Warning: no humor at all in this chapter, and lots of bad things happen to Clark
* * * * *
The old building where they had originally set up the race course was carefully reactivated. Obvious to any watchers were the basic supplies being brought in. Invisible to any eyes short of Clark's were the subtle reinforcements. Performing for the watchers, Wally made a point of moving a little faster than human normal as they worked. Clark occasionally lifted things he shouldn't have. Bruce wore glasses and carried a computer around and looked studious. Kurt was brought into the building in a crate, which he thought was great fun. Wynter prowled.
The backup team didn't consist of techs this time. There were ex-Special Forces people among John's converts, too. They were strictly out of sight, though, until the trap had been sprung. Catching the people who were an unknown threat to Clark was priority number one, and nothing worried Wynter more than one of them getting away to warn the rest of the traitors and expose Clark to the public.
He didn't want to believe that there was any real danger that Special Operations couldn't handle short of Lake herself, but he knew all too well how ugly things could get, and how quickly.
The two Specialist trackers had declared the area free of meteorites, Clark following cautiously behind them to make sure, but they were unable to find any current traces of the people who they expected to be watching. Noah did, however, point out an area that she considered to be suspiciously level. "Something was placed there," she declared. "I smell refined metal. And electricity."
McCallan agreed, looking over the various animal paths in the vicinity. "Human footprints. Brushed-out tire tracks. Someone has been here since we were. They even went right up to our building. It's a wonder they didn't break in."
Wynter didn't see anything, but he didn't argue. John didn't graduate people to field status who weren't already proven. "They probably expected us to come back. Can you find any trip wires, any sensors they'd be using to detect our presence?"
Noah pointed overhead. "Satellite."
Wynter smacked himself in the head.
* * * * *
"Okay, guys, you know the drill. Assume we're being watched. Assume there's some kind of electrical weapon involved. Assume, oh, hell, that they may have a special talent of their own, though that's not likely, given what we have on their background, but even the nazis recruited magicians when they thought it would serve their purpose. Wally, keep an eye on your surroundings. I know these aren't the ideal conditions for training you as a forward observer, but try, will you? Clark, stay enough behind Wally that he can stop you in case of a rock, but not to lose sight of or contact with each other. Ready?"
The two looked at him impatiently. Wynter had a tendency to repeat himself.
"Right. Three. Two. One." Wynter clicked his stopwatch with an exaggerated flourish. The two took off at no more than Ferrari speed.
"This is boring," Wally opined, stretching his neck and shoulders.
"Don't ever let Wynter hear you say that. Or John, or Bruce, for that matter. They'll put us on TREADMILLS. Without a TV screen, even."
"Gah. I'd rather do the math homework."
"Don't ever let them hear you say THAT, either. And you're supposed to be looking around, not flapping your lips."
"Kent, you're a self-righteous snob, you know that?"
"And you run like a girl."
* * * * *
They were almost back to the building when a wave of dizziness brought Clark stumbling to a stop, and then down to his hands and knees with a gasp. Vertigo contorted his normally perfectly-balanced high-speed senses into a sickening whirl. "What -- ?" The question answered itself when the all-too-familiar blaze of pain caught him full force and he doubled up. "Ahh! Where -- "
"Dammit!" Wally spun and started back towards him. Something like an electrical tingle ran through him, warning him just in time to freeze, long enough to see the glint of a sniper rifle pointed at him.
Even machine gun fire was no real threat to him or Clark. But that tingle.... Electrical weaponry, Wynter had said. Wally hadn't yet tested himself against an actual lightning strike, and something warned him not to take the chance.
"Smart move." The voice was bitter, hateful. Considering that the voice's owner had a gun pointed to Wynter's head, it was a pretty safe bet that they had found the bad guys. "We go after one alien freak, and we get three. See, we rigged the meteorite radiation generator just to stop the," he used a word that was much less polite than "alien freak" when he gestured at Clark, "there, but just in case that thing thought it could still crawl away, any of you fucking freaks moves, it'll blow. They tell me the meteorite dust fallout could spread a couple hundred miles. Maybe that'll force all the rest of you," that word again, "out of hiding. Then we'll get rid of you inhuman pieces of shit once and for all."
"And maybe you'll find out that you and your friends are also inhuman pieces of shit," Wynter said, as calmly as if he were reading a phone book instead of being held at gunpoint. No, Wally thought, Wynter would sound excited even if he were reading a phone book. This glacial forced stillness meant that he took that threat seriously. "Are you willing to kill yourselves if you turn out to be latent mutants, too?"
"You shut the fuck up!" The man backhanded Wynter hard enough to snap the neck on someone Wynter's size if he hadn't known how to roll with it. Wally quivered, but stayed frozen as only someone whose atoms could vibrate was able to stay frozen, terrified as he had never been before at the thought of the number of people who might be put in danger if he moved. Wynter simply lay there, so motionless that he would have believed the boy already dead if not for the glitter in his eyes and the slight smile.
Clark whimpered with the effort but moved his head, slowly, slightly. Wally saw his eyes flash red and realized what he was trying to do. But before he could summon enough energy to turn on the heat, the man that Special Operations had identified as Jackson kicked Wynter once and pulled a shard of green crystal out of his pocket, and put it to Clark's throat.
Wally very nearly said the filthy word himself. Clark convulsed with a soundless shriek of agony, scrabbling desperately but impotently to pull away that piece of Death incarnate. Then his arms fell limp, unable to stand proximity to the shard even as it ate into the skin and muscles at his neck.
Wally would have traded his life and soul in that instant for Clark's senses, because if he'd known where the generator was he would have hit Barry's speed and thrown himself on it.
But Wynter was only sitting up, tilting his head carefully as if inspecting a specimen, as if oblivious even to Clark writhing helplessly in weakening spasms. "You really don't believe you're going to get away, do you? Or that we would have just walked back into an area we knew to be compromised? You were lured here. You think we came alone? I should file a complaint on the poor quality of government spies my tax dollars are being wasted on."
"We'll still be rid of you and your alien freaks." Jackson sliced the green crystal knife across Clark's throat, drawing blood. Clark made a small sobbing sound, working just to hold on to consciousness because he was afraid if he passed out he wouldn't wake up, and trying not to throw up only because he didn't have the strength to vomit and the attempt would only hurt more.
"Actually, he stands a pretty good chance of healing, though his hazardous-duty bonus is going up an extra zero. You, on the other hand, are only alive because I intend to drug you back to the day you were born and make you relive every sordid episode your mother's rapist boyfriends put you through so that I can figure out what makes stupid sick pieces of unrecyclable garbage like you. Put the knife down now, and I won't get inventive about it."
The government agent laughed. "You little mutant puke. I might have known you'd sympathize with an alien invader." He gestured to Clark with the hand that wasn't holding the edged kryptonite. Wynter deliberately did not follow the gesture, holding Jackson's eyes, gaging the man's mental state second by second. If necessary, he was prepared to try to take the guy, gun and all -- Wynter didn't spend all his time behind a computer, his deceptively scrawny frame had been trained by experts.
But if the killer holding Clark managed to force kryptonite inside him and cause internal organ poisoning, Clark might not ever completely recover. He wouldn't risk that until they were out of options.
Dammit, what was taking their people so long? It had been almost five minutes!
Clark tried to make words to tell Wynter to get away, leave him and let him go, to save the rest of themselves., but he couldn't speak. The blood running down his neck felt cold, so cold. The green-rock fever burned in his veins, his bones. He could make out what the others were saying, a little, but he couldn't ... he couldn't.... So dizzy, sick, burning alive, life draining out of him, dying, dying would be a relief, everything hurt so bad, it wasn't worth it, just let it end....
Wynter's eyes narrowed. "The definition of alien invader consists of a little more than you squawk-show listeners get out of your cheap paperback dictionaries. Kal-El is from another planet. He is not an invader. You got a voting card without passing an eighth-grade reading test. You're the invader, the way fire ants and kudzu are invaders."
Jackson actually took the knife away from Clark's skin in incredulity (which had in fact been Wynter's main purpose -- some people were so stupidly easy to manipulate!) and pointed it at him. "You -- you freak -- you're calling me --"
"An idiot, among other things. Anyone less trusting than Kal would have killed you already. Moron bigot. Clark could have snapped your arm before you got your stupid little chip out of your pocket." True, but Clark was so conditioned to holding back, it wouldn't even have occurred to him. "One more time. Let him go. Or face some consequences much worse than being locked up and drugged and analyzed for the rest of your miserable life." Much much worse, if Lake's work with the warhead runners wound up any time soon.
"You and what army?" Jackson snarled. "More of your freaks?" The shard came back up. Wynter flinched, hoping he'd bought enough time. Wally quivered, madder than he'd ever been. Clark gagged when the flat of the crystal pressed against his throat. He would have begged if he'd been able to do anything except choke.
"That," said a basso profundo voice from behind Jackson, "Would be me."
The green hand tossed Jackson casually a few hundred meters, expertly aimed with a rocket scientist's trained reflexes so that it only broke a few dozen bones but left the upper half of his spine intact for questioning purposes. "Damn. Sorry to take so long, Kal-El. I thought they'd be ranged all around the area, so I was circling in. But his other cohorts were just waiting in their truck -- do these guys all watch nothing except cheap old bank robber movies?"
"Can I move?" Wally said tentatively.
"What? Oh, of course. Kurt found the field generator as soon as they turned it on, and I did a 'Hulk Smash' on it and the truck, though I did have to change twice to get through the triggering field. I'm walking around here, aren't I? Walter, we're going to have to work through your basic physics classes again. What...?"
Wally disappeared. The sound of the gunshot barely preceded the sonic shockwave echoing through the dust settling behind Wally's trail.
The Hulk said an impolite word. "I missed one! Dammit! Wynter?"
Wynter had hit the ground at the crack of the sniper's rifle, though he would have been too slow if the sniper had been any good -- or if Wally hadn't intercepted the bullets.
"I'm fine." Wynter stood back up, looking around. "Wally...?"
"Here," Wally panted as he jogged back to them, dragging a limp form. "Faster than a speeding bullet! My new sig file. But I really am going to have to start working out, unconscious bodies weigh a ton. Must be nice to have Clark's strength. Clark? Uh-oh."
Clark was as unmoving as the sniper Wally had tagged at a few thousand kph. Bruce started to kneel beside him and then pushed back, cursing himself. "I don't want to touch him when I'm radiating like this. Wally, can you check his pulse? Wynter, how about his eyes?"
"Looks like shock," Wynter agreed. "I can't really tell -- still having a little trouble focusing from that whack to the head. But the cuts are healing, and his skin is losing that green tint. Wally, be careful about getting close to him. If he has another convulsion, well, his teeth could cut through an I-beam even in this condition."
The Hulk made a noise that sounded like a curse, backed up and turned away. His color faded from green to yellow to tan, the bulging muscles from obscene to weird to weightlifter to normal. He turned back, lifted an eyebrow at Wally's open mouthed protest, and bent over Clark.
"Kal-El? I need to check you over. You took a pretty heavy radiation dose. Can you put up with me touching you for a few seconds?"
"I'll be okay," Clark murmured vaguely. "Bet Wally's butt has a bigger bruise than mine."
"Not sure what you're talking about, but you're the one with x-ray sight."
Wally stepped forward unexpectedly, moving to stand in front of Bruce, though confronting Bruce even in human form still scared him. "Let me."
Wynter and Bruce traded glances. "You sure?"
"You'll have to tell me what to look for, but yeah, I'm sure. I'm faster than," he paused, and tried out the accent, "Kal-El. He can't hurt me. And I won't hurt him."
Bruce stepped back. Wally knelt beside Clark and followed Bruce's and Wynter's directions, checking with his fingertips over neck, shoulders, arms, hands, torso, legs. Touching his abdomen prompted a small sick gasp, but his body's attempt to reject the poison seemed to be gaining ground. Wally described his findings to Bruce and Wynter as he went along.
Wynter hesitated at asking Wally to inspect his eyes -- if Clark was too far out of it, he might take close visual examination as a threat -- but Wally simply took Clark's face between his hands and asked him quietly to look at him.
"His pupils both contracted at the same time when he opened his eyes," Wally reported. "That's a good sign, right?"
"Shock, dehydration, fever, the usual symptoms of poisoning. Pupils even and responsive, though. Breathing clear, heart rate fast but steady." Bruce went over the list with a paramedic's skill. "Clark, you feel up to drinking anything? An IV is kind of problematical on you."
Clark gagged and swallowed. "Not -- not yet."
"Coherent, at least." Bruce and Wynter nodded to each other in deep relief. "He'll be okay. Though the medical team needs to keep an eye on him for a day or so. Wally, can you get him back to the secure room? Kurt can take it from there. Solar energy will do both of you some good, though you don't want to take the kind of doses Kal-El does. Be sure and tell Kurt to keep his enthusiasm under control, and get out of there if he starts talking about supernovas."
"No prob, man." Wally kicked his metabolism into high gear and lifted Clark's hundred-twenty kilograms as if he were a small child. "I'm getting the hang of this control thing. Who'd've thought I'd ever enjoy science classes? Mutants and aliens and great food. This place could be a vacation resort if you just had a beach and a teacher who didn't turn into the Hulk."
"Wally." Clark's voice was careful and weak, but steady.
"Yeah? Sorry, guy, didn't mean to ramble on. We'll be there in a flash."
"Just -- put me down for a minute. I can walk. With a little help. But can we please not move real fast or talk about food right now?"
* * * * *
* * * * *
The old building where they had originally set up the race course was carefully reactivated. Obvious to any watchers were the basic supplies being brought in. Invisible to any eyes short of Clark's were the subtle reinforcements. Performing for the watchers, Wally made a point of moving a little faster than human normal as they worked. Clark occasionally lifted things he shouldn't have. Bruce wore glasses and carried a computer around and looked studious. Kurt was brought into the building in a crate, which he thought was great fun. Wynter prowled.
The backup team didn't consist of techs this time. There were ex-Special Forces people among John's converts, too. They were strictly out of sight, though, until the trap had been sprung. Catching the people who were an unknown threat to Clark was priority number one, and nothing worried Wynter more than one of them getting away to warn the rest of the traitors and expose Clark to the public.
He didn't want to believe that there was any real danger that Special Operations couldn't handle short of Lake herself, but he knew all too well how ugly things could get, and how quickly.
The two Specialist trackers had declared the area free of meteorites, Clark following cautiously behind them to make sure, but they were unable to find any current traces of the people who they expected to be watching. Noah did, however, point out an area that she considered to be suspiciously level. "Something was placed there," she declared. "I smell refined metal. And electricity."
McCallan agreed, looking over the various animal paths in the vicinity. "Human footprints. Brushed-out tire tracks. Someone has been here since we were. They even went right up to our building. It's a wonder they didn't break in."
Wynter didn't see anything, but he didn't argue. John didn't graduate people to field status who weren't already proven. "They probably expected us to come back. Can you find any trip wires, any sensors they'd be using to detect our presence?"
Noah pointed overhead. "Satellite."
Wynter smacked himself in the head.
* * * * *
"Okay, guys, you know the drill. Assume we're being watched. Assume there's some kind of electrical weapon involved. Assume, oh, hell, that they may have a special talent of their own, though that's not likely, given what we have on their background, but even the nazis recruited magicians when they thought it would serve their purpose. Wally, keep an eye on your surroundings. I know these aren't the ideal conditions for training you as a forward observer, but try, will you? Clark, stay enough behind Wally that he can stop you in case of a rock, but not to lose sight of or contact with each other. Ready?"
The two looked at him impatiently. Wynter had a tendency to repeat himself.
"Right. Three. Two. One." Wynter clicked his stopwatch with an exaggerated flourish. The two took off at no more than Ferrari speed.
"This is boring," Wally opined, stretching his neck and shoulders.
"Don't ever let Wynter hear you say that. Or John, or Bruce, for that matter. They'll put us on TREADMILLS. Without a TV screen, even."
"Gah. I'd rather do the math homework."
"Don't ever let them hear you say THAT, either. And you're supposed to be looking around, not flapping your lips."
"Kent, you're a self-righteous snob, you know that?"
"And you run like a girl."
* * * * *
They were almost back to the building when a wave of dizziness brought Clark stumbling to a stop, and then down to his hands and knees with a gasp. Vertigo contorted his normally perfectly-balanced high-speed senses into a sickening whirl. "What -- ?" The question answered itself when the all-too-familiar blaze of pain caught him full force and he doubled up. "Ahh! Where -- "
"Dammit!" Wally spun and started back towards him. Something like an electrical tingle ran through him, warning him just in time to freeze, long enough to see the glint of a sniper rifle pointed at him.
Even machine gun fire was no real threat to him or Clark. But that tingle.... Electrical weaponry, Wynter had said. Wally hadn't yet tested himself against an actual lightning strike, and something warned him not to take the chance.
"Smart move." The voice was bitter, hateful. Considering that the voice's owner had a gun pointed to Wynter's head, it was a pretty safe bet that they had found the bad guys. "We go after one alien freak, and we get three. See, we rigged the meteorite radiation generator just to stop the," he used a word that was much less polite than "alien freak" when he gestured at Clark, "there, but just in case that thing thought it could still crawl away, any of you fucking freaks moves, it'll blow. They tell me the meteorite dust fallout could spread a couple hundred miles. Maybe that'll force all the rest of you," that word again, "out of hiding. Then we'll get rid of you inhuman pieces of shit once and for all."
"And maybe you'll find out that you and your friends are also inhuman pieces of shit," Wynter said, as calmly as if he were reading a phone book instead of being held at gunpoint. No, Wally thought, Wynter would sound excited even if he were reading a phone book. This glacial forced stillness meant that he took that threat seriously. "Are you willing to kill yourselves if you turn out to be latent mutants, too?"
"You shut the fuck up!" The man backhanded Wynter hard enough to snap the neck on someone Wynter's size if he hadn't known how to roll with it. Wally quivered, but stayed frozen as only someone whose atoms could vibrate was able to stay frozen, terrified as he had never been before at the thought of the number of people who might be put in danger if he moved. Wynter simply lay there, so motionless that he would have believed the boy already dead if not for the glitter in his eyes and the slight smile.
Clark whimpered with the effort but moved his head, slowly, slightly. Wally saw his eyes flash red and realized what he was trying to do. But before he could summon enough energy to turn on the heat, the man that Special Operations had identified as Jackson kicked Wynter once and pulled a shard of green crystal out of his pocket, and put it to Clark's throat.
Wally very nearly said the filthy word himself. Clark convulsed with a soundless shriek of agony, scrabbling desperately but impotently to pull away that piece of Death incarnate. Then his arms fell limp, unable to stand proximity to the shard even as it ate into the skin and muscles at his neck.
Wally would have traded his life and soul in that instant for Clark's senses, because if he'd known where the generator was he would have hit Barry's speed and thrown himself on it.
But Wynter was only sitting up, tilting his head carefully as if inspecting a specimen, as if oblivious even to Clark writhing helplessly in weakening spasms. "You really don't believe you're going to get away, do you? Or that we would have just walked back into an area we knew to be compromised? You were lured here. You think we came alone? I should file a complaint on the poor quality of government spies my tax dollars are being wasted on."
"We'll still be rid of you and your alien freaks." Jackson sliced the green crystal knife across Clark's throat, drawing blood. Clark made a small sobbing sound, working just to hold on to consciousness because he was afraid if he passed out he wouldn't wake up, and trying not to throw up only because he didn't have the strength to vomit and the attempt would only hurt more.
"Actually, he stands a pretty good chance of healing, though his hazardous-duty bonus is going up an extra zero. You, on the other hand, are only alive because I intend to drug you back to the day you were born and make you relive every sordid episode your mother's rapist boyfriends put you through so that I can figure out what makes stupid sick pieces of unrecyclable garbage like you. Put the knife down now, and I won't get inventive about it."
The government agent laughed. "You little mutant puke. I might have known you'd sympathize with an alien invader." He gestured to Clark with the hand that wasn't holding the edged kryptonite. Wynter deliberately did not follow the gesture, holding Jackson's eyes, gaging the man's mental state second by second. If necessary, he was prepared to try to take the guy, gun and all -- Wynter didn't spend all his time behind a computer, his deceptively scrawny frame had been trained by experts.
But if the killer holding Clark managed to force kryptonite inside him and cause internal organ poisoning, Clark might not ever completely recover. He wouldn't risk that until they were out of options.
Dammit, what was taking their people so long? It had been almost five minutes!
Clark tried to make words to tell Wynter to get away, leave him and let him go, to save the rest of themselves., but he couldn't speak. The blood running down his neck felt cold, so cold. The green-rock fever burned in his veins, his bones. He could make out what the others were saying, a little, but he couldn't ... he couldn't.... So dizzy, sick, burning alive, life draining out of him, dying, dying would be a relief, everything hurt so bad, it wasn't worth it, just let it end....
Wynter's eyes narrowed. "The definition of alien invader consists of a little more than you squawk-show listeners get out of your cheap paperback dictionaries. Kal-El is from another planet. He is not an invader. You got a voting card without passing an eighth-grade reading test. You're the invader, the way fire ants and kudzu are invaders."
Jackson actually took the knife away from Clark's skin in incredulity (which had in fact been Wynter's main purpose -- some people were so stupidly easy to manipulate!) and pointed it at him. "You -- you freak -- you're calling me --"
"An idiot, among other things. Anyone less trusting than Kal would have killed you already. Moron bigot. Clark could have snapped your arm before you got your stupid little chip out of your pocket." True, but Clark was so conditioned to holding back, it wouldn't even have occurred to him. "One more time. Let him go. Or face some consequences much worse than being locked up and drugged and analyzed for the rest of your miserable life." Much much worse, if Lake's work with the warhead runners wound up any time soon.
"You and what army?" Jackson snarled. "More of your freaks?" The shard came back up. Wynter flinched, hoping he'd bought enough time. Wally quivered, madder than he'd ever been. Clark gagged when the flat of the crystal pressed against his throat. He would have begged if he'd been able to do anything except choke.
"That," said a basso profundo voice from behind Jackson, "Would be me."
The green hand tossed Jackson casually a few hundred meters, expertly aimed with a rocket scientist's trained reflexes so that it only broke a few dozen bones but left the upper half of his spine intact for questioning purposes. "Damn. Sorry to take so long, Kal-El. I thought they'd be ranged all around the area, so I was circling in. But his other cohorts were just waiting in their truck -- do these guys all watch nothing except cheap old bank robber movies?"
"Can I move?" Wally said tentatively.
"What? Oh, of course. Kurt found the field generator as soon as they turned it on, and I did a 'Hulk Smash' on it and the truck, though I did have to change twice to get through the triggering field. I'm walking around here, aren't I? Walter, we're going to have to work through your basic physics classes again. What...?"
Wally disappeared. The sound of the gunshot barely preceded the sonic shockwave echoing through the dust settling behind Wally's trail.
The Hulk said an impolite word. "I missed one! Dammit! Wynter?"
Wynter had hit the ground at the crack of the sniper's rifle, though he would have been too slow if the sniper had been any good -- or if Wally hadn't intercepted the bullets.
"I'm fine." Wynter stood back up, looking around. "Wally...?"
"Here," Wally panted as he jogged back to them, dragging a limp form. "Faster than a speeding bullet! My new sig file. But I really am going to have to start working out, unconscious bodies weigh a ton. Must be nice to have Clark's strength. Clark? Uh-oh."
Clark was as unmoving as the sniper Wally had tagged at a few thousand kph. Bruce started to kneel beside him and then pushed back, cursing himself. "I don't want to touch him when I'm radiating like this. Wally, can you check his pulse? Wynter, how about his eyes?"
"Looks like shock," Wynter agreed. "I can't really tell -- still having a little trouble focusing from that whack to the head. But the cuts are healing, and his skin is losing that green tint. Wally, be careful about getting close to him. If he has another convulsion, well, his teeth could cut through an I-beam even in this condition."
The Hulk made a noise that sounded like a curse, backed up and turned away. His color faded from green to yellow to tan, the bulging muscles from obscene to weird to weightlifter to normal. He turned back, lifted an eyebrow at Wally's open mouthed protest, and bent over Clark.
"Kal-El? I need to check you over. You took a pretty heavy radiation dose. Can you put up with me touching you for a few seconds?"
"I'll be okay," Clark murmured vaguely. "Bet Wally's butt has a bigger bruise than mine."
"Not sure what you're talking about, but you're the one with x-ray sight."
Wally stepped forward unexpectedly, moving to stand in front of Bruce, though confronting Bruce even in human form still scared him. "Let me."
Wynter and Bruce traded glances. "You sure?"
"You'll have to tell me what to look for, but yeah, I'm sure. I'm faster than," he paused, and tried out the accent, "Kal-El. He can't hurt me. And I won't hurt him."
Bruce stepped back. Wally knelt beside Clark and followed Bruce's and Wynter's directions, checking with his fingertips over neck, shoulders, arms, hands, torso, legs. Touching his abdomen prompted a small sick gasp, but his body's attempt to reject the poison seemed to be gaining ground. Wally described his findings to Bruce and Wynter as he went along.
Wynter hesitated at asking Wally to inspect his eyes -- if Clark was too far out of it, he might take close visual examination as a threat -- but Wally simply took Clark's face between his hands and asked him quietly to look at him.
"His pupils both contracted at the same time when he opened his eyes," Wally reported. "That's a good sign, right?"
"Shock, dehydration, fever, the usual symptoms of poisoning. Pupils even and responsive, though. Breathing clear, heart rate fast but steady." Bruce went over the list with a paramedic's skill. "Clark, you feel up to drinking anything? An IV is kind of problematical on you."
Clark gagged and swallowed. "Not -- not yet."
"Coherent, at least." Bruce and Wynter nodded to each other in deep relief. "He'll be okay. Though the medical team needs to keep an eye on him for a day or so. Wally, can you get him back to the secure room? Kurt can take it from there. Solar energy will do both of you some good, though you don't want to take the kind of doses Kal-El does. Be sure and tell Kurt to keep his enthusiasm under control, and get out of there if he starts talking about supernovas."
"No prob, man." Wally kicked his metabolism into high gear and lifted Clark's hundred-twenty kilograms as if he were a small child. "I'm getting the hang of this control thing. Who'd've thought I'd ever enjoy science classes? Mutants and aliens and great food. This place could be a vacation resort if you just had a beach and a teacher who didn't turn into the Hulk."
"Wally." Clark's voice was careful and weak, but steady.
"Yeah? Sorry, guy, didn't mean to ramble on. We'll be there in a flash."
"Just -- put me down for a minute. I can walk. With a little help. But can we please not move real fast or talk about food right now?"
* * * * *