A/N: I find myself writing ahead… mostly so that, if I get enough reviews, I can post a new chapter nearly immediately. (Yeah, like that happens as often as I want… not the reviews although, more is always good but more that I don't follow-up as often as I should…) But Christmas is kicking my butt! (And if this is posted some time late January, you can tell that I wrote it ahead of time… :D) Anyways, sometimes that's why my Author's Notes seem a little behind the times…

Chapter 15

When the voice broke off, Chloe looked about her frantically for any sign of her location. The room definitely didn't feel otherworldly, but it wasn't a place she felt familiar with. The unrelieved gray of the walls was rather depressing and only emphasized her imprisonment. She took a deep breath. "Get a hold of yourself, Chloe girl. You've been in worse spots."

She looked at the door and realized that if she had a key, she could have opened it from her side of the door. It seemed bizarre to her that a key would be needed on the inside of a room, but shrugged it off. If this had been going on for as long as Clark thought, this could have been prepared in advance for anyone not susceptible to the Transmission. The room had a toilet in it, but if the room was eight foot by six, she would have been surprised.

She looked at the window where the light feebly shone in. The ceilings were surprisingly tall and she didn't think she could just reach it. She cursed her slight stature and wished briefly that she was at least six inches taller. Then she might have reached it by jumping… or maybe doing the walking up the wall, propping her feet between the two walls. She was just thankful that there was a toilet in the corner. Obviously, this has been used as some sort of prison before, she thought morosely. When she heard the door scraping open, she jumped and twirled around quickly.

------

Clark had to swallow hard to bury the fierce disappointment that the radio station had revealed no nefarious activities. It had just been a lead vault to house archives of various shows and their records. Considering the frequency of disasters that happened in the area, it wasn't a bad idea. But now he had to trek at normal speed to another location. He paused for a moment and wondered if anyone would really notice him superspeeding anywhere. But in the back of his mind, a wiser voice than he was used to asked if he was really willing to risk Chloe by taking that chance. He shook his head. He was going to have to slog through the day like everyone else. His mouth twisted into a grimace. While he still frequently wished he was "normal", right now he just wanted everything to be the way it was. He hefted his backpack more securely on his shoulder and kept moving. At least he had put the search in a logical order in his mind.

Progress felt slow to him as he moved toward the LuthorCorp Shipping Center. With Lex being affected, it seemed like it would be a good bet for Chloe to be stashed in such a heavily guarded building. He smirked slightly. He found it odd in the extreme that Chloe and he had been able to break into and out of LuthorCorp facilities almost without any trouble for the last five years. He would have expected more from Lex.

------

"Lois! Lana! You've got to get me out of here! Clark's in trouble!" Chloe prayed to herself that an imagined threat to their desired leader would be enough for them to get her out of there. Their faces didn't even change expression and Chloe looked at them more closely. Lana's hands held a tray of food and Lois carried the water. "Shit," she muttered.

"We are to bring you sustenance, Chloe Sullivan," Lana said and Chloe shuddered that all emotion had been leached out of her voice.

"Lana…" she started, but she was totally ignored as Lana placed the tray carefully within the room. She turned to her cousin… the one that she thought could withstand anything. "Lois, what's going on? Why am I in here? Why won't you help me?"

There was absolutely no reaction from Lois Lane. Dead eyes bore into Chloe's and she wondered if she'd ever get her friends and cousin back. "You will slide the tray under the door when you have finished," Lois murmured in monotone. She poured water into a plastic cup, which she set beside the tray. "Someone will return in the morning."

As the girls turned to leave, Chloe saw her first chance of escape disappearing before her eyes. Sure, they said someone would be by in the morning, but there was no guarantee of that. Silently begging their forgiveness, Chloe swept Lana's feet out from under her and tackled Lois to the wall. "Please don't make me hurt you," Chloe begged as Lois continued to struggle.

With no response given, she pulled her hand back to punch out her much beloved cousin. But before she could land a blow, her hand was twisted behind her and she was actually flipped to the floor. Lana stood above her, no sign of the exertion she had just made showing at all. "You will be attended to in the morning," Lana stated as the girls moved quickly out of the room. Chloe was too winded to try and stop them. She wished briefly that her captors had installed carpeting in her cell.

------

Clark left the shipping center cursing fluently under his breath. If his parents had heard him, he would have been grounded for a week… even though he was a college man. He had been so sure Lex would hold Chloe in his facility. He sighed heavily. There are two other places Lex could have stashed her, I suppose, he thought morosely. He was tempted to go straight to the main LuthorCorp factory… especially considering everything that had occurred there. He opened his backpack and munched on an apple as he considered. He turned to head in that direction until he thought of Chloe.

"You gotta' follow your journalistic instincts, Clark," she'd mentioned during one of their various stake-outs forTorch assignments. "Rushing in all directions at once does absolutely nothing for an investigation." He'd wondered if he even possessed those instincts and had said so. She'd just smiled and patted his hand. She hadn't said anything further, but she'd always shown such faith in him… and she'd set him a great example. While those that didn't know her would think that she just jumped without looking, he knew from experience that she researched the possibilities and then went on her field trips.

He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. Mentally, he called up his list of suspect sites again and started toward the Manor.

------

Chloe stood on the toilet and reached toward the window. She could have sworn that she could just have reached it. As her fingers clutched hopelessly on thin air, she blistered the air with curses. Finally, she jumped with the hopes that she could latch onto the ledge and pull herself up. Unfortunately, she slightly miscalculated the distance and slammed into the wall. Luckily, her fingers did latch onto the sill, but she hung there, gasping to regain her breath. But as time slowly passed, she could feel her fingers burning from the strain of even hanging there. She couldn't even find the strength to pull herself up to the ledge, but she wouldn't allow herself to give up so easily. Tears streamed down her face and her arms started shaking as she fought to raise herself up. Finally she met with success as her eyes passed the window sill. What she saw made her say a number of words that would have made Clark blanche. She dropped to the ground in defeat, slightly twisting her ankle for all of her troubles.

"How could there possibly not be a latch on that window?" she asked to the empty air of her cell.

"Did you really expect me to allow that to happen?" The cold voice seemed to emanate from every point in the room.

In her inspection, she hadn't noticed any cameras or speaker systems, so she wondered how it was possible. Don't let him shake you, Chloe, she thought fiercely. The last thing she wanted in the world was to appear weak to this person and allow herself to be used as bait in a Clark-trap. She tilted her chin up unconsciously, ready to do battle… if not for herself then for Clark. "Well, I haven't been that impressed with your tactics so far," she sneered, "so why wouldn't you leave a window open?"

"If you are trying to antagonize me, Ms. Sullivan, you will find that an impossible task." The voice, if anything, had gotten slightly chillier and Chloe had to swallow a smirk.

"Of course it's impossible." She started pacing. To sit still while being interrogated in this bizarre manner was anathema to her. "You're a computer, after all. Emotion is not something you are capable of."

A tinny laugh sounded which chilled Chloe to the bones. "And what theoretical jump did you need to make to come to that conclusion?"

Chloe continued pacing, thinking furiously. She knew that the entity or person knew that she'd been to see Jor-El which is what had made her invulnerable to the Transmission. But did she really want to reveal that Jor-El had said he couldn't pinpoint the source of it? If she said anything further, would it give her kidnappers more leverage against Clark? She vowed silently that she wasn't going to reveal anything. She pressed her lips together fiercely and sat in the corner.

The tinny laugh came again. Chloe wondered if it was her imagination or if it really was a simulacrum of a true laugh. "Very good, Ms. Sullivan. But we have plenty of time to get acquainted. Please make yourself comfortable for the night. Someone will be by with your meal in the morning."

Chloe shivered in reaction. She had a feeling that the ultimate solution to this problem wasn't going to be as easy as they'd originally thought. She wondered if there was any way for her to get a signal to Clark or something, but she hesitated to bring him to this place. If the zombies knew about red kryptonite, then they would definitely know about the green stuff. She straightened her spine as she lay down to get some sleep. If she was going to keep Clark safe, she was just going to have to escape on her own.

A/N: Oh my gosh! So do I have news! I have currently been offered the position of News Editor for Can you believe it! I think it was my poem that did it. We'll see how I do. It's not so much that I'm nervous as that I'm worried how much time it'll take and if I'll be able to garner any sort of news about my dear Chloe. Although finding information about the rest of the show and actors was a snap! Except for who died on January 26:(

MarkMark261: Thank you for catching that error in grammar. I think I put singular because, before the preposition, I put "a"… which made me think singular. Whoops! ;D

Yeah, I know that the villain has been totally playing least in sight. I think it's mostly because I was feeling ambivalent about the identity of said villain. I know I gave an identity previously, but I started rethinking that. We'll see how the story lets me determine who it ultimately is. (Doesn't it seem odd that I don't know the identity of my own villain?)

I'm not going to let Clark off that easily. He and Chloe will need to have a long talk. Whether I'll have that in the context of the story or not remains to be seen.

KentCharm: The Clark proposing to Lana thing isn't giving me too much heartburn. I know how that'll end up, so I'm not worried. In fact, I'm starting to be less worried about the Death as more trailers come out. But ultimately, we had to wait until January 26th. And thanks for being patient! We'll see how it goes. My personal life is starting to heat up, so we'll see how much attention I'll be allowed to give to the story…

Johnny Superfecta: A new fan! Welcome! I'm so excited when new people read my work… and especially when they bother to give feedback. It makes me happy. The "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" vibe did get a little sidetracked, but it's coming back… with a vengeance. ;D And I'm glad you liked my Krypton synopsis. I just see so many versions that I wanted to put down the historical stuff I remember and grew up with. For it to be any other way seems slightly wrong to my delicate sensibilities… ;D

Oh, don't worry. Transmission Lex is definitely going to be around a bit more. To leave him out would be a travesty! ;D

Regarding the Red K, that's totally true. I guess I was going for how they couldn't seem to keep their hands off of each other and then suddenly all his restraints are taken off and he does exactly what he wants. What's funny to me is that scene came out of me totally by surprise. I definitely wasn't intending that scene when I started out…