Clark jerked upright and awake. He could hear screaming. It wasn't just human voices, but the sound of steel and concrete ripping and crashing with noises that sounded like anguished voices. He leapt to the window, looking out. It was so loud, it had to be close.

But he couldn't see a thing, not with his regular vision or with his x-ray vision. He shook his head in disbelief. It had to be somewhere close, he was hearing it so clearly, so clearly that he wasn't even aware of imagining the tumbling walls and buildings, the struggles of people caught in the wreckage--he saw just saw them.

But the night was calm, street lights steady, cars moving at their usual paces, no matter which direction he looked. He held his hands over his ears but that did nothing to block the sounds.

He couldn't be imagining it, could he? "Go away," he whispered. "Go away." As if they heard him and were responding, the sounds redoubled.

Now almost terrified, he stumbled to his brother's room. At least, if Lex could hear them, he'd know he wasn't crazy, and if he couldn't, well, at least he'd know that it wasn't real. He shook Lex awake.

"What is it?" Lex asked, muzzily, sitting up. Clark remembered that he could see in the dark, but Lex couldn't, and turned a light on. He didn't want to see Lex look at him if he were going crazy, he decided, and eyes lowered, asked, "Do you hear it?"

"Hear what?" He stole a quick glance. More awake now, Lex looked to be concentrating. "Clark, I don't hear anything."

"Nobody...screaming?" He risked another glance at Lex and saw the mingled confusion and fear that he'd never wanted to see on anybody's face when they looked at him. "Are you sure?" he asked in a voice he wouldn't have identified as his own.

"What direction is it coming from?"

"Everywhere," he whispered. "They don't stop."

"Are they...telling you things? Or just screaming?" Lex's voice sounded too calm, too controlled.

"Mostly just screaming. Sometimes it sounds like they're calling for help, but it's mostly just screaming. And things falling down, metal ripping, it sounds like whole buildings are being torn apart! Lex, I have really good hearing, but I can't see anything, anywhere, like this. No accidents, no fires, nothing!"

Lex drew his legs up, underneath the covers. "Do you think it's Dad? Doing...something to you?"

"It could be, I guess. But Lex, they sound so scared!"

Both of them jumped as the phone rang. Clark wrapped his arms around himself. If it was Dad...and Dad could put things in his head...

Lex reached for the phone, answering, coldly, "Hello."

Clark heard, among all the other noises, Batman's voice. Only he sounded more perturbed than Clark had ever heard him. "There's been an earthquake here in Gotham. It's bad and we need all the help we can get. Come to the manor, the headquarters are wrecked."

"We'll be there." Clark slowly loosened his arms. Lex looked up at him sharply. "You heard that? An earthquake?" At Clark's nod, he spoke quickly into the phone. "Just one more thing--this sounds crazy, but is it noisy? People screaming, buildings falling?"

"Yes." It sounded as though Bruce's attention was already somewhere else.

"Clark was hearing it. More than half the country away."