Moments after he'd hung up on his conversation with Chloe, the phone rang. Lex answered it and was told by his secretary that Senator Burke was urgently requesting to speak with him--put him through, said Lex. The senior Senator from Nevada was an ally of his, and sat on the important intelligence and military committees.
"What's up in the Silver State, Paul?" he asked genially.
"There may be some trouble at one of our installations in the desert, Mr President." He sounded nervous. Nevada was a big and mostly empty state, in which the government had been doing funny things in secret for decades. Lex had continued that trend--the Nevada desert was like one huge Level Three to him.
"Tell me." There were procedures in place if anything got out of hand--all eventualities were covered.
"Meridian has been compromised, we think. And there's been a panic--the troops have had to quarantine the area.." It sounded as if the panic had spread to the Senator, whose voice was rising.
"Paul--just...hold your water, all right?" Ah, germ warfare. He'd inherited that program when he'd taken office, and had come close to shutting it down. but he couldn't quite do it. It was his nature to encourage scientists who were doing terrifying things in a secret laboratory, not disband them.
Lex said into the phone, "No one can get away from that facility, so there's nothing to worry about. Right?"
Right. And if there was something to worry about in Nevada, and the population centers were threatened, surely Superman would appear on the scene, he thought. The great hero was not unfamiliar with that part of the country...
---------
Kansas State Senator Lex Luthor was in Las Vegas, of all places, one winter weekend. He had come to attend the grand re-opening of Caesar's Palace--now under new management. His father, with whom he had become slightly closer of late, had quietly put the financing together and purchased it--just like that, LuthorCorp was suddenly in the hotel/casino business.
He'd asked Lionel why, and received a typically opaque answer: "It's our kind of city, Lex--why shouldn't we own a piece of it?." The old man then added with a dark chuckle, "You don't have to worry, son; I'm not going 'Howard Hughes' on you." That had been Lex's first thought--when an aging tycoon buys a Vegas casino, alarm bells tend to go off. Just as long as he doesn't move into the penthouse and stop cutting his toenails, Lex said to himself as he circled the casino floor. A malevolent Lionel Luthor is preferable to an insane one.
Gambling had never held much interest for him--actually to be more accurate, it was wagering that bored him. He hadn't placed a bet since he successfully backed the Crows to win the state championship--the late Mikhail Mxzyptlk had gotten that one all wrong. In the gaming area, he ambled past a craps table where a group of young men were hollering wildly--evidently the dice were running in their favor. One of them stepped away from the table, unobserved by the others, and stepped into Lex's path. It was Clark Kent, not looking especially happy to see him.
Lex's jaw dropped a little. This wasn't right at all--finding Clark betting on dice in a glitzy casino was like...it would be like coming across Lana shopping in a Wal-Mart. He tried to compose himself.
"Lex," said Clark. "I wondered if you'd be here."
"Did you? What are you doing here, Clark?"
He gestured toward the craps table. "Bachelor party. For a friend from college. We're here for the weekend--they wanted to see Caesar's, so..." He trailed off.
Lex searched for something to say. "Are you...er, having any luck?"
"I'm up two hundred bucks."
Lex responded with a bit of a smile, "Well, you should walk away from the tables, then--lock in those winnings. The house's advantage will break you in the long run."
Clark said, "Don't let your dad hear you tell people that--he is the house, now."
"He always has been." The table cheered as the shooter rolled another seven. "You're not staying here?"
"No--at the Imperial Palace."
"Ah." Lex thought of something. "You know, if you like, I could get you and your friends tickets to the big fight.." The welterweight championship was being fought over tonight in the hotel's twelve-thousand-seat auditorium as part of the festivities. Having made the offer, Lex, in his tuxedo, suddenly felt like an unctuous pit boss dangling comps in front of an important player. It felt distasteful.
Clark shrugged and mumbled something noncommittal--he seemed reluctant to accept a favor from Lex.
"Well, it was just a thought. Anyways, I've got a function to get to. I'm staying in the hotel--you can reach me through the front desk." He turned to go, then added over his shoulder, "Have a lucky day, Clark." Clark nodded and returned to the table. Lex walked away from the tables and past a bank of slot machines--a fat man with a plastic pail full of quarters barged into him and growled, "Watch it, baldy."
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After a long, pointless afternoon and evening, Lex got a call from Clark late that night. They agreed to meet in the coffee shop of Clark's hotel--open twenty-hours. It was about half-full at that time of the night. Clark was there sipping coffee when Lex arrived and sat down.
"Hello, Clark."
"I hope I haven't pulled you away from anything."
"No, not at all. So, I suppose you needed a break from all that bachelor partying?" he asked.
"Yeah. Everyone's drunk, and loud, and--you know, I don't think Las Vegas is my kind of place." You might enjoy it more if you were drunk, Lex thought. But I don't even think alcohol affects you, does it?
Out loud, he replied, "No, I don't imagine that it is. Compared to Smallville, it must be like another planet to you." Did Clark flinch ever-so-slightly at that? Lex couldn't quite tell--he'd had a few drinks himself..
"Uh, yeah, it's quite a contrast. So, how was the fight?"
"Over before it began; a first-round knock-out. Very disappointing."
"Sorry to hear that."
Lex took off his jacket, and said, "I wonder if, perhaps, your return here has dredged up any unhappy memories for you."
Clark stared at him. Then: "You mean Alicia. It isn't really an 'unhappy memory', but yes, she's what I first thought of when I arrived. I got up early this morning while everyone was still recuperating and went to look at the chapel and hotel we went to--they look worse than I remembered. They're run-down dumps, way north of here on Las Vegas Boulevard. "
The waitress arrived and asked them what they wanted. Lex was hungry and ordered steak and eggs (late-night special: $3.99); Clark was not.
"That certainly was out of character for you, eloping off to Vegas. Not like you at all." Lex had talked to Clark about it around the time it happened, but he'd provided few details, and Lex was still interested.
Clark said, "Yeah--it was a strange time for me," and looked uncomfortable. He changed the subject with, "So, why in the world did your father buy a casino?"
Airily, Lex replied, "Couldn't tell you--his reasons are his own. He keeps himself to himself." A glass shattered across the room, after being knocked off a table. Lex returned to what he was interested in. "Yes, Alicia--I can imagine how she would prey on your mind here in Las Vegas."
"How's that?"
"Well, she was the one you couldn't save, wasn't she? Lana, Chloe, your parents, even me--you always got there in time when we were in danger. But you couldn't get to her."
"Lex--"
"And it must really have hurt to have lost her to such a...well, a nothing, really. A 'moral-values' fanatic who has the amazing ability to turn himself into a cloud of dust? You and Chloe beat tougher meteor freaks than him between breakfast and lunch--most of the time."
Clark said, "It was never that easy. What's your point--why are you bringing this stuff up?"
"You called me--said you were bored and wanted to talk, remember? Now as I recall, Alicia was being framed by that 'arch-villain'--she was being set up to look like she'd relapsed into madness. But she hadn't, had she--she really was all better, as she claimed."
"Yes, she was," and Clark looked down as he said this.
"You believed the frame-up, didn't you--you turned on her; was that why she was alone? It's hard to fathom--you stopped the guy who could turn other people into dust, but you lost your wife to some clown. How on earth did you let that happen?"
Clark stood up, snarled "Go to hell, Lex," and stalked away and out of the restaurant. Lex waited for his food to arrive. That hadn't been very nice, he thought, a little surprised at his own behavior. I must really have some deep-seated ill-will towards Clark.
---------
Lex had never been back to Las Vegas. He had never found out exactly why his father had bought that casino, either, and he had sold it when Lionel died. Perhaps it had just been an investment--not everything his father had done was part of some fiendish plot.
Burke was still going, on the telephone. A good man, but a little twitchy. Lex interrupted him, "Just follow the procedures in place and things will be fine. Call me later when you have more details on what happened." He hung up, leaving the Senator spluttering.
If you suddenly decided you needed germ warfare, you had to have a program already running--that was how Lex had justified keeping the project open. And having made the decision, he had put his own spin on it; and suggested they bring Kryptonite into their research.
Lex stood up and walked to the door. He felt like stretching his legs.