Dawn looked worried, too. "He'll feel better after stopping some crime," she said aloud, obviously trying to convince herself more than him.
"I think I'll declare myself a holiday until the Fourth of July. It's only a couple of days. Besides, there's no point in worrying about the stock price if the world comes to an end," Lex mused. "Between the two of us, you think we can figure out a way to prove to Clark that it's okay to kill those guys?"
"I think we have to. I'm not sure Buffy can take out five spaceships full of alien invaders alone."
"Especially if they land at five different spots on the planet's surface. If I had five spacecraft and were invading a world, I'd..." Lex broke off a moment and thought. "If I had five ships, I'd definitely need some sort of communication between them."
"Radio, laser, telepathy, magic, something we've never heard of..."
"Occam's Razor. Radio's easiest."
"Who do I know with a powerful frequency scanner?" Dawn asked, looking at Lex with raised eyebrows.
End of the world. "All of LexCorp's and LuthorCorp's assets are in play. I'll see what I can find." Lex pulled out his cell. Even in the middle of the night, he had his minions. It was nice to be the boss. "Nolan? I'll need you to deliver the following supplies to Lab Seven, Metropolis University." He looked up at Dawn. "You'll let my man in?"
"Maybe we should move my stuff to one of your labs? It'd be nice to have a more robust power supply."
Lex nodded. "Maybe we should move your stuff out of Metropolis altogether, if that's where the big fight's going to be." Addressing the phone again, he said, "Nolan, change of plans. Send a team and a van to Met. U. We'll meet you at the door."
"And don't forget to ask Chloe about Mulder and Stonetree. I could look them up myself, but I think I'll be busy with moving the hardware. Clark could be right, you know, about them just being nuts or bad guys themselves. We do have to check somehow."
"I'll call Chloe right now." Lex flipped the tiny phone open again. He'd programmed in the number for Chloe's cell after Mrs. Kent had made him write it down -- had that only been last week? And now the Earth was probably being invaded by some sort of alien strike-force. The world is stranger than we can imagine.
"Hello?" It didn't sound like he'd just woken her up. Thank heaven for college girls.
"Chloe, this is Lex Luthor."
"Hey, Lex. What's up? I read about your dad. Was it really vampires?"
"It was. I'll be glad to tell you the whole story later, off the record. Right now, there's a new problem, though, and I need your skill with research."
"Color me intrigued."
Lex smiled. He didn't want to go into the whole alien invasion story over the phone, so he just said, "Could you copy down the following two names? Joe or Joseph Stonetree, Fox Mulder." He spelled them for her, and waited while she spelled them back. "We need to know all about them, really."
"I have some stuff I need to do for the paper, but I can probably get back to you tomorrow or the next day."
"I'm afraid that won't be good enough --"
"Lex," Chloe interrupted, "I have cut you a lot of slack and taken your side a lot over the years, but when you act like you have priority over my life just because you're rich, it's really just too --"
Lex interrupted her in turn. "It's a matter of life and death, Chloe. I wouldn't, well I'd try not to -- it's about the end of the world. Superman can give you the whole story, in a few days, if we all live that long."
Chloe stunned was a specific sort of a silence, one that he recognized from their shared insane youth in Smallville. "Okay," she finally said. "I'll get right on this and call you back as soon as I can." She hung up.
Dawn was sitting and scribbling at the lab's battered metal desk. She looked up at Lex and gestured to her paper. "Suppose it is radio. These guys are, what, two-thirds of the way to the Oort Cloud from here? The radio transmission delay is going to be huge, and I doubt they'll be patient and enthusiastic about a conversation with us anyway."
"We'll just have to try it."
"Or, we could try this."
It seemed a little anti-climactic, to end up in this perfectly ordinary yellow farmhouse sharing pie and coffee with these perfectly ordinary-seeming people. The caves had been much more like the sort of thing he was used to.
On the other hand, he and all his allies had been struggling through ancient sites of power for many years. So far, all it had brought them was suffering and death, and the world was no closer to salvation.
Briefly, Mulder longed for the days when the worst he had to worry about was the closure of the X-Files, being thrown out of the FBI and imprisoned, and certain alien invasion and doom in the year 2012. In those days, he'd had friends; he'd had Scully. At least he'd known where she was and that she was mostly safe, and that she was brilliant and working on the problem. Skinner had been with her, bringing to bear as much of the official Bureau resources as he could on their behalf, on the behalf of the world. He'd had hope of success. Even if it had been false hope, it had been something.
Now Skinner was dead, and Scully had finally given up on him and his crusade. Now he knew that the invasion was coming six years earlier than he'd hoped. Now he'd exhausted every lead, burned every bridge, and if it weren't for the bizarre help of this retired Toronto policeman, he almost certainly would have put a bullet in his brain by now, to save the aliens the trouble.
Fox noticed everybody around the table was staring at him. "I'm sorry?" he asked.
Stonetree guffawed a little, softly. Mr. Kent's weathered face crinkled in a smile. "Martha asked you if you wanted any more pie," the farmer asked.
"Um. Yes, please. This is... good pie. Thanks." Mrs. Kent took his plate and returned it with another piece. She refilled his coffee without asking, but she still looked a little suspicious.
The blonde, Buffy, wiped Cara's face and watched him warily. Cara was on the verge of falling asleep; it was pretty late for a little girl, Mulder guessed. He was momentarily lost again in regrets about his son, regrets that he thought he'd given up on a long time ago.
"So, Mr. Mulder, tell us all about this alien invasion of yours." Mulder thought that Jonathan Kent's voice sounded falsely jovial, and he noticed that the farmer had his trusty rifle near at hand, hung on the wall right behind his seat.
Mulder sighed. "When I was a child, my sister was abducted by aliens. Nobody seemed to believe me when I told them what I'd seen. When I became a man, I joined the FBI, to find out the truth. I found out... a lot of things. More than I'd bargained for."
He took out the one weapon he had (his Glock was unloaded and locked in the Caddy's trunk), and showed it to them all.
Martha took one quick, uninterested look and busied herself with getting her sleepy toddler upstairs to bed, but Buffy and Jonathan both looked on in great interest. Stonetree had seen it before, days ago in Toronto. He got up and fetched himself another cup of coffee, muttering, "Wonderful coffee," to no one in particular.
Buffy reached out her hand and stopped in mid-motion. "May I?" she asked.
"Careful," he said, and operated the hidden switch that shot out the sharp narrow blade.
Buffy smiled delightedly and picked it up. She was attractive when she smiled, he thought, maybe a little skinny for his taste.
"Over the course of many years' investigation, I found evidence of a worldwide government conspiracy. They were covering up all evidence of alien incursions on Earth. They were also, simultaneously it seemed, trying to develop covert plans to either thwart or enable the alien invasion and takeover of the planet. There were so many groups, all trying to keep secret from one another, and all willing and able to kill for their own purposes. The truth was out there, I always thought, but I was wrong. The truth was back home. After my father died, I found this with his things. It's a specialized tool for killing alien spies and assassins. The only way to kill them is to stab them in the back of the neck, at the juncture of the skull and the spine. These things are specially designed for the purpose. My father, he knew all along. He traded my sister for something, some goal of some group he was always a part of, since before we were born." Mulder knew he wasn't telling this story in a persuasive way; he'd done a lot better in Canada. No one was going to be convinced by his whining ramblings. Hell, he wouldn't even be convinced.
Apparently, Buffy and Jonathan were, though. They were looking at him with a mixture of pity and horror in their eyes. "I thought the Luthors were bad," Jonathan muttered, shaking his head in disgust.
"He probably thought he had some sort of... reason," Buffy suggested dubiously.
"Are you condoning --," Mr. Kent began, heatedly.
Buffy cut him off. "No! There's always another way." She shook off whatever memory it was that darkened her eyes, and changed the subject. "This weapon is very cool," Buffy said, wielding it in some quick complicated pattern before plunging it towards the table and stopping a hair's breadth away from the worn wooden surface. She laid it back down exactly where it had been. "Nothing else will kill them? Beheading, setting on fire, stake through the heart?"
"Doesn't seem to. Also, if they're wounded but not killed, their blood emits toxic vapors, and it will eat through almost any material, like a powerful acid."
"Darn," she commented. "We'll have to come up with a way to get around that."
Mulder looked at her in surprise. Was she joking?
She smiled at his expression. "I'm the Vampire Slayer."
"Aaah," Stonetree said. Mulder couldn't tell whether he was referring to the Vampire Slayer or the pie.
"But I kill other stuff, too; it's not just vamps!" Buffy insisted. Apparently, his doubts showed on his face. "I've done an alien, even, a Queller Demon. So. Have you ever heard of an organization called The Initiative? The Adam Project? Professor Maggie Walsh? Something called 314?"
It seemed to ring a bell. "There've been a number of Adam Projects, I'm not sure..."
"It doesn't matter, really. Government mad-science guys and commandos, in my town, Sunnydale, splicing together people and demons to make super-soldiers for some reason we never found out. It all went horribly wrong, of course, and they ended up shutting it down. It's just that it seems to fit in with what you were talking about."
"It could easily have been. I actually came to Toronto looking for a vampire cop, Nick Knight, hoping he'd help."
"Vampire cop?" Buffy asked, clearly fascinated. "I know a vamp private eye in L.A., but I never heard of a vampire cop. How could that even...?" She trailed off, clearly thinking hard.
"Nick was a good guy," Stonetree rumbled. He got up and gathered all the dishes and took them to the sink.
"But he was gone by the time I got there. Joe was still around, though, and he brought us here looking for Naman and Segeeth, ancient prophesied defenders of the world." Mulder realized it might be out of place to let the sneer creep into his voice when he said that, considering that they'd apparently actually found them, but he somehow couldn't help it.
"Naman and Segeeth?" Jonathan Kent asked. "Are you sure? I always thought those prophesies said the two of them are destined to be enemies, that Segeeth betrays Naman and they battle forever."
"They balance forever," Stonetree rumbled over the sound of the running water. "They are as close as brothers, and like brothers they betray one another and reconcile, again and again, generation after generation. They are not always the same men, but when the world needs them, there they are. Star-destined." The big man turned back toward the table, wiping his hands on a dishtowel. He'd washed all the dishes and neatly put them away. "They are not always the same men. They are not always the same stories. But they are always there."