Summary: Lex Luthor had just one question; 'what was going on in this reality?' Clark/Tess

Disclaimer: "Smallville" and all associated characters and situations are the property of DC Entertainment and are used for entertainment purposes without permission or intent to profit.

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"KentCo"
By J.T. Magnus, 'Turbo'

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Alexander Luthor chuckled to himself as he put the finishing touches on his creation. The man who commonly went by 'Lex' Luthor had so far failed for years to discover Clark Kent's secret in his own world, but with this new device, he could change the rules of the game and if he couldn't learn the truth in his own world, he could do it elsewhere and bring the knowledge back. It might not be considered 'fair', but as far as he was concerned playing 'fair' was something the sheep wanted the wolves to do because it lowered their chances of becoming dinner, and Lex very much considered himself to be one of the wolves in the world. Clark Kent and the other man's secret bothered him because, to carry the metaphor further, he looked like a sheep and tried to act like a sheep, but every so often Lex could see the wolf that Clark tried to hide and he couldn't figure out why he was hiding it. If he had to hazard a guess, though, it would likely have to do with the sheep that had raised his estranged friend.

He would have thought further on the matter, but the readings all now indicated that the device was fully charged and ready for use.

"One small step for science, one giant leap for me," Lex remarked as he picked up the device's remote control and strapped it to his forearm, under his sleeve, so that it wouldn't be easily lost. Fortunately, he'd built the remote early enough in the project that he'd had time to familiarise himself with the locations of the controls so that even under his shirt sleeve he knew where they were when he needed to use them. With that knowledge, it was easy to press the control that would activate the device and he watched as a blue-purple glow appeared in front of him, spreading out as it ripped open a hole in the fabric of reality large enough for a person to step through easily.

And he did.

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It was almost cliche; the alley abandoned even in the middle of the day, the wind blowing discarded newspapers and other trash around, the stray cats that hissed and ran away at the sight of the glowing rip between dimensions as Lex Luthor exited it and looked around.

Sniffing, he frowned, "Near the waterfront, by the smell of it. I was aiming for downtown. The calibrations must have been off or perhaps this version of the city was built slightly different than what I'm familiar with..."

Perhaps he should have sent some sort of probe or drone through ahead of him, but it wouldn't have been much of a change since the geographical coordinates would still have been the same. It was an annoying fact that an unmanned, robotic probe - whether remote controlled or programmed - simply wouldn't have been able to provide the same information on its destination as a living, breathing human being could. They could provide video or audio images, but not necessarily the context needed to interpret them. Considering that he hadn't trusted anyone else with knowledge of his project, far less being actually involved with it, there hadn't been anyone Lex could have sent through in his place, even if he were to be so generous as to allow someone besides himself to be the first person to use the device.

On that same matter of information and context, he had no intention of grabbing one of the random newspapers littering the alley as there was no telling their condition, source or accuracy; it being a different world, the Gotham Post could actually turn out to be a paragon of journalistic integrity and the Daily Planet little more than a scandal-rag instead of the other way around. There was really only one person whom Lex Luthor could trust to be truthful with him as long as it served their interests well and that was Lex Luthor. The co-ordinates he'd input into the device should have deposited him downtown, only a few blocks away from LexCorp headquarters and in easy walking distance. As it was, however, it would seem that the new first step would be to confirm his own location and discover that of LexCorp before he could then move on to arranging a meeting with his counterpart here. That meant he needed access to a phone book; he could do an internet search if he could find a free public wi-fi, but that risked tripping any kind of protective system that may or may not exist depending on the paranoia level of his counterpart and he wanted to save that until they met face-to-face.

Of course, if his counterpart was too reluctant to help, or even had joined Clark in protecting his secret, there was always the possibility of removing and replacing them. After all, if Lex could think of doing it, he was certain that it would occur to his counterpart as well. He would just have to make sure he acted first and successfully if it came to that.

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Lex was finding himself both confused and somewhat disturbed; a phonebooth had been easy to find, complete with its own phonebook. What he hadn't been able to find was any phone numbers, address, or even advertisements for LuthorCorp or LexCorp; it was as though his company, and seemingly him along with it, didn't even exist here. What did exist was something that didn't seem like it should, that seemed like it had replaced his company in all respects even occupying what should have been LexCorp Tower; something called 'KentCo'. His initial thought as seeing that name was that, somehow, Jonathan and Martha Kent had bought the Smallville fertiliser plant at some point and had since expanded as a company. At least he hoped it was the two of them, they deserved it for being better people than he or his father ever could or ever tried to be; he wasn't sure he wanted to think about the possibility of it being Clark instead.

With a frustrated sigh, Lex fought down the urge to slam his fist against something. This was why he had entire divisions of his company dedicated to espionage both corporate and political, data-mining, and other forms of research that could find the raw information for him instead of Lex himself having to do so. Sorting through data related to a situation and using it to form a plan was something he honestly enjoyed doing - for one thing, it removed the possibility of another analyst's bias in interpreting the data - but he never liked finding the data to begin with since it often required digging through so much unrelated material. The telephone book hadn't had enough information for him to draw any conclusion, which meant that Lex had to, despite his prior reluctance, find a newspaper stand and see what the papers and magazines could add to what he did have.

The contents of a newspaper stand only deepened the mystery; the biggest headline of the Daily Planet was KentCo announcing a new metahuman training inititive - apparently metahuman was a politically correct term for what used to be called 'meteor freaks' that became the standard when they started showing up with no connection to the Smallville Meteor Showers since the training inititive boiled down to KentCo providing places for them to practice their powers safely and anonymously while at the same time offering jobs for those 'metahumans' in need of them. To go with the headline, the Planet had a picture of KentCo's Owner and Chief Executive Officer Tess Kent sitting in her office - his office - and he didn't recognise her, which meant she likely never existed in his world. Ms. Kent's picture in the paper led Lex to the conclusion that Jonathan and Martha had a daughter; possibly also adopted, though he didn't know if red hair was recessive in either of their DNA and could have potentially become dominant in a biological child. Then there was the by-line of the article, the name of the reporter was neither 'Clark Kent' nor 'Lois Lane', but 'Cat Grant'. It took Lex a moment to place her as the Planet's entertainment/'celebrity news' reporter, at least in his world, and he wondered why a seemingly high-profile article would be written by her and not one of the Planet's 'headline' reporters.

The conclusion which Lex reached because of the article was that, in lieu of information about seemingly non-existant LexCorp or LuthorCorp, he would need to find out more about 'KentCo'. Unfortunately, he lacked any connections or contacts in this world and his plan of meeting with the other-Lex wass on hold with no trace of LexCorp to track him down with, so that meant he would have to use the most open and base of public resources - the Metropolis Public Library.

The thought almost amused him.

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Lex put his head in his hands and fought back the urge to growl in frustration. He had reviewed the internet - fortunately this Metropolis Public Library had free public access to the world wide web; studied business magazines; perused back-issues of newspapers local, national and even international. Ultimately, though, the answers which he had gotten had only led him to developing new questions. As near as Lex could piece together given the various information sources which he was using, major events were basically the same until the Arctic. In this world, it didn't seem like he had secretly survived the destruction of Superman's hidden fortress; his counterpart had basically disappeared at that point. Even more frustrating was that instead of Mercy Graves being put in control of LexCorp and its subsidiaries to handle things for him while he was in hiding, a woman he didn't recognise named 'Tess Mercer' took them over. It also happened that some three years later, Mercer married Clark Kent; which, as it happened, answered the questions regarding what had happened to LexCorp and where had KentCo come from as she had changed the former's name to the latter after her marriage. The new, perhaps even more frustrating question that it left was 'who is Tess Kent, nee Mercer'?

As if Clark didn't have enough secrets on his own...

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Author's Note: Yes, readers, the reference to the Gotham Post as a scandal-rag is a nod to ChrisDee's excellent "Cat-Tales" universe...

As a bit of backstory, though it plays no part in the actual story. It was in my notes that Lois was fired by Tess for attitude problems and Clark, being the husband of KentCo's owner/CEO, doesn't do articles on the company due to appearance of conflict of interests.