***
It was a long walk to where Lex's car was parked, and by the time the three intrepid monster-hunters got back with a couple of inauthentic but well-made swords, the pool was closed.
Pete and several other young men were hanging around aimlessly in the summer twilight. Lex felt it, too. The absence of the Kleptes-Virgo was like the ghost of a feeling he'd had too many times before. Girls always leave -- Helen, Buffy, Desiree, Pam, Mom....
Lex sat heavily down on a grubby wooden park bench next to Pete. He ran his hands over his head and sighed.
"Pete! Where's Clark?" Chloe sounded agitated.
"Gone, man. Clark's gone," Pete answered slowly.
"Pete! Where?"
"Uh, with the lady. Her name's Sheryl. Mmm. Sheryl."
Chloe handed her newspaper-camouflaged sword to Dawn and shook Pete hard by the shoulders. "Where! Did! They! Go! Pete!"
Pete shook his head for a moment after Chloe stopped shaking him, and then he looked a little more focused. Lex almost envied him. Pete gestured. "They went in there. Sheryl took one look at Clark, and left all the rest behind, even though he was all shaky and... Oh, man. Her eyes were really green." Pete blinked a couple of times, and Lex could see that busy brain start humming again behind Pete's eyes. "I think Clark's in trouble."
"You *think* Clark's in trouble!?" Chloe was loud and indignant, but Pete turned to Dawn and Lex.
"No, I think he really is. He was acting like he used to around Lana, when she had that damn necklace? And Sheryl's eyes didn't glow before Clark got close to her; I'm sure of it. Somehow that thing has meteor rock in her."
Lex didn't even wait for Pete to finish speaking before he was trying to find a way in to the pool house. "Locked," he fumed, slamming his hand painfully against the door. The sun had set; the other aimless teenage boys had wandered off home. Lex started hunting for a window he could break, but they all had bars.
"Let me," Dawn said. She put down the bundled-up swords and got two small wire objects out of her jeans pocket.
Lex unwrapped the swords and got one of them into his hand. Its solid weight made him feel a little better. He could hear Chloe and Pete arguing -- Chloe was accusing Pete of knowing more than he said, and Pete was vehemently not denying it. Dawn seemed to be taking a long time. "You're sure you can *pick* locks?"
"One of Buffy's old boyfriends taught me."
Ouch. "So your sister ordinarily dates criminals?"
"Ordinarily she doesn't date. Anymore." The lock turned, and Dawn jumped up, pumping her fist in the air. "Yes! Guys! We're in!"
Lex stopped the other three from rushing headlong through the now-open door. "Wait. You'll need weapons."
"Dibs on the other sword!" Dawn sang out as she scooped it up from the ground.
There was no doubt that Dawn knew her way around a blade, so that was fine. Lex drew his pistol from under his light summer-weight jacket and held it pointing up at the sky. Looking at Chloe and Pete, he asked, "Can either of you shoot?"
"I'm pretty good," Pete admitted.
Lex gave him the gun. "It may not be much use, but then again it might." Pete seemed to handle the weapon competently. "Oh," Lex added, "It's loaded with wooden bullets."
Chloe looked very surprised and interested. "Okay, you guys, something's up, and you all know but me. This is NOT acceptable."
"We'll tell you later, Chlo," Pete promised. "After Clark's okay, and hopefully those other kids, too."
"I'll hold you to that, Pete Ross," Chloe whispered as the party entered the quiet pool building.
It was dark inside. The building was an ordinary municipal building for Parks & Recreation offices and storage. Lex and Dawn walked in front with their swords naked in their hands, each hugging one wall of the hallway. Pete was a little behind, ready to fire between them or around them. Chloe was back a little further, jittering from side to side like a high-energy particle and watching their backs.
There were two shower-rooms, Girls and Boys, and three offices on the ground floor. None of the doors was locked. The adventurers didn't split up to search, and they didn't find anything out of the way. They did find a can of roach spray in the janitor's closet off the Girls' locker-room, and Chloe appropriated it for her weapon. At the end of the hallway there was an access door to a stairwell.
Lex gestured silently for the others to stay back as he leaned against the door that led to the stairs. Dawn crowded up against it with him anyway. Listening hard, he could make out some panicky yelling rather far away on the other side. "Down?" he mouthed to Dawn. She nodded. The door had no lock.
***
Clark leaned against the strong chain link of the cage. He was so screwed. It was dark, but he could see well enough to know that. Dawn hadn't said anything about these klepto-whatevers having kryptonite in them, but he hadn't exactly waited around for the planning of the *real* plan, had he? He'd wandered off like a dang four-year-old. He'd followed Sheryl like a lamb to the slaughter, right downstairs, right into the cage. He'd tagged along behind her like an unweaned pup, though he could hardly walk straight. He'd struggled almost as hard to follow her to his doggone doom as he'd struggled to haul Lex up out of empty space at Level Three. Man, he was an idiot. It's not like he didn't *know* she was a monster. Even if he hadn't, there she was now -- giant preying mantis, check, with glowing, multi-faceted, kryptonite-colored eyes. She was laying slimy, green, glowing eggs. Spookier yet, she was crooning to them in Sheryl's soft, womanly voice, calling them her darling children and promising them the world. Clark felt sick, and it wasn't just from the kryptonite.
Right. Still gotta do your best, Clark, no matter what.
There were two other boys in the cage with him. They were younger, tenth-graders he thought, and they were very afraid. Clark let go of the cage wall and lurched back to the farthest corner, where they were huddled together on the floor. Even that small increment of additional distance away from the monster was enough to make him feel a little better.
"Okay," he told the kids. "It's gonna be okay."
Both of the boys looked up at him, and one answered. "It's not gonna be okay. That thing killed Craig last night, and it's gonna kill all of us, too."
"It'll be okay. I have friends who'll be looking for me, and I have a plan."
The boy who hadn't said anything before spit out, "You're delusional."
Clark got a little mad at the kids' defeatism, and it helped him feel stronger. He moved to the corner of the cage, where the fencing material met the hard concrete wall. Taking a deep breath and bracing his back against the wall, he shoved against the chain-link as hard as he could. It moved a little. He did it again, trying to be quiet. Very soon he had a space that a person might be able to squeeze through, but he was out of time. The Kleptes-Virgo had finished laying her brood, and she was coming to fetch a mate to fertilize it.
"While she's busy with me, you guys get out through there and make a run for it," he hurriedly told the high-schoolers.
Clark could feel the weakness and nausea increase as the monster came closer, but he forced himself to the front of the cage. "Hi, Sheryl," he said, trying to sound as cool as Lex always did when he was kidnapped by lunatics. "What's up?"
The thing cocked its head at him, and that was really disturbing. The bright eyes whirled with curiosity. "Are you not afraid, dear? Perhaps you are the worthy progenitor of the new race."
Oh, crap. He hadn't even *considered* that. To make matters worse, young Mr. "You're Delusional" behind him in the cage was ignoring his friend's urging to sneak out of the cage in favor of having literal hysterics right there on the floor. And the monster was opening the door. She grabbed him with her big serrated claws and pulled him out of the cage. He could see out of the corner of his eye that his arms had gone all veiny and dark, and it hurt like heck wherever she touched him, but he fought back as hard as he could. He had to go down fighting. No! He had to hold her off until help arrived, or else Jor-El's grand-insects would rule the Earth with strength, and he *couldn*'*t* let that happen.
***
Lex took a deep breath. Okay. One, two, three. He slammed the door open. Dawn and he rushed down the stairs, with Chloe and Pete right behind.
One flight down the room was a big concrete basement, ordinarily used to store lane lines and chlorinating agents and the other paraphernalia associated with a public pool. There was a cage that the chemicals were supposed to be kept in, with yellow metal storage cabinets and a door that locked. Clark and two high school kids were in the cage. One of the younger kids seemed to be freaking out.
Unfortunately, between the foot of the stairs and the cage there was an enormous insectoid monster. The monster reached into the cage and grabbed Clark. He looked bad, and the monster had that Smallville meteor rock glow.
"Put him down!" Lex yelled.
The giant mantis turned its head all the way around to look at them. It appeared to consider for a moment. "I could kill him now, if you do not leave," it said. It sounded just like a human woman.
"If you kill him now, he won't be able to fertilize your spawn," Lex pointed out coolly.
"And he's a good one," the insect agreed. "Fresh. Large. Of a novel genome." Clark was struggling hard, but the creature had no trouble tossing him thirty feet into the wall.
Then, lightning-quick, it attacked Lex.
He didn't get his sword up in time to deflect the first slash, but he was instinctively dodging already, and it only ripped down the outer edge of his right arm.
Dawn was there in a flash, attacking it from the side with great hacking sweeps of the sword. The mantis's quick-parrying legs made it impossible for Dawn to get a serious blow in on its body, but she was probably going to take a limb off before long.
Pete jockeyed for position behind the first line of battle. Lex wished he'd just hurry the hell up and shoot, but he had to admit that this monster was a lot scarier than your typical Smallville mutant, and he himself hadn't exactly landed any useful blows either. He was working hard to keep parrying the thing's tearing claws, when suddenly the Kleptes-Virgo bent its scary, ugly head down and opened its big bug jaws and bit at his neck. His panicky sideways dodge meant it sank its mandibles into his right shoulder instead. "Damn," he thought, "I'm going to lose a limb before it does." He hacked inelegantly at its dinner-plate-sized eye with the sword in his left hand, and Dawn finally knocked off the middle leg on its left-hand-side, and presently it had to let go.
While the monster's head was relatively still, jaws buried in Lex's flesh, Pete had finally emptied the pistol into the creature's other, unwounded eye. The blast, so close to Lex's head, was deafening, but after that, the creature seemed to have a lot more trouble hitting them. Chloe had run to see if Clark was all right. Dawn and Lex kept fighting, although Lex really wished he could sit down. Thank God for shock -- if he could still feel his right arm he was sure it would hurt like hell. Pete ran after Chloe and got the roach spray from her. Lex took another slice on the right shoulder. He could feel the blood running down his shirt.
Fortunately for Lex, the monster seemed to have decided Dawn was something of a threat as well, once she cut off its leg, and it was concentrating on biting her instead of him. Dawn was thin and lithe, and she dodged well. Her sword technique was unlike anything he'd ever seen in fencing class, and she was starting to scream at the thing as she fought. Lex would've told her to save her strength for the battle and not be a fishwife about it, but it seemed to be working for her. She'd done the monster some damage, and she'd avoided everything but little scratches. It was as if she knew where the thing was aiming before it struck.
Suddenly Dawn's luck ran out. Abandoning its attempts to hold Lex at bay, the Kleptes-Virgo used both its huge serrated front-limbs to grab Dawn and hoist her into the air. Lex dodged underneath the girl to try to stab at the monster's underbelly, but its remaining middle limb gashed him painfully across the scalp, and he was driven back.
Pete got back to the melee with Chloe's insecticide and sprayed it into the Kleptes-Virgo's face. Dawn fell from the creature's uncontrollable limbs with a squeak, and scrambled away. The monster and the humans all retreated from the combat, coughing, and suddenly a big, yellow, metal chemical storage cabinet came sailing across the room and smashed the big bug against the concrete wall. Clark, cut-up and nauseous as he was, had been watching the whole combat from a distance and awaiting his chance.
Dawn dashed forward, avoiding the clawed, spasming limbs, and severed the head from the body. That didn't stop the creature from moving, but its movements stopped being coordinated. There no longer seemed to be any chance that the battered big bug body would be able to work its way out from underneath the metal cabinet and attack.
The sudden stillness was unnerving. Wait, maybe that was the blood loss. Lex sat down carefully on the concrete floor and started trying to think of something he could use to wrap up his arm. The sword was heavy, so he put it down.
***
Buffy woke up in the dark again. She was lying on a narrow white bed. Her clothes were gone, and she was dressed in coarse white cotton pajamas. She was fuzzy-headed, and her arm hurt more than it had earlier, although the sore place from the taser had apparently had time enough to heal itself.
She wasn't tied down to the bed. Buffy sat up.
Her head swam. She waited a while for it to stop, but it didn't. Looking at her sore arm, she counted three puncture marks. The counting took some time.
There were other beds in the room with her, with other people in them. Buffy got up and wandered around quietly, looking at them. They were all women, pretty women between their late twenties and fifty-something. Most of them were redheads. They were all asleep. They smelled drugged.
The door was locked. The window had bars. Slayer senses seemed to be working better than other things -- brain, for instance. It was three hours until midnight. There were no vampires around for at least a quarter-mile in any direction.
Buffy lay back down and went to sleep.
***
Lex looked pretty bad. Clark looked pretty bad. The two high-school boys looked pretty bad, although not so much physically. Fortunately the Kleptes-Virgo looked even worse. Dawn couldn't help crowing in triumph when its legs quit twitching. Chloe was looking suspicious and a little angry, and Pete looked like he was catching his breath.
"Right!" Dawn told the others. "Let's get out of here. You two kids, from the Carson Park Swim Club, we just saved you from a *horrible* death. The least you could do is help us get our friends, who were hurt on *your* behalf, out of this stinky monster-filled basement and up into the fresh air. Move!"
The two tenth-graders blinked at Dawn. The one who had been having hysterics before looked like he might argue with her, but Dawn had learned her 'resolve face' at the feet of the master, and she quelled him with a glance. The less-stupid kid hauled his companion to his feet, and they both, under Dawn's supervision, got Lex standing (more or less) and helped him out of the basement. Chloe and Pete had Clark, although Chloe's expression said she'd rather torture some answers out of her friend than help him out this very second. Dawn snagged Lex's sword from the floor and a first aid kit from the Girls' Shower Room wall on their way out.
Once they were outside in the warm summer night, Clark was apparently fine. All his cuts healed up in a few moments. Lex, on the other hand, was barely moving under his own power. Dawn directed the two former victims to set him on a nearby park bench. She sat down beside him and opened up the first aid kit as Pete helped him out of his jacket and shoulder holster.
As she started to work on cleaning and bandaging Lex's wounds, Dawn suggested to the two high-school virgins that they should go back downstairs and smash every single one of the eggs the Kleptes-Virgo had left. They agreed readily, and took off back into the pool building. Pete went, too, to keep an eye on them and make sure they didn't miss any.
Chloe had seen Clark's magic healing routine, and the mysterious krypto-sickness, and the big-heavy-cabinet tossing. Dawn remembered how furious Lex had been at finding out Clark's secret, and she decided she'd keep her mouth shut and let Clark deal with his own friends himself.
"So, Clark. What *have* you been hiding all these years?" Chloe's voice was cold. She'd had time to pull herself together, and she wasn't letting anything go.
Clark took his glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on. He took a deep breath and stood up tall. Dawn thought he looked kind of grown-up that way -- almost Giles-like; she liked it.
"Off the record, Chloe," Clark said.
Chloe looked at him with furious eyes. "Fine," she spit out. "Deep background only. It's the best you'll get, Clark. I *can* figure it all out myself, and you know it."
Clark looked down at the ground and then back up at Chloe. He pushed his glasses back into place with one finger. "I'm Superman," he said quietly.
Dawn shivered. From the look on Lex's face, he felt it, too. Neither of them had ever heard him admit it flat out like that.
Chloe's face crumpled. Dawn thought she might cry. Then she visibly composed herself and went back to being offended and mad.
"*You*'*re* Superman?" Chloe asked skeptically. "I've known you since you were *twelve*. No *way* are you *Superman.*"
Clark didn't answer. He just flew. He took off into the moonless Kansas night, looped around once, came back and landed soundlessly. Dawn had Lex's arm and head bound up by now, and she watched his eyes grow big as he watched Clark. Was it the first time Lex had seen Clark fly, as well?
If anything, Chloe seemed to be made even angrier by the display. "Fine!" she spit out. "You're Superman! You're the superhero from another *planet* that *Lois Lane* wrote about last winter. How come you never told me, Clark? I thought we were friends!"
"We are friends, Chloe," Clark protested quietly, "but I couldn't just *tell* people I'm an *alien*. I didn't even know it myself when I first met you, and...."
Chloe didn't let him finish. "You couldn't *tell* people? Or you just couldn't tell me? It seems pretty clear that I'm the only one here tonight that didn't KNOW, Clark!"
Clark was starting to seem a little stunned. Dawn wished she could help him, but she had no idea how. She settled for cleaning the swords. He ducked his head and looked at the ground again, looking less like Superman and more like the dork who'd first attracted her attention in Astronomy 101.
"Pete found my spaceship when it got out of the cellar the summer after freshman year. He *found out* about me; I didn't just tell him. My folks have always known, of course. That kid Ryan, you remember him? He really was psychic; he found out. A couple of other mutants over the years. Dawn's sister just plain recognized me in the Superman costume; that's never happened before. That's how Dawn and Lex found out, too; they were there when Buffy outed me."
"And I've found out now." Chloe's voice was awfully unfriendly for someone who'd been palling around with Clark since Junior High.
Clark lifted his head and looked at Chloe again. "Please don't tell anyone."
Chloe sniffed. "I already told you: deep background only. A journalist has to keep her word to a source."
Clark looked hurt. "A source? Chloe, please. I want to still be your friend."
"So, Superman. Tell me, why didn't you just crush that killer bug right away?"
"It's the meteor rocks, Chloe. You remember that from Smallville, don't you?"
"And do you have any idea why the Kleptes-Virgo would also have that effect on you?"
"I don't know. I remember that Greg was full of the stuff -- kryptonite is the actual name of that mineral. He almost got me in the old foundry back home, but there was some lead sheeting there, and that blocks the radiation or something, I guess. Some heavy equipment fell on him, and he broke up into a zillion little bugs, and they all scurried away."
"And so much for Greg. He was supposed to be your friend, too." Chloe's voice dripped with bitterness.
"That might not have been the end of him," Dawn put in tentatively. Everyone turned to look at her, so she went on. "There was a Latvian bug-man called Mr. Pfister -- an assassin. He could break himself apart into a lot of little worms, so that he could go through small places, like under a door or something. Then he'd re-assemble himself and be fine."
Lex spoke up unexpectedly. His voice was a little hoarse. "Was Greg a virgin?" At Chloe's scoffing agreement and Clark's silent nod, Lex went on. "Perhaps he encountered one of these giant mantids. Like calling to like. The resulting offspring might well incorporate kryptonite into their tissues."
Clark looked suddenly up at the building. "Pete and those kids are done smashing eggs. They're on their way back," he said.
"I won't betray your secret identity, Superman," Chloe stated.
Clark looked at her. "Chloe," he began, but then Pete and the two boys were back, and he had to stop.
Lex fumbled his cell phone out of his pocket.
"What are you doing?" Dawn asked, attention drawn by his sharp intake of breath.
"Calling the police," he answered.
"The police? Are you sure that's a good idea? This isn't exactly normal stuff we're dealing with here," Dawn argued.
Lex struggled a little to handle the phone one-handed. Clark came over and held it for him. "This isn't Sunnydale," Lex said. "It isn't Smallville, either. This is Metropolis. The people of Metropolis don't need to be protected by ignorance; we don't need to be lied to, and our police force is the finest in the world. I'm confident that the Metropolis PD can accept and process the knowledge of this creature, and it would be extremely regrettable for them to never be able to put case closed to Craig's murder."
"We don't need to tell them the name and the lore and the how-do-we-know, though, do we?" Dawn challenged. "'Cause my experience has been that's a first-class ticket to the loony bin."
Lex shook his head. "I don't see why we should need to tell them anything other than what we've seen here tonight. Hello? This is Lex Luthor. I'm at Carson Park. Please send a patrol car and an ambulance to the pool area. Yes, it's an emergency." He held his phone out towards Dawn. She took it and closed it up.
"Okay, I'll grant you the Metro Police should want to know what happened to that guy who was found dead this morning. But who's the ambulance for?" Dawn looked at Lex, but he didn't answer.
His bandaged head was warm and heavy against her arm where he lay unconscious.
"At least he didn't get a concussion this time," Pete observed.
Dawn glared at him as she and Clark laid Lex down flat on the bench. "Inappropriate much?" she huffed.
Pete laughed at her and tucked Lex's ruined jacket under his head.
***
When Buffy awoke again, nothing appeared to have changed in the room. It was about two hours past midnight this time, three or four hours still until dawn. Her accelerated Slayer metabolism had processed more of the drug that should have kept her unconscious at least until morning, and now she had to decide what to do.
Her earlier wandering around the room had told her she was only on the third floor. The window was barred on the outside of the glass; the bars were fairly far apart; she thought she could slip through them. She'd fallen from higher places; she'd even *survived* falling from higher places. Buffy knew there was no moon tonight. She could hear a high wind kicking up, and it smelled like it might rain. She was pretty sure she remembered there being trees and stuff outside from earlier.
She hunched her knees up to her chin and hugged them. If she rocked a little as she thought, at least there was no one to see her acting crazy. Wait, untrue. There was a camera mounted high on the wall, just where it met the ceiling. That meant that anything she did would have to work the first time; no do-overs for Buffy. "Our two main weapons are fear, surprise and a fanatical devotion to the Church," she muttered. Her arm hurt; her mouth was dry; she was sure she hadn't eaten since lunch on the day before she was captured, and she'd had nothing to drink since her morning cup of tea before leaving the house to be kidnapped. Nevertheless, she had to make this quick and sudden.
Fighting off the urge to just lie back down and go to sleep again (Because I'm the Slayer, dammit! The world *needs* me!) Buffy suddenly uncoiled and launched herself at the window, bursting through the glass like a shell, heedless of the shards falling around and with her. She grabbed one of the bars briefly, whipped her body around and between them with the momentum, and threw herself at the ground.
She landed in broken glass and muddy grass, rolling to break her fall, not even flinching from the cold sharp glass that left shallow cuts on her knees and elbows. She rolled some distance, trusting the coarse cloth of her pajamas to shield her from most of the sharp edges, trusting the dark mud to help camouflage her in the night.
She made it to a scratchy hedge of some sort and squirmed into it to hide and observe. The building she'd jumped from was a huge lightless bulk looming in the darkness. There were no audible alarms. There were no searchlights. Wind-whipped tree branches and scudding clouds intermittently let the dim light of the stars down to her. Buffy crept along beneath the hedge as far as she could, heading obliquely away from the building the whole time, before finally squeezing out from under it on the opposite side from where she had started. She could make out a stone wall about thirty yards from her, and she could hear traffic noise far away, muted by the driving wind.
Buffy worried about the other women being held in the building she'd just escaped. Who was their captor? Could she really just leave them there? They were drugged; could she even rescue them if she tried? What if they were imprisoned for a good reason, and Buffy had been the exception? "Stop it!" she told herself sternly. "Escape first. Then find out stuff. Then plan what to do about them. Right? Right!"
There was a tall tree overlooking the wall. Its branches reached to within about five feet. The whole thing was thrashing with the stormy wind. Buffy ran to the tree and climbed it as fast as she could. She crept out along the branches overlooking the wall as far as they would bear her slight weight. She held tight and kicked in time with the wind, gaining the momentum she needed to launch herself over the wall, then let go and flew.
It was a bad landing. The ground was further away than she'd thought it would be. Apparently the walled compound, whatever it was, was situated on top of a rocky little hill. Buffy felt bruises blossoming on her shoulder and hip when she hit, but at least she didn't twist an ankle. "That's right," she told herself. "Look on the bright side."
Buffy fled.
***
It was a long walk to where Lex's car was parked, and by the time the three intrepid monster-hunters got back with a couple of inauthentic but well-made swords, the pool was closed.
Pete and several other young men were hanging around aimlessly in the summer twilight. Lex felt it, too. The absence of the Kleptes-Virgo was like the ghost of a feeling he'd had too many times before. Girls always leave -- Helen, Buffy, Desiree, Pam, Mom....
Lex sat heavily down on a grubby wooden park bench next to Pete. He ran his hands over his head and sighed.
"Pete! Where's Clark?" Chloe sounded agitated.
"Gone, man. Clark's gone," Pete answered slowly.
"Pete! Where?"
"Uh, with the lady. Her name's Sheryl. Mmm. Sheryl."
Chloe handed her newspaper-camouflaged sword to Dawn and shook Pete hard by the shoulders. "Where! Did! They! Go! Pete!"
Pete shook his head for a moment after Chloe stopped shaking him, and then he looked a little more focused. Lex almost envied him. Pete gestured. "They went in there. Sheryl took one look at Clark, and left all the rest behind, even though he was all shaky and... Oh, man. Her eyes were really green." Pete blinked a couple of times, and Lex could see that busy brain start humming again behind Pete's eyes. "I think Clark's in trouble."
"You *think* Clark's in trouble!?" Chloe was loud and indignant, but Pete turned to Dawn and Lex.
"No, I think he really is. He was acting like he used to around Lana, when she had that damn necklace? And Sheryl's eyes didn't glow before Clark got close to her; I'm sure of it. Somehow that thing has meteor rock in her."
Lex didn't even wait for Pete to finish speaking before he was trying to find a way in to the pool house. "Locked," he fumed, slamming his hand painfully against the door. The sun had set; the other aimless teenage boys had wandered off home. Lex started hunting for a window he could break, but they all had bars.
"Let me," Dawn said. She put down the bundled-up swords and got two small wire objects out of her jeans pocket.
Lex unwrapped the swords and got one of them into his hand. Its solid weight made him feel a little better. He could hear Chloe and Pete arguing -- Chloe was accusing Pete of knowing more than he said, and Pete was vehemently not denying it. Dawn seemed to be taking a long time. "You're sure you can *pick* locks?"
"One of Buffy's old boyfriends taught me."
Ouch. "So your sister ordinarily dates criminals?"
"Ordinarily she doesn't date. Anymore." The lock turned, and Dawn jumped up, pumping her fist in the air. "Yes! Guys! We're in!"
Lex stopped the other three from rushing headlong through the now-open door. "Wait. You'll need weapons."
"Dibs on the other sword!" Dawn sang out as she scooped it up from the ground.
There was no doubt that Dawn knew her way around a blade, so that was fine. Lex drew his pistol from under his light summer-weight jacket and held it pointing up at the sky. Looking at Chloe and Pete, he asked, "Can either of you shoot?"
"I'm pretty good," Pete admitted.
Lex gave him the gun. "It may not be much use, but then again it might." Pete seemed to handle the weapon competently. "Oh," Lex added, "It's loaded with wooden bullets."
Chloe looked very surprised and interested. "Okay, you guys, something's up, and you all know but me. This is NOT acceptable."
"We'll tell you later, Chlo," Pete promised. "After Clark's okay, and hopefully those other kids, too."
"I'll hold you to that, Pete Ross," Chloe whispered as the party entered the quiet pool building.
It was dark inside. The building was an ordinary municipal building for Parks & Recreation offices and storage. Lex and Dawn walked in front with their swords naked in their hands, each hugging one wall of the hallway. Pete was a little behind, ready to fire between them or around them. Chloe was back a little further, jittering from side to side like a high-energy particle and watching their backs.
There were two shower-rooms, Girls and Boys, and three offices on the ground floor. None of the doors was locked. The adventurers didn't split up to search, and they didn't find anything out of the way. They did find a can of roach spray in the janitor's closet off the Girls' locker-room, and Chloe appropriated it for her weapon. At the end of the hallway there was an access door to a stairwell.
Lex gestured silently for the others to stay back as he leaned against the door that led to the stairs. Dawn crowded up against it with him anyway. Listening hard, he could make out some panicky yelling rather far away on the other side. "Down?" he mouthed to Dawn. She nodded. The door had no lock.
***
Clark leaned against the strong chain link of the cage. He was so screwed. It was dark, but he could see well enough to know that. Dawn hadn't said anything about these klepto-whatevers having kryptonite in them, but he hadn't exactly waited around for the planning of the *real* plan, had he? He'd wandered off like a dang four-year-old. He'd followed Sheryl like a lamb to the slaughter, right downstairs, right into the cage. He'd tagged along behind her like an unweaned pup, though he could hardly walk straight. He'd struggled almost as hard to follow her to his doggone doom as he'd struggled to haul Lex up out of empty space at Level Three. Man, he was an idiot. It's not like he didn't *know* she was a monster. Even if he hadn't, there she was now -- giant preying mantis, check, with glowing, multi-faceted, kryptonite-colored eyes. She was laying slimy, green, glowing eggs. Spookier yet, she was crooning to them in Sheryl's soft, womanly voice, calling them her darling children and promising them the world. Clark felt sick, and it wasn't just from the kryptonite.
Right. Still gotta do your best, Clark, no matter what.
There were two other boys in the cage with him. They were younger, tenth-graders he thought, and they were very afraid. Clark let go of the cage wall and lurched back to the farthest corner, where they were huddled together on the floor. Even that small increment of additional distance away from the monster was enough to make him feel a little better.
"Okay," he told the kids. "It's gonna be okay."
Both of the boys looked up at him, and one answered. "It's not gonna be okay. That thing killed Craig last night, and it's gonna kill all of us, too."
"It'll be okay. I have friends who'll be looking for me, and I have a plan."
The boy who hadn't said anything before spit out, "You're delusional."
Clark got a little mad at the kids' defeatism, and it helped him feel stronger. He moved to the corner of the cage, where the fencing material met the hard concrete wall. Taking a deep breath and bracing his back against the wall, he shoved against the chain-link as hard as he could. It moved a little. He did it again, trying to be quiet. Very soon he had a space that a person might be able to squeeze through, but he was out of time. The Kleptes-Virgo had finished laying her brood, and she was coming to fetch a mate to fertilize it.
"While she's busy with me, you guys get out through there and make a run for it," he hurriedly told the high-schoolers.
Clark could feel the weakness and nausea increase as the monster came closer, but he forced himself to the front of the cage. "Hi, Sheryl," he said, trying to sound as cool as Lex always did when he was kidnapped by lunatics. "What's up?"
The thing cocked its head at him, and that was really disturbing. The bright eyes whirled with curiosity. "Are you not afraid, dear? Perhaps you are the worthy progenitor of the new race."
Oh, crap. He hadn't even *considered* that. To make matters worse, young Mr. "You're Delusional" behind him in the cage was ignoring his friend's urging to sneak out of the cage in favor of having literal hysterics right there on the floor. And the monster was opening the door. She grabbed him with her big serrated claws and pulled him out of the cage. He could see out of the corner of his eye that his arms had gone all veiny and dark, and it hurt like heck wherever she touched him, but he fought back as hard as he could. He had to go down fighting. No! He had to hold her off until help arrived, or else Jor-El's grand-insects would rule the Earth with strength, and he *couldn*'*t* let that happen.
***
Lex took a deep breath. Okay. One, two, three. He slammed the door open. Dawn and he rushed down the stairs, with Chloe and Pete right behind.
One flight down the room was a big concrete basement, ordinarily used to store lane lines and chlorinating agents and the other paraphernalia associated with a public pool. There was a cage that the chemicals were supposed to be kept in, with yellow metal storage cabinets and a door that locked. Clark and two high school kids were in the cage. One of the younger kids seemed to be freaking out.
Unfortunately, between the foot of the stairs and the cage there was an enormous insectoid monster. The monster reached into the cage and grabbed Clark. He looked bad, and the monster had that Smallville meteor rock glow.
"Put him down!" Lex yelled.
The giant mantis turned its head all the way around to look at them. It appeared to consider for a moment. "I could kill him now, if you do not leave," it said. It sounded just like a human woman.
"If you kill him now, he won't be able to fertilize your spawn," Lex pointed out coolly.
"And he's a good one," the insect agreed. "Fresh. Large. Of a novel genome." Clark was struggling hard, but the creature had no trouble tossing him thirty feet into the wall.
Then, lightning-quick, it attacked Lex.
He didn't get his sword up in time to deflect the first slash, but he was instinctively dodging already, and it only ripped down the outer edge of his right arm.
Dawn was there in a flash, attacking it from the side with great hacking sweeps of the sword. The mantis's quick-parrying legs made it impossible for Dawn to get a serious blow in on its body, but she was probably going to take a limb off before long.
Pete jockeyed for position behind the first line of battle. Lex wished he'd just hurry the hell up and shoot, but he had to admit that this monster was a lot scarier than your typical Smallville mutant, and he himself hadn't exactly landed any useful blows either. He was working hard to keep parrying the thing's tearing claws, when suddenly the Kleptes-Virgo bent its scary, ugly head down and opened its big bug jaws and bit at his neck. His panicky sideways dodge meant it sank its mandibles into his right shoulder instead. "Damn," he thought, "I'm going to lose a limb before it does." He hacked inelegantly at its dinner-plate-sized eye with the sword in his left hand, and Dawn finally knocked off the middle leg on its left-hand-side, and presently it had to let go.
While the monster's head was relatively still, jaws buried in Lex's flesh, Pete had finally emptied the pistol into the creature's other, unwounded eye. The blast, so close to Lex's head, was deafening, but after that, the creature seemed to have a lot more trouble hitting them. Chloe had run to see if Clark was all right. Dawn and Lex kept fighting, although Lex really wished he could sit down. Thank God for shock -- if he could still feel his right arm he was sure it would hurt like hell. Pete ran after Chloe and got the roach spray from her. Lex took another slice on the right shoulder. He could feel the blood running down his shirt.
Fortunately for Lex, the monster seemed to have decided Dawn was something of a threat as well, once she cut off its leg, and it was concentrating on biting her instead of him. Dawn was thin and lithe, and she dodged well. Her sword technique was unlike anything he'd ever seen in fencing class, and she was starting to scream at the thing as she fought. Lex would've told her to save her strength for the battle and not be a fishwife about it, but it seemed to be working for her. She'd done the monster some damage, and she'd avoided everything but little scratches. It was as if she knew where the thing was aiming before it struck.
Suddenly Dawn's luck ran out. Abandoning its attempts to hold Lex at bay, the Kleptes-Virgo used both its huge serrated front-limbs to grab Dawn and hoist her into the air. Lex dodged underneath the girl to try to stab at the monster's underbelly, but its remaining middle limb gashed him painfully across the scalp, and he was driven back.
Pete got back to the melee with Chloe's insecticide and sprayed it into the Kleptes-Virgo's face. Dawn fell from the creature's uncontrollable limbs with a squeak, and scrambled away. The monster and the humans all retreated from the combat, coughing, and suddenly a big, yellow, metal chemical storage cabinet came sailing across the room and smashed the big bug against the concrete wall. Clark, cut-up and nauseous as he was, had been watching the whole combat from a distance and awaiting his chance.
Dawn dashed forward, avoiding the clawed, spasming limbs, and severed the head from the body. That didn't stop the creature from moving, but its movements stopped being coordinated. There no longer seemed to be any chance that the battered big bug body would be able to work its way out from underneath the metal cabinet and attack.
The sudden stillness was unnerving. Wait, maybe that was the blood loss. Lex sat down carefully on the concrete floor and started trying to think of something he could use to wrap up his arm. The sword was heavy, so he put it down.
***
Buffy woke up in the dark again. She was lying on a narrow white bed. Her clothes were gone, and she was dressed in coarse white cotton pajamas. She was fuzzy-headed, and her arm hurt more than it had earlier, although the sore place from the taser had apparently had time enough to heal itself.
She wasn't tied down to the bed. Buffy sat up.
Her head swam. She waited a while for it to stop, but it didn't. Looking at her sore arm, she counted three puncture marks. The counting took some time.
There were other beds in the room with her, with other people in them. Buffy got up and wandered around quietly, looking at them. They were all women, pretty women between their late twenties and fifty-something. Most of them were redheads. They were all asleep. They smelled drugged.
The door was locked. The window had bars. Slayer senses seemed to be working better than other things -- brain, for instance. It was three hours until midnight. There were no vampires around for at least a quarter-mile in any direction.
Buffy lay back down and went to sleep.
***
Lex looked pretty bad. Clark looked pretty bad. The two high-school boys looked pretty bad, although not so much physically. Fortunately the Kleptes-Virgo looked even worse. Dawn couldn't help crowing in triumph when its legs quit twitching. Chloe was looking suspicious and a little angry, and Pete looked like he was catching his breath.
"Right!" Dawn told the others. "Let's get out of here. You two kids, from the Carson Park Swim Club, we just saved you from a *horrible* death. The least you could do is help us get our friends, who were hurt on *your* behalf, out of this stinky monster-filled basement and up into the fresh air. Move!"
The two tenth-graders blinked at Dawn. The one who had been having hysterics before looked like he might argue with her, but Dawn had learned her 'resolve face' at the feet of the master, and she quelled him with a glance. The less-stupid kid hauled his companion to his feet, and they both, under Dawn's supervision, got Lex standing (more or less) and helped him out of the basement. Chloe and Pete had Clark, although Chloe's expression said she'd rather torture some answers out of her friend than help him out this very second. Dawn snagged Lex's sword from the floor and a first aid kit from the Girls' Shower Room wall on their way out.
Once they were outside in the warm summer night, Clark was apparently fine. All his cuts healed up in a few moments. Lex, on the other hand, was barely moving under his own power. Dawn directed the two former victims to set him on a nearby park bench. She sat down beside him and opened up the first aid kit as Pete helped him out of his jacket and shoulder holster.
As she started to work on cleaning and bandaging Lex's wounds, Dawn suggested to the two high-school virgins that they should go back downstairs and smash every single one of the eggs the Kleptes-Virgo had left. They agreed readily, and took off back into the pool building. Pete went, too, to keep an eye on them and make sure they didn't miss any.
Chloe had seen Clark's magic healing routine, and the mysterious krypto-sickness, and the big-heavy-cabinet tossing. Dawn remembered how furious Lex had been at finding out Clark's secret, and she decided she'd keep her mouth shut and let Clark deal with his own friends himself.
"So, Clark. What *have* you been hiding all these years?" Chloe's voice was cold. She'd had time to pull herself together, and she wasn't letting anything go.
Clark took his glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on. He took a deep breath and stood up tall. Dawn thought he looked kind of grown-up that way -- almost Giles-like; she liked it.
"Off the record, Chloe," Clark said.
Chloe looked at him with furious eyes. "Fine," she spit out. "Deep background only. It's the best you'll get, Clark. I *can* figure it all out myself, and you know it."
Clark looked down at the ground and then back up at Chloe. He pushed his glasses back into place with one finger. "I'm Superman," he said quietly.
Dawn shivered. From the look on Lex's face, he felt it, too. Neither of them had ever heard him admit it flat out like that.
Chloe's face crumpled. Dawn thought she might cry. Then she visibly composed herself and went back to being offended and mad.
"*You*'*re* Superman?" Chloe asked skeptically. "I've known you since you were *twelve*. No *way* are you *Superman.*"
Clark didn't answer. He just flew. He took off into the moonless Kansas night, looped around once, came back and landed soundlessly. Dawn had Lex's arm and head bound up by now, and she watched his eyes grow big as he watched Clark. Was it the first time Lex had seen Clark fly, as well?
If anything, Chloe seemed to be made even angrier by the display. "Fine!" she spit out. "You're Superman! You're the superhero from another *planet* that *Lois Lane* wrote about last winter. How come you never told me, Clark? I thought we were friends!"
"We are friends, Chloe," Clark protested quietly, "but I couldn't just *tell* people I'm an *alien*. I didn't even know it myself when I first met you, and...."
Chloe didn't let him finish. "You couldn't *tell* people? Or you just couldn't tell me? It seems pretty clear that I'm the only one here tonight that didn't KNOW, Clark!"
Clark was starting to seem a little stunned. Dawn wished she could help him, but she had no idea how. She settled for cleaning the swords. He ducked his head and looked at the ground again, looking less like Superman and more like the dork who'd first attracted her attention in Astronomy 101.
"Pete found my spaceship when it got out of the cellar the summer after freshman year. He *found out* about me; I didn't just tell him. My folks have always known, of course. That kid Ryan, you remember him? He really was psychic; he found out. A couple of other mutants over the years. Dawn's sister just plain recognized me in the Superman costume; that's never happened before. That's how Dawn and Lex found out, too; they were there when Buffy outed me."
"And I've found out now." Chloe's voice was awfully unfriendly for someone who'd been palling around with Clark since Junior High.
Clark lifted his head and looked at Chloe again. "Please don't tell anyone."
Chloe sniffed. "I already told you: deep background only. A journalist has to keep her word to a source."
Clark looked hurt. "A source? Chloe, please. I want to still be your friend."
"So, Superman. Tell me, why didn't you just crush that killer bug right away?"
"It's the meteor rocks, Chloe. You remember that from Smallville, don't you?"
"And do you have any idea why the Kleptes-Virgo would also have that effect on you?"
"I don't know. I remember that Greg was full of the stuff -- kryptonite is the actual name of that mineral. He almost got me in the old foundry back home, but there was some lead sheeting there, and that blocks the radiation or something, I guess. Some heavy equipment fell on him, and he broke up into a zillion little bugs, and they all scurried away."
"And so much for Greg. He was supposed to be your friend, too." Chloe's voice dripped with bitterness.
"That might not have been the end of him," Dawn put in tentatively. Everyone turned to look at her, so she went on. "There was a Latvian bug-man called Mr. Pfister -- an assassin. He could break himself apart into a lot of little worms, so that he could go through small places, like under a door or something. Then he'd re-assemble himself and be fine."
Lex spoke up unexpectedly. His voice was a little hoarse. "Was Greg a virgin?" At Chloe's scoffing agreement and Clark's silent nod, Lex went on. "Perhaps he encountered one of these giant mantids. Like calling to like. The resulting offspring might well incorporate kryptonite into their tissues."
Clark looked suddenly up at the building. "Pete and those kids are done smashing eggs. They're on their way back," he said.
"I won't betray your secret identity, Superman," Chloe stated.
Clark looked at her. "Chloe," he began, but then Pete and the two boys were back, and he had to stop.
Lex fumbled his cell phone out of his pocket.
"What are you doing?" Dawn asked, attention drawn by his sharp intake of breath.
"Calling the police," he answered.
"The police? Are you sure that's a good idea? This isn't exactly normal stuff we're dealing with here," Dawn argued.
Lex struggled a little to handle the phone one-handed. Clark came over and held it for him. "This isn't Sunnydale," Lex said. "It isn't Smallville, either. This is Metropolis. The people of Metropolis don't need to be protected by ignorance; we don't need to be lied to, and our police force is the finest in the world. I'm confident that the Metropolis PD can accept and process the knowledge of this creature, and it would be extremely regrettable for them to never be able to put case closed to Craig's murder."
"We don't need to tell them the name and the lore and the how-do-we-know, though, do we?" Dawn challenged. "'Cause my experience has been that's a first-class ticket to the loony bin."
Lex shook his head. "I don't see why we should need to tell them anything other than what we've seen here tonight. Hello? This is Lex Luthor. I'm at Carson Park. Please send a patrol car and an ambulance to the pool area. Yes, it's an emergency." He held his phone out towards Dawn. She took it and closed it up.
"Okay, I'll grant you the Metro Police should want to know what happened to that guy who was found dead this morning. But who's the ambulance for?" Dawn looked at Lex, but he didn't answer.
His bandaged head was warm and heavy against her arm where he lay unconscious.
"At least he didn't get a concussion this time," Pete observed.
Dawn glared at him as she and Clark laid Lex down flat on the bench. "Inappropriate much?" she huffed.
Pete laughed at her and tucked Lex's ruined jacket under his head.
***
When Buffy awoke again, nothing appeared to have changed in the room. It was about two hours past midnight this time, three or four hours still until dawn. Her accelerated Slayer metabolism had processed more of the drug that should have kept her unconscious at least until morning, and now she had to decide what to do.
Her earlier wandering around the room had told her she was only on the third floor. The window was barred on the outside of the glass; the bars were fairly far apart; she thought she could slip through them. She'd fallen from higher places; she'd even *survived* falling from higher places. Buffy knew there was no moon tonight. She could hear a high wind kicking up, and it smelled like it might rain. She was pretty sure she remembered there being trees and stuff outside from earlier.
She hunched her knees up to her chin and hugged them. If she rocked a little as she thought, at least there was no one to see her acting crazy. Wait, untrue. There was a camera mounted high on the wall, just where it met the ceiling. That meant that anything she did would have to work the first time; no do-overs for Buffy. "Our two main weapons are fear, surprise and a fanatical devotion to the Church," she muttered. Her arm hurt; her mouth was dry; she was sure she hadn't eaten since lunch on the day before she was captured, and she'd had nothing to drink since her morning cup of tea before leaving the house to be kidnapped. Nevertheless, she had to make this quick and sudden.
Fighting off the urge to just lie back down and go to sleep again (Because I'm the Slayer, dammit! The world *needs* me!) Buffy suddenly uncoiled and launched herself at the window, bursting through the glass like a shell, heedless of the shards falling around and with her. She grabbed one of the bars briefly, whipped her body around and between them with the momentum, and threw herself at the ground.
She landed in broken glass and muddy grass, rolling to break her fall, not even flinching from the cold sharp glass that left shallow cuts on her knees and elbows. She rolled some distance, trusting the coarse cloth of her pajamas to shield her from most of the sharp edges, trusting the dark mud to help camouflage her in the night.
She made it to a scratchy hedge of some sort and squirmed into it to hide and observe. The building she'd jumped from was a huge lightless bulk looming in the darkness. There were no audible alarms. There were no searchlights. Wind-whipped tree branches and scudding clouds intermittently let the dim light of the stars down to her. Buffy crept along beneath the hedge as far as she could, heading obliquely away from the building the whole time, before finally squeezing out from under it on the opposite side from where she had started. She could make out a stone wall about thirty yards from her, and she could hear traffic noise far away, muted by the driving wind.
Buffy worried about the other women being held in the building she'd just escaped. Who was their captor? Could she really just leave them there? They were drugged; could she even rescue them if she tried? What if they were imprisoned for a good reason, and Buffy had been the exception? "Stop it!" she told herself sternly. "Escape first. Then find out stuff. Then plan what to do about them. Right? Right!"
There was a tall tree overlooking the wall. Its branches reached to within about five feet. The whole thing was thrashing with the stormy wind. Buffy ran to the tree and climbed it as fast as she could. She crept out along the branches overlooking the wall as far as they would bear her slight weight. She held tight and kicked in time with the wind, gaining the momentum she needed to launch herself over the wall, then let go and flew.
It was a bad landing. The ground was further away than she'd thought it would be. Apparently the walled compound, whatever it was, was situated on top of a rocky little hill. Buffy felt bruises blossoming on her shoulder and hip when she hit, but at least she didn't twist an ankle. "That's right," she told herself. "Look on the bright side."
Buffy fled.
***