Epilogue

Okay, this was inspired by you people who submitted reviews, thank you very much evil contemplative grin. See, feedback is its own reward. And punishment. (Someone commented that Lake creeped him out. I did a little dance of joy. Success! Lake is SUPPOSED to creep you out. Lake is supposed to creep out EVERYONE. The fact that she lives in my head should creep you out, too. Sometimes it even creeps ME out. But Lake took it as a compliment, and came back to participate in this little scene. Besides, I (we?) have been wanting to do this since we first laid eyes on Lionel, that nasty blankety-blank....)

Set, oh, I dunno, early in the third season. Mixing in your own characters tend to weird up the timeline. Not that the show or comics have ever been real concerned about the timeline. But Lionel is about to become, hm, less of a threat.

A little cursing, no sex or nudity, no drugs, but if you have a weak stomach, stop right here.

Interview, part the second. As you may have guessed by now, Lionel's.

The room was warm, rich, comforting. Not "comfortable." Not comforting the way a favorite blanket was. Comforting the way only obscene amounts of money and its flagrant abuse could be, to someone who took pleasure in flaunting it.

Carpet deep and thick enough to hide a small pet. A fireplace with a servant to keep it stocked, controlled, swept. Wood paneling that probably had destroyed a small forest. Leather, and the smell of dead animals, losers on the food chain. Marble imported at great cost of human labor and suffering. Stained glass ostentatious enough, and wastefully hoarded out of public view enough, to make a saint curse.

Lionel would have had the chandelier made out of blood diamonds -- diamonds that had been stolen so many times that each facet represented a death -- if the damn things hadn't been so hard to string up properly. Drilling a hole in hundreds of 56-facet diamonds was more effort than it was worth, even for the people he ordered around.

Lionel leaned back, took a sip of his brandy, and closed his eyes. He didn't even particularly like brandy. Truth be told, he preferred mixed drinks. But haughty billionaires did not drink things with little umbrellas in them.

He went blind.

Being blind is not the same as closing your eyes. A sighted person can still tell the difference in light levels through closed eyelids. There are still visual cues. There is always the knowledge that you can open your eyes. Even if you've been blindfolded, one of the more terrifying experiences in deliberate torture, you still believe than someday you will still be able to open your eyes. Blindness, though, is like trying to see color with the end of your nose, and no amount of staring or fighting will bring back the missing sense.

Lionel was blind. He knew the experience. And he did not like it.

Lionel snatched for his emergency button, his safety line, his last resort.

Then he discovered something far more terrifying than the sudden blindness.

He was paralyzed.

He could still breathe. He could move his head. But he could not move his hand. The glass slipped out of suddenly lax fingers and fell. It didn't shatter on the thick carpet, but it was gone. Just like the rest of his body. His legs didn't exist. His back was no longer aware of the feel of the chair. His heart beat. He could breathe. But the rest of his body, from the neck down, was absolutely not there.

"It's not difficult to allow you your autonomic reflexes while removing everything else," said an unfamiliar voice. A woman's voice. A casual, controlled, unimpressive voice. Lionel tried to swallow and discovered that he could do that. He was, he realized, being allowed to do that. "But it would be even easier to cut it off."

Lionel was not stupid. Lionel was quite paranoid, as his long and venturous life had forced him to be. He understood the words very quickly, and with no hesitation or miscomprehension, just as well as he understood that it was thoroughly impossible for someone to have entered his mansion, his room, without his forewarning and permission.

He was blind and paralyzed. There was a strange woman in his room. He understood the situation all too well.

"What do you want?" His voice was as steady as it could be, under the circumstances. It hurt to talk, to breathe. Lionel replayed the part about "keeping you breathing." Drugs? A paralytic gas? Some kind of electronics, focused on his nervous system? The possibilities flashed through his mind, intriguing a part of him. He was up against a formidable adversary.

He understood formidable adversaries. Part of him relished the challenge. The part that wasn't gibbering in panic.

Just as abruptly, he could see again.

The small pale woman was sitting at his desk, fingertips steepled, light blue eyes the color of a frozen lake. Lionel was suddenly more terrified than he'd ever been before, an order of magnitude more terrified than he had been even when he found himself blind and paralyzed without warning. Whatever had been affecting him hadn't just worn off. She had canceled it, as effectively and inexplicably as she had no doubt caused it.

She was letting him see her.

That meant she didn't care about him identifying her.

That meant he was going to die.

"What do you want?" he repeated, and was sick and ashamed at the quavering he heard in his own voice. "Money? It isn't necessary to torture me. I can give you all the money you want."

The glacier-eyed woman considered him for a long moment, expressionless. Lionel found himself admiring her skill. Damn, she was good at the subtleties. With someone like that working for him, he could fire half the rest of his staff.

Then he remembered that he was only still breathing because she had, somehow, allowed his diaphragm and heart to continue functioning. The rest of his body, from the neck down, was completely gone, as far as his nervous system was concerned.

"I want to know about your warehouse in Smallville that burned," she said softly, a voice that almost purred. "Why you maintained it in that poor a condition. Why it was there. Why you bothered."

"The WAREHOUSE?!" Lionel would have shouted if he'd had more control of his own lungs. "That piece of trash? I was glad it burned. I should have done it myself."

"Indeed?" Her eyes flickered, considering him. It felt like being drowned in icy water. "Why didn't you?"

Lionel sighed. She permitted it. "Honestly? In order to cause another problem for my wayward son. He needs a few more lessons in the real world."

The pale woman stared at him. No, not "stared." She simply let her glacier eyes rest on him.

"It was convenient." Lionel tried to shrug. That, she was somehow not permitting. "What," he demanded, "Is so damn important about the damn warehouse?"

She smiled, and rose, and came towards him. Slowly. Lionel suddenly discovered a whole new level of terror. "I burned it," she remarked. "Professional curiosity. Your son came. He made some interesting decisions. You didn't come. I wondered why."

Oh. Lionel closed his eyes, wishing for blindness again. She was playing cat-and-mouse with him. She already knew the answers. He was going to be tortured to death just to satisfy this lunatic stranger's "professional curiosity."

"This is about the meteorites, then."

The ice maiden stopped in her approach, and crossed her arms in front of her, head tilted slightly, quizzically. Lionel would have shuddered if she had let him. Lionel hired professional killers all the time. Half of them would have run screaming from the look she was gracing him with. "Why would you think that?"

"I am not," Lionel grated, "usually held captive in my own damn chair, through some unknown technology, by someone who beat the most expensive security system in the world, over a few cheap reproductions of artwork."

"Ah." Astonishingly, to Luthor, she retreated to the desk, leaning her backside against it. If it was a move calculated to reassure him, it did exactly the opposite. By now, Lionel was pretty sure that the innocuous-looking small woman did not make mistakes. "Tell me about the meteorite collection, Lionel."

Somehow the use of his name was the worst violation yet. Maybe the way she said it. Not spat out, not said with distaste. As if it bored her.

"I think you know," he accused softly.

She touched a fingertip to her lips. Stroking. It could have been a deeply sensual gesture. It was anything but. "I know that they're responsible for many inexplicable things in the area." She matched his soft, accusing tone, reasonably, chillingly. "They're radioactive, after all. Dangerous. Any high school science class would know better than to leave them around unsecured. People panic over such trivialities as radon in their basement, over RTGs on spaceships, yet use those rocks for paperweights and souvenirs?"

That, on the other hand, was definitely spit out. "Stupidity. You are not that stupid, Lionel. Why would you have a collection of mutagenic, teratogenic, potentially poisonous remnants of a fairly recent and poorly investigated meteor strike, in a warehouse otherwise full of, as you say, worthless trinkets? Why not in a laboratory? Why not a research facility, or a university?" She straightened again, and Lionel would have backed away if he could have. "Answer me, Lionel."

Luthor met her eyes, and knew there was no pity, no bribing, no excuses, no way out. He was superb at reading the faces of his enemies, no matter how poker-faced they were. This was not a poker face. This was an open promise of death. If he was lucky.

"I was looking into making mutants," he said tiredly. "You already know enough about me to have gotten in here. This could hardly come as a surprise."

Lake didn't show it, but in fact, it did surprise her. She had been entirely focused on what Lionel knew about Clark. She hadn't expected such a mundane explanation, or such a ridiculous excuse. If it had not been for her decades of training, she would have burst out laughing.

Maybe some people would think it was violating individual rights and all that crap to mess with a person's DNA and produce a bizarre kid against his-or-her will, but Lake and most of her fellow Special agents had already been there, done that, bought the t-shirt and washed it in bleach, and so what?

Making more mutants? Like there weren't enough already? Like even Lionel thought he could USE them? Crusted rotting cheese on a crossed computer node, had Lionel not even read the local papers since he sent his own son here? Shape-shifters, out-of-control "superboys," people who froze things and people who set sprinklers on fire, and Lionel wanted to make MORE of them? John was going to throw things while she rolled around on the floor in hysterical laughter, and Wynter would make the world's worst bad puns.

Well, no. The Baron, their boss, who pleased himself to go by the name John this century, had given this one to her alone, while Nicole went ahead to Korea without her, and even Wynter didn't think nuclear war was funny. Lionel was a crumb on the table, and catching up with the other situation would be hell, but John and Wynter and her partner Nicole all agreed that she personally had to be the one to follow up on any threat to Clark. No one was going to treat it as a joke.

Especially when it came to Lionel.

An amateur would have said something at that point, derided Luthor in some way, put the ball back in his court, but that would also have given away an advantage, because anything she said would have given Lionel information.

Lake was not an amateur. She simply regarded him.

Lionel tried to shift nervously. He couldn't, of course. "Surely, you --" he couldn't resist a smirk as he made a guess, knowing how it annoyed most people, not knowing how boring such ploys were to Lake -- "Of all people, might understand that people who have received, mm, extraordinary talents from the meteors could be quite useful to a competitive businessman."

Lake came as close as she ever had to gurgling. It would be HOURS before she could get herself under enough control to repeat that one to John without laughing until she peed herself. If Lionel had had ANY idea what he'd just said, he might pee himself too.

She settled for keeping her expression frozen solid.

Lionel read what he was intended to. His own face paled. "I see no reason for that to be the cause of such treatment as this."

Lake moved, standing again, indolently. "You don't?" She put every bit of decades of training and anger and the hideous things she'd seen and done into a voice barely above a whisper.

"The mutations are not controllable, Lionel. Did you not even consider what you might have unleashed? I would personally wipe people like you from the face of the Earth, little man, but there are so many of you. And I am forced to remove you fools one by one." She neglected to add that it was a self-imposed restriction, with John's approval.

"I do not play your careless games. I do not play games at all. I don't think you're stupid enough to take the risk of creating a mutation that you could not control, just for the possibility of a business advantage. I believe you are still lying. Tell me all of it, Lionel. If you are not careful, complete, and honest, I will leave you alive. And I will return."

Lionel was about to object vehemently to being compared to "so many other fools like you," but he didn't get the chance. He looked into Lake's glacier eyes, and froze. She gave him just enough time, and just enough of her expression, to let him see it coming.

Lake reached out with her mind, the psycho-telekinetic power that could shut down a nervous system as easily as it could disrupt the electrical lines of a security alarm. This time, she did not limit the force that she directed against every nerve ending in Luthor's body.

She did, however, paralyze his vocal cords to keep him from screaming aloud.

Seventeen minutes later, Lionel regained fuzzy consciousness. He still could not move voluntarily. But his body was no longer a blank, a missing space. His body burned and shrieked and convulsed. He was lying on the floor in a pool of his own vomit. He could feel blood trickling from his mouth and nose and ears. He was blind again, though not completely. The blood vessels in his eyeballs had ruptured.

"The rest of it, Lionel," purred the soft cool voice.

"Aliens," he choked out, babbling as fast as his damaged and violated voice could manage. "You don't understand. One of them landed here. Got to my son. He's dangerous. Not human." He gasped, even past her control. "The meteor rocks. Only thing that can stop them. They're, they, they can't be hurt. Not by guns. I saw. Please. You have to know. Invaders. Sounds crazy, I know. I swear it, I swear it. Alien invaders."

Among Lake's many instructors had been combat veteran squad leaders. She knew whole hosts of curses. Right now, she couldn't think of any bad enough.

"Finish," was all she said, betraying no emotion at all.

"The meteorites. Give us the power. Fight back. I found out. Saw him. It. Found the spaceship. They're coming, don't you understand? They, they'll take us over! I saw it." Lionel's eyes were weeping blood. "Ask Virgil Swann. Famous. Scientist. Not a nut. Ask him. He found a message. About the aliens. Want to make us their slaves. Rule us. They can. They have powers. Too strong for us. Strong ... you can't imagine. Nothing can stop them. Except for the rocks. Our only defense. It's the truth! I swear it. Please..."

Lake had quit counting the number of people she had killed when she reached one thousand, and that was while she was still a teenager. She was trying to remember if she'd ever been so revolted. Or so angry. Or so absolutely disbelieving.

Clark Kal-El Kent, an alien invader, bent on taking over the world? That was hysterical. Clark couldn't even figure out where to put a comma in a compound sentence. Oh, sure, they'd all seen the stupid message that Jor-El had so pompously sent with his poor kid. "Rule them with strength." Gag a buzzard. The haughty old fart couldn't even be bothered to say "I love you, son, I'm sorry about having to put you through all this?" Little Kal had gotten a better deal being the only survivor of his whole race, stuck on the wrong planet where he was a super-powered freak, than he would have had growing up normal in a society like that.

Lake leaned over Lionel, a useless habit of intimidation. Lionel was broken. Hells, Lionel had been broken since the day he thought that "To Serve Man" had come to life. (She didn't think he was the type to have watched "Independence Day," but you never knew.) Of all the idiotic.... Had Lionel ever even considered getting to just know the child? To see that he had to be forced at meteor-point to so much as be rude?

Was it possible for someone to be so obsessed with their own personal need for power that they considered any potential challenge, any possibility that someone might be capable of taking them on, to be a threat to be eliminated rather than someone to cultivate as a friend?

Well, yes, Lake admitted ruefully. There were so many nutcases with their fingers on the nuclear button these days that she doubted she would have been able to kill them all even if she hadn't had to do it one-on-one (John did not permit his Specials to make impulsive generalities, especially when it came to executions) and under explainable circumstances.

Lionel thought that Clark had "gotten to" his son. It didn't occur to him that Clark might really be the only friend his emotionally abused and unhappy son, who had been forced to become viciously arrogant in order to even survive in Lionel's world, who had turned instinctively to Clark because Clark was one of the few people on the planet not much impressed by the power of a Luthor, was ever likely to have.

Kal-El, abandoned, inhumanly powerful, utterly alone, and still sane, was possibly the best friend an entire species bent on self-destruction through one stupidity or another was ever likely to have.

She considered killing Lionel right now. It would be easy to set up an explainable scenario in such a poorly-defended locale. It would also have been merciful. But Lex might still have some use for the paranoid psycho schizo. Maybe make him sign some papers and have him locked up, in a nice quiet publicity stunt. "All of it, Lionel," she whispered.

Lionel stuttered and stammered and words poured over each other. Where all the vaults were. Where all the papers were. Who knew the truth -- even Lionel was not sure whether Lex knew the full story or not; Lionel refused to believe that Lex would have remained friends with an "alien invader," but the litany of evidence to which Lex had been privy convinced Lake that Lex had a handle on a good deal more than she was comfortable with.

After Korea, she would have to return to Smallville for some follow up.

Who had suspicions. A long list, including Clark's two "girlfriends." Lionel was convinced that their reticent ambivalence stemmed from a subconscious fear of Clark, having apparently never known what teenage dating disasters were like. (Lake admitted that she lacked experience on that front as well.) Lionel skipped completely over Pete. Of course. That "refuse to believe that anyone would be friends with a nonhuman" attitude, again.

None of it was news to Lake, but she listened with clinical interest, looking for the vaguest of contradictions, for an iota of information she had not uncovered herself during debriefing after their last visit as she was being lashed by John's disapproval, with the help of a sixty-person investigation team, eighty computers, and Wynter, under John's scowling eye.

Clark as a Kzinti or Berserker or something. Buy a vowel.

"Thank you, Lionel," she finally murmured, when he ran down, exhausted. She straightened. Touching him would have been too disgusting even for her.

Causing damage and pain with the mind alone was not easy, even for Lake, who had no empathic ability whatsoever, much less telepathic, and could not actually feel what others were going through. John, in fact, disapproved of her using her mental force against other minds directly, mostly because of that very limitation, because he understood just how much of a temptation such personalized yet consequentless torture could be.

Lake could have given nightmares to a death camp prison guard. But even for Lake, there was no way to build callouses on thoughts, on the mind itself.

Psi-fire, Wynter had named her, and not as a compliment. Capable of overriding any mental harm at all from reflecting on or even touching her, even as she forced it onto, into, another brain. Still, it was mind to mind, direct, and she could not help but know what she was doing, what was happening. Sentience to sentience, unprotected, impossible to shield from or be shielded, her talent and skill and sheer raw power unleashed and rampaging through the brain of someone who was defenseless, helpless, powerless against her.

Right now, Lake wished for telepathy, even if it had meant being forced to share directly with what she was about to do. It would have been so much cleaner if she could have just found the correct synapses and destroyed only those. As it was, she was forced to rip through Lionel's mind at random until she was certain that she had destroyed enough to remove his memory of Clark.

It was going to hurt.

And she was going to have to be part of it, at least enough to know when she was finally successful.

This time, she at least let him scream.