Chapter 35 - Experimentation
Clark ran his hand over the place on his back where the needle had gone in. The soreness had faded long ago, but the memory remained, almost enough to break him down again.
It had taken him minutes to calm down when his brother had taken his marrow. Lex had taken a long time to comfort and calm him back then; Clark didn't expect any of the same treatment now, and he didn't get it. But the darkness also hadn't been nearly as horrible as Clark had expected. He had been slow and gentle and careful, as much as he could reasonably be, and he had given Clark some ice and time alone to recover. He wasn't a mindless sadist.
Now, though, Clark was feeling mostly recovered. A little stiff and sore when he stood up in the lab room they had gone to—Clark would never understand how Lex just had access to labs wherever he went—but not particularly worse for the wear. The physical pain had been awful, but he hadn't had any flashbacks. He had kept his mind focused on his mission.
He was there to save his brother.
Lex was waiting for him in a little office, where they had met for Clark to hear the details about what would be happening. He looked up from his laptop when Clark came in. Clark stepped toward Lex, but immediately stepped back. Lex had replaced the kryptonite in his pocket with a smaller piece so that Clark could get a little closer, but he still had to keep his distance. "How was that?" Clark asked.
"Profitable."
Clark didn't know what he'd expected. "It's going to help people, right?"
"The ones who can pay for it."
It was a start. "So what now?"
"Well, I'm not gonna take any more samples today. Need you to bounce back so I can tap that resource in the future."
"Right," Clark said. He wished Lex could just pretend to care about his well-being, even if he didn't.
Lex stood up, looking Clark up and down. "I've been curious about something," he said.
"What's that?"
"Your limits. You're the only alien specimen on the planet, as far as I know. I wonder what you're capable of."
Clark frowned. "How is that going to help your research?"
"It won't, not as far as I know. But I'm a scientist at heart." He raised his eyebrows. "How about you, Clark? Have you ever been curious what you're made of?"
"Blood, marrow, and CSF?"
Lex chuckled. "You said you wanted to work together. This could help you learn about yourself. What do you say?"
Clark shifted his weight. If Lex had asked him the same question back when he was pretending to care about him, Clark probably would have agreed enthusiastically. If he was honest with himself, he was kind of curious: his dad had never encouraged pushing his limits, but rather setting new ones to fit in and avoid hurting anyone. As it was, though, Clark didn't know whether to trust the man who looked like his brother. "Are you going to use kryptonite on me?"
"Tempting, but I'm more curious about what you can do without it."
"What do you want to test?"
"Strength, durability, speed. I'd love to get x-rays and MRI scans, maybe take some close-up shots and scans of what's happening in your eyes when you use heat vision and x-ray vision. What else can you do? Super hearing?"
"You wouldn't publish anything, would you?"
"I'm interested in money and power more than fame. I have no interest in sharing you."
Something about the way he said it both comforted Clark and sent a chill down his spine.
"What have you got to lose? I'm not using kryptonite, am I? So you can run away at any time if it becomes too much."
"It's a lot of tests," Clark said.
"Yeah, it is," Lex said. "Probably take us days to get through, maybe weeks."
As far as Clark was concerned, that just meant more time they would get to spend with each other. More time Clark would get to learn about what made the darkness tick; more time he could use to try to get through to him. But there was one piece he really didn't understand. "I just don't get why you would want to. I mean, you're going to pour so much time and money into these tests, and I don't know how they're going to help you."
Lex sighed and stood. He paced a couple of steps, away from Clark. "I believe that greatness deserves to be witnessed," he said finally. "What better reason to acquire wealth in the first place than to experience that which no one else has access to? You, Clark, your species, you're the ultimate mystery." He smirked. "And if I have one sin, it's that I love a good mystery."
It was almost a compliment. And it checked out. What's more, it wasn't even fully evil. It could be, depending on the choices Lex made, but right now… He wasn't forcing Clark into anything. He was giving him the choice.
And Clark really was curious.
"OK," Clark said. "Let's do it."
Lex didn't let Clark do any experiments that first day. He said he wanted to see the full range of Clark's abilities, not just what he could do after having CSF taken. They took x-rays and MRIs, and then Clark went home.
It was for the best. It meant he was able to tell his family what he was planning to do before carrying it out.
Predictably, his mom was worried but supportive, his dad was unhappy, and his brother was livid. His brother didn't say anything, though—just stalked out of the room. His dad talked him through what he was doing.
"I'm not going to yell at you for giving CSF," he started, "but I want to remind you that we had an agreement. You were supposed to ask me first."
Clark winced. "I'm sorry, Dad."
"I don't want you doing any chores for 48 hours."
"I can take a couple of easy days, but I'm really OK." This extraction had hurt more than the one for marrow, while it was happening, but he was feeling a lot better now.
"To be on the safe side," his dad said. "And I want to hear about all of the experiments you do."
"Believe me, I'm not going to lie to you anymore." He had learned his lesson about that one.
"Good," his dad said, and he gave Clark a couple of pats on the shoulder. "I'm trusting you."
Clark's heart swelled.
He had been nervous about the experiments, but after a few weeks, he had to admit that they were really cool. The x-ray and MRI scans didn't mean much to him, until Lex let him look at scans of himself, so Clark could compare his own biology to that of a human. The differences were fascinating, as were the similarities— the shapes were nearly identical, but the textures and relative sizes were different. There were some structures in common and some that were different, and Lex took the time to explain what he knew about human biology and his theories about Kryptonians. Clark drank it all in.
Testing speed was tricky. He broke several treadmill belts trying. But each time, he broke new upper limits. Eventually, Lex resorted to using a high-speed camera, and he discovered that his top speed was several times the speed of sound—and he just kept getting faster.
Strength was also tricky to measure, because Clark could have lifted the very building they were in. Lex ended up devising different strategies of giving Clark what he called mechanical disadvantage—whatever that meant. In the end, though, they ended up giving up on this one. There just wasn't a way to reach the limit. They capped out at a few tens of millions of pounds.
They didn't end up doing a lot with endurance. Despite making a few sarcastic comments, Lex didn't push him into doing anything that would hurt, and Clark wasn't exactly pushing for it himself. They had a few brainstorming sessions about it, though, and that was more than enough for Clark. As much as he enjoyed learning about himself, it wasn't what he was there to do. He was there to connect with Lex, and working with him, brainstorming with him, let him see into Lex's mind.
And when it came to that, looking at how heat vision and x-ray vision worked might have been the most interesting. Clark got to learn a lot about how eyes worked, and Lex was a surprisingly patient teacher. Clark's x-ray vision didn't use x-rays at all, but rather some additional sensors in his retina, the back of his eyes. And the heat vision was coming from a tiny organ system near his tear ducts that humans didn't even have. While Clark always had that slight feeling that Lex might be wanting to take advantage of him for his strength or speed, listening to him talk for minutes or even hours on end about the physiology of humans versus kryptonian eyes made him realize that Lex truly loved biology; not for the power it brought, but for its own sake. Seeing the person he had been taught to see as pure evil light up with such innocent wonder gave Clark a truly new perspective.
The hard part was that the more time Clark spent with the darkness, the less he was able to connect with the light. At home, his brother retreated from him, distant and uncertain.
Clark tried not to worry too much about it. He knew he would find a way to connect with both of them.
One problem at a time.
