Chapter 33
Back at the Kent farm that night, Lana and Clark were discussing what to do.
"How do you know that Lex has the key?" Lana asked.
"I don't," Clark replied. "But I do know that he was very interested in the spaceship and fortunately for us he found after it was already safely removed. But the key is needed to activate it so it must have fallen out nearby. My guess is that Lex or his people discovered it when they went to check the place out."
"What if he didn't find it?" Lana asked.
"Well we can always check that out." Clark replied. "But we should go with the worst case scenario first."
"Good thinking," Lana agreed. "How do you propose we get it from Lex?"
"Let's check out the mansion late tonight." Clark said. "We can get in and out without being detected."
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Outside the Luthor Mansion two guards were standing watch.
"Did you hear something?" one of them asked the other.
"Nah, must have been the wind," he replied.
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"Where do you think Lex would keep it?" Lana asked as they snuck into the house.
"Probably in his office, if he even has it here," Clark replied. "We should try using X-ray vision. Any lead containers or what not are potential targets. And of course the disk itself may be visible."
"Alright I'll check the ground floor you check upstairs," Lana suggested.
They began scanning the house with their X-ray vision.
"I found it," Lana said after only a very short time.
"Where is it?" Clark asked.
Lana shot of and came back less than a second later, the disk in hand. "Right here," she replied.
"Thank god," Clark said breathing a sigh of relief. "Let's go find out what this thing does."
"What about my mom and dad?" Lana asked.
"We've got to do this," Clark said.
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Down in the caves, Lana was standing in front of the wall, holding the key and debating whether or not she should slide it into the slot. Clark was standing nearby in case somebody came. There were three sets of symbols on the disk and Lana tried to line them up and match them if she could with the other symbols on the wall. Suddenly the disk was pulled out of Lana's hand and it stuck into the slot on the wall. She looked over at Clark who was looking back at her. When she looked back the three symbols on the disk were glowing, the top one was red, the left symbol was yellow and the right symbol was blue. The carved symbols of the wall then began to glow around their edges and the inner most ring began to rotate. The middle ring and the outer ring then began rotating in opposite directions. Lana reflexively began to back away from the wall. Then the middle of the disk opened up to form a diamond shape. Lana stared at it, trying to see if there was something inside it. Clark came over to stand beside her and see as well. Suddenly a flash of light came from the key and then two beams of light came pulsing out. They hit both Lana and Clark in the chest and lifted them up into the air.
Lana felt and invisible breeze blowing her hair back as she was shaking as hung there in the air. She managed to move her head slightly to see Clark doing the same. Lana began to feel strange not sure what was happening and suddenly she blacked out.
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"Lana?" someone said.
Lana rolled over from her spot on the ground to see who it was. She groggily rubbed her eyes and saw Chloe standing in front of her.
"Chloe, what are you doing here?" Lana asked.
"I was about to ask you the same question," Chloe replied. "But then I saw him."
Lana looked to where Chloe was looking and saw Clark lying on the ground about three feet away.
"Chloe this is not what it looks like," Lana said. "Believe me."
Clark was slowly awakening himself.
"Ugh, I feel like I got hit by a train," Clark muttered to himself.
As he picked himself up he noticed Chloe standing in front of him.
"Chloe, uh, what are you doing here?" Clark asked.
"Unlike some people I'm here to do research," Chloe replied.
"Chloe, I, look this isn't what it seems." Clark said.
"Why do you keep denying?" Chloe demanded. "Are you trying to give me some faint glimmer of hope? Or are you just doing it for your own malicious amusement?"
Clark sighed. "Fine Chloe, if it'll make you happy, Lana and I were out here having wild passionate sex all night. We did here because we didn't want to get caught by her parents," Clark lied.
Chloe glared at him angrily. "Get out of here before I call Lex Luthor and have him remove you," Chloe said coldly.
Lana quickly scanned for the key, but she couldn't see it. Clark helped her up off the ground and they quickly left the cave and headed back to the farm.
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Clark and Lana were trying to quietly sneak into the house, hoping that Jonathon and Martha weren't up yet.
"And just what were you two up to all night?" Jonathon asked as soon as they opened the door.
"Dad we were doing something very important," Lana said. "We found the key and then put the key in the slot in the cave."
"And what happened?" Martha asked.
"There was a flash of energy and we blacked out. Next thing we knew Chloe was waking us up," Clark replied.
"Chloe?" Jonathon asked.
"What is she doing around there?" Martha inquired.
"I don't know," Lana answered. "But she threatened to have Lex throw us out of the caves. My guess is that she's helping Lex research them."
"I never thought I'd see the day when Chloe Sullivan is helping Lex Luthor with one of his notorious schemes," Jonathon muttered.
"To make matters worse she thought we were there, you know." Clark added.
"Yeah well then you went out and told her that we were," Lana stated in a condescending tone.
"It's better than telling her what we actually were doing," Clark countered.
"Well what happened to the key?" Jonathon asked.
"We don't know," Clark replied.
"When we woke up, we couldn't see. We're hoping it disintegrated or something," Lana said.
"Well you'd better hope so," Martha said. "If that key falls into the wrong hands."
"Mom, we took the key away from Lex earlier tonight. It's already been in the wrong hands," Lana said.
"You broke into the Luthor mansion?" Jonathon asked.
"Well, we had to get the key." Lana answered.
"Well as long as Lex doesn't trace it back to you," Martha said.
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Down in the caves Chloe was busy taking pictures of the area for her own personal use. She was especially interested in the wall with all the carvings. As she was getting closer to examine it better her foot hit something. Looking down she saw an odd rock, she bent down and picked it up. It was a transparent crystal that seemed to glow ever so slightly. It looked as if it were part of a larger rock and that it had been purposely cut off. She stuck the rock in her pocket, Lex would want to see this. She snapped off a few more pictures before she left the caves.
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Please Read Over:
Whoa, whoa, whoa. One of those rocks already? Well now that's interesting isn't it? And now Chloe is working for Lex. Well she did work for Lionel so I guess it isn't that unusual. Kind of makes you wonder just what's going to happen though. Because right now it just seems like Chloe is about to help Lex discover the secret, and if that happens, who knows what terror may be fall Smallville.
Just another one of the usual reminders that if you want to talk to me about the story or Smallville in general. Go on IRC to the otherside servers, irc. (Port 7000), irc. (Port 7000), or irc. (Port 6667), then go to channel #smallville. Hope to see some people there. If you're looking for an IRC client I would recommend X-Chat although there are many other options out there. Really, please go there to discuss any questions answers will be a lot more direct. That and it gets kind of boring talking to the same two people all the time, I need fresh opinions. And if that doesn't work for you, look for the Smallville Revised Forum. I hope to see you in one of the two places.