A/N: Pretty sure there are only a few of you who will still read this, since it's been a month or two since I updated last, but thank you anyway! If you do read, please review…I love those tasty little critiques (lol).

Chapter 6: Those Nagging Questions

Lex jogged the rest of the way behind Chloe and Lana across the rows of seats, passing the small trickling trail of blood which had dripped its way down to the middle of the stairs. He paused as he passed it, following the gleaming trail up to the window with suspicious eyes. What reason could anyone possibly have for locking them in? And what did that have to do with the blood coming from the projector booth? It sounded like someone's sick idea of a joke to him, but underestimating his enemies wasn't something he was renowned for, and the last thing he wanted to do was answer to angry parents if any of the others got hurt. He could just see the look on Mr. Kent's face, lecturing Clark on how things like this would always happen around a Luthor. Chloe's father would probably quit his job working for Lex if anything happened to Chloe, and Pete would have the mother of all victorious "I told you so" moments. Naturally, it would all be accompanied by Lana's innate sympathy but simultaneous avoidance of Lex (except for business with the Talon). It would happen just like it had always happened before, and maybe there wasn't anything he could do to stop it. Then again, this was all under the circumstance in which he himself was this criminal's target. There was still a possibility that it was a new undiscovered meteorite induced phenomenon, in which case Lex was almost certainly off the hook. It was the "almost" part that worried him. In fact, he wouldn't be at all surprised if the majority of Smallville found some way to pin the fiasco on him even if it was caused by a "meteor freak." To say that he was victim to a wide range of accusations would be accurate, if not for the word victim.

"Clark?" Chloe called, snapping Lex out of his downward spiral. The girls were standing near the wall looking down the hallway in shock, and Lex suddenly forgot about the mysterious trail of blood.

As he reached the wall where Chloe and Lana stood staring, he noticed a pale orange glow coming from the direction of their gaze and glanced to his left, not sure what to expect. There stood Clark, looking an interesting mix of guilty and preoccupied. Looking past him, Lex could see that the two metal doors had been forced open and one of the hinges had popped off in the process and now lie on the glossy checkered floor.

"What kind of drills did they run in football, exactly, Clark?" Chloe asked, clearly not at too much a loss of words to be sarcastic. Then again, she never really was.

"I don't know what happened,…" Clark began, but stopped at the look on Lex's face. That's when Lex realized he must have looked as maniacally scheming as he felt right now, and he forced the wave of questions that had come over him to subside for the moment. Those questions were dangerous, prying, nonsensical things that had no place here or now. At least, that was what his mental mantra had always been.

"Who cares, let's just get out of here," Chloe interrupted, though Lex could tell it was a much more calculated response than she was letting on. That raised further questions, and this time he couldn't stop himself from partially indulging in them.

If there was something going on with Clark as strange as it seemed, did Chloe know about it? Why would Clark let Chloe in on any secret that would explain his notoriously good timing? Furthermore, why would he tell Chloe and not Lana, or even Lex himself? What scared him most about this whole idea was not the notion of Clark keeping some dark secret. It was the fact that Lex's own fascination with finding the answer drastically outweighed any rivalry he might have otherwise felt towards Chloe. He wasn't even angry at the possibility of her knowing Clark's secret before him, because he was too busy trying not to embrace the investigative stance he so badly wanted to take on the issue. Although he would never admit it aloud, he desperately wanted to seek the answers to those dangerous, prying, nonsensical questions every time Clark pulled off another miracle. This time was no different.

"You know, being a big movie buff is one thing," Chloe called from outside the room, peeking head back inside the doors as Lex realized the others were ahead of them and halfway to the exit door,

"but sticking around to see the movie after the whole flickering-lights-and-blood-on-the-walls thing calls for a serious assessment of your priorities, Lex."

She was certainly recovering quickly from the trauma of being covering in an unknown person's blood. He would have expected even Chloe to need a little more time before looking back on any of this as funny, especially considering they were still in the middle of it.

"I think your comedic attitude is a little premature, considering the situation," he said bluntly, jogging to catch up to her (which was easy since she could barely walk in her shoes.)

"When faced with a stressful of frightening situation," she replied, "some people fall apart, go completely undeniably delusional. Others make jokes to keep their sanity. If you ever saw the delusional version of me, I'm pretty sure you'd prefer me as a comedian much more." She glanced down at the red stain on her shirt so quickly he almost missed it, but there was definitely something in her expression that hinted at sincerity.

Suddenly, they heard the rattling of a locked door being tried and looked ahead to see Clark and Lana failing to open the exit door. The two backed up from the door and turned back to look dismally at Lex and Chloe.

"This doesn't make any sense!" Lana said frantically, running her hand through her long hair.

"This place was overflowing with people when we got here. Why would everyone have left within ten minutes of getting here?" She crossed her arms trying to conceal the desperation in her voice, but Lex found that Lana was almost always the perfect picture of exactly how she felt. Chloe, as she came up next to him, was less an image of desperation and more one of speculation, biting her lip and squinting at the transition from movie theater darkness to dim hallway brightness.

"Lana's right, you guys," she said, more to herself than anyone else.

"There's no way we wouldn't have heard a fire alarm or something if everyone was evacuated for some reason."

A fire or some other natural disaster might account for the lights going out temporarily, but the blood in the projector booth, the locked doors and the sudden lack of all other people couldn't be explained. Something strange was going on, but it wasn't an accident. Chloe was right in that at least one of them would most likely have heard any fire alarm or emergency announcement if it had happened.

"Unless someone wanted everyone out except us," he added slowly, still operating on grounds of a plot. Clark looked at him curiously.

"You mean like someone planning this all out?" he asked uncertainly.
"But Lex, why would someone want to trap a random group of people in a movie theater?"

Chloe seemed to be turning the phrase over in her mind, and Lex certainly wasn't going to allude to the idea that this was all his fault, so he stayed silent. Then, just as expected, she replied,

"Maybe it wasn't random at all. I mean, think about it; how many Wall of Weird incidents have actually involved someone targeting people at random? There's always been a story behind these things, and just because we're once again the center of it doesn't mean this is a random act of aggression."

Clark and Lana were making there "Ohhh, now I get it" faces, and Lex was waiting for someone to point out the possibility of this being someone's attempt at getting revenge on the Luthors. After all, he hadn't entirely ruled it out himself, though it wasn't a very attractive prospect. Fortunately, no one seemed to consider it.

"Well I say we either keep trying to escape, which is starting to look pointless," he responded, "or we try to get the bottom of this and find out who our supposed captor is."

Clark started to say something when they all turned at the sound of faint music playing in the theater across from where they had just been. It sounded like classical music, the kind that plays during silent black and while films.

"Do you guys hear that?" Clark asked, already heading toward the theater entrance.

The screen wasn't visible from where they stood in the hallway, but it was casting a gray glow that flickered on the glossy floor. Even without thinking it through, Lex had a bad feeling about this.

A/N: Sorry it's so short. Next chapterAMAZING! Stay tuned.