From his corner table in the Talon, Lex watched as his customers milled
around the counter, laughing and chatting. He had never intended to get
involved in owning a small business, and even though he'd put up the money
for the Talon he'd had serious doubts about its long-term survival. But he
had to admit it made a nice, if small, profit every month. The Talon had
become the unofficial social center for the town: it was where kids hung
out after school, where couples arranged dates, and where old people sat
and relaxed on lazy Sunday afternoons.
Not that Lex took any credit for it. In fact, the less visible involvement he had with the place the better it seemed to do-after all, the Luthor name remained something of a curse word locally. But no one would dare find fault with Lana Lang.
His only interest in Lana had been trying to steer her in Clark Kent's direction, but the girl had turned out to have a surprisingly good head for business. She thought up endless promotions to keep regulars coming back, and a wide range of other events-from charity auctions to movie nights-to attract new business.
And, he thought as he took a sip from his own mug, the coffee was good.
Now he couldn't help but smile as Clark and Lana shared a table across the room. Judging from the pile of books and papers they were working on some sort of school assignment, but it pleased him to see them sitting together. The couple was taking a ridiculously long time to hook up, but friendship was a start.
Lex would hate to see his first and only attempt at matchmaking end in failure.
His cell phone rang insistently, and several other patrons shot him dirty looks as he dug it out of his coat pocket. Lex ignored them and listened carefully to the voice on the other end.
"No 'hello', Mr. Hale?" Lex said lightly. "You always were a man of few words. What do you have for me?" His eyes narrowed. "Really."
Lex looked up, and managing to catch Clark's eye gestured for him to come over. "Tell me what you've found."
With Clark and Lana standing next to him, Lex listened carefully to Hale's story, jotting a few notes on the back of his receipt. "Right. Right."
Seeing that Clark was chewing his lip nervously Lex held up a finger, cautioning his friend not to interrupt.
"In your experience how much time would you say we have?" Lex listened carefully. Then he glanced at his watch. "All right. Take what you have to the Metropolis P.D. Call me back as soon as they've made their decision. I'll speak to the girl's father."
Lex hung up his phone as Clark landed heavily in a chair.
"That was your PI? What did he say? Is Jenna." Clark trailed off.
"He hasn't found her. But he believes he has good evidence that she was did not leave her apartment of her own accord."
Lana looked genuinely upset, and laid a hand on Clark's arm. "Clark told me what happened," she told Lex, looking at him with a serious expression.
"He's taking what he's learned to the police. I'm no expert, but it sounds to me like enough to get a search warrant for the Summerhill Institute," Lex told his friends.
"I knew it. I knew it," Clark said.
"It isn't conclusive by any means, Clark, but it's a step in the right direction," Lex told him.
"So what did he find?" Lana asked.
Lex looked at Clark with a questioning look, and he shrugged. Lex knew from personal experience Lana could be surprisingly tenacious, so he decided he might as well tell the whole story.
"You'll remember I thought it was a little odd that the kitchen was so clean and that the trash had been removed almost a whole week before it was to be collected. My.employee recovered a bag of trash in a dumpster six blocks away from Jenna's apartment. The junk mail in it indicates it's hers. He also found a variety of food containers, each laced with extremely high doses of barbiturates and sedatives."
Clark shook his head. "Jenna's fridge did seem really empty when I opened it looking for something to drink. But I never thought."
Lana frowned. "I don't understand-why would they want to poison Jenna Iverson? What did she ever do to anybody?"
"Not poison her, Lana-just drug her so she could be removed with a minimum of fuss. Although at those high dosages they might very well have accidentally killed her. I'm sorry to say that, Clark, but it's the truth."
Clark only nodded solemnly, and stood.
"I need to get home and talk to Dr. Iverson. Lana, I'll need a rain check on helping you with that history assignment."
"Of course, Clark, or course. Tell Jenna's father that I'll be hoping for the best."
Lex stood as well.
"I'll come with you, Clark. I think the news might sound better if it comes from me."
As they walked Lex clapped a hand on his friend's shoulder. He wasn't sure about Clark's relationship with Jenna, so he wasn't quite sure what he should say. Hale hadn't sounded too hopeful about the chances of finding Jenna alive now that nearly a week had passed, but Lex didn't want to share that information with his young friend.
Instead as they stepped through the Talon's doors he settled on more neutral comment.
"Remember, Clark, whoever took her wanted her alive. There's still reason to hope."
"Maybe. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best-that's what my father says."
Lex nodded encouragingly. For once he was glad to hear one of Jonathan Kent's platitudes.
And the longer such expressions kept Clark from appreciating the grim reality of the situation, the better.
******************************************
"I feel like I should be in there with them," Clark fretted as he peered through the windshield. A police officer was standing at the front doors of the Summerholt Institute, but there was still no sign of the half dozen or so who had entered the building half an hour earlier.
"No, Clark-seeing you would only antagonize Garner further," Dr. Iverson told him. But the older man's own hands kept knotting and unknotting in his tie.
As Lex had promised the evidence produced by his private detective had been enough to push the Metropolis police department into investigating the Institute. They had agreed to execute a search warrant for the missing woman. Their grounds were that the drugs found in the food recovered from the garbage could only have been procured from someone with connections to a medical laboratory or a hospital, and that the restraining order Garner had against Jenna might have led him to perceive her as a threat worth eliminating. Both connections were circumstantial, however, and the Metropolis P.D. doubted they'd be able to take the case any further without new evidence.
Lex had pulled some strings and Clark and Iverson had been permitted to watch the search-but only from a distance. The lead detective had sternly warned them that if they attempted to enter the building themselves he'd have them arresting for interfering with a police investigation.
Clark tried to feel more confident now that the police were taking Jenna's disappearance seriously, but he couldn't. He knew from experience just how slippery Dr. Garner could be. If he had indeed kidnapped Jenna- for what nefarious reason Clark didn't even want to think about it-he wouldn't put her someplace where she would be easily found. After all, Jack Williams had yet to be found, and he'd been missing far longer than Jenna. Though they were careful not to mention this fact, Clark knew both he and Jenna's father were thinking the same thing.
Clark and Iverson also knew-although of course they couldn't share this with the police-that the combination of drugs-- Rohypnol, Thorazine, Phenobarbital-was identical to that used in the attack on Clark.
Clark bit his nails as he waited.
"Dr. Iverson, do you think Lex is right and Jenna might have ingested enough drugs to kill her?"
In the backseat of the unmarked police car where they sat Iverson sighed heavily.
"I hope not, Clark. If Jenna had a normal human physiology it might have, but I honestly don't know how her body might react to those kinds of poisons. And the fact that the drugs were used so heavily leads me to conclude that whoever administered them knew they weren't dealing with an ordinary person."
"They must have learned that from me," Clark said gloomily.
"Perhaps. Although, remember-they wouldn't have affected you at all if they hadn't been mixed with the meteor rocks." Iverson sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "What can possibly be taking so long?"
"There's four floors to the building," Clark explained, "and I guess they're searching room to room." When he had broken into the Institute to rescue Ryan he'd found him on the second floor. But he didn't know how deep the building might go underground. Was there a basement? A sub- basement? What if, like the LuthorCorp plant, the Institute had levels no one knew about? What then?
"Clark, are you feeling well enough to have a look?"
Clark knew instantly what the other man meant.
"I can try. Hold on a sec."
Clark carefully narrowed his line of sight until he could see straight through the concrete façade of the building. The cop out front became only a greenish skeleton standing at attention, and inside he could see the motionless outlines that indicated the furniture in the lobby.
He scanned the portion of the building he could see from this angle, and finally shook his head.
"I can see figures moving on every floor, but I can't tell who's who. It looks like they're all moving back toward the main stairs in the front- maybe they're finishing up the search."
Abruptly his vision flipped back to normal, and Clark's rubbed his forehead ruefully.
Iverson recognized Clark's grimace and winced.
"I'm sorry I asked you to do that, Clark-it obviously still causes you pain."
"Just a little bit, and less every day," Clark quickly told him. "At least it works again, and most of my strength is back."
The lead detective and several other officers appeared at the glass doors, and Clark hastily jumped out of the front seat.
"Clark." Iverson warned, but Clark only waved a hand at him.
"I just want to ask what they found," he called over his shoulder.
The detective, a heavy-set man called Greely, saw Clark approaching and scowled.
"I thought I told you not to interfere."
"I know, but I just thought." He looked from one face to another, and noticed none of the other officers would meet his eyes. His heart sank. "You didn't find anything, did you?"
Greely shook his head. "I'm sorry, Mr. Kent, but, no, we didn't. The Institute management allowed us free access to every floor, and we didn't find any evidence Ms. Iverson is here, or has ever been here. Or any evidence other patients, for that matter."
"Are you sure? Did you look everywhere? He could have had her moved."
The detective sighed. "I understand you're upset, young man, but we know our job. I'm telling you, there's nothing here. Now I'd like you to come with me while I break the news to the girl's father."
Greely had a hand on Clark's elbow to steer him back to the car, but at that moment Clark looked up to see Dr. Garner on the other side of the glass. He was standing in the lobby, with his arms folded against the chest of his white lab coat. And he was smirking.
Clark felt a surge of white-hot anger. The man who had killed Ryan, taken Jack and probably Jenna, too, was standing less than three yards away. And the police were doing nothing to stop him.
Clark took a step forward, determined only to get through the glass, to get his hands around Garner's scrawny neck and wring it until he admitted what he'd done. But the detective hauled him back with some difficulty.
"Take it easy, kid. That isn't going to solve anything."
"It might," Clark said through gritted teeth. He wished fervently his parents hadn't raised him to be so careful about using his powers, to respect authority. If they hadn't he might not have hesitated, might already be hearing what had happened to Jenna, might be acting like the ruler he was supposed to be.
"He's right, Clark," a soft voice said from behind him. Clark looked up to see Dr. Iverson standing there. His sad eyes looked calm. "Don't let him provoke you. We aren't through yet, I promise you."
Clark let the rage subside. If Jenna's father wasn't going to create a scene, he couldn't either. As he let the detective guide them both away from the Institute's doors, however, Clark vowed that he would do whatever it took to bring Garner to justice.
Iverson said they weren't done yet, but he had already virtually exhausted what human justice could do.
But Clark wasn't human. And he wasn't going to continue to be bound by their rules in this matter. Not if it meant the difference between life and death for Jenna.
***********************************
Garner swiped his key card through the scanner, and the heavy steel door in front of him automatically unlocked. He pulled it open.
Since only he and a few of his most trusted researchers had access to this area, it lacked the polished décor of the rest of the building. Here the walls were still institutional white, and the lighting was still the buzzing fluorescents that had been installed when the building had been constructed.
But whom did he need to impress down here?
Reaching another door at the end of the long corridor, he punched in a code on a keypad. This door unlocked as well.
Elaborate precautions, perhaps, but until he found out how Clark Kent had managed to remove Ryan James from the Institute, necessary ones.
In the small examining room he carefully bent over his patient, smoothing back the auburn hair.
The eyes were partially open, but unresponsive, a product of the IV drip attached to the arm.
At first Garner had been concerned about using such a high dosage for so long, but it had been necessary in order to keep the patient from becoming violent. The dosage had long ago exceeded that which would be fatal to most humans, but it was still just enough to keep the patient in a stupor.
Garner had initially spent a day or two studying the brain waves, hoping against hope he'd stumbled on to another subject, but that had proved futile. The brain waves were appallingly normal.
However, the subject offered other physiological anomalies of interest. He'd discovered while attaching the IV that cuts, even deep ones, healed almost instantly. He'd tested and observed the same phenomena on the hands and feet.
This, and the subject's abnormal strength, could open up a whole new field of research to him. And whole new sources of funding.
Garner knew a windfall when he saw one. What had started off only as bait had become almost as interesting a subject as Kent himself.
And soon he'd have them both.
Not that Lex took any credit for it. In fact, the less visible involvement he had with the place the better it seemed to do-after all, the Luthor name remained something of a curse word locally. But no one would dare find fault with Lana Lang.
His only interest in Lana had been trying to steer her in Clark Kent's direction, but the girl had turned out to have a surprisingly good head for business. She thought up endless promotions to keep regulars coming back, and a wide range of other events-from charity auctions to movie nights-to attract new business.
And, he thought as he took a sip from his own mug, the coffee was good.
Now he couldn't help but smile as Clark and Lana shared a table across the room. Judging from the pile of books and papers they were working on some sort of school assignment, but it pleased him to see them sitting together. The couple was taking a ridiculously long time to hook up, but friendship was a start.
Lex would hate to see his first and only attempt at matchmaking end in failure.
His cell phone rang insistently, and several other patrons shot him dirty looks as he dug it out of his coat pocket. Lex ignored them and listened carefully to the voice on the other end.
"No 'hello', Mr. Hale?" Lex said lightly. "You always were a man of few words. What do you have for me?" His eyes narrowed. "Really."
Lex looked up, and managing to catch Clark's eye gestured for him to come over. "Tell me what you've found."
With Clark and Lana standing next to him, Lex listened carefully to Hale's story, jotting a few notes on the back of his receipt. "Right. Right."
Seeing that Clark was chewing his lip nervously Lex held up a finger, cautioning his friend not to interrupt.
"In your experience how much time would you say we have?" Lex listened carefully. Then he glanced at his watch. "All right. Take what you have to the Metropolis P.D. Call me back as soon as they've made their decision. I'll speak to the girl's father."
Lex hung up his phone as Clark landed heavily in a chair.
"That was your PI? What did he say? Is Jenna." Clark trailed off.
"He hasn't found her. But he believes he has good evidence that she was did not leave her apartment of her own accord."
Lana looked genuinely upset, and laid a hand on Clark's arm. "Clark told me what happened," she told Lex, looking at him with a serious expression.
"He's taking what he's learned to the police. I'm no expert, but it sounds to me like enough to get a search warrant for the Summerhill Institute," Lex told his friends.
"I knew it. I knew it," Clark said.
"It isn't conclusive by any means, Clark, but it's a step in the right direction," Lex told him.
"So what did he find?" Lana asked.
Lex looked at Clark with a questioning look, and he shrugged. Lex knew from personal experience Lana could be surprisingly tenacious, so he decided he might as well tell the whole story.
"You'll remember I thought it was a little odd that the kitchen was so clean and that the trash had been removed almost a whole week before it was to be collected. My.employee recovered a bag of trash in a dumpster six blocks away from Jenna's apartment. The junk mail in it indicates it's hers. He also found a variety of food containers, each laced with extremely high doses of barbiturates and sedatives."
Clark shook his head. "Jenna's fridge did seem really empty when I opened it looking for something to drink. But I never thought."
Lana frowned. "I don't understand-why would they want to poison Jenna Iverson? What did she ever do to anybody?"
"Not poison her, Lana-just drug her so she could be removed with a minimum of fuss. Although at those high dosages they might very well have accidentally killed her. I'm sorry to say that, Clark, but it's the truth."
Clark only nodded solemnly, and stood.
"I need to get home and talk to Dr. Iverson. Lana, I'll need a rain check on helping you with that history assignment."
"Of course, Clark, or course. Tell Jenna's father that I'll be hoping for the best."
Lex stood as well.
"I'll come with you, Clark. I think the news might sound better if it comes from me."
As they walked Lex clapped a hand on his friend's shoulder. He wasn't sure about Clark's relationship with Jenna, so he wasn't quite sure what he should say. Hale hadn't sounded too hopeful about the chances of finding Jenna alive now that nearly a week had passed, but Lex didn't want to share that information with his young friend.
Instead as they stepped through the Talon's doors he settled on more neutral comment.
"Remember, Clark, whoever took her wanted her alive. There's still reason to hope."
"Maybe. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best-that's what my father says."
Lex nodded encouragingly. For once he was glad to hear one of Jonathan Kent's platitudes.
And the longer such expressions kept Clark from appreciating the grim reality of the situation, the better.
******************************************
"I feel like I should be in there with them," Clark fretted as he peered through the windshield. A police officer was standing at the front doors of the Summerholt Institute, but there was still no sign of the half dozen or so who had entered the building half an hour earlier.
"No, Clark-seeing you would only antagonize Garner further," Dr. Iverson told him. But the older man's own hands kept knotting and unknotting in his tie.
As Lex had promised the evidence produced by his private detective had been enough to push the Metropolis police department into investigating the Institute. They had agreed to execute a search warrant for the missing woman. Their grounds were that the drugs found in the food recovered from the garbage could only have been procured from someone with connections to a medical laboratory or a hospital, and that the restraining order Garner had against Jenna might have led him to perceive her as a threat worth eliminating. Both connections were circumstantial, however, and the Metropolis P.D. doubted they'd be able to take the case any further without new evidence.
Lex had pulled some strings and Clark and Iverson had been permitted to watch the search-but only from a distance. The lead detective had sternly warned them that if they attempted to enter the building themselves he'd have them arresting for interfering with a police investigation.
Clark tried to feel more confident now that the police were taking Jenna's disappearance seriously, but he couldn't. He knew from experience just how slippery Dr. Garner could be. If he had indeed kidnapped Jenna- for what nefarious reason Clark didn't even want to think about it-he wouldn't put her someplace where she would be easily found. After all, Jack Williams had yet to be found, and he'd been missing far longer than Jenna. Though they were careful not to mention this fact, Clark knew both he and Jenna's father were thinking the same thing.
Clark and Iverson also knew-although of course they couldn't share this with the police-that the combination of drugs-- Rohypnol, Thorazine, Phenobarbital-was identical to that used in the attack on Clark.
Clark bit his nails as he waited.
"Dr. Iverson, do you think Lex is right and Jenna might have ingested enough drugs to kill her?"
In the backseat of the unmarked police car where they sat Iverson sighed heavily.
"I hope not, Clark. If Jenna had a normal human physiology it might have, but I honestly don't know how her body might react to those kinds of poisons. And the fact that the drugs were used so heavily leads me to conclude that whoever administered them knew they weren't dealing with an ordinary person."
"They must have learned that from me," Clark said gloomily.
"Perhaps. Although, remember-they wouldn't have affected you at all if they hadn't been mixed with the meteor rocks." Iverson sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "What can possibly be taking so long?"
"There's four floors to the building," Clark explained, "and I guess they're searching room to room." When he had broken into the Institute to rescue Ryan he'd found him on the second floor. But he didn't know how deep the building might go underground. Was there a basement? A sub- basement? What if, like the LuthorCorp plant, the Institute had levels no one knew about? What then?
"Clark, are you feeling well enough to have a look?"
Clark knew instantly what the other man meant.
"I can try. Hold on a sec."
Clark carefully narrowed his line of sight until he could see straight through the concrete façade of the building. The cop out front became only a greenish skeleton standing at attention, and inside he could see the motionless outlines that indicated the furniture in the lobby.
He scanned the portion of the building he could see from this angle, and finally shook his head.
"I can see figures moving on every floor, but I can't tell who's who. It looks like they're all moving back toward the main stairs in the front- maybe they're finishing up the search."
Abruptly his vision flipped back to normal, and Clark's rubbed his forehead ruefully.
Iverson recognized Clark's grimace and winced.
"I'm sorry I asked you to do that, Clark-it obviously still causes you pain."
"Just a little bit, and less every day," Clark quickly told him. "At least it works again, and most of my strength is back."
The lead detective and several other officers appeared at the glass doors, and Clark hastily jumped out of the front seat.
"Clark." Iverson warned, but Clark only waved a hand at him.
"I just want to ask what they found," he called over his shoulder.
The detective, a heavy-set man called Greely, saw Clark approaching and scowled.
"I thought I told you not to interfere."
"I know, but I just thought." He looked from one face to another, and noticed none of the other officers would meet his eyes. His heart sank. "You didn't find anything, did you?"
Greely shook his head. "I'm sorry, Mr. Kent, but, no, we didn't. The Institute management allowed us free access to every floor, and we didn't find any evidence Ms. Iverson is here, or has ever been here. Or any evidence other patients, for that matter."
"Are you sure? Did you look everywhere? He could have had her moved."
The detective sighed. "I understand you're upset, young man, but we know our job. I'm telling you, there's nothing here. Now I'd like you to come with me while I break the news to the girl's father."
Greely had a hand on Clark's elbow to steer him back to the car, but at that moment Clark looked up to see Dr. Garner on the other side of the glass. He was standing in the lobby, with his arms folded against the chest of his white lab coat. And he was smirking.
Clark felt a surge of white-hot anger. The man who had killed Ryan, taken Jack and probably Jenna, too, was standing less than three yards away. And the police were doing nothing to stop him.
Clark took a step forward, determined only to get through the glass, to get his hands around Garner's scrawny neck and wring it until he admitted what he'd done. But the detective hauled him back with some difficulty.
"Take it easy, kid. That isn't going to solve anything."
"It might," Clark said through gritted teeth. He wished fervently his parents hadn't raised him to be so careful about using his powers, to respect authority. If they hadn't he might not have hesitated, might already be hearing what had happened to Jenna, might be acting like the ruler he was supposed to be.
"He's right, Clark," a soft voice said from behind him. Clark looked up to see Dr. Iverson standing there. His sad eyes looked calm. "Don't let him provoke you. We aren't through yet, I promise you."
Clark let the rage subside. If Jenna's father wasn't going to create a scene, he couldn't either. As he let the detective guide them both away from the Institute's doors, however, Clark vowed that he would do whatever it took to bring Garner to justice.
Iverson said they weren't done yet, but he had already virtually exhausted what human justice could do.
But Clark wasn't human. And he wasn't going to continue to be bound by their rules in this matter. Not if it meant the difference between life and death for Jenna.
***********************************
Garner swiped his key card through the scanner, and the heavy steel door in front of him automatically unlocked. He pulled it open.
Since only he and a few of his most trusted researchers had access to this area, it lacked the polished décor of the rest of the building. Here the walls were still institutional white, and the lighting was still the buzzing fluorescents that had been installed when the building had been constructed.
But whom did he need to impress down here?
Reaching another door at the end of the long corridor, he punched in a code on a keypad. This door unlocked as well.
Elaborate precautions, perhaps, but until he found out how Clark Kent had managed to remove Ryan James from the Institute, necessary ones.
In the small examining room he carefully bent over his patient, smoothing back the auburn hair.
The eyes were partially open, but unresponsive, a product of the IV drip attached to the arm.
At first Garner had been concerned about using such a high dosage for so long, but it had been necessary in order to keep the patient from becoming violent. The dosage had long ago exceeded that which would be fatal to most humans, but it was still just enough to keep the patient in a stupor.
Garner had initially spent a day or two studying the brain waves, hoping against hope he'd stumbled on to another subject, but that had proved futile. The brain waves were appallingly normal.
However, the subject offered other physiological anomalies of interest. He'd discovered while attaching the IV that cuts, even deep ones, healed almost instantly. He'd tested and observed the same phenomena on the hands and feet.
This, and the subject's abnormal strength, could open up a whole new field of research to him. And whole new sources of funding.
Garner knew a windfall when he saw one. What had started off only as bait had become almost as interesting a subject as Kent himself.
And soon he'd have them both.