"You know, you really didn't have to go to all this trouble, Mrs. Kent," Chloe said as Martha took a mouth-watering turkey out of the oven.

"You can't live on coffee three meals a day, Chloe."

"I mix it up with the occasional blueberry muffin."

Clark gave her a look from where he was currently setting the table for their dinner.

"What? That has a food group in it."

"Barely," he told her.

Emmeline laughed. "Well, I, for one, am thankful to have a meal that I didn't make and isn't take-out. Dad's cooking skills stop at breakfast food, and though he does make some mean pancakes, you can only eat them so many times."

Martha smiled at her. "Emmeline, if you ever need a break or need some lunch or dinner, I'm happy to make something for you and your father. Please don't ever hesitate to ask."

"No, I-I couldn't put you out like that. You're so busy with your new job."

"It wouldn't be any trouble at all. How about I make you some pasta next weekend?"

"That…that'd be really great. Thank you so much."

"My pleasure. Are you feeling okay? You look exhausted."

Emmeline ran a hand through her hair. "Oh, no, I'm okay. I just had this really crazy nightmare last night and couldn't fall back to sleep."

"I'm sorry to hear that. I'll make you some tea before you leave. That should help you get a good night's rest."

"That sounds amazing. My mom's tea is mainly for getting over colds, not getting over nightmares."

Martha smiled and handed her a bowl of mashed potatoes. "Can you put this out on the table for me?"

"Sure!" She took the bowl from her and walked over to join Clark and Chloe at the table.

"Did you find anything new?" Clark asked Chloe as she took a seat.

"Tons," she answered. "There have been reports of unusual occurrences happening all over the world. It's like the Wall of Weird went global." She handed him a folder of several articles. "The worst attack was on a small village in the Kashmir region of India. The entire village was nearly destroyed."

"Villagers said they saw something fall from the sky the night before. That's the same time I escaped from the Phantom Zone."

Martha set the turkey onto the table. "Do you think whatever it was got out when you escaped?"

"Like the park ranger?" Chloe put in. "How about a trip to the ice castle? Jor-El could help track down the Zoners before they do any more damage."

Clark raised an eyebrow. "'Zoners'?"

"'Escaped super-criminals from the Phantom Zone' is a little bit of a mouthful."

"The Fortress is dead. There's no way to contact Jor-El, ask for his help. I should have just listened to him."

"And done what, Clark? Killed Lex to stop Zod from taking over his body?"

"You're not a murderer, Clark," Martha told her son firmly.

"What about all those people in that village, Mom?" Clark asked. "They might have died because of my actions. I need to know for sure."

Chloe sighed heavily. "Then we need to find more crater impacts. Like the one you made when you came out of the Phantom Zone? I think our best bet would be satellite images."

"I thought all the satellites were down on Dark Thursday," Martha said.

"All except for a few owned by Queen Industries. Now, if we could get the access codes, I might be able to find an image of whatever it is that came down before the attack on that village."

"Oliver Queen still owes me one," Clark told them. "Maybe it's time to collect."

"Well, until then, I am diving into this turkey," Emmeline said, hoping to lighten the mood if only a little. She wasn't sure how much it worked, but they dropped the conversation and began to eat.

Unfortunately, dealing with 'Zoners' would have to wait. While staying at Lex's mansion, a chandelier fell almost directly on top of Lana and Lex, but Lana ended up getting most of the blow.

When Emmeline arrived at the hospital, she started towards Lana's room but stopped when she saw Clark and Lex in a rather heated argument right outside the door. Was this really the time to be hashing it out again?

"I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you, Lex," Clark bit out. "Since you've been with her, she has a funny habit of getting hurt."

"And how many times did she wind up in the hospital when she was dating you?" Lex shot back. He opened the door just enough for Clark to see Lana unconscious in the hospital bed. "Save yourself a trip next time, Clark. Just send flowers."

The door slammed in his face.

"Ouch," Lois said behind him, revealing both her and Emmeline's arrival. "That was harsh."

Clark sighed. "It's not like he's wrong, though. I've hurt Lana more than anyone else. She wouldn't even be with Lex if it wasn't for me."

"Lana being with Lex is not your fault," Emmeline told him as they made their way back to the waiting area. "You can't control what she does. Or…the things Lex may have said to her to get her to open up to him."

"Em's right," Lois said. "Lana made that questionable choice on her own. Stop beating yourself up. That's my job. And my other one is sniffing out a good story."

"That's why you're here?" Clark asked.

"I don't think Lana's chandelier run-in was an accident. Or that she was the target. In the past 24 hours, two of Lex and Oliver's old friends from boarding school died in violent accidents."

"And you think Lex was almost the third."

"I think it has something to do with a kid named Duncan they all knew, but Oliver won't tell me anything."

"All right, listen, I don't want you to end up sharing a hospital room with Lana, all right? Get some distance between you and Oliver just for now."

"Or I could man-up and get to the bottom of this like a real reporter. Preferably before the Grim Reaper drops something very heavy on my hot boyfriend."

Lois quickly strutted off to get the answers she desired.

"Man, I wish I had her confidence," Emmeline remarked.

"Her confidence is going to get her killed," Clark said bluntly.

"Or maybe she actually will go on to be a good reporter. You know, after she stops making all of those horrendous spelling and grammar errors. I swear, whenever I edit her stuff, my eyes almost start bleeding."

Clark couldn't help but laugh.

As she made her way down the hall of the private hospital, Emmeline glanced up from the files she held in her hand to see a familiar face. "Clark?" she called.

The young man in question looked over alarmed but relaxed a little when he saw who it was. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm on an assignment for my internship at the clinic. What are you doing here?"

"Do you remember that guy that Lois mentioned, Duncan?"

"Yeah."

"Oliver told me that he died back in boarding school. He and Lex were best friends, but Lex lost it on him one day because of Oliver and his friends which resulted in Duncan stumbling out in the street where he got hit by a car."

"Geez, that's awful."

"Well, when I went to go see Lionel, it turns out that's not the whole story. Lionel brought in a team of doctors to try to keep him alive, but he only ended up brain-dead. So he funded a research program to try to reverse the damage which he's been doing ever since the accident."

"Wait a second, and he's…he's here?"

"Yeah." Clark showed her the piece of paper in his hand with Duncan's information. "Do you know where room 237 is?"

Emmeline looked down the hallway. "Yeah, it's just this way. Come on."

She started to lead him down the hallway when a familiar voice called, "Smallville?"

Clark turned around and his heart sank. "Lois, what are you doing here?"

"I'm following a lead. I checked out Duncan's mother."

"She's dead."

"I know that, Sherlock. On a hunch, I dug up all her old phone records. And every day while she was still kicking, she placed a call to this facility."

"She was checking on her son."

"Duncan? I thought he was dead."

"Yeah, so did everyone else. I think he's in this room."

Lois snatched the paper from his hand. "How do you know all this?"

"You're not the only one with hunches."

"Nice work."

Emmeline stopped in front of one of the doors, but Lois kept plowing ahead of them.

"Lois?" Clark called.

Lois turned around, and Clark nodded at the door that had a large '237' on it. She started to make her way back over to the door she'd passed.

Clark reached for the doorknob, but Lois quickly grabbed it first.

"Uh-uh," she said sharply. "It's my story. I don't share bylines." Unfortunately, she went to turn the knob but it wouldn't budge. She awkwardly cleared her throat and looked back up at Clark and Emmeline. "It's locked. You two stay here. I'm gonna flirt us up a set of keys, all right?"

Lois started down the hallway again.

Clark grabbed the knob, and Emmeline moved to stand in front of it so that neither Lois nor anyone else (like a possible security camera) could see him forcefully turn the knob with his superhuman strength.

"Lois," he called again. "It was just stuck."

Lois gave him a thin smile. "Well, ladies first."

The three of them walked into the room and quietly shut the door behind them.

Emmeline looked at the poor man inside. He was hooked up to several different machines as he sat inside a chair staring at the opposite wall. She wondered what it was like to be in a vegetative state. Was he aware of anything happening around him? Did he have any kind of consciousness at all? Perhaps everything around him only felt like a far-off dream.

No one should ever have to live like that.

What was strange though was the monitors behind him. All of them showed signs of activity.

"I'm not a doctor, but I've seen enough Discovery Channel to know you don't get the squiggly lines when you're in a vegetative state," Lois remarked.

Clark picked up Duncan's chart. "Unless your new treatments are working."

"What new treatment?"

"Something called 12-B. It's experimental. It's derived from refined meteor rocks."

"Meteor rocks?" Emmeline said. "Well, we know what those are capable of, so that can't mean anything good."

Lois looked down at the chart. "Clark, they started giving him this stuff two days ago. Look at the injection times."

"They coincide with the attacks," Clark noticed.

"Maybe we just found our killer."

"No, wait a minute, these treatments, they might stimulate brain activity, but he's still in a wheelchair."

"His body is, yeah, but look at his charts. His new cocktail is whipping up a heck of an electrical storm. Now, I read this article in The Inquisitor about brain waves and astral projection—"

"Astral projection?"

"Do you have a better explanation?"

Clark opened his mouth to say something.

"No. When was his last injection?"

"20 minutes ago."

Duncan began convulsing in his chair as the activity on his monitors increased.

Lois turned to look at him. "It's happening again."

Emmeline looked over at Clark and motioned with her head to go stop Duncan's latest attack before either Lex or Oliver got killed. He quickly sped out of the room just as Lois turned around.

"Smallville, I…" She sighed and put her hand on her hips. "Where did he go?"

Fearing that she wouldn't be able to hide Clark's secret well if she said anything, Emmeline quickly went over to Duncan and took his hand in hers and knelt down beside him. Her heart ached for him. Regardless of how much awareness he had, the only person who had ever checked up on him was his mother, and she wasn't even alive anymore. Everyone else thought he was dead. Had any of the doctors or nurses ever talked to him or held his hand or showed him any kind of affection at all, or had he just been another name on a piece of paper to be checked off when he'd been given his medication?

"Duncan," she said quietly. "I'm sorry. This shouldn't have happened to you. You must've felt so alone all this time. I don't blame you for feeling angry or for wanting revenge. You have every right to hate the people who did this to you." She gently moved her hand to the side of his face. "But if you continue to go after them, how does that make you any different from them? I promise that I will come visit you every day from now on and I will sit and talk with you and hold your hand and do whatever it takes so that you don't feel alone anymore. It's okay to let go of your anger. I'm here for you now."

For just a fraction of a second, Emmeline could've sworn his pupils moved to look at her. But the movement was so fast and so brief that she couldn't be sure if it had actually happened or not.

Suddenly, Duncan began violently convulsing, and Emmeline frantically stepped away from him.

After several painful seconds of the lights flashing and Duncan thrashing around, his arm fell from the armrest and the monitors fell silent.

Emmeline sighed. Whatever had happened, at least Duncan was no longer confined to a body that didn't work.

Upon Duncan flatlining, some doctors and nurses escorted the two women out of the room and placed Duncan's body onto a gurney before placing a white sheet overtop of him.

Clark came running up behind them. "Hey. What happened?"

"You went AWOL while things heated up, as usual," Lois retorted.

"I went to go find a phone to warn Oliver and Lex."

"Did you get ahold of them? Are they all right?"

"A little worse for wear. Oliver said whatever happened just suddenly stopped."

"Well, Duncan went flatline, like he blew a fuse or something. I wonder what caused it."

Clark smiled sarcastically. "You need that for your article?"

"Well, it would be good if I were still going to write one."

"But you're not?"

"It would make a juicy story for The Inquisitor, but considering the outcome, an exploitation piece on a catatonic patient astral-projecting his way to revenge might be in bad taste."

She started to walk away, but Clark quickly said, "Would you still feel the same way if Oliver wasn't involved?"

"We've all done things we're not proud of. I just wish that Oliver didn't feel like he had to hide it from me."

"You know…sometimes in order to protect the people we love, we keep secrets."

"That is…the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

Clark smirked as she walked away. He looked over at Emmeline and noticed that she had practically folded in on herself. "Hey, you okay?"

Emmeline sighed and looked up at him. "He didn't deserve any of this."

"Em, you didn't even know him."

"That doesn't matter. This shouldn't have happened. At the very least, he shouldn't have been hidden away from everyone. He must've felt so lonely."

"He was catatonic. He didn't know what was going on."

"But what if he did?"

"You can't think like that."

"You don't understand. I…talked to him. Just for a minute. And…I think he could hear me."

Clark looked at her thoughtfully. "You might be right. When I went to go help Oliver, I was able to see Duncan's, um, astral projection, I guess. It was only a glimpse, but he looked at me, and he looked…I don't know, at peace. Like he was ready to stop everything. Maybe you got through to him and convinced him not to hurt Oliver or Lex."

"Maybe. But he still shouldn't have been stuck here all these years because some teenage boys couldn't get a grip."

Clark put his hand on her shoulder. "Em, as a psychologist, you're going to come in contact with all kinds of people who have both done terrible things and have had terrible things done to them. You're going to see and hear the worst parts of humanity. We can't control other people's actions or any of the terrible outcomes because of them. All we can do what we can to make the situation better. Just remember this. In a matter of minutes, you managed to convince someone who had held onto his anger and bitterness for over ten years to let go of his pain and move on."

Chloe marched into the barn with Emmeline holding a folder containing some important pictures. "Clark." She looked up and realized that a certain famous blond was there with him. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize you had company."

"Chloe, Oliver Queen," Clark introduced.

Chloe walked over to him with a smile. "Oh, hi. I feel like I know you already. Lois talks about you all the time."

"I was actually just gonna go see Lois right now," Oliver said with his ever-so-charming smile. "Maybe it's time I did some talking. Well, look, I'm looking forward to your article on Dark Thursday. I hope my satellite images helped."

"Yeah."

"Good. It's good to meet you. Good to see you again, Emmeline."

"Oh, yeah, you too," Emmeline said politely.

"Clark."

As Oliver left the barn, Chloe looked up at Clark with a broad smile. "Wow. In person, he is really…wow."

Emmeline laughed. "My words exactly."

"Chloe," Clark said firmly to pull her back to Earth. "Were you able to pull anything off the satellites?"

"Oh, yeah, um, well, I'm still sifting through the images, but I already found a handful of craters that match the one you made when you busted out of the Phantom Zone."

"Which means more Zoners on Earth. Did you find the one in India?"

"That was just a smoking hole, but I did find another one in Australia that I thought you might want to take a look at."

Clark took the folder from her and pulled some pictures out of it. "Is there someone in the crater?"

"I blew it up as much as I could. It's not very clear, but…" She noticed how Clark looked at the second picture. "What is it?"

"…Raya."