Part 5
Anger and Luthors go hand in hand
By the time he received the call he was already pissed and packing a couple of whiskies. He had tried to calm himself down by drinking. It hadn't worked. He had paced and paced around his office until dawn had slowly crept up beyond Metropolis' skyscrapers. He hadn't slept at all that night and it hadn't helped his mood much. He had yelled at his secretary, yelled at anyone who had dared come near him. And now the phone dared to ring.
"What is it?" he asked impatiently as he picked it up. It had rung ten times and no one had answered it. His secretary had resigned – or more likely fled – the previous night and had not returned to her post. All his calls went directly to his office now.
"Mr. Luthor?" a tired voice asked at the other end of the line.
"What do you want?" he spat out irritated.
"It's Sanches. I think we might've located your wife," the man said. "It was a good idea to have that reporter followed. She tried to give us the slip a few times and we let her believe she succeeded…"
"Where is she?" he cut him off abruptly.
Across Metropolis, in the middle of Lana's apartment, Chloe sat cross-legged on the floor in the middle of a mess of pictures and newspaper clippings. She had called in sick that day from the Daily Planet. She had found that she actually enjoyed telling Lana about what had happened in the last two years and she was slowly, but surely, starting to actually believe this was the real Lana she was talking to and that Mrs. Luthor had been nothing but a bad dream made up by a crazy witch's spirit.
"Lois says why not? So we go inside the locker room and there's the quarterback getting higher than a kite on liquid na…," her story was interrupted by the doorbell ringing. She quickly stood up: "Must be the pizza."
"Could you get it? My hands are all wet," Lana yelled at her from the small kitchen, but Chloe was already at the door.
"You better have a good excuse for being late cause there are two very hungry ladies here that…," she choked on her words when she saw Lex standing in the doorway. "Lex! What a surprise! What brings you to this neck of the woods?"
"Where is she?" Lex asked on a dead serious tone.
"Where's who?" she tried to play it cool, but her eyes couldn't help but wonder toward the back of the apartment where the kitchen was.
"I don't feel like playing games, Chloe," he said impatient.
"Well, see the truth is…," she slammed the door shut in his face and struggled to lock it up as fast as she could as she yelled toward Lana: "Get out of here!"
"What were you saying?" Lana asked coming out of the kitchen drying her hands on a towel just as Lex shoved the door open and grabbing Chloe by the arm pushed her out of the apartment and then closed the door behind her.
"Lex! Let me in! LEX!" Chloe yelled banging on the door like crazy.
"How did you find me?" Lana asked uneasily as she put the towel away. "I really thought I covered all my tracks."
"You did. She didn't," he gestured toward the door Chloe could still be heard furiously banging on. His impatience was obvious and the fury in his eyes far too burning for her not to notice.
"I'm sorry. I should've told you I was leaving," she apologized.
"I was worried sick," he said as he started pacing in front of her.
"I just…had to get out of there as fast as I could," she explained. "And if you're here to take me back, I won't go with you."
"Fortunately for you then, I'm not here to ask you to come back. I'm here to hear some explanations," he sat down in one of the armchairs and pulled out the glass cube he had received the previous night by special delivery. Lana stared at it confused. She had no idea what it was. "Well?"
"It's…uhm…," she picked up the cube and turned it on all sides. It had a tiny little mouse - burnt with a laser probably - in one of its corners. It looked like a plain glass cube to her… "A diamond?" she guessed because she really couldn't understand how he could be mad about some glass cube. He laughed dryly.
"Very funny."
When she didn't say anything, he went on:
"I don't know exactly where you were planning on going or disappearing for good to, but apparently 72 hours were an obvious overestimation on your side because here you are."
"What are you talking about?" she asked more and more confused as Chloe was attempting to break the door down with a fire extinguisher.
"You know very well what's on that thing!" Lex said standing up abruptly and pointing at the cube enraged. "I can't believe you could've hidden something like that from me!" He stared at her awaiting an answer, but she just looked down at the floor, not knowing what to tell him. She had no idea what he was talking about and telling him that would've only made him madder so after a few moments of silence she suddenly remembered to ask him something she desperately wanted to know:
"Are you going to be closing down Lang Pharmaceuticals after the trial?"
"What?" he looked at her incredulously. "Is that what all this is about? Lang Pharmaceuticals? Jesus! You know I won't shut it down unless you want me to. You can kill as many people as your sick little heart desires. I don't care."
"How can you be so coldhearted?" Lana asked coolly.
"Coldhearted," he repeated scoffing. "This, coming from you?"
"I would never let people die if I could do something to stop it!" she protested, mentally knowing however that he was right. There wasn't a word harsh enough in the English language that could describe what Isobel had made of her.
"Do you want to know the exact body count? It's in one of those many reports you like to torch without reading," Lex told her with a smirk. Since when did she start acting so righteous to him who knew every nasty little detail of her dirty businesses? Well, he had thought he had known everything up until a few hours ago anyway.
"Want to know yours?" she asked in a chilling voice that reminded Lex of the wife he had shared a bed with for the last two years. She chuckled: "Of course you don't. You like to forget you ever killed anyone, but newsflash, Lex, the bodies are pilling up in the basement and you won't be able to keep that door closed forever." Then Lana blinked and looked around the room confused. What had just happened? What was she saying? What was Lex saying?
"At least I don't go around killing innocent people for the fun of it," he replied dryly. "Now tell me what the hell this is all about, Isobel."
"You know," she muttered shocked.
"Don't you play smug with me," he suddenly said misinterpreting her words and picking up the glass cube threw it in the wall behind Lana, shattering it into a million pieces. Lana's heart was beating faster. She had closed her eyes instinctively thinking Lex had actually tried to hit her with the cube. "Now, tell me," Lex added in the end.
"I really don't know what that is…," she said looking back at the shattered cube.
"How could you not know what it is?" he asked exasperated. "You've been funding the researchers since they came up with the concept."
"I don't know," she repeated and then added, looking at the door: "Now, please leave and let Chloe back in." Lex stared at her suspiciously for a few moments. Where was the hysteria, the screams, the hitting? His wife had broken half a dozen ancient Chinese vases trying to hit him… Then it suddenly occurred to him: "Lana?" he asked and his voice had the slightest tremor in it. At that moment the door finally opened and Chloe entered the apartment thanking the landlord for letting her back in. She stared from Lex to Lana and from Lana to Lex. Then, clearing her throat, Lana repeated her request:
"Please leave."
Still in shock, Lex walked out the door in silence, not bidding either one of the two women farewell.
"He knew," Lana said once he was gone and Chloe had closed the door behind him.
"About Isobel?" Chloe asked raising her eyebrows in surprise. She had really thought Lex was clueless to the switch as she couldn't imagine him settling for anything less than the real Lana Lang.
"Yes," Lana said. "And now he knows it's me."
"As in you you?" she asked and Lana nodded. "Now I know why he looked like the sky just fell on him. Did he want anything in particular or was he just here to take you back home?"
"He wanted me to explain something about a glass cube. It was kinda weird," she looked back at the shattered cube.
"Did the cube happen to have a tiny little mouse logo in a corner?" she asked thinking she knew what the cube was.
"Yeah, I think it did," she recalled the sign.
"Oh, crap," she let out looking at the glass shards with regret. She kneeled next to them and picked up some of the bigger pieces.
"What is it?" Lana asked confused.
"It's called Cubicon X, it's this new tech Lang Pharmaceuticals' been backing research on," Chloe explained. "One of the things it can do is record holographic messages in what appear to be simple glass cubes. The little mouse is the logo of LWM research facilities."
"LWM?" she raised her eyebrows questioningly.
"Little White Mouse," she explained with a smile. "The people there are pretty okay. If I didn't know Luthors and their ulterior motives so well I'd say it's the only good thing Isobel ever did."
"You think it's tied in with everything else?" Lana asked staring at the shattered cube, regretting not saving it in front of Lex's anger.
"Don't make it sound like it's some big conspiracy…," Chloe started saying, but suddenly stopped mid-sentence. "You don't think Isobel might have been up to something, do you?"
"I don't know," she shrugged. "Though I really don't see how she'd just satisfy herself with being Mrs. Lex Luthor. It wouldn't be like her."
"Yeah, I did think she might've tried to get her powers back a few times after you brought up the possibility of Isobel taking you over," she pointed toward a pile of articles. "I mean she stayed in Paris an awful long time and there were rumors of her buying all kind of old stuff from private collectors. Of course since she slept with half of said collectors, it's needless to say the fine press focused on the sex."
"But she didn't manage to get them back," Lana concluded.
"Not that I know of, but then again Mrs. Luthor's a real life witch wouldn't sound very plausible on the front page of any paper, not even a tabloid," Chloe pointed out.
On the edge of Metropolis' industrial area, in the basement of one of Luthorcorp's factories, Lex paced nervously from one side of the room to the other.
"I don't understand how this could've happened. I mean one moment she's Isobel and then suddenly it's Lana standing in front of me and looking at me like I'm a monster," he sighed and ran his hand over his scalp. "Jesus! If she woke up now…what is she going to think? What is she thinking? It's been two years…I lost all hope and now…suddenly…without a warning…," his voice faded out and he stared at the floor for a second before resuming his pacing. "It's her. Lana. I've imagined it so many times, but never like this. It was always when we were making love. And she'd look at me and say Lex and I'd know it's her…," he stopped and then abruptly picked up his sentence: "I wonder how long she's been back," he thought back to the last few days. "It must be..," he recalled the incident in her apartment. "More than four days ago. That's plenty of time for her to have found out more than she should've. I bet Chloe helped. She knew. She was there in the apartment too. She lied to me. I shouldn't have expected her to be honest. It's been a while since we've been on friendly terms after all," he paused for a moment staring at the wall. "Is she ever going to forgive me for letting Isobel do all those things to her? Is she ever going to forgive me for all the things I did to her? She shouldn't have found out anything without me by her side explaining everything. Now she's going to get everything wrong. There are some things – most things – that she couldn't get any way but wrong, but I could've put them in a better way than Chloe," he rubbed his face tiredly and then stared at the tank in the middle of the room: "How on earth are we going to explain everything to her?" he asked the unconscious form of Clark Kent floating in a green liquid inside the tank.
End Part 5
