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Nightmare part 2
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"Are you not afraid what magic could lead you to?" Isobel asked as she lifts a feather in the air.
"No" Amelia said.
"Why not?" Isobel said.
"Why be afraid of something I grew up around?" Amelia said, picking the feather out of the air.
"What are you afraid off Amelia?" Isobel asked.
"I'm not afraid anything" Amelia said.
"Really? You are fearless" Isobel said "Everyone afraid of something"
"I'm not everyone" Amelia said.
"But you must fear something" Isobel said.
Amelia looked at her friend "Only my heart"
In the Torch Clark is sitting at the computer looking at an environmental quality report for Kansas on the screen as Lois stood beside him.
"We know that Jason was in town by nine o'clock" Lois said.
"Well, according to the hourly satellite images, we had clear skies all morning" Clark said
Lois leans over next to Clark to look at the screen.
"Hourly? Can we get a bit more specific than that?" Lois asked, she holds her stomach for a moment feeling a wave of sickness.
"I'll try" Clark said and begins to type "You alright?"
"It doesn't exactly help when you see a guy dying from that stuff in front of you" Lois said "Especially if Chloe's got it"
"Hey, we'll get her out of it" Clark said reassuring smile at her before carried on typing.
"We better or I'll be kicking your ass" Lois said "Clark?"
"Yeah?" Clark said.
"What happened at Chloe's party?" Lois asked him.
"You passed out" Clark said.
"Chloe said she, Tina and Lana got possessed by witches" Lois said
Clark stops typing and looks at her.
"Isobel, Madeline and Briana I believed they were called" Lois said, anger hidden beneath her calm voice "Why did you lie to me?"
"I'm sorry" Clark said.
"Damn right you should be" Lois said "Now what really happened?"
"You were possessed by a witch" Clark said nervously, returning back to the computer.
"I liked the passed out story better" Lois said covering her eyes with her hand then removed it to look at him "Is that it?"
"Well err--" Clark said trying to find an answer.
"Why do I have the felling you know more about this witch?" Lois said.
"She made me promise not to tell you" Clark said.
"Well you better tell me once this is over cause I will kick you butt Numan" Lois said.
"Numan?" Clark said.
"I meant Smallville" Lois said.
"Look I'll tell you once this is over" Clark said.
Lois looks at Clark, seeming to accept his answer. There is a beep from the computer and Lois looks at the screen.
"Look at that" Lois said
On the screen there was a simulation of a cloud forming rapidly over Kansas.
"It looks like that cloud came out of nowhere" Clark said.
"And then it's completely gone five minutes later." Lois said
"It covered two miles before it dissipated" Clark said.
"Why would a cloud just appear like that? What is it magician?" Lois said.
"Maybe it's not a cloud" Clark said looking at Lois "Maybe it's pollution or smoke or something"
"Well, if that's the county line, then Chloe's house was right in the middle of it" Lois said.
"So is LuthorCorp" Clark said.
Clark gets up from the computer and walks away. He doesn't notice that Lois suddenly starts to feel weak and has to brace herself against the desk to keep from falling. The lights of the Torch starts to flicker and then everything went suddenly dark.
"Clark?" Lois called out.
She stumbles about before she finds a door, feeling her way around it she grabs the doorknob and opens to see she's in the middle of a church. Blood was covering the entire place, it looked like the remains of a massacre. There is several creaking sounds filling the place up.
"Lois, Lois" a taughting voice called out.
Lois looks over to see a woman on the altar with a mask on her face there smirking like a cobra about to strike. She begins to play with the bloody jewel encrusted knife in her hand.
"What happened?" Lois asked.
"It's all your fault honey" the woman said slowly looking up "You couldn't protect any of them"
Lois looks up and realise why there were creaking sounds. Everyone she loved was up there were hanging with there eyes looking at her either pleading for help but were glazed over. Her sister, her father, Chloe and even Mr and Mrs Kent…but where was Clark? She looks back at the woman who begins to lift her mask off, smiling all the time. When it finally came off Lois was looking right back at herself.
"Nor can you protect him" herself said pointing behind her with the knife.
Lois turns to see Clark with his hands chained to a wooden railing above him. He struggles to get free but can't.
"Say goodbye Lois" herself said and throws the knife at Clarks heart.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Lois screams the top of her lungs.
She collapses against the desk of the Torch office still screaming as Clark comes to her side just as she passes out.
"Lois!" Clark shouted holding her up.
In the LuthorCorp office, a monitor that shows the patients' blood pressures elevating to enormous heights. Next to that, there is a monitor of one of the patients struggling in panic on his cot as a man in a protective suit tries to restrain him.
"I can't control him! Get over here!" the man said to the guard.
"Yes, sir!" the guard said as he comes over to help retrain the patient.
Lex watches all of this through the window. Once the patient is under control, Lex walks away from the window and to Dr Ford. Dr. Ford opens the incubator wearing a pair of rubber gloves. He removes one of the vials and puts it in the top of a medical gun with a syringe at the end to inject the antidote.
"Mr. Luthor, we have never tested this antidote" Dr Ford said "I urge you to try it on one of our lab animals first.
"One of my employees is about to die. Do you see any other options for us right now?" Lex said.
"No, sir, I don't. But please remember, this is like a flu inoculation" Dr Ford warned "It contains traces of the infectious element"
"Is that your way of telling me the patient's gonna get worse before he gets better?" Lex asked impatiently
"Assuming it works" Dr Ford said and nods slightly.
Lex looks down at the monitor, seeing the patient being forcibly restrained. Then Lex goes to the wall and pulls one of the protective suits off of a hook where it is hanging.
"Mr. Luthor, you can't go in there!" Dr Ford warned as he tries to stop Lex "You must keep the exposure to the toxin to a minimum!
"I'm responsible for this plant and everyone who works here" Lex said "I'm going with you"
Lex and Dr. Ford quickly places on protective suits and stand in the chamber between the office and the patient room. They are showered in white steam, and then the glass door to the patient room slides open. Dr. Ford holds a small tray with the injection gun and two other vials of the antidote. He and Lex walk over the patient who is still clearly distressed, but does not need to be restrained anymore.
Lex sits down on one side of the patient as Dr. Ford goes to the other side, preparing the man's arm for the injection. He sticks the needle into the man's arm, and the vial quickly drains. There is a short pause as they wait for a reaction, and then the heart monitor starts to beep at frightening speed as the man's eyes open wide and he grunts painfully. He sits up, wildly reaching for Lex, and Lex stands up, backing away and knocking his arm against a table. The heart monitor flat lines, and the man falls back against his pillow; dead.
Lex glances down at his arm where he hit the table and sees a small tear in his protective suit.
Lex enters the Smallville Medical Centre. The hallways are full of patients, some standing and some unconscious on gurneys. Lex walks to Dr. Scanlan who is standing over a gurney near the waiting area.
"Dr. Scanlan, I understand you're treating a patient named Jason Teague" Lex said
"Lex, I've got my hands full right now" Dr Scanlan said "We're watching Mr. Teague along with all the others in his condition" Dr. Scanlan starts to walk away and Lex follows him.
"The others? Are you telling me all these people have the same symptoms?" Lex said as they stop at another patient who is unconscious on a gurney in the hallway.
"Unfortunately. We have no idea what we're dealing with" Dr Scanlan said as he looks at the heart monitor and then keeps walking.
"It's a synthetic toxin" Lex said making him stop and turn back to Lex, he lowers his voice "A pressure tank exploded this morning at my plant. We thought we had it contained, but the toxin must have escaped into the atmosphere. It's possible all these people were exposed at the time"
"And you're just telling me this now?" Dr Scanlan said looking at Lex like he was completely nuts "I have to call the Centre for Disease Control"
"I don't know how much they can do, but there's an antidote my project manager's been modifying as we speak" Lex said as he follows Dr Scanlan
"How close is it?" Dr Scanlan asked.
"The first trial was unsuccessful, but I assure you we'll have the situation under control" Lex said.
"It's too late for that" Scanlan said just as Clark enters the hallway carrying Lois.
"I need a doctor! I need a doctor!" Clark shouted.
Clark walks toward Dr. Scanlan and Lex. Dr. Scanlan motions to an empty patient bed next to the wall and Clark puts Lois down on it. An orderly wheels the bed away and Dr. Scanlan follows. Clark goes to Lex, grabbing him roughly by the shoulder.
"Did you know about this when I talked to you earlier today?" Clark asked.
"Clark, other than Jason, I had no idea anyone outside of LuthorCorp was exposed. You have to believe me" Lex said.
"What is this stuff?" Clark asked in fear.
Before Lex can answer, there is a loud zooming noise and then a large explosion by the window in the waiting area as a flaming meteor crashes into the medical centre. Clark turns to the waiting area as it fills up with smoke and several more meteors crash through the wall, knocking a man to the floor and flipping an empty patient bed upside down.
Clark runs down the hallway to Lois's hospital room, where Lois is now sitting up in her bed and wearing a hospital gown. She looks fearfully toward the window where we can hear several car alarms going off. Clark runs to the window and pulls up the blinds. Several meteors with fiery orange heads and long tails of black smoke shoot out of the sky and into the parking lot where they crash into the cars and send them doing flips into the air. Two more meteors crash into the pavement leaving large black craters in the ground.
Then Clark looks up into the sky and sees a meteor headed straight for the window where he is standing. He runs over to Lois's bed and hunches over her, standing between her and the window as the meteor hits. The wall explodes and dozens of kryptonite rocks hurtle themselves at Clark's back, but he successfully protects Lois from getting hit as she holds her arms over her head.
As she uncovers her head and looks up at Clark, the kryptonite all over the room weakens him and he falls to the floor with a grunt. There is now a huge hole in the wall and a ray of sunlight comes into the room through it. Lois gets up from her bed and walks to Clark slowly. The lights in the room surge noisily and sparks fly from exposed wires in the hole in the wall. Lois looks at Clark intensely.
"What's going on Smallville?" Lois asked "There was a meteor shower and you…what going on?"
There is a flash of light and a pop from a bulb behind Lois. She jumps slightly and turns to look at it, then turns back to Clark.
"Lois…Help me" Clark whispers painfully.
"How can I help you when I don't know what you are?" Lois said quietly "These meteorites? What are doing to you?"
"The meteor shower's the reason I'm here" Clark said "I'm from a planet called Krypton"
Lois stares at Clark as he struggles to remain conscious.
"It all makes sense" Lois said "That green gas from that psycho doctor and that drink you had from those cheerleaders. The meteorite rocks, they…hurt you" bends over and picks up a long piece of glowing kryptonite. "You're not even human"
Clarks looks pleadingly at her.
"When were you going to tell me?" Lois said.
"I'm sorry" Clark said weakly.
"I kissed you. I kissed an alien" Lois said in disgust "How could I ever think that there would be a chance that…"
"Please. That stuff makes me sick" Clark moans in pain.
Lois looks at the rock before back at him "Lex has been experimenting with these rocks. These rocks put Chloe in the hospital" Lois said near tears "Chloe is going to die because of you and I'm never gonna see her again" whispering deadly "You killed my cousin"
Clark looks up at Lois pleadingly. She lowers her eyes to the kryptonite in her hand, and then she rushes toward Clark, holding the kryptonite above her head, ready to stab him. Just before the kryptonite hits Clark in the chest, he wakes up in a hospital bed with a jolt. His bed is in the hallway and he looks around, seeing that the hall is still full of patients and doctors, but the meteor shower was just a dream.
"Lois" Clark quietly whispers but a thought occurs to him "Mom"
Clark gets off the bed and starts to walk down the hall hurriedly looking at all the unconscious patients. Dr. Scanlan sees Clark and follows him.
"Clark?" Scanlan said in disbelief
"I need to find my parents! Where are they?" Clark said
"They haven't been admitted. Clark, you're the first patient to come out of this" Scanlan said "I think you'd better sit down."
"No, I feel fine" Clark said
"Clark--" Scanlan said but before Dr. Scanlan can say anymore, Clark runs out of the hallway.
Clark super speeding onto the Kent farm. He comes inside through the kitchen door and finds Jonathan unconscious on the floor near some broken glass.
"Dad?"
Clark kneels next to Jonathan and touches his shoulder, but Jonathan is unresponsive. Clark continues to look around and he can hear the phone beep signifying that the phone is off the hook. He follows the sound and sees Martha unconscious next to the kitchen counter with the phone and a broken lamp lying on the floor next to her.
"Mom!" Clark cried out as he goes to her "Mom?"
He turns her gently onto her back and her body remains limp. Clark super speeds from the room.
LuthorCorp where Lex is talking on his cell phone in the office outside the quarantined patient room. The doctors in protective suits are still administering to the patients. Dr. Ford is in the office with Lex and is already very anxious. Clark runs into the office.
"Lex!" Clark cried out.
"I'll keep you updated" Lex said to the person on the phone and hangs up.
"You're running out of time" Clark said
"How did you get past security?" Dr Ford said.
"It's okay" Lex said to Dr Ford then turns to Clark "I don't understand. I left you in the hospital. What happened?"
"My parents are in there now" Clark said.
Lex takes a moment to digest the news before he began "Clark-"
"Lois, Chloe, Jason-- they're all gonna die if you don't do something!" Clark said.
"What do you suggest I do?" Lex asked.
Clark thinks about it, noticing the vials of liquid in the incubator. Then he thinks of something.
"Use me" Clark said finally.
Dr Ford looks at Lex, confused.
"I want you to use me. Look, I came out of this panic state" Clark explained "Maybe there's something in me that can help. I'll give you whatever samples you need"
"Well, even if your immune system could offer us some sort of insight, I don't know, those kind of tests take months, years to analyze. No, no." Dr Ford said
Lex walks toward the incubator holding his hand to his head pensively. There are beads of sweat forming all over his scalp. He turns back to Clark.
"He's right, Clark" Lex said "We have a new antidote that we can test in a few hours"
"There's no time" Clark said.
"The antidote needs to be heated to 1000 degrees Kelvin until it clears" Lex said "Otherwise, it's useless"
"This time we're gonna test it first" Dr Ford said to Lex.
"People's lives are at stake. We're running out of time!" Lex said.
Dr Ford points to the window "Look at them, Mr. Luthor. Look at them" he said angrily "Are you going to point the finger and decide which one of them is going to take the potentially lethal injection? Whoever it is, you could be killing them"
Lex goes to the window and looks through it, caught in an impossible decision. When he and Ford have their backs to Clark, Clark uses his heat vision on the incubator, raising the temperature to 1000 degrees in seconds. The dark solution in the vials becomes clear and the incubator beeps. Both Lex and Ford turn to look at the incubator in disbelief.
Then Lex walks toward the counter, grabbing an injection gun on his way, and opens the incubator, pulling out a vial and sticking it into the top of the gun. Both Ford and Clark look at him expectantly, unsure of what he is going to do. Without a word, Lex sticks the needle into his own wrist and injects himself with the antidote. Clark's mouth opens in shock.
"Mr. Luthor, no!" Dr Ford shouted.
Lex eyes roll back in his head. He sees a flash of white and suddenly he's dressed all in white, standing behind the desk in the White House in Washington, D.C. Behind him there's a field of Kansas with a farm house and a couple of barns in the background. Far off in the distance, several missiles soar straight into the air leaving long white tails of smoke behind.
Lex steps away from the desk and walks toward a door at the side of the office that leads to the outdoors. He opens the door and the sun shines brightly on him as he looks out. He sees one of the missiles land and cause a massive explosion that covers nearly everything in sight.
He stands in the middle of the field.
From space several missiles are launched from many different locations on the Earth, arcing miles over the land and crashing with devastating explosions, leaving huge circles of fiery destruction all over the planet.
Lex still stands in the field, but now the ground is nothing but dirt and human bones. He looks around with a dark smile as the sky fills with blood red clouds.
Lex jolts awake in the office at LuthorCorp. He sees Clark kneeling next to him.
"Clark?" Lex said, very breathless.
"Thank God it worked. I'm gonna get the antidote to the hospital" Dr Ford said in relief
"Lex, you're gonna be okay" Clark said reassuringly, smiling at Lex proudly.
Chloe smiles at the nurse as she leaves her meal, just as she was about to investigate what the nurse gave her Clark enters with a cup of coffee.
"Hey, your awake" Clark said
"Yeah" Chloe said.
"You alright?" Clark asked.
"A little groggy" Chloe said "Would kill for some coffee"
Clark offers his.
"Oh not the hospital crap" Chloe said "The taste kinda sticks with you for months"
"I gotten use to it" Clark said then takes a sip and makes a face "Maybe not"
Chloe smiles "So what's happening?"
"Everyone is being given the cure for the thing that Jason got" Clark said.
"That's good" Chloe said, Clark nodded and she looked down.
There was silence between them before Chloe looked up at him.
"I found my mom, Clark" Chloe said
Silence. Then Clark walks towards Chloe.
"Wow. That's... Chloe, that's great" Clark said.
"Yeah, I mean I put my feelers out for years, and something, three months ago, finally came through, so... um, it turns out she's, um... not exactly MIA, so to speak" Chloe said and starts to cry "She's in a mental institution."
"I'm sorry" Clark said.
"The real kicker is it's hereditary" Chloe said after she nods.
"Listen, hey" Clark said soothingly as he puts his hands on her arms. "If there's one thing that I've learned it's that you're not destined to follow in your parents footsteps, all right?"
Chloe nods wiping her eyes.
"Yeah, thanks" Chloe said and pulls away "So, popular question of the day. What is Clark Kent's worst nightmare?"
"When I woke up" Clark said as he sits on the chair near the window "Everyone that I knew was gone. I was completely alone"
"I wish I could say that I'll always be there for you, but somehow I get the feeling that may not be a promise I can keep" Chloe said pulling her leg toward her body and wraps her arms around them. "You were the only one who came out of it, Clark, and I don't think it's because you've been taking your vitamins"
"Chloe--"
"Look, you know what? You don't have to tell me" Chloe said "I know that I gave you my word that I was going to stop all this prying but... In these last few months, I really got a taste of what it was like to keep my mom's secret, and I've never felt more alone"
"It's weird when people think they're so close to you but have no idea what you're really going through." Clark said, nodding thoughtfully.
"Yeah. I'd hate to live my whole life like this. But after 'fessing up, it's amazing how quickly that feeling of loneliness disappears" Chloe said "I mean, if you can't tell your best friend, who can you tell? Right, Clark?"
Clark looks at Chloe for a long time, trying to decide what to do. Chloe returns his gaze steadily. Suddenly an alarm goes off, Clark looks over to where the Doctors and Nurses going to. His eyes widened.
"Clark? Where's Lois?"
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