"Lex, are you okay?" Clark demanded as he, Chloe, and Emmeline rushed into one of the examination rooms in the hospital.

"Clark, I'm fine," Lex replied, standing up from the table. "How did you know I was here?"

"One of your EMTs is a friend of mine," Chloe told him. "She said there was an explosion at LuthorCorp?"

"What happened?" Clark asked.

"We were conducting an experiment," Lex explained.

"Well, I'm guessing it didn't go well."

"Not exactly as I hoped, but it was worth the risk."

"I'm sure it was," Chloe said with a hint of iciness in her tone. "To LuthorCorp's bottom line."

"To the world, Chloe. Look, why don't the two of you come with me to the lab, and I'll show you what Dr. Sinclair and I have been working on? I really think you're gonna like this one."

Lex grabbed his coat off the hook and exited the room.

Clark looked at the two girls. "All right, let's go."

Chloe quickly grabbed his arm as he started to leave. "Clark, wait, I'm not buying any story from a Luthor without corroboration. So Em and I are gonna go talk to Dr. Sinclair and find out what he has to say about this."

"Okay. I'll check out the lab with Lex."

"Just be careful, okay? I mean, no matter what he says, LuthorCorp experiments never end well."

Clark smiled, clearly unconcerned with her warning, and followed after Lex.

"Okay," Chloe said. "Now that we know your field of study, you can start practicing now."

"Uh, now?" Emmeline asked nervously.

"Relax. I'll ask the questions, but you can start seeing the psychology behind everything. Maybe in his actions or how he says things or however that works."

"What do you mean I'm starting now? Being friends with you and Clark has given me years of practice."

Chloe laughed lightly and headed off to Dr. Sinclair's room.

However, they were quite shocked by what they saw when they got there.

Lex stepped out of the room just as they arrived.

"Lex?" Chloe said in surprise.

Lex smiled suavely. "Chloe. Emmeline."

"I thought you left for the lab with Clark."

"Well, I just wanted to check in with Dr. Sinclair first."

"Hm. Was he all right?"

"Not feeling a thing."

"Well, I was hoping we could maybe talk to him."

"Well, he's sleeping now." He put his hand on her back and started leading the both of them away from the room. "Maybe you two should come back later when he's feeling a little more alive."

"Okay."

Lex continued walking down the hallway when a loud beeping noise sounded from the room behind them.

"Code blue, room 213, code blue, room 213," a woman announced.

Doctors and nurses rushed to Dr. Sinclair's room.

When the two girls looked down the hallway at Lex's retreating form, he stared back at them coldly as if he knew exactly what was happening.

It sent a shiver down their spines.

"He's arresting!" a doctor cried. "Defibrillator!"

The doctor began using a defibrillator on the unresponsive man.

Emmeline looked at Chloe in fear. "You don't think…"

"…It couldn't be."


Clark rushed into the Talon office to find Chloe and Emmeline working. "Chloe."

"Hey," she greeted. "It's about time. Pretty slow for the quarterback."

"Ex-quarterback. What's so important?"

"Dr. Sinclair."

"Did he say something about the explosion at LuthorCorp?"

"He couldn't. He's dead, Clark."

"What? What happened?"

"Cardiac arrest. In a guy with no history of heart problems."

"Well, I'd better go tell Lex."

"He already knows, I think. Em and I bumped into him coming out of Dr. Sinclair's room just before he died."

"When was this?"

"Right after you left for the lab."

"Well, Chloe, I was with Lex. We went to the lab together."

"Which would be about the same time I was talking to Lex outside Dr. Sinclair's room."

"Well, that's impossible."

"Not in Smallville. You of all people should know that." When she noticed Clark giving her a strange look, she quickly added, "You know, because of all the stuff you've seen."

"All the stuff he's seen?" Emmeline asked sarcastically. "All of the stuff all of us have seen. You could fill a book with the amount of meteor freaks we've dealt with."

"Fair enough."

"There must be a way to figure out the timeline," Clark said.

"Yeah, there is. Smallville Medical Center has a surveillance system which, as far as the both of you know, I've never hacked into because that would be wrong."

The two of them nodded with small smiles. Chloe had hacked into everything, wrong or not.

"It's just gonna take a while."

"Call me if you find anything."

Clark left the office while Chloe began typing away at her computer and using all her skills to get the information they needed.

"Hey, you know, prom's coming up," the blonde mentioned. "Are you thinking of going with anyone?"

"Me? You're the one who likes Clark so much."

Chloe's cheeks reddened though she would always deny it. "If Clark is going with anyone, he's going with Lana."

"Lana's with Jason."

"So then he's probably not going with anyone."

"You don't give him enough credit. You could always ask him. Lots of people go to prom as friends."

"That would almost be worse. As nice as it would be go to prom with him, to be there as a friend, knowing that it will never be anything more, would just suck."

"I can see how that would be a bit torturous. Are you going at all?"

"Of course. We've waited four years to be able to go to prom. It's a huge part of the classic high school experience."

"Well, if neither of us end up finding a date, we can just be each other's date."

"Sounds like a deal. I have to make us hair appointments again then. We are going to go out even more than we did for Spring Formal."

"So dress shopping soon?"

"Naturally."

"Hopefully it doesn't take as long as last time. And isn't as expensive."

Chloe didn't answer her, her eyes transfixed on her computer.

"What is it?" Emmeline asked.

"Look at this."

As Chloe called Clark on his phone, Emmeline came around behind her and looked at the screen. There was old security footage from the hospital the previous night.

"Clark," Chloe said into her phone. "I found surveillance footage of Lex, me, and Em outside of Dr. Sinclair's room talking. And of you and Lex leaving the medical center." She clicked a button and the two images showed on the screen with their time stamps showing. "They're identical. Looks like our favorite billionaire has one heck of a split personality."

Emmeline sighed heavily. "Well, this isn't good."


That night, Clark brought Chloe and Emmeline to the lab that had previously exploded. The real Lex insisted that he was going to figure out how to get the other Lex and fix the whole mess.

"I want to thank you three for bringing this to my attention," Lex told them. "My security team is working to detain the situation."

"Is there anything we can do to help?" Clark asked.

Lex's cell phone began ringing, and he quickly pulled it out to answer it. "Excuse me. Hello? I'll be right there." He hung up the phone and turned back to them. "This could be what I was hoping for. I'll be right back. Don't worry. This will all be over soon." As he left, he called back, "Keep an eye out for my security team."

Chloe peeked back to make sure he was out of sight before picking up a vial and examining its contents.

"Chloe, what are you doing?" Clark asked.

"Snooping where I don't belong," Chloe replied coyly. "I'm thinking of making a career out of it."

"Lex, said he was gonna be right back."

"How can you be sure it was really him?"

"I was careful. Besides, I think I know my own friend, Chloe."

"Clark, how many times has your friend done something underhanded that you didn't expect? People have a lot of different sides and sometimes they keep those sides hidden, even from the ones that they love."

Clark looked at her for second, considering her words. "Sometimes you have to, even if that's not what you want."

"Yeah, but sooner or later you have to trust them with what's in your heart. Otherwise, you're gonna end up going through life alone."

Emmeline could clearly read the subtext in their conversation. It all related back to the mysterious secret no one wanted to tell her.

She hoped Clark either confessed his secret or Chloe confessed she knew his secret or SOMETHING so that her friend would quit dangling the undisclosed knowledge in front of her face. If someone didn't do something soon, she was going to rip her hair out.

She decided to join in on the search of the lab, not fully convinced that the Lex they had just seen was the real Lex. Chloe had a point. There were several times Clark truly didn't know Lex at all, the whole murder scandal a few weeks ago being a prime example.

"Clark?" Chloe called urgently. "Clark!"

Clark and Emmeline quickly ran over to their shocked friend. Their eyes widened when they saw what she had discovered. A dead security officer had been stuffed inside the cabinet she had opened.

Suddenly, the huge platform above them began to drop, no doubt the work of the other Lex.

Clark's mind worked fast to figure out how to save his friends and his secret. Using his speed, he pushed Emmeline out of the way and then threw himself onto Chloe to protect her from the falling metal.

The platform crashed on top of them, but luckily, Clark's body kept them from receiving any major injuries.

He quickly summoned his strength and pushed the platform off the both of them.

"Chloe?" he quickly said kneeling down to his unconscious friend. He gently pushed the hair away from her eyes. "Chloe?"

When he hurriedly scanned the lab to see where Emmeline had ended up, he winced when he realized that he had accidently pushed her a little too hard and knocked her into one of the pillars. She too was unconscious.

At least he was confident his secret was safe. Now to think of how to explain himself out of this…


After helping his friends regain consciousness, Clark took the both of them back to the farm.

Chloe sat at the counter pressing a towel to the cut on her face while Emmeline held an ice pack on the back of her head.

"We really should get you both to the hospital," he said to them.

"Yeah, 'cause that worked out really well for Dr. Sinclair," Chloe answered. "Clark, we're fine, okay? Although I still can't figure out how we survived the sky falling on our heads. Can you?"

"Well, the last thing I remember was I pushed Em out of the way and then I grabbed you and we dove underneath the lab table. It must've protected us from the debris."

"Did you have to push me so hard?" Emmeline asked, wincing as she moved the ice pack. "You really have an arm on you. Football training must've worked."

Clark grimaced. "I'm sorry. I guess I don't know my own strength."

"I suppose considering the circumstances, I can let it slide."

Chloe laughed lightly. "Good thing our ex-quarterback moves so fast."

Clark furrowed his eyebrows as he looked at her injuries. "Yeah, well, not fast enough."

He lightly pushed her hair away from her face.

Emmeline knew that it was just to look at the bruise on her forehead, but a part of her thought the gesture was so kind and so gentle that it was extremely cute. She kind of wished Clark liked Chloe the same way she liked him. They complimented each other so well.

Chloe smiled warmly. "Clark, I can live with a couple of bruises considering the alternative. You're always there when I need you, Clark. I just hope someday I can do the same for you."

"Right now, I just want to make sure you're safe."

"I can—I can stay with Lois at the military base. Perfect. Although getting between her and the general while they're trying to reconcile might be just as dangerous." She put her coat on and headed towards the door. "Watch out, okay? Lex can be devious enough. There's no telling what his evil twin is capable of. I'll be on my cell."

Chloe smiled again as she left the farm.

Clark looked at Emmeline. "What about you?"

"I'm sure I'll be fine at home. Lex doesn't know where I live. Neither Lexes know very much about me really."

"Are you sure about that?"

"No. Not at all."

"Em, if something happened to you, I don't know what I would do."

Emmeline felt her breath catch a little. It had been a long time since she had genuinely liked Clark as more than a friend, and she wasn't sure how she felt now, but the way he said those words to her definitely made her feel something.

"I'll be okay. I trust you to figure things out. It's what you do."

"I'm glad you have such faith in me."

"Of course I do. I always have."


True to Clark's nature, he managed to fix the situation and merge the two Lexes back together again.

Which meant that the true Lex had to go around and apologize for what his double had done to everyone.

When there was a knock on the Torch office door, Chloe and Emmeline realized it was their turn.

"Uh, I guess I'll save all the awkward greetings," Lex said sheepishly as he came in. "Clark told me what happened when my double took you to the lab. I'm really sorry for what my double did to you."

"It's okay, Lex," Chloe told him. "We know you would never do something like that."

"Of course not. I would never want to hurt either one of you."

"We believe you. And it's fine because Clark was able to protect us."

Lex laughed lightly. "Why am I not surprised?"

"I'm glad you're back to normal."

"Thanks. I'll see you later."

"Bye, Lex."

Lex smiled a little and left the office.

"Well, that was kind of awkward," Emmeline said. "Although I know how he feels. After healing from the Nicodemus flower, I had to go around apologizing to everyone without even knowing what I had done."

"I had the same thing happen when I got poisoned with that parasite in the caves."

"Clearly, we need to move somewhere where we don't constantly do really weird things and then lose our memories of it."

"But it makes life interesting, doesn't it?"

"It certainly does."