It felt like hours, but eventually he reached the road with the warehouse. He practically fell off the bike and spent a few moments desperately trying to suck in enough oxygen to keep himself upright.
And then he heard the shot.
The sound seemed to reverberate far longer than it should, during which time Clark was frozen to the ground.
No! God Damn it, No! How could he be too late again? It simply could not be possible.
He fell to his knees in despair, and saw a man strolling out of the warehouse entrance. It was Webb. Clark's hackles rose.
'Hey!' He yelled, but it came out as more of a croak.
Webb turned to look at him. His eyes widened and he sprang into a run. Clark lurched to his feet and began to pursue him. He barely got a hundred yards before collapsing with exhaustion. Webb disappeared round a corner out of sight. Clark rolled about on the ground in misery for a moment before picking himself up and walking back into the warehouse.
He knelt in the doorway and gazed upon Chloe's slumped body. Even as the blood seeped from her chest he felt the life leach from his own body. There was nothing he could do to help her. He could barely stand on his own feet now. Pain and sorrow competed for his attention. His mind whirled. Lex's words came back to haunt him;
"You can't change the past, Clark. But you can change the future."
Well, Lex was right about one thing, it seemed. You cannot change the past. Everything he'd done had already happened. Every single thing had happened exactly the way it had before. He looked again at Chloe, and even the damn song from the hospital radio taunted him:
"And I wanted
You to turn away.
You don't remember
But I do,
You never even tried."
Why had she come here? He'd told her it would be dangerous… and… of course – that was why she'd come. He tortured himself some more by thinking that if he hadn't told her to stay away she might not have been inclined to come at all.
He looked at his watch in frustration and realised that his earlier self would be showing up soon. He staggered into the corner of the warehouse out of sight. Soon enough his other self came in, crumpled upon seeing Chloe, and picked her up. He looked briefly in Clark's direction, and Clark had to dive out of the way. The two figures raced off and Clark was left to contemplate his fate.
He wearily ran his fingers through his hair, and was horrified to bring away a clump of greasy strands. He looked in dismay at his hand, covered in hair and, worryingly, sore patches. He rolled up his sleeve to find more sores welling up; symptoms, he guessed, of acute radiation poisoning. It began to occur to him that the effects of the beam were getting worse the nearer he got to the time he'd used it, as if the consequences of exposure were happening backward. He wondered what would happen when the time finally caught up with him.
He tried to strain the thick soup of his brain into something more useful. He had to do something. There must be something he could do. But what? He could not effect any change from where he was. He was about to curl up in despair when an engaging thought worked its way into the sludge of his brain.
What if he destroyed the machine? What if he could get the machine to overload and by some arcane process destroy itself?
Well, it was all he had left. He heaved himself to his feet and dragged himself over to the lift in the adjacent building. He shuddered as the lift went down, and rolled out of it at the bottom. He lay on the floor gathering his thoughts before stumbling over to the machine again. He charged the coils without engaging the targeting beam. The machine began to hum and shudder.
There. It was done. He staggered into the lift and collapsed on the floor. The journey to the surface seemed to take an hour. When the doors finally opened he barely had enough strength to roll out onto the cold concrete floor.
The pain bore down on him like an immense weight. His bones were as cold as ice, yet his skin was on fire. He could no longer move his limbs.
As he lay there helpless, he felt a tremor in the earth. He prayed it was the dreadful machine blowing itself up, but it could equally have been his own body shuddering in anguish.
He began to accept that it was too late for himself. He had left most of his remaining hair in the lift, and the burning sores on his skin were not healing. All he had left was the hope that he had undone the trouble that Justin Webb had caused. As he lay there contemplating his fate, he felt the air around him moving. It seemed that it was being sucked out of the building to be replaced with… different air. Of course, he might be getting confused. Maybe it was just his soul being sucked out of his body.
Lex's phoenix flew into his head and flapped about, leaving his thoughts eddying in its wake.
He became aware of someone murmuring in his ear, but it was too far away. He tried to listen, but the world was getting heavier.
'Clark?'
Was that someone calling him, or was it his own brain trying to remind him who he was?
'Clark!'
It was a voice, but he could no longer see. He recognised it. It belonged to a girl. What was her name? Allison? No. He didn't even know an Allison.
Chlex? No. He was getting confused. But it began with a "Ch".
Chloe…? Chloe! Of course. But how could she be here? She was still in hospital dying of gun shot wounds.
Then it dawned on him.
She had died. She was calling to him from somewhere else. Well, he'd be joining her soon.
Even as the world faded away her voice grew stronger. He tried to reply, but it was too late.
He died with her name on his lips.
* * *