Clark supersped into the Daily Planet directly in front of Chloe and Emmeline. "You said it was urgent."

Chloe didn't even jump anymore. "It is. A Taiwanese cargo ship was found off the coast of Alaska with its entire crew dead of unknown causes. The details are a bit murky, but the manifest says that its last stop was Bellona Island."

"Bellona Island? They got hit by a meteor the same day I escaped from the Phantom Zone. Where's the ship now?"

"It's being towed to Seattle."

"I have to go there."

Chloe quickly touched his arm. "Clark, these guys aren't just meteor freaks. They're from galaxies far, far away. And, more importantly, they can hurt you. You can't go unarmed."

"I won't. I have the crystal that Raya gave me. I'll use that against them."

Clark started for the door.

Chloe's phone began to ring, so she picked it up and answered it. "Hey, Lana."

Hearing Lana's name made Clark stop and turn back around.

"Whoa, slow down. Are you all right? Oh…Yeah, of course."

"What happened?" Clark asked as she hung up the phone.

"Lex just mysteriously disappeared."

Clark shook his head a little. "I have to go to Seattle."

"Well, Clark, I know that Lex isn't exactly your pick for 'man of the year', but you can't just turn your back on him."

"Chloe, there's innocent people in danger. I'll be back as soon as I can."

He quickly left the room, leaving the two women behind.

"I gotta side with Clark on this," Emmeline said. "Lex has a will to survive that I've never seen before. Wherever he is, he'll probably be fine. But the Zoner is an entirely different story. As long as it's out there, people very well might get killed. Only Clark can handle the Zoner, but he's not the only one who can handle finding Lex."

Chloe sighed. "I guess. By the way, you're looking a lot more rested. How are you doing?"

Emmeline ran a hand through her hair. "A little better. I've been taking some sleep aids the last couple weeks. It hasn't stopped the nightmares, but it makes them a lot less vivid so I can actually make it through the night."

"That's good to hear."

"Did you find out anything about what might be causing it or what it means?"

"No. But I think between the two of us, you're probably better off deciphering dream meanings, Ms. Psychologist."

"Don't get ahead of yourself. I still need to get my degree and then go for a Master's. I've still got a long road ahead of me."

"How's work at the clinic going?"

"It's not bad. I really like working there. I think they're going to let me interact with some of the patients in the coming weeks, but it's not guaranteed yet."

"Hey, that's exciting!"

"I'm a little nervous, to be honest."

"Don't be. You're going to do great."

The next day, Chloe and Emmeline went over to Lex's mansion to see if they could find anything that would help them figure out where he had disappeared to.

"Thank God someone believes me," Lana said as they all entered Lex's study. "You guys are the first people that don't think I belong in Belle Reve."

"A lot stranger things have happened in Smallville," Chloe smiled. "Don't worry. We'll find him. So, where exactly was Lex when he vaporized?"

Lana moved over a few steps. "He was somewhere in the middle of the room, like around here."

Chloe walked over to Lex's desk and opened up his computer. "You said Lex backs up all of his security footage on an internal server, right?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Okay, we're gonna need a password. You and Lex are close. Are you password close?"

"No, I guess not. Why don't you try 'Julian', his brother? Or 'Lillian', his mom."

Chloe tried both of those, but neither of them worked. "Ixnay. Okay, how about 'Lana'?"

That didn't work either.

"No. Do you have anything else?"

"No, I don't know."

The blonde pulled a piece of hardware out of her purse. "Don't worry, we'll just upload the whole hard drive, and I'll work on it later."

"Chloe, the way he disappeared, what if…what if Lex is really gone? Forever."

"You can't think that way, Lana. We're gonna get him back."

"I've had so many doubts about this relationship, so many suspicions. But now that he's gone, none of it matters anymore. I just want to see his face again."

"I'll crack this back at the Daily Planet, and either we'll get a week's worth of footage of Lex sipping bourbon and diddling on his computer, or we'll actually hit the jackpot."

Emmeline bolted up in bed once again, tears streaming from her eyes.

So much for the sleep aids doing any good.

After two weeks of a small break, the nightmares were now more vivid than ever. Each time she had that horrible dream, more and more of it became clearer. She didn't know how much more of it she could take. Or what she would do once every part of the dream came into perfect focus. Would it answer all of her questions, or would she just have more? And would the nightmares stop then?

"Hon?"

Her father slowly opened the door to her bedroom.

Emmeline wiped her eyes. "I didn't even get to the living room this time before you're checking on me?"

"It's getting worse, isn't it?" He took a seat on her bed. "Will you at least tell me what happens in your dream?"

She wanted to. She wanted to tell him everything. But something inside her warned her that she shouldn't. These dreams weren't normal. And things that weren't normal usually went back to Clark. Though she had no idea how these dreams could possibly be connected to him, she felt it best to keep the details on a need-to-know basis.

"I can't remember anything when I wake up," she told him, feeling horrible for lying to him and even worse that he bought it. "I just know the feeling it leaves me with."

Her father sighed. "All right. Maybe we need to try a heavier sleep aid."

"It won't work. And what if I end up becoming addicted to it?"

"I just hate to see you like this."

Emmeline wiped the sweat off her face. "I'll be fine. Just…give it some more time, and I'll be okay."

"How can you be sure?"

"I'm not. I just…know myself."

"But if this gets worse, you might suffer from some serious exhaustion and that can do a real number to your brain and body."

Emmeline sighed. "I'll…make an appointment with the health clinic at school and see what they suggest. Maybe we can work something out."

"So I hear you've been having some trouble sleeping," Dr. Andres said as she stepped into the small examination room. "Can you tell me more about that?"

The doctor was a petite black-haired woman, and something about her made Emmeline want to share absolutely everything with her. But she knew she couldn't. She sighed as she tried to figure out what to say. She'd really only made this appointment to give her dad some peace of mind, and she felt that it was in Clark's best interest that she didn't explain the whole story. She quickly tried to pick and choose which parts were okay to talk about. "I've been having really vivid nightmares every single night for about six weeks now. It wasn't too bad at first, but now I can't even make it through the night without waking up."

"Okay, what happens in the nightmare?"

"Um…this is all completely confidential, right?"

"Of course. HIPAA laws give you complete privacy, so no one outside of the personnel in this health clinic are going to be able to see your records without your permission, not even your family members."

Emmeline nodded. "It's a really bad car accident. I'm not the one driving, but for some reason, I have to reach over and yank on the steering wheel. The car goes careening and makes the windshield explode directly into me."

"Is that when you wake up?"

"Most of the time, yes."

"What happens the other times?"

"I think someone pulls me out of the car."

"And you don't know who's driving or who pulls you out?"

"No."

"Have you ever been in a car accident before?"

"Not that I can recall."

"Do you struggle with a lot of stress or high anxiety?"

"Not any more than usual. I'm taking a lot of college classes and working at a mental health clinic for an internship, but I've been pretty good about handling my workload for the last year and a half."

"Have you tried any sleep aids?"

"Yeah, for the last two weeks. They helped a little at first, but now they're not doing anything either."

"Okay, so here's what I'd like for you to try. Create an evening routine that will relax you just before you go to bed. For example, you could read a book, take a hot bath, or meditate. Just anything that will really calm you down. Stay off any kinds of screens like a television or a laptop at least two hours before you plan to go to sleep. Then while you're lying in bed, practice doing some deep breathing to get you fully relaxed as you're falling asleep."

"Okay."

"I'd also like for you to get a journal and spend some time every day writing out your dream but rewriting the ending. Maybe instead of being the passenger, you're the driver and you get the car under control. Maybe the windshield doesn't shatter and you walk out of the car completely okay. It can even be something completely wild and impossible, like a friend of yours speeds up to the car and pulls you out just before it wrecks."

Emmeline had to keep herself from smiling at the irony of the suggestion.

"It doesn't matter what you come up with as long as it has a happier ending. If you do it enough times, your subconscious might start rewriting the ending while you're sleeping too."

"I guess I can try."

"If none of that seems to be working, then we can try to do a sleep study one night and see if we can analyze what exactly happens to you at night and treat it that way."

Emmeline already knew that wasn't an option because she felt like she was currently revealing too much as it was, but she said anyway, "Okay, sounds good."

Chloe later explained to Emmeline that while she had been figuring out doctor's appointments and what to do about her severe lack of sleep, she and Jimmy had figured out what had happened to Lex. A Belle Reve patient, Bronson, who had been given abilities in the last meteor shower had had the power to trap Lex onto a different plane of existence. Chloe and Jimmy had gone to the Luthor mansion with a radio frequency jammer which had allowed them to see the plane Bronson had trapped Lex in. Bronson had tried to kill Lana in an attempt to get Lex to admit that he'd transferred him from Belle Reve to the mysterious 33.1 where he'd been brutally experimented on. However, Lex had continued to deny its existence and he'd then killed Bronson supposedly in self-defense.

Exhausted beyond belief and longing for nothing more than a full night of sleep, Emmeline joined Lana in the elevator Bronson had taken her to that supposedly led to 33.1. But when the elevator opened, the entire floor was completely empty of everything but support beams, just as it had been when Bronson had showed it to Lana before.

Chloe and Jimmy quickly stepped away from each other as the two women stepped out of the elevator.

"Hey," Lana called. "Find anything interesting?"

"Yeah, I've got to say, this all just feels a little strange," Chloe admitted. "Have you ever considered the possibility that maybe Bronson was telling the truth?"

"And this was some secret laboratory? Chloe, I don't think Lex would have given us clearance if he had something to hide."

"It seems like a lot of hoops for someone bent on revenge to jump through if 33.1 never even existed."

"Chloe, that guy was delusional. The meteor exposure made him sick. He spent over a year in Belle Reve."

"There's a lot more to this story than meets the eye. You don't know the Luthors like I do."

"You don't know Lex like I do. I'm not gonna take the word of a homicidal maniac over Lex. I'm sorry."

"Lana, you can't prove that 33.1 didn't exist."

"And you can't prove that it did."

Normally, Emmeline would've remained calm and tried to politely present her own opinion on the situation, but she was so exhausted and frustrated at everything that had been happening for the last two months that she just snapped.

"Okay, both of you need to just stop and take one second to consider that the other may be right," she said hardly. "Chloe, maybe there really wasn't anything up here on this floor and maybe Bronson really was just a patient in a mental hospital who hallucinated the whole thing. Lana, for just once in your life, open your mind to the possibility that Chloe is right and there really was something here and Bronson really was being experimented on for his abilities. I'm not saying either one is wrong or either one is right, but just don't immediately assume that you're automatically correct in your thinking because there's still so much about this entire situation that we don't know. I'm tired of constantly having to play mediator for everyone."

Chloe, Lana, and Jimmy looked at Emmeline wide-eyed at her outburst.

"Emmeline, are you feeling okay?" Chloe asked gently.

"I'm fine," Emmeline snapped which only proved that her statement was a lie. "What, because I actually shared my opinion for once, there must be something wrong with me?"

"No, that's not what I meant."

"I'm sorry that for once, I didn't sugarcoat my words and said it like it is."

"Emmeline—"

"I have to go."

"Em!"

Emmeline went back to the elevator, deciding that silence and solitude was what she needed most right now.

"So, what, your cell phone doesn't get reception in Seattle?" Chloe asked as she ascended the steps to the loft.

Clark turned to face her. "I was preoccupied."

"That's fine, but you were up against an alien from another planet. Em and I were worried."

"Sorry."

"So the crystal was a success?"

"No, it wasn't," he said distantly as he took a few steps away from her.

"Then did the Zoner just decide to pack up and leave the solar system?"

"Someone else killed him. Someone who can do things I could only dream of."

"Whoa. So, this someone, he's on our side, right?"

"I'm not sure."

Chloe held her arms out. "Clark, it's me, your most trusted friend and secret keeper. How about a few details?"

"Believe it or not, there are some things you don't need to know."

"Look, I understand that you feel like all these psychopathic space invaders are your fault, but you can't keep it all inside. You feel the need to carry the world on your shoulders, and that's noble. But there are other people out there who want to help you fight the good fight, and you need to let them in. Because sometimes even heroes need to be saved." When Clark still didn't say anything, Chloe crossed her arms. "Okay, you don't want to talk about that? Then let's talk about Em."

Clark finally turned around. "What about Em? Is she okay?"

"Not really. Look, when it comes to your own secret, I respect the fact that you tell who you want when you want. But you have to tell her why she's having the nightmares. It is physically hurting her. She completely went off on me and Lana yesterday, and while she certainly had good reason to, it still isn't like her."

"Why? What happened?"

"I'll get to that in a minute. Clark, she's not getting any sleep and she's exhausting herself because of it. She told me that they might have her start working with patients at the clinic soon. She needs to be fully focused for that, and right now, she isn't. You know how important that internship is to her. This is one thing that you can't keep from her."

"Chloe…I don't know if telling her will even solve anything. What if it just makes her nightmares worse?"

"I'm not sure that's possible."

Clark sighed heavily, trying to figure out what to do. He knew that Emmeline deserved the truth, especially when it was hurting her so much, but he didn't know how he could possibly explain to her what had happened that night. In this case, the truth might hurt even more.