Chapter 13 - Proximity

Clark arrived a few minutes early for his first day of his fake internship. Lex had cleared out a space in his house—it was the size of a ballroom, and Lex said he was the only one with a key to the room—and filled it with scientific equipment. A lot of it looked like things Clark had seen in hospitals, but there was also a treadmill, and lots of screens, and boxy machines that Clark didn't recognize.

"Did you just get all of these?" Clark asked as he paced around the makeshift science lab, glancing around at all of the machines.

"Yeah. I've been reading up on how to use all of them. It'd be easier to bring in real doctors and scientists, but we'll make do."

Clark nodded. "So what do I need to do?"

"The first thing we're going to do is talk." Lex took a seat at a workbench.

Clark sat down across from him. "Okay. About what?"

"About honesty."

"Honesty?"

"Yeah. I need you to be honest with me if something is too much for you."

"Uh . . ." Clark shifted in his seat. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because you're curious, and that curiosity is going to make you want to push yourself. But I'm as curious as you are, and when we get into this, I can't trust myself to cut off the experiments just because you're hesitant. If something hurts . . . you need to tell me outright to stop."

"It's going to hurt. You already said that. We're using meteor rocks, right?"

"I know, but . . . you know what I mean. Don't push yourself. I can't have you getting injured. I'm not a doctor, and we can't even call your parents in to help."

Clark wasn't sure it was possible for him to be injured, but then again, they were planning on pushing his outer limits. "Okay. I'll be honest."

Lex nodded. "Let's begin."

They started with some preliminary tests. Lex taped a couple of sensors to Clark's arm and clipped one to his finger to get his heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature. They were all surprisingly normal for a human, though his temperature ran warmer. Lex also gave him a little device that was supposed to measure hand strength, and told him to squeeze the sides with just his thumb and index finger—the reading was off the charts, so he switched to his pinky. Then he read him a string of numbers and asked him to repeat them back, saying it was a cognitive test. Lex also gave him a short burst of electricity through his arm—enough to cause moderate pain but not injury to a human—but Clark could barely feel it.

"Do you have an x-ray machine?" Clark asked.

"No point, since I don't know how to use one or what to look for."

"Can I . . . uh . . . can I look at your bones and compare them to mine? I won't . . . look at anything you wouldn't want me to see." He'd seen plenty of guys in the locker room showers during his brief time on the football team, but this felt different somehow. He realized he was asking Lex to trust him quite a bit, but that was a big part of what they were doing.

"Ah . . . sure." Lex stood up.

Clark took a look at Lex's skeleton, then looked down at his own, glancing back and forth. There were no major differences that he could see, though it was hard to tell if the material was the same. The muscles were a different story. They were in all of the same places, and had the same overall shape, but didn't seem to be made up of the same material at all—Lex's were smoother, while Clark's almost appeared to be corded. He couldn't get much information from looking at the other internal organs, since he didn't know very much about biology, but he just seemed to have more systems going on inside him than Lex had.

Lex nodded through Clark's descriptions, then said, "You know, it's not really x-ray vision, if you can see all of that," Lex said. "That's not how x-rays work."

Clark shrugged. "I don't know what else to call it. The only people who would correct me are you and my parents."

"Fair enough. Ready to start with the meteor rock?"

"What are we going to do?"

"Now that we have baseline numbers for your vitals, we're going to test them again with the meteor rock at different distances from you."

"Are you using Lana's necklace?"

"That's all I have right now. For later tests, I might need to find more meteors."

"Okay." Clark set his jaw.

"We're starting the testing at a distance of thirty feet." Lex picked up the lead box and walked across the room. He set down the box at a marked distance. "I'm gonna open the box. You ready?"

Clark swallowed hard. "Ready."

Lex opened the box, and Clark almost laughed aloud. "Nothing," he said.

"Let's check on that." Lex walked back to the workbench, looking at his computer screen. "Temperature and blood pressure are normal. Heart rate is up."

"Sorry. I got nervous," Clark said.

"Try the force sensor?"

Clark squeezed the device as hard as he had before, and Lex nodded, then gave him a sequence of numbers, which Clark repeated back. The burst of electricity was as harmless as it had been without the meteor rock.

"Okay. Down to twenty feet."

Twenty feet was a similar story. The readings were all the same—the only difference was that Clark could feel the electricity a little more. At fifteen feet, he was starting to feel a little weaker; it didn't make him sick or affect his blood pressure or temperature, but the force he was able to put on the sensor with his pinky was down to eighty percent, and the burst of electricity was distinctly uncomfortable.

"You want to go to ten?" Lex asked.

Clark swallowed. "Do it."

Ten feet was interesting. His blood pressure and heart rate went up just a little, his temperature stayed the same, and he didn't feel sick, exactly. But when he tried to push on the force sensor with his finger, it barely moved.

Lex looked up from the computer. "Huh."

"What?"

"That's how much force I can put on it when I use that finger. Sure you want the electricity?"

Clark grimaced. "How bad is it?"

Lex took the electric probe from Clark and hit the button for the pulse. He winced. "It hurts. Not too bad. It's short."

Clark took back the probe. "I want to know how it affects me. Do it."

Lex shrugged and hit the button.

Sharp, intense pain shot through his arm. Clark yelled aloud, then breathed hard. "You said it wasn't too bad!"

" . . . Oh." Lex gave a short laugh. "Sorry, Clark. I should have realized."

"Realized what?"

"Well, it's not your fault, but you have no pain tolerance."

Clark didn't like hearing that, even if he knew it was true. It made him sound weak. He gritted his teeth. "Move the rock to five feet."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

Lex moved the rock, and Clark's muscles tensed. He felt sweaty and nauseous, and his legs felt weak.

"Heart rate's up. Blood pressure, too, and you're at 102 degrees. Try the force sensor?"

Clark pressed on it, but nothing happened.

"Not getting much of a reading," Lex said.

"The electricity?"

"I'm not doing that."

"I want to know the effects."

Lex shook his head. "You know the effects. It's going to hurt."

"We wanted to test my capabilities, Lex."

"What are you trying to prove?"

"I need to know what I can do."

"Then . . . try the x-ray vision."

Clark squinted. He couldn't see a thing. "It's not working. I want to test my invulnerability."

Lex rubbed his forehead and sighed before pressing the button.

Excruciating shockwaves brought Clark to his knees. As soon as he was able, he dropped the electric probe, but he picked it back up again once he had control of himself. "I'm okay," Clark gasped. "I can keep going."

"Too bad. I'm cutting this off." Lex picked up the lead box, stalked over to the meteor rock, and placed the rock inside, snapping the box shut.

The pain and discomfort died away immediately, and Clark breathed hard. But he wouldn't have quite called the feeling relief. "I said I was okay!"

"I'm not going to hurt you just to prove you can feel pain." Lex set the lead box down on his desk.

"I don't want to stop the experiments."

"We won't. But we should find another way to do it. Obviously, the effects increase with closer proximity. If I had to guess, I'd say it's some kind of inverse relationship."

"And we don't understand it."

"No, but this won't help with that. We get the point—when the meteor rock is close to you, it affects your strength and invulnerability. Let me work on an experiment to help you get around it. In the meantime, you should go home and get some rest. I'll still pay you for the full time."

Clark swallowed hard. He was supposed to be here for three hours, and it hadn't even been one. Part of him felt begrudgingly thankful to have someone who cared about him enough to cut things off before he really hurt himself, and part of him felt frustrated with himself for pushing too hard. Of course, a bigger part of him was frustrated with Lex. What had he been expecting to happen?

But most of him just felt disappointed. He'd really been looking forward to the time with his friend.

"Let me stay?" Clark asked. "Please. My parents aren't expecting me until six."

"No. You're done for the day. Go rest."

"Not to experiment, just . . . to hang out."

"Oh!" Lex's expression relaxed a little. "Of course. Up into the dining room?"

Clark stood up and followed him. "Actually not hungry. Can you teach me how to play pool?"

"Sure." They walked in silence for a moment, then Lex said, "Meet anyone infected by meteor rocks in the time since we last talked?"

Right. It had been awhile. "I haven't told you about Sean Kelvin, or Jodi Melville."

"Who?"

"People from my school who got infected with the meteor rocks. Sean could freeze people with his hands. And Jodi turned into some kind of fat-sucking vampire."

A slight smile crept across Lex's face. "Of course she did."

A/N: Okay, so this is definitely not all consistent with canon, but to be fair, canon was NOT consistent. There were times Clark was standing a foot away from Lana with her necklace and feeling nothing, and there are times he feels it from twenty feet away. After extensive research on the subject, I've discovered that the distance Superman has to be from Kryptonite in order to feel its effects is "the distance required by the plot for that story."