless and inert. "Is this her?"


Lana circled the Talon cleaning out the booths and straightening up for final closing. The last of her usual teen crowd had cleared out more than an hour earlier, but one patron had lingered. His bald head was just visible in the back booth where he had spent the evening hunkered over a set of ledgers. It couldn't be awesomely secret or important work as he was doing it at the Talon. She didn't begrudge her financial partner the workspace. His home had burned rather recently, taking all his regular sanctuaries with it. But Lex did not have a key, and she needed to get home before Nell sent a search party.

Sliding quietly into the booth opposite him, Lana didn't make an overt move to interrupt. It took Lex several moments to acknowledge her presence. He looked up at her and smiled smoothly. "It's gotten a bit late hasn't it."

"It has," Lana agreed. "Did you have a productive day?" She wasn't exactly clear on what Lex worked on now that his father had taken the fertilizer plant away.

"Not really." Lex started closing the books in front of him and slipping them into the case at his side. "It was much easier to accidentally run into Clark, when he was making it a point to accidentally run into you." Lana's eyes widened in surprise before she could control the impulse. "And I sound like a stalker."

A little... Lana shook her head. One didn't run around pitying the local billionaire, typically, but she felt an almost painful surge of pity tonight at how lonely he had to be. "You just miss your friend. Why not visit the farm? He still skulks around there quite a lot."

"You have better coffee."

"I do," Lana agreed. But I don't have Clark anymore. Just thinking it made her flush. She had never had Clark, not really. "But I don't think you're going to find what you're looking for here."


The shape was right, a simple hexagonal based crystal, small enough to fold safely into his fist. Clark stared at the silent white rock on Chloe's palm and hoped that it wasn't really his friend. "I think it's her," Clark said. "She's drained is all."

He started to reach out for her, but stopped himself. He had been floored by Kryptomium more than once, floored by nice blue Kryptonium that still had enough juice to chatter at him. Touching white-Lola could be dangerous. Assuming it was her.

"How do we help her?" Chloe asked. "We can, can't we?"

"She needs energy..."...assuming that she isn't dead. "Skin to crystal contact should offer her the opportunity to charge up, but as low as she is, I don't know that she'll be able to control herself."

"She feeds on you?" Chloe looked down at the cool stone in her hand nervously. "She's a parasite."

That was the word his parents had used to describe her. Clark hadn't been able to make them understand the symbiosis of their relationship. "She isn't a parasite. I get as much as I give, more even. Her species and mine have been associating for thousands of years in a mutually beneficial relationship."

"Sorry, okay, symbiont then. What do you get from her if she gets energy from you?" Chloe asked.

"Fair question. Lola gives knowledge. Kryptonium has the capacity to store ungodly amounts of information in its crystalline matrix. She's a library, an ancient one. Traditionally, in exchange for using her information, a student or anyone would help keep her energy stores replete." Clark smiled bitterly. "Beyond that usually impersonal transaction, she's my friend. She saved my life, and I would love to return that favor."

"Okay, so how do we help without putting you at risk? I mean, vamping you can't be her only meal ticket. You are the only one of you left, and you guys only met recently." Chloe smiled hopefully.

"The sun is an option, but she isn't very efficient with sun storage. I'm afraid she's dying, Chloe, and waiting may push her over the edge." Clark ran his hands through his hair nervously and took a step closer to Chloe and Lola. "I'm going to touch her and when I pass out, if I pass out, you separate us and put her back in the box. If I hold her too tight in my fist and you can't get her out, open the box, and let the Kryptonite weaken my grip long enough to get her away and in the box."

"I don't like your plan." Chloe gazed down at the stone he was so desperate to revive. "What if something goes wrong? We should go to the farm and let your parents help."

Clark shook his head slowly. "They put her in there, Chloe. I'm almost certain. You really think I can trust them to help me help her now?"

"Crap." Chloe bit her lip. "Crap. Crap. Crap. Okay, lie down on my bed so if you do faint we don't wake up my dad." Chloe waited for Clark to settle onto her yellow coverlet. His large frame made the twin bed look tiny. "This is going to be okay. You are going to help your friend and you aren't going to pass out. And if you do, I'm here."

Clark nodded. "I'm ready."

I'm not, Chloe thought. "Are you sure?"

Clark held out his hand palm up and nodded. Chloe closed her eyes at the last moment before dropping Lola into his waiting hand.