***
Lex tried manfully not to toss and turn on the expensive linens. It was undignified; the servants would know from the rumpled bedding that he was insomniac, and they'd tell his father. Also, the painkillers they'd given him at the hospital were useless; his right side screamed at him every time he turned.
It would be light soon; maybe he should just get up.
Maybe he could call Toby, and get some of the good stuff.
No, that would only be a good idea if he weren't planning to go in to work today, and there was no way in hell he was staying at the penthouse all day long. No way. He had to go in to LexCorp or he'd lose his mind.
Lex kicked the bedclothes off onto the floor and rang for his valet. He swallowed another pill from his prescription, even though it hadn't been four hours since the last one. When Charles arrived, Lex bit his lip to keep himself quiet while Charles helped him dress.
He dismissed the servant and went to the kitchen. Lionel's staff hated it when Lex made his own coffee in the mornings, but that was one of reasons he enjoyed it. The other reason was that it reminded him of Smallville. Mrs. Digman at the castle used to welcome him in the kitchen. Maybe he should spend some time in the country soon....
Lex was surprised to find that the kitchen was already occupied. Lionel's chef was preparing breakfast, and Lex didn't feel quite strong enough this morning to challenge him face-on. He contented himself with asking that coffee be brought to him in the dining room, and left.
Lionel Luthor was seated at the dining table, elegantly dressed. He was reading the Business Page of the Daily Planet, and greeted Lex before Lex had time to get away unnoticed. Damn.
"Lex! You're up early. Particularly after a night spent in the Emergency Room. I thought you'd outgrown that, son."
Lex sat down and accepted a cup of coffee from the maid. He put as much sarcasm in his voice as he could. "Sorry to disappoint you, Dad. How are you this morning?"
Lionel looked appraisingly at Lex over the edge of his own coffee cup. "Better than you. You look like shit, Lex. What *were* you doing last night?"
Lex smiled bitterly and swallowed coffee. "What, hasn't the police report been delivered to your desk yet? Public park, after hours, me and Clark Kent... What do you think I was doing?"
The momentary flicker of unease on Lionel's face was almost worth it. Lex counted it as a point for him. Childish. It didn't last nearly long enough before it was replaced with an expression of calculation.
"Yes," Lionel mused. "Clark Kent. His finger-marks are all over this...."
Lex knew better than to ask, "All over what?" He knew he'd have to find out, though.
***
Something woke Buffy up. She was in a small, dark space. Panic washed over her. She froze and let it crest, ebb away. The smell was wrong -- not the stench of meat left in a closed box for four or five months, but rather grass, dirt, plastic, rain, car exhaust.... She wasn't in her grave. She was under a tarp, in the back of a gardener's truck, in Kansas, escaping from the minions of Lionel Luthor, one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. She took a deep breath of relief. She was sodden and tired, starving and filthy, but she had reason to know it could be *so* much worse.
It must have been the sudden lack of engine noise that had awakened her, because the truck had stopped. She heard the driver's door slam as he got out. Slayer-sense said it was a little after dawn. She peeked out from under the edge of the tarp.
They were in a residential area. To Buffy's California-bred eyes, the houses looked big. They were on large lots, too, and there were no fences between them. The truck-driver was talking to a few men on the front porch of one of the houses. It was still raining. They didn't seem to be paying any real attention to the truck.
Buffy ran.
***
When Dawn got up that morning, she was surprised to find a big alien camped out in her hallway. "I thought you were staying with Pete!" she exclaimed.
Clark stood up and looked sheepish. "His roommate snores. Also I was worried about you."
"I'm fine," Dawn said with a smile. "Now, get out of my way so I can go to the bathroom. Please."
Clark scrambled out of her way, then tagged along behind her as she carried her clothes and towel down the hall. "How are you this morning?" she asked.
"I'm fine. I set up at Pete's last night after I dropped you off and dropped Lex's car off. Then I couldn't sleep..."
"Snoring roommate."
"Right. So I put on," Clark dropped his voice to a whisper, "the suit, and patrolled for a little while." Clark looked up and down the hall. There was no one there. "Nothing much was happening, so I came over here and sat in front of your door and read. Then you got up."
"How's Lex?"
"The hospital let him go. The Luthor limousine picked him up around 4:30. I haven't seen him, but I was going to check the LexCorp office later. He's living with his dad right now, and the guy creeps me out..."
"Evil," Dawn put in.
"No kidding," Clark agreed. He went on, "So I didn't want to go to the penthouse. Besides, Lex hates it there, so if he's there he's probably asleep, and I shouldn't bother him anyway."
"This is my stop," Dawn said when they got to the door of the Women's Bathroom. "I won't be long. You want to go out to breakfast?"
"Sure!" Clark grinned at her. "I'll be right here."
***
Dawn didn't take long to get ready, which was kind of keen, Clark thought. He remembered the few times he'd waited for Lana downstairs at the Sullivans' house, when he'd gotten his act together enough to actually show up for one of their rare and ill-fated dates. She used to take *forever* to get ready to go *anywhere*. Maybe that had been some sort of petty revenge? Nah, probably not. Lana wasn't that kind of girl.
"Ready to go?" Dawn asked. Clark looked up with a start. Staying awake all night wasn't as tough on him as it would be on a human, but it still left him a little bit spacey -- especially if there wasn't any sunshine, for some reason.
Dawn looked dang cute for someone who hadn't gotten much sleep, herself. Her hair was shiny and pretty, even when it was still damp from the shower. She was wearing a sleeveless green top, khaki shorts and sandals. Clark made a quick synapse connection, and came up with "You look nice this morning."
Dawn beamed at him. "Thanks!" she said, gesturing with her armful of pajamas and towel. "So do you. I gotta go put this stuff back in my room."
She was quick to put her laundry in the hamper and get her purse and umbrella, too. Going out with Dawn was always nice -- comfortable, and, after the first time, practically angst-free. Unless she was mad at him, and she never made him guess about that, being with Dawn was always fun, and sort of easy. What did that mean?
The coffee shop was busy. Clark used his superior height and bulk to get them a little table by the window. Dawn ordered the pancakes, so Clark did, too. While he waited for their order, his eye fell on the copy of the Daily Planet that the man at the next table was reading. Near the bottom of the front page of the second section was a story about Superman. Dawn was rummaging through the jam caddy, looking for marmalade, so he let his attention, and his freaky multi-focus eyes, dwell on the story.
Dang!
Dawn looked up, startled by his exclamation. Clark didn't know what to do for a second; he couldn't just steal the guy's paper, could he? But this was important....
Dawn finally got his attention. Clark realized she'd said his name two or three times already.
"Clark!" she said loudly, "What's wrong?"
"I can't believe she'd do that," Clark mused. Was this the 'shock of betrayal' they kept bringing up in English class? If so, it stank.
"Who'd do what?" Dawn asked.
Clark took a helpless breath. "Chloe."
Dawn finally seemed to notice that he was staring at a newspaper. Their pancakes arrived, but she said she'd be right back.
Clark was so thrown he didn't even start eating while she was gone.
Dawn got back with a newspaper that she'd bought. "Where?"
Clark showed her.
Dawn read silently. "Oh my God!" she exclaimed. "But... but she said she wouldn't tell!"
Clark was comforted that Dawn was enraged on his behalf. He didn't want her to make a scene, though. "Let's finish our breakfast, and then read it all again back at school. Maybe it's not as bad as it seems."
"Not as bad as it seems? Clark!"
"Dawn!" Clark lowered his voice again almost immediately. Dawn still looked really mad -- kind of funny to have it not be at him. "Let's talk about it somewhere more... private."
Dawn nodded sharply. "Right." She folded the newspaper up and put it in her bag. "Is there any marmalade over there?"
***
Buffy lurked carefully through the prosperous suburbs. The weather continued stifling, overcast and gloomy, with occasional warm rain; it helped her stay out of sight. There were plenty of chances to get a stake, so she was well-armed in no time.
She wanted a working pay-phone (rarer than ever now that cell phone technology had really come into its own), or a public library with internet access, or LuthorCorp Tower. If she found a pay-phone she could call Xander collect (if he was home -- was it a weekend?) If she found a library, and if she remembered her Yahoo! password, she could send an e-mail to Willow, and ask her to undo whatever warrants or commitment papers Lionel Luthor had made up on her. If she found LuthorCorp Tower, she could go in and beat the crap out of the guy. Okay, that last part wasn't exactly a *good* plan.
Buffy walked through the side streets and carefully-manicured yards for more than an hour. One house had several sets of plastic flip-flop sandals on the front porch, and she stole a pair. Gradually the surroundings changed; the houses got smaller and less opulent, and there were little clumps of businesses in between them. Nothing was open yet, but there were people walking around that she needed to avoid. She hoped she was moving closer to the middle of the city. She hoped this was the right city, Metropolis, instead of Wichita or something.
She got confirmation of the day of the week when she passed St. Luke's Catholic Church, and it was full of people. She lingered on the front steps and rested for a few minutes, listening to the singing. She was about to move on, when she suddenly remembered something Merrick had said, years before. There was a trash can on the sidewalk near the steps. Buffy rummaged through it for a minute, then came up with a 20-ounce plastic soda bottle, complete with cap. She dumped the last few drops of sticky brown liquid out of it into the gutter, and slipped into the back of the church. It didn't take long to find the Holy Water dispenser -- it was a big tin urn with a cross painted on it in a little side hall near the restrooms and drinking fountain. Buffy filled her plastic bottle and tucked it into her makeshift belt, then left the church and continued on her way.
It was late morning when she found a small branch library. The sign said it opened at noon on Sundays. There were a few other people, almost as shabby as she, waiting under the overhang of the building. Buffy got up her nerve to ask one of them the time, and found out that it was 11:40, and the library would be open in twenty minutes. "They're okay with you staying outta the weather," he said, "as long as you don't cause no trouble."
Buffy thanked him and crouched by the wall to wait.
***
God, it was good to get back into the LexCorp office. It was Sunday; Lex was the only one there besides Security. That was good, too. Being all tensed up around his father made his shoulder hurt more than ever. It was a physical as well as a mental relief to be away from him. Lex hoped the wounds healed fast.
Lex ran over the list of business indicators that his computer found and flagged for him each day. It was a program of his own; he didn't trust his underlings to know exactly what he was looking for. Acceptable all around -- he'd have to reward his managers, and change the program. There were always more parameters to analyze. Lionel could strong-arm people; that was an advantage he had over Lex, who had decided he *didn*'*t* want to live in that world. As long as Lex could find other ways to keep an advantage over LuthorCorp, he could stand comfortably by that choice.
Lex locked everything down and dug into the safe for the codes he'd hacked out of his father's computer. He knew Lionel kept codes he'd had hacked out of the LexCorp computers as well. He hoped Lionel never hired anyone good enough to notice that there were two levels of penetrability on the LexCorp computers. Lex deliberately left some rather vital information where it could be obtained with only a reasonable amount of effort, in order to (he hoped) disguise the fact that there were other data which couldn't be obtained as easily. It was like leaving one piece of meat out, far from the rest, at a barbecue for the wasps. That was something else he'd learned in Smallville.
What were Lionel's pet compu-nerds up to now? Lex found it within half an hour.
His father had rigged up commitment papers on Buffy Summers. She was incarcerated here in Kansas. Lex dug a little further. The private asylum that his father always used, the one where Lionel's former mistress, Rachel Dunleavy, was detained -- something had happened there the previous night. There was a report, heavily coded. Lex figured that there had been some sort of a jailbreak. Eight women were missing.
Lex sat back in his desk chair. That made sense. Lionel's private jail wouldn't be able to hold the Slayer. Maybe she'd rescued some other prisoners as she left.
Where was she now?
***
Lex tried manfully not to toss and turn on the expensive linens. It was undignified; the servants would know from the rumpled bedding that he was insomniac, and they'd tell his father. Also, the painkillers they'd given him at the hospital were useless; his right side screamed at him every time he turned.
It would be light soon; maybe he should just get up.
Maybe he could call Toby, and get some of the good stuff.
No, that would only be a good idea if he weren't planning to go in to work today, and there was no way in hell he was staying at the penthouse all day long. No way. He had to go in to LexCorp or he'd lose his mind.
Lex kicked the bedclothes off onto the floor and rang for his valet. He swallowed another pill from his prescription, even though it hadn't been four hours since the last one. When Charles arrived, Lex bit his lip to keep himself quiet while Charles helped him dress.
He dismissed the servant and went to the kitchen. Lionel's staff hated it when Lex made his own coffee in the mornings, but that was one of reasons he enjoyed it. The other reason was that it reminded him of Smallville. Mrs. Digman at the castle used to welcome him in the kitchen. Maybe he should spend some time in the country soon....
Lex was surprised to find that the kitchen was already occupied. Lionel's chef was preparing breakfast, and Lex didn't feel quite strong enough this morning to challenge him face-on. He contented himself with asking that coffee be brought to him in the dining room, and left.
Lionel Luthor was seated at the dining table, elegantly dressed. He was reading the Business Page of the Daily Planet, and greeted Lex before Lex had time to get away unnoticed. Damn.
"Lex! You're up early. Particularly after a night spent in the Emergency Room. I thought you'd outgrown that, son."
Lex sat down and accepted a cup of coffee from the maid. He put as much sarcasm in his voice as he could. "Sorry to disappoint you, Dad. How are you this morning?"
Lionel looked appraisingly at Lex over the edge of his own coffee cup. "Better than you. You look like shit, Lex. What *were* you doing last night?"
Lex smiled bitterly and swallowed coffee. "What, hasn't the police report been delivered to your desk yet? Public park, after hours, me and Clark Kent... What do you think I was doing?"
The momentary flicker of unease on Lionel's face was almost worth it. Lex counted it as a point for him. Childish. It didn't last nearly long enough before it was replaced with an expression of calculation.
"Yes," Lionel mused. "Clark Kent. His finger-marks are all over this...."
Lex knew better than to ask, "All over what?" He knew he'd have to find out, though.
***
Something woke Buffy up. She was in a small, dark space. Panic washed over her. She froze and let it crest, ebb away. The smell was wrong -- not the stench of meat left in a closed box for four or five months, but rather grass, dirt, plastic, rain, car exhaust.... She wasn't in her grave. She was under a tarp, in the back of a gardener's truck, in Kansas, escaping from the minions of Lionel Luthor, one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. She took a deep breath of relief. She was sodden and tired, starving and filthy, but she had reason to know it could be *so* much worse.
It must have been the sudden lack of engine noise that had awakened her, because the truck had stopped. She heard the driver's door slam as he got out. Slayer-sense said it was a little after dawn. She peeked out from under the edge of the tarp.
They were in a residential area. To Buffy's California-bred eyes, the houses looked big. They were on large lots, too, and there were no fences between them. The truck-driver was talking to a few men on the front porch of one of the houses. It was still raining. They didn't seem to be paying any real attention to the truck.
Buffy ran.
***
When Dawn got up that morning, she was surprised to find a big alien camped out in her hallway. "I thought you were staying with Pete!" she exclaimed.
Clark stood up and looked sheepish. "His roommate snores. Also I was worried about you."
"I'm fine," Dawn said with a smile. "Now, get out of my way so I can go to the bathroom. Please."
Clark scrambled out of her way, then tagged along behind her as she carried her clothes and towel down the hall. "How are you this morning?" she asked.
"I'm fine. I set up at Pete's last night after I dropped you off and dropped Lex's car off. Then I couldn't sleep..."
"Snoring roommate."
"Right. So I put on," Clark dropped his voice to a whisper, "the suit, and patrolled for a little while." Clark looked up and down the hall. There was no one there. "Nothing much was happening, so I came over here and sat in front of your door and read. Then you got up."
"How's Lex?"
"The hospital let him go. The Luthor limousine picked him up around 4:30. I haven't seen him, but I was going to check the LexCorp office later. He's living with his dad right now, and the guy creeps me out..."
"Evil," Dawn put in.
"No kidding," Clark agreed. He went on, "So I didn't want to go to the penthouse. Besides, Lex hates it there, so if he's there he's probably asleep, and I shouldn't bother him anyway."
"This is my stop," Dawn said when they got to the door of the Women's Bathroom. "I won't be long. You want to go out to breakfast?"
"Sure!" Clark grinned at her. "I'll be right here."
***
Dawn didn't take long to get ready, which was kind of keen, Clark thought. He remembered the few times he'd waited for Lana downstairs at the Sullivans' house, when he'd gotten his act together enough to actually show up for one of their rare and ill-fated dates. She used to take *forever* to get ready to go *anywhere*. Maybe that had been some sort of petty revenge? Nah, probably not. Lana wasn't that kind of girl.
"Ready to go?" Dawn asked. Clark looked up with a start. Staying awake all night wasn't as tough on him as it would be on a human, but it still left him a little bit spacey -- especially if there wasn't any sunshine, for some reason.
Dawn looked dang cute for someone who hadn't gotten much sleep, herself. Her hair was shiny and pretty, even when it was still damp from the shower. She was wearing a sleeveless green top, khaki shorts and sandals. Clark made a quick synapse connection, and came up with "You look nice this morning."
Dawn beamed at him. "Thanks!" she said, gesturing with her armful of pajamas and towel. "So do you. I gotta go put this stuff back in my room."
She was quick to put her laundry in the hamper and get her purse and umbrella, too. Going out with Dawn was always nice -- comfortable, and, after the first time, practically angst-free. Unless she was mad at him, and she never made him guess about that, being with Dawn was always fun, and sort of easy. What did that mean?
The coffee shop was busy. Clark used his superior height and bulk to get them a little table by the window. Dawn ordered the pancakes, so Clark did, too. While he waited for their order, his eye fell on the copy of the Daily Planet that the man at the next table was reading. Near the bottom of the front page of the second section was a story about Superman. Dawn was rummaging through the jam caddy, looking for marmalade, so he let his attention, and his freaky multi-focus eyes, dwell on the story.
Dang!
Dawn looked up, startled by his exclamation. Clark didn't know what to do for a second; he couldn't just steal the guy's paper, could he? But this was important....
Dawn finally got his attention. Clark realized she'd said his name two or three times already.
"Clark!" she said loudly, "What's wrong?"
"I can't believe she'd do that," Clark mused. Was this the 'shock of betrayal' they kept bringing up in English class? If so, it stank.
"Who'd do what?" Dawn asked.
Clark took a helpless breath. "Chloe."
Dawn finally seemed to notice that he was staring at a newspaper. Their pancakes arrived, but she said she'd be right back.
Clark was so thrown he didn't even start eating while she was gone.
Dawn got back with a newspaper that she'd bought. "Where?"
Clark showed her.
Dawn read silently. "Oh my God!" she exclaimed. "But... but she said she wouldn't tell!"
Clark was comforted that Dawn was enraged on his behalf. He didn't want her to make a scene, though. "Let's finish our breakfast, and then read it all again back at school. Maybe it's not as bad as it seems."
"Not as bad as it seems? Clark!"
"Dawn!" Clark lowered his voice again almost immediately. Dawn still looked really mad -- kind of funny to have it not be at him. "Let's talk about it somewhere more... private."
Dawn nodded sharply. "Right." She folded the newspaper up and put it in her bag. "Is there any marmalade over there?"
***
Buffy lurked carefully through the prosperous suburbs. The weather continued stifling, overcast and gloomy, with occasional warm rain; it helped her stay out of sight. There were plenty of chances to get a stake, so she was well-armed in no time.
She wanted a working pay-phone (rarer than ever now that cell phone technology had really come into its own), or a public library with internet access, or LuthorCorp Tower. If she found a pay-phone she could call Xander collect (if he was home -- was it a weekend?) If she found a library, and if she remembered her Yahoo! password, she could send an e-mail to Willow, and ask her to undo whatever warrants or commitment papers Lionel Luthor had made up on her. If she found LuthorCorp Tower, she could go in and beat the crap out of the guy. Okay, that last part wasn't exactly a *good* plan.
Buffy walked through the side streets and carefully-manicured yards for more than an hour. One house had several sets of plastic flip-flop sandals on the front porch, and she stole a pair. Gradually the surroundings changed; the houses got smaller and less opulent, and there were little clumps of businesses in between them. Nothing was open yet, but there were people walking around that she needed to avoid. She hoped she was moving closer to the middle of the city. She hoped this was the right city, Metropolis, instead of Wichita or something.
She got confirmation of the day of the week when she passed St. Luke's Catholic Church, and it was full of people. She lingered on the front steps and rested for a few minutes, listening to the singing. She was about to move on, when she suddenly remembered something Merrick had said, years before. There was a trash can on the sidewalk near the steps. Buffy rummaged through it for a minute, then came up with a 20-ounce plastic soda bottle, complete with cap. She dumped the last few drops of sticky brown liquid out of it into the gutter, and slipped into the back of the church. It didn't take long to find the Holy Water dispenser -- it was a big tin urn with a cross painted on it in a little side hall near the restrooms and drinking fountain. Buffy filled her plastic bottle and tucked it into her makeshift belt, then left the church and continued on her way.
It was late morning when she found a small branch library. The sign said it opened at noon on Sundays. There were a few other people, almost as shabby as she, waiting under the overhang of the building. Buffy got up her nerve to ask one of them the time, and found out that it was 11:40, and the library would be open in twenty minutes. "They're okay with you staying outta the weather," he said, "as long as you don't cause no trouble."
Buffy thanked him and crouched by the wall to wait.
***
God, it was good to get back into the LexCorp office. It was Sunday; Lex was the only one there besides Security. That was good, too. Being all tensed up around his father made his shoulder hurt more than ever. It was a physical as well as a mental relief to be away from him. Lex hoped the wounds healed fast.
Lex ran over the list of business indicators that his computer found and flagged for him each day. It was a program of his own; he didn't trust his underlings to know exactly what he was looking for. Acceptable all around -- he'd have to reward his managers, and change the program. There were always more parameters to analyze. Lionel could strong-arm people; that was an advantage he had over Lex, who had decided he *didn*'*t* want to live in that world. As long as Lex could find other ways to keep an advantage over LuthorCorp, he could stand comfortably by that choice.
Lex locked everything down and dug into the safe for the codes he'd hacked out of his father's computer. He knew Lionel kept codes he'd had hacked out of the LexCorp computers as well. He hoped Lionel never hired anyone good enough to notice that there were two levels of penetrability on the LexCorp computers. Lex deliberately left some rather vital information where it could be obtained with only a reasonable amount of effort, in order to (he hoped) disguise the fact that there were other data which couldn't be obtained as easily. It was like leaving one piece of meat out, far from the rest, at a barbecue for the wasps. That was something else he'd learned in Smallville.
What were Lionel's pet compu-nerds up to now? Lex found it within half an hour.
His father had rigged up commitment papers on Buffy Summers. She was incarcerated here in Kansas. Lex dug a little further. The private asylum that his father always used, the one where Lionel's former mistress, Rachel Dunleavy, was detained -- something had happened there the previous night. There was a report, heavily coded. Lex figured that there had been some sort of a jailbreak. Eight women were missing.
Lex sat back in his desk chair. That made sense. Lionel's private jail wouldn't be able to hold the Slayer. Maybe she'd rescued some other prisoners as she left.
Where was she now?
***