- Chapter 24 - Seeing Red -

A blast of white light like a camera flash filled her bedroom and Chloe winced. Clark thought his friend might accidentally hurt him. Chloe opened her eyes on a scene that wasn't exactly reassuring. Clark's skin was white as chalk and his lips were tinged a deep, frostbite blue. Moving quickly, Chloe snatched Lola off Clark's hand. The once white crystal radiated a dull, red fire. He told her that Lola was supposed to be blue? Chloe didn't contemplate the meaning of Kryptonium, Kryptonite, and color shifts. Red probably reflected her mood, angry-after being imprisoned and starved who could blame her? "I apologize for this, and nice to meet you..." Chloe trailed away ineffectually and sealed the stone in Clark's lead box.

"Clark?" Chloe rubbed her hand over his pale, immobile forehead, very concerned by his silence. Her fingers burned with the cold and she pulled them back protectively. Chloe started to panic. Was he breathing? Had Lola killed him? "Oh God, Clark? Please don't be dead. Clark?"

He groaned deep in his throat and color rushed back into his lips inhumanly quickly. "Not dead," he muttered. "A bit chilled. She's done that before."

"I think I understand why she might have scared your parents." Chloe stroked his forehead again, now warmer, hardly cool at all. "I thought she killed you."

"You put her in the box?" Clark asked.

"That was my job, right? I think she may be angry. I don't really speak Kryptonium, but she wasn't blue like you said. She was red. Does red mean angry?"

Clark sat up and looked up at Chloe, his eyes bright. "Are you sure she was red? "

"I'm not color blind. She was red. Is red bad?"

"Red is chaos, at least that was all she would ever say about it. Color is everything with Kryptonium and Kryptonite. Each color is an energy state and a state of mind. Green has the highest hunger for energy, the highest natural energy state. It's also the least efficient at storing it. The only sane form is blue." Clark picked up the lead box but didn't open it. "She told me that her wild type used to be red."

"So your friend is insane? She went wild?"

"At least she's not dead."

Chloe sat by Clark on her bed and rested her head on his shoulder. Together they stared at the box of chaos on his lap. "So what do we do now?" Chloe asked.

"That is a very good question."


The kitchen clock ticked past midnight. Now that his curfew had officially passed, Martha felt her fear and anger magnify. Jonathan sat at the table, nursing a cup of coffee and she joined him. "Do you think it's the Eradicator? Do you think she's back?"

"I don't think there's any way for us to know for sure, but she left Luci and Ford behind if she took Clark again, so I think Clark broke curfew all on his own." Jonathan took another long drink of his coffee.

"I'm going to ground him for a month," Martha said. "Two maybe."

It isn't the Eradicator, Jonathan repeated to himself. "We will ground him if he isn't through that door in another five minutes."

The flowered wallpaper of Smallville's only real inn began to wear on Lex the day he moved in. Now more than a month into the reconstruction of his home, he could barely stand to open his eyes in the room. He tossed back a snifter of brandy and resolutely kept his eyes closed as he poured another.

How had things come to this point, blind drinking in a cheap rural inn? Had Lana's admonitions really stung him so badly? No. His father shouldered a healthy portion of the blame, Lex reasoned. He took away Smallville Fertilizer, poached his pet psychic, Jon Fisk, and he had the pure gall to send Lex a condolences card on the house.

If Lionel Luthor didn't drive you to drink, there was always the Kent clan to finish you off. Just thinking about them made him angry-Jonathan and Martha, small town values and platitudes, hypocrites and liars. He did nothing but help them and support them, but he was never worthy of their secrets. It was so obvious at this point that Clark was a meteor mutant that really it was an insult to his intelligence not telling him. Not trusting him was an unforgivable insult.

Maybe it was finally time to stop trying? Maybe it was finally time to get the Hell out of Smallville? The entire place was a hazard. The citizens should all be wearing hazmat suits.

A knock at the door startled him into opening his eyes. Billionaires could afford to stay at dingy, rural inns only if they brought their own security, and Andre knew better than to disturb him at this time of the morning. Lex crossed the room and glanced through the spy hole. Andre, expensive muscle in an equally expensive suit, stood next to the meteor mutant who had just been on his mind.

Lex considered putting the brandy away and feigning sobriety, but he shook his head. He might be a Luthor and he might be a liar, but he wasn't a hypocrite. With an audible click, Lex pushed the door open.

"Good morning Clark. It is either very early or very late for calling, but come in. I wasn't sleeping so it doesn't matter either way." Lex ushered Clark in and nodded to Andre that he had responded appropriately. "Would you like a refreshment? I have Brandy."

"No thanks, I...This is probably a bad time. I mean I know it's not a good time." Clark felt his cheeks flush with color as he stumbled over his words. "I told Chloe I was going home, but that seemed like a bad idea." People like me shouldn't confront people when they're angry. "I need somewhere to sleep that won't get anyone grounded, and Pete's parents would just call my parents."

"You're welcome to one of the beds, and I wouldn't dream of calling your parents. But I would like to know why you don't think you can't go home. Trouble in paradise?"

Not trouble. Trouble was the Eradicator with a breeding program and age inappropriate candidates. Trouble was a meteor mutant who hurt people and had to be dealt with. Lola driven insane by blind fear and bigotry went beyond trouble. The red rock inside that box was a form of human-made evil that Clark was still trying to wrap his head around. "Have you ever been betrayed by someone you loved?" Clark asked.

Lex laughed mirthlessly and dropped onto one of the upholstered, flowered chairs. "I've never loved anyone who proved trustworthy in the end. Everyone lies. Everyone betrays. You even lie, don't you Clark?"

"Everyone lies," Clark agreed. He took the other chair next to the table with Lex's alcohol. With reverent care, he placed the box containing Lola on the table between them. "I had to take a placement test to restart school, and they said I was deficient in functional literacy, that I didn't remember everything about how the world works, socially or functionally. They were right. But I'm starting to really understand now, how humans work."

Lex frowned, not liking the way Clark said humans, as though excluding himself. Even if he was a meteor mutant, he was still human, and whoever had insinuated otherwise to him was a damn bigot. "What happened?"

"My parents work very hard to protect me. They love me completely, unconditionally, selflessly. I thought love was a perfect thing, but it isn't, not when fear gets in. Fear can make love ugly and hateful." Clark stared at the box between them, feeling more alien than he had in months.

"What's in the box, Clark? Let me help." Lex felt his hands twitch with wanting to open that box, to see the proof of the Kent's hateful hypocrisy. What had they done?

"You've already helped more than you know," Clark said. "As for what happened, I lost a friend. Despite the lies and betrayal and fear...I don't want to lose my family. Do you keep loving people who betray you? Do you forgive them? If I stay away until I'm not so angry, and I wait until the pain isn't so bad, will it all go back to being okay?"

"I still love my mother who died and left me. I still love my father who never loved anyone or anything. I still love you."

"Even after I forgot you and lied to you...and accidentally burned your house down." Clark winced at his spurt of confessions and awaited Lex's angry explosion.

"I suspected." Lex poured himself another drink and lifted it in salute before downing it. "Forgiving betrayal comes easier to some than others, but never forget your betrayers or you're doomed to be victimized forever."

Lex noticed that Clark's fist had sunk into the cool metal of the table in an apparently unconscious show of strength. Not for the first time, he wondered how strong Clark was and what exactly he was capable of.

"I won't forget." Clark took his box back off the table and nodded to Lex. "I'll never forget."


Tick.

Tock.

Tick. Tick. .TICK.

Within the faux children's library of Kal's simulated mind, the black industrial clock's red second hand counted the increments of time with a steady inaudible tick that captivated the former overlord of the galaxy. Though they were his last, the seconds seemed to drag on, procrastinating his death, a matter that had malingered half-finished for too long now.

Tock. Tick.

Kal cursed the red second hand as it made its circuit around the twelve again. Where was his Eradicator? Why did she make him wait?

It couldn't take this long.

She had failed.

She couldn't overcome her ingrained programming against his destruction.

She was frozen, useless, and he would echo here forever, alone.

Every tick of the clock tormented him.

It was over.

Tick.

What now?

Tock.

All his power was gone, eliminated by the war he had narrated note by note.

No.

The Eradicator couldn't fail him now. He would not echo here for eternity. His will alone would summon her, break through the bit of her core programming that had stopped her from her final task.

Eradicator, finish it. Please? Please help me?

Each second mocked him as it passed. Another second of awareness. Another moment that was never meant to come. Another. And another. Kal began to scream at the seconds as they passed, cursing them for existing.

And then the storm was over.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

The children's library with its ticking clock continued its virtual existence, but the rustle of Kal-El's mind no longer disturbed the perfect silence. Seconds passed, uncursed and unnoticed.

Cut off mid-tirade, Kal-El's consciousness was no longer aware of them.