Title: A Whole New World
Author: Dhrelva
Rating: PG
Spoilers: concepts from Skinwalkers, Rosetta, Relic, and Talisman
Category: pre-Smallville, Alternate Universe
Summary: Young Lex is abducted. By aliens.

Metropolis, 1984

Lex Luthor was four. He could read, and he could add. That made him a smart boy. He could reach all of the buttons on the elevator when he stood on his tippy toes. That made him a big boy. He could drag a chair close enough to the counter to get on it and get to the cookies. That made him a smart big boy. Therefore, Lex concluded, he was good enough to start school. And he didn't mean stupid nursery school which seemed more like a playgroup than an education from what Mommy said about it. That was why Daddy wasn't enrolling him in one.

He was more than qualified enough to start first grade, though, and he didn't understand why his father wasn't putting him in one of those classes. Tutors were stupid and boring. He wanted to go to school. Daddy said he was a Luthor. Daddy said nothing was impossible for Luthors. Lex didn't have to be a smart big boy to understand that, together, these meant that Lex could go to school, even if Daddy didn't sign him up for it.

So he had found the phone book and he had found out where the closest elementary school was. Then he had gotten his favorite bag and put some of Daddy's pens and notepads in it. Then he had gotten his coat and made sure one of his inhalers and his hand-drawn map were in the pocket. Then he listened to made sure Mommy was still busy practicing on the piano, and snuck out the door of their Metropolis penthouse and pushed the button for the elevator.

When it finally arrived, Lex was fidgeting and looking nervously toward the penthouse door, but the elevator door opened before Mommy realized he was sneaking out, and he made his escape cleanly. He pushed the button for the ground floor and he was on his way.

The front receptionist and the security guard were talking to each other and didn't even look his way as he stepped into the lobby and purposefully crossed to the big rotating glass doors. He tucked up behind a lady who looked a little like Mommy (but not really) so nobody would think he was by himself. That had been his mistake last time he tried to leave. But now he was smart and big, so he wasn't gonna fall into that trap again.

Once out on the sidewalk, Lex leaned up against the Luthor building as he consulted his map. ('Consulted' was his newest word. Daddy had explained what it meant before he went to work this morning. Lex bet other first graders didn't know what 'consulted' meant. Maybe he should start in second grade?) The map told him to go past three roads, then he'd make a turn toward the side that he writes with onto Congress Street. Lex started walking.

The first road he had to cross was easy. The white "WALK" lit up just as he got to it and he stayed close to a man who was also crossing the street. He had to run a little to keep up, but he was a big boy now and he managed this successfully, even if he did have to use his inhaler when he got to the other side. The next stretch of sidewalk was really long and it felt like forever before he got to the next road.

This one didn't have a walk sign, but it wasn't much more than an alley, so Lex looked both ways then hurried across when he didn't see anyone wanting to drive where he wanted to walk. It was a shorter distance to the next road, but it was a big road with lots of lanes, and a whole crowd of people were already standing at the corner waiting to cross. Lex mingled in with them, ducking under arms and squeezing between people to get to the front. He might be a big boy, but he still had short legs and he wanted as much of a head start as he could get when the light turned to say WALK.

As he brushed past some guy, he tripped over a crack in the sidewalk grabbed onto a metal rod the man was holding, hoping to catch his balance. Lex was quite astonished when it crumbled to dust in his hands. The dust, obviously, didn't hold him up and he crashed to the ground, scraping the heels of his hands on the pavement and knocking his bag off his shoulder. The man whose rod disintegrated helped him stand up again, righted his bag, but didn't let go of him.

Neither did he cross the street when the rest of the people started to move. He didn't let Lex follow them either. Lex tried to wiggle away, he was a lot smaller than the man and the guy had a strong grip. He thought about yelling for help and claiming he was being kidnapped, but the man was just kneeling in front of him, staring, and he didn't want to give the guy ideas. Instead he tried to tug away again, saying, "Leggo, I have to go to school."

The man didn't even seem to notice. Lex was starting to get creeped out. Nobody had ever looked at him like this before. A lot of shock and even a little fear. He wasn't blinking. He didn't even breathe until he said, "Se'geeth."

That wasn't English. At least, Lex didn't think it sounded like English. But it might be a bad word. It sounded like a bad word. Or maybe it meant 'God' in some language and it was a prayer. It sort of sounded like a prayer, too. Not that Lex had heard a lot of prayers or curses, but he blamed that fact for why he couldn't tell which this was. "Leggo," he tried again, deciding that if it didn't work this time he was going to scream that he was being kidnapped.

The man suddenly stood and picked him up. Lex shrieked at the top of his lungs. Only wide fields of wheat heard him, though, because they weren't in Metropolis anymore. He was put down on a dirt road. Lex had no idea where he was, but anywhere not here was better than with the freaky man who stared at him, so he turned and ran toward the wheat, hoping to be able to hide until he could find a way to call home. He had both the penthouse number and Daddy's work number memorized. Today, he probably needed Daddy.

He didn't even make it to the field before the man was in front of him again. Kneeling there, like before. Holding him by his arms. Staring. Lex felt his chest tighten and knew a panic-induced asthma attack was about to hit. He fumbled for his inhaler. The man didn't stop him. Two medicated breaths helped but he was still more scared than he'd ever been. "Take me back," he tried to order commandingly, like Daddy would do, but his voice shook and broke on the words, and he felt tears on his face.

The man touched the tears, and pulled at a red curl. "This?" he asked, with as much scorn as Daddy would use if he saw Lex crying like he was, "This is Se'geeth?" And then he laughed. Despite his jacket and the bright Kansas sun, Lex felt chilled. Like a ghost had just walked through him. Lex had a really awful feeling like something really bad was about to happen. Something that he wouldn't ever be able to set right again. Something that not even Daddy would be able to set right.

Hands cupped his face gently, almost like Mommy would do, and brushed away his tears. The sense of impending disaster was so strong, he couldn't even function well enough to produce more. The man smiled. It was scary. Like some of Daddy's. "We're going to take a little trip, Se'geeth." That, too, was a Daddy voice. The one that meant he was in serious trouble. Lex was having trouble breathing again. Two more medicated inhalations jump-started his lungs again, but he still felt paralyzed.

The man continued, having paused long enough to let Lex re-learn how to draw oxygen into his body. "I have some friends who would be very interested in meeting you. They'll be here in a few days."

"W-why do th-they want t-to meet m-me?" He didn't think it was because he was a Luthor. In fact, he was pretty sure that the creepy man didn't even know he was a Luthor.

He smiled again, though it was a creepy smile that hid something like malice. "You have a destiny."

Lex blinked, the familiar words shocking him into clear speech. "Daddy says that, too." Was there something about him that told people he was special? Could everyone just look at him and know he had a destiny? It was a kind of weird thing to say to a person, especially a stranger, so there had to be a reason people kept telling him this.

The man looked at him sharply, "What sort of destiny does your father say you have?"

He was a smart boy. He knew better than to mention LuthorCorp to strange creepy men who carried him off to the middle of nowhere in a split second. His first name would probably be safe to bring up, though, and he needed a good answer. "I was named after Alexander the Great. I will do great things." It wasn't even a lie. Daddy said that all the time, too.

The look directed at him was hard to interpret. The man wasn't happy with the response though. The last of Lex's bravado dried up and he tried to curl into himself. He also wished really hard for the ground to open up beneath - well, it would be really helpful if it swallowed the man up. But it didn't eat either of them. Stupid ground.

The man's thin-lipped expression cleared after a moment, and he nodded, as if coming to a decision. "We have some time before my friends arrive, so you should probably rest, Se'geeth." Lex tried to pull away as the guy's hand moved toward the top of his head, but there was a small flash of pain and the world went black around him.

Lionel Luthor was deep in projections for next quarter when his secretary buzzed him. "Your wife is on the line, she sounds worried about something."

He turned toward the phone, picked up the handset, and pushed the button to take the call. "Lillian?"

'Worried' didn't cover it. She was frantic. "Have you heard from Lex? I can't find him. He's not in the penthouse. The guard downstairs hasn't seen him. He's gone, Lionel!"

Lionel closed his eyes and counted to five. It didn't really help, but he didn't have the time to spare to count up to a hundred. "Lillian, breathe. I'll check with building security and see if they caught him leaving on the cameras. I'll be home in twenty minutes."

She still sounded close to hyperventilation, but she answered in a more coherent manner. "Security cameras. Yes. Good. I'll see you soon."

Lionel hung up and left his office. "Clear my schedule for the rest of the day," he told the secretary, "and call down to security to tell them I want unrestricted access to this morning's security footage for the penthouse hallway, our elevator, the stairwell, and every exit."

Knowing better than to ask what was wrong, she nodded, "Right away, sir."

The security people, when he reached them, already had the sequence of interest ready for him. No doubt they anticipated his descending upon them when Lillian asked the lobby guard if he'd seen Lex. What he saw proved quite clearly that Lex had deliberately left the building. When he was found, the boy was going to seriously regret this. "Find him," he ordered, then swept out of the office and took the elevator up to the penthouse.

Lillian looked a wreck. "He snuck out again, this time successfully," Lionel told her, he couldn't help but feel a little bit of pride at the boy's accomplishment, but anger and worry guaranteed it wouldn't show once the child was brought back. That was just as well, it would only encourage him. "I have people looking for him."

She was pulling on her coat before he finished speaking. "We'll look for him, too. Last time he wanted a soft ice cream cone."

"Yes," Lionel agreed, staying calm in the crisis because that was what he was good at, "but we've bought him an ice cream machine. He doesn't need to run away for that now."

"Movie theatre popcorn," she came up with next, "he was angry I wouldn't get him any last night when we saw Pinocchio."

Lionel nodded slowly. He was fairly certain there was no popcorn in the penthouse. His eye fell on the phone book lying in the middle of the floor. His son was resourceful, he'd give the boy that, but he didn't clean his tracks very well. Lionel would have to lecture the boy about that. He hurried to the nearest phone, his eyes never leaving the Yellow Pages. "Send a man up. I want to know what page in the phone book my son was looking at. My wife and I will be checking movie theatres for him, call the limo phone if you find anything." Another call took care of getting the limo brought around, and then he and Lillian left the apartment.

Lex was not at any of the nearby movie theaters, not unless he had gotten an adult to buy him a ticket and was actually watching something. None of the ticket sales people remembered seeing a young red-haired boy, though, so Lionel wasn't going to wait around. They were all given the limo number, the penthouse number, and the security number. A promised reward of very generous proportions guaranteed those numbers would be used in the off chance they did spot him. He was satisfied that if Lex was at any of those theatres, he'd soon know.

The security man, a retired private investigator, had determined that Lex was looking at elementary schools and had drawn a map to one on Congress Street, only four blocks away from the Luthor building. The principal there claimed he never saw the boy. The route Lex had drawn out was traced, but he wasn't anywhere along it. None of the questioned passers-by had noticed him.

Lillian was starting to panic again, and Lionel was beginning to suspect that Lex had run into trouble. "Winters," he spoke to the driver, "bring us home." Looking back at his wife, he said, "There's nothing more we can do but wait." He didn't say that what they were waiting for was a ransom call, but by the frightened look in her eyes, he doubted he needed to.

It wasn't easy to contact Krypton from Earth, but Jud-El managed it. The equipment in the Smallville caves helped a lot with boosting the signal. He looked over at the boy, confirming once again that Se'geeth was still unconscious. Not that him being awake would pose a problem. The child was bound, and would be incapable of understanding Kryptonian.

"Jud-El," a familiar voice seem to come from the whole cave wall. "You are supposed to be in exile."

Jud shrugged, though Jor-El would be unable to see it. "Yeah, well, you better come pick me up early." He looked at the boy again. "The End comes, brother. I found Se'geeth."

There was a long pause. "You found Se'geeth." There was disbelief in his voice.

"Se'geeth cannot touch palac stone. Bring some with you when you come back for us and I will prove I have found him."

There was another pause, but this was shorter. It may have even been caused only by transmission delay. "Us? You have him with you? Jud, that man is dangerous."

Jud-El laughed. "You will understand when you see him."

Jud imagined Jor-El scowling. The tone of his next words confirmed that he was doing just that. "I will come quickly, Jud-El, but Lara will not be happy about us cutting our wedding month short."

"Then tell her to use your absence to find out why our planet and all of us but Naman will die within the next few years. We have been given a warning we never expected. Let us make the most of it." There was a quiet groan from the boy. "Se'geeth wakes, Jor-El. I must go. Hurry."

"I will. Be careful, Jud."

Though it hadn't truly been glowing, the cave wall appeared to dull as the connection was closed. The boy's eyes were large. "The wall talked," Se'geeth observed in something like awe.

"Yes," Jud agreed, not wanting to get into a technical discussion with a very young human child. It occurred to him with some dismay that he was going to need to keep the kid alive for the next few days until Jor-El could get here. Fantastic. Like he knew the first thing about child care. At least Se'geeth could talk. With an internal sigh, he asked, "Are you hungry?"

The boy shook his head.

"Well, let me know if you need anything." That should cover all the possible situations that might require his interference.

"I need to pee." Lovely. At least the kid wasn't crying and having breathing attacks anymore.

Three days and Lex was still gone. No ransom demands, no substantiated sightings called in. Nothing. The police had found one man who reported seeing a red haired boy fall down and get picked up by a dark haired man. That had happened beside fourth avenue and was halfway along Lex's route between the Luthor building and the elementary school. Aside from trace DNA evidence that Lex had been there, and a sketch of the man's face, though, that hadn't really helped much. Both a recent photo of Lex and the sketch of the man were being shown on every news station as well as the Daily Planet. The police were flooded with calls, but none of them brought Lex back.

Lillian was doing poorly. She didn't sleep, she didn't speak, and she didn't eat. She jumped every time the phone rang. If she didn't snap out of it soon, Lionel was going to have to bring in a doctor for her.

He only hoped that she would survive finding out that their son was dead. Lionel knew the statistics for kidnapping. The odds were against Lex now. He hoped the body turned up soon. It was cruel not knowing.

The ship came in under cover of night and landed beside the caves. Jor-El and two others entered the cave in a tight formation, weapons drawn and eyes darting around as if expecting imminent attack. Jud leaned against a cave wall drinking a Diet Coke and smirking at them. "Everything's under control," he drawled, in English, "You can put the guns away. You'll scare Se'geeth." He waved casually toward the boy who was sitting cross-legged on the cave floor doing a word search puzzle from the Smallville Ledger. After the first dozen escape attempts, he'd realized there was no way he was going to outrun Jud, so he'd stopped trying. It had made the last day and a half much easier.

Three muzzles trained on the kid, who did, as predicted, look terrified. The guns only lowered and got tucked away when the kid's fumbling hands drew out his inhaler and he breathed in two deep breaths. "Se'geeth," Jud continued, "these are the friends I mentioned who were interested in meeting you." The boy's blue-grey eyes warily studied Jor-El and the others, but he seemed fairly calm now that no weapons were pointed at him anymore. The kid didn't talk much, and Jud wasn't surprised when he stayed silent now. "Jor, you brought the palac stone?"

The round rock that Jor-El produced was nothing like the dagger given to the Kawatche people, or the direction rod he'd been using to try to navigate Metropolis with, but it was made of the same material. Jud pushed himself up and took the stone from his brother, then squatted down beside Se'geeth. The other three moved closer to get a good view. "Se'geeth, hold this for us, will you?"

Se'geeth looked at all four of them suspiciously, but he cupped his hands to hold the rock in. Jud dropped it into the waiting bowl of fingers. A flash bright light made them all blink, and Se'geeth held only dust. He looked up at them nervously, biting his lip. "Why did it do that?" he whispered when no one yelled at him for breaking it.

When the other three remained silent, Jud answered, "Because you are Se'geeth."

He looked unsatisfied by this answer, but he did not ask again about Se'geeth. He had learned those questions were fruitless even before he learned that running wasn't going to help. He had only tried once to get Jud to call him by his human name. Jud had been insistant that 'you are Se'geeth' and he hadn't tried again.

"He is Se'geeth," one of the other Kryptonians said, in Kryptonian, sounding shocked. Jud could sympathize.

"Let us kill him and be done with it," the other one said, also in Kryptonian, which Jud was grateful for because the kid had enough trouble breathing without comments like that to scare him.

"He's just a boy," the first disagreed.

"A boy who will grow to become the Bearer of Darkness," Jor-El pointed out. "A boy who will someday be strong enough to face Naman."

"For now, though, he is still a boy," the first man reiterated. "We cannot kill a boy."

Jud decided now was a good time to speak. "We could take him back with us. If he dies with Krypton, nobody will need to kill him."

They looked at each other. The first man nodded slowly, "This is acceptable. We will be able to watch him this way. Perhaps we may even avert the prophesy altogether by finding him so young."

Jor-El nodded as well, "Let us do this for now. We can cryofreeze him until the Council has a chance to convene and discuss him. We should also try to identify Naman before we allow him to wake."