Chapter Six

"You think it's best that you're here in Belle Reeve?" Clark asked again, pulling Chloe's mind back to the room and the table like a fish being reeled in at a dock on a foggy morning. The tabletop came into focus beneath her distant gaze, and reality slowly drifted into her senses. "Chloe, don't tell me you think that you should stay here."

He stared at her expectantly, waiting for a response. Chloe frowned at her hands lying limply in her lap and mumbled, "My mother…"

"Chloe, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that you are not your parents," Clark disputed instantly, his intense eyes piercing her own. "Trust me."

She understood his argument now, but even his bold voice no longer held sway over her. "He did… He turned into His father."

Clark opened his mouth as if to refute her statement, and then he closed it again, seeming to realize that she was correct and assuming defeat. "No," he muttered at last, pure hatred burning in his fiery eyes. "He's worse than his father." It was a long while before he could force the fuming frown from his face. "Anyway, that's beside the point. We're not talking about Lex; we're talking about you."

Chloe hesitated. "I almost killed my father."

"You- you weren't… yourself," Clark faltered, but Chloe knew that he was aware of his own lie. They both fell silent.

Like a liter of soda going flat, the half-hearted quarrel fizzled out.

"I… I talked to your dad the other day," Clark began again, apparently trying to find his footing in the conversation so that Chloe would not drift away again. "With his new job and everything, he's been busy…" His voice trailed off. "My… my mom's making an apple pie for you. She said she'd bring it by later this week if they would allow it here…" Clark leaned back and scratched his head, looking around as if he expected to find the right words floating around the room.

Chloe noticed his struggle and with great effort raised her eyes, as if her line of vision were encumbered by a massive weight. She watched him calmly, her stillness seeming to ease his anxiety. Clark returned the gaze, took a breath, and told her, "It's just so difficult seeing you here, Chloe. You were always filled with energy and passion, and I still can't believe what's happened to you—what he did to you… I guess what I'm trying to say is that… I'm sorry, Chloe. I'm so sorry for everything. I promise I won't ever let you down again. I care about you too much. Chloe, you're my best friend, and I care about you more than you could ever know."

Chloe could feel the sincerity of Clark's words rippling through the air and slightly penetrating the cold emptiness inside of her. "I care about you too, Clark… That's why I tried so hard… to keep your secrets…"

His head snapped up, but Chloe was still staring down at her hands. "W-what?"

"Your secrets… the secrets of the cave…"

Clark could only gape at her, attempting to speak calmly. "Chloe, what secrets are you talking about?"

But Chloe could not answer. A twister had begun spinning in her brain, jarring her forcibly from the present and shoving her mercilessly into the dark caverns of her memories. She was slipping downward, down into the grayness of the room where the green syringe lay eagerly awaiting her, waiting with the Table and Him…

x-----x-----x-----x-----x

Clark could only watch helplessly as Chloe's eyes widened, unfocusing and refocusing as if trying to decide whether to show her the present or whatever twisted image lay in her haunted mind. Her eyes made the decision that he had dreaded most, and he stared at her, powerless to stop the inevitable. Chloe gazed off into the distance, a look of quiet apprehension on her face.

She appeared to be listening to something, something that Clark could not hear. After a moment, her eyes narrowed into slits, and she spat out harshly, "Well, Lex, why don't you stick that needle up your ass and get your results first hand?"

Taken aback by her sudden outbreak of callousness, Clark leaned over and tried to bring her back. "Chloe. Please, Chloe. Don't do this." But it was too late. She had sunk into another memory. He watched as Chloe's eyes went wide, a look of panic crossing her face as her breathing slowly became more laborious. She glanced around her as if searching for a way out, her arms clasped tightly against the armrests of the chair as if bound there. She twisted her head back and forth, an invisible rope keeping her tied to the chair.

"I- I don't know. Smallville, I guess," she replied to the unasked question. Clark turned his head to see if there happened to be someone passing by to help, but there was no one. He hesitantly turned back to Chloe to watch as the scene unfolded before him, to watch as his friend panicked in her mind and answered her silent, invisible assailant.

"Lex, I really don't know! I-I'm telling the truth!" Chloe's voice cracked with fear as she said this, her voice rising in pitch and volume and her breathing becoming heavy and strained. "I swear I don't know! I don't know where he's from!"

Clark's attention was snagged like a leaf caught by the wind. His heart thudded a bit more forcefully against his ribcage as he realized what the question was. He had known why Lex had taken Chloe, or at least had a pretty good idea. But he didn't know what Lex had managed to find out… for he didn't know how much Chloe was aware of.

"I don't know! I don't know where! Please— don't— I don't know where, I don't know where, I don't know!" Chloe's voice had risen to a note of alarm, and tears were streaming down her face as she choked out this sentence. Yet she remained somehow constricted to the chair, staring up at the ceiling as she sobbed uncontrollably. Clark momentarily forgot his consternation at the prospect of Lex knowing more about him than he would like as his attention turned back to the pain his friend was going through inside of her mind.

Chloe let out an agonized scream. "I SWEAR! I don't know! I don't know where, I swear, I SWEAR!"

Then Chloe's left arm jerked as she let out a piercing, agonized wail of torment that rang through the room. As she jolted her arm, her whole body shuddered, and the chair she sat in fell backward and crashed to the floor. Chloe gripped the armrests harder, the invisible binds still strapping her down. At the sound of the shriek, a man in a uniform streaked into the room and dashed over to Chloe's chair where she was still screaming in pain, incomprehensible words spewing from her mouth through her tears. The man lifted a walkie-talkie to his mouth and shouted, "Sedative to room 217!"

As somebody else came rushing in with a sedative to calm Chloe down, Clark stepped to the side, the scene before him terrifying and unbearable. He was about to leave the room when a single word amongst Chloe's nonsense sounded throughout the room, echoing in his head even after she stopped screaming.

Krypton.

It was unmistakable. In Chloe's torment, the word "Krypton" had slipped, unbidden, from between her lips. Clark stared at her, disbelieving. The sedative was given to Chloe, and she fell into unconsciousness. His heart was fluttering anxiously again as Clark turned and exited the room, stopping for a brief moment in the doorway for one final glance back at what had become of his friend, one question tearing through his mind and eating away at his nerves as he left Belle Reeve:

How much did Chloe know?

x-----x-----x-----x-----x

Being the closer of the two, Chloe received the worst of the explosion.

A brilliant, blinding, resplendent blast of light exploded through the cave with energy so fierce that it shook the walls as it flared outwards in all directions. Instinctively, Chloe's arms flew up to shield her face as she was swept clear off her feet and into the rough wall behind her. There she was pinned, her feet dangling into nothingness, for a fraction of a second— the light, like the gust of a hurricane, holding her chest; the jagged, ancient wall supporting her back. Her right hand was out the furthest, still attempting to protect her vulnerable face. It felt like the light were searing her palm, burning it as if a torch were being applied to the skin.

A torch. How ironic.

When the infinitesimal yet infinite moment ended, the light receded and Chloe was dropped like a rag doll onto the ground. Her forehead came into contact with solid rock, and with a sharp crack she was out cold.

Letting out a groan, she squinted one eye open into a slit and found consciousness swimming in and out of focus before her. All she could see was the uninteresting, coarse ground stretching out around her. Aching consumed her entire body, but mostly her head, which pounded like the tireless beat of an advancing army's footsteps. Deciding that it wouldn't be very productive to lie there all day, she rolled over and sat up, placing a hand to her forehead and discovering a steam of crimson blood flowing from a deep gash.

That's good. It'll accessorize nicely with my red purse.

But it wasn't the time for pointless sarcasm, she realized as she stood up, spotting an unconscious Lex Luthor sprawled out in a far corner. Dimly aware of a continuous pain in her hand, Chloe turned over her right palm for a closer examination. Her lungs momentarily constricted as she stared, wide-eyed, at her branded palm. Burned into her raw red skin were three small black marks. One she recognized instantly, for she had seen it earlier that day on the stone in Clark's hand— when she had found him, lo and behold, passed out in Lex's mansion. The other two symbols looked chillingly like others found in the caves.

So Clark is connected to the caves. The caves are connected to the stones. The stones are connected to the blast of light. The blast of light is connected to… my hand? And the leg bone's connected to the knee bone!

She shook her head futilely, seeing that her random thought process was partially due to her normal brain (or lack thereof) and partly due to her recent head trauma. Dropping her fascinating hand for the time being, Chloe's eyes danced around the cave in search of her friend, from whom the strange blast of light had emitted. Yet the unmistakable broad shoulders and plaid were nowhere to be found. Neither, apparently, was the alcove in which he had stood.

Not possible. Chloe warily trod over to the spot where the opening had been. Her heart fluttered uncomfortably in her chest. Nothing. Where there had once been a doorway now adamantly sat a solid wall. Feeling as if she had been thrust into some freakish funhouse, Chloe tested her voice, which remained quiet so as to not awaken her captor.

"Clark?"

The harsh whisper that escaped her lips fell dead in the air. She stared blankly at the firm, unmoving wall. She had seen people who could control bees, start fires, teleport— hell, she had witnessed the depth of Clark's powers— yet she could not for the life of her fathom a moving wall. Her reportorial curiosity, which sometimes felt like a chronic disease to her, overcame her rationality as she stepped forward. She eyed the innocent looking wall as if attempting to sway it out of its disguise by staring at it. Was Clark still in the room masquerading as a cave wall? Had he been chucked somewhere far off from the blast? Had that overwhelming light hurt him? Then again, what could hurt Clark, right? Still, she called out his name again, louder this time. Was he… behind the wall, perchance? She stepped so close to the wall that she was mere inches from it, ready to press her ear against its rocky texture to try and hear anything going on behind it. It was what she often did with the door of her bedroom to see if the coast was clear to sneak out late at night- a tactic she had never divulged to her father.

She lifted her hands to place them on the stone wall, allowing her fingers to brush the jagged rock. It was cold. She pressed her palms up against it. Her right palm began to sear again as if she had placed her hand on a stovetop. And suddenly the wall exploded in a burst of pure white light so intense that Chloe had to squint and stumbled back a few paces, her arms once again flying up to shield her eyes from being blinded. The light was terrible, unbearable… yet somehow intriguing, beckoning to her. In a lapse of thought, she started moving forward again, toward the cave wall that had vanished behind the glare, into the light…

Her right palm stung, feeling excruciatingly like it was being sliced open and roasted like a marshmallow over a white-hot flame. The light had long since engulfed her, and she had long since stopped walking forward. She could no longer feel the hard, jagged rock beneath her fingers, and a turbulent wind had picked up all around her, whipping her hair around her face and her clothes around her body. She squinted, nearly blinded by the intense light and the wind pouring over her body. All at once, her palm throbbed painfully, and she turned it around and squinted at it.

The three symbols were glowing, each a different primary color. The red, blue, and yellow light illuminated her face, filling her sight as she stared, awe-stricken, at her luminescent flesh. That was when the images started flowing over her like rain in a heavy storm.

At first, they were images that she didn't understand—big, crystalline buildings and machinery that she didn't recognize and people and a brilliant sunset. Words spilled into her mind, words that held no meaning for her. And then she saw it.

A tiny spaceship, in which was placed a tiny boy.

He was sent across the stars, raining down to earth in the protection of the meteors. The Kents' red pickup truck crashing in a field. The boy running unbelievably fast. The boy climbing a tree and breaking off an entire branch by accident. The boy growing up, getting hit by a sleek silver sports car, fighting super powered teenagers, going into the caves, learning of his heritage and his destiny, bending a metal crowbar… Some images were familiar… Most were entirely new…

And words. Words drummed against her brain. Kal-El. Jor-El. Lara.

Krypton…

These words had meaning. Kal-El was Clark. Krypton was his home planet. Chloe didn't even realize that she was holding her breath until her burning lungs released it, and the images and words faded to ghosts and whispers, and then to nothing at all. She glanced down at her hand, still squinting in the light as the wind died down, and realized that her palm had acted as some sort of a key, a key to all the knowledge and information within the caves. But her brain was not meant for this; most of the knowledge escaped her the instant it was gone, yet some she retained. The blast of light as Clark vanished—when the crystal was complete, she surprised herself by knowing—had been so forceful on her hand that it had inscribed upon her flesh its symbols, giving her access to the secrets… the secrets of the cave…

The symbols on her palm were no longer glowing; now they were nothing more than charred and black, burned into her skin. Chloe stared at her palm, mesmerized and awe-stricken. The light faded around her, and when she looked up, she discovered that she was standing in the caves, an inch from the solid stone wall. Dizziness fell upon her as her brain absorbed the truth. A black shroud was overcoming her vision, and exhaustion was beginning to take over her body.

Her last thought before descending into unconsciousness was that Clark Kent was an alien.